Seeking Descendants and Exploring Mary Sara's Journey

Who is Mary Sara, the Sami woman whose brain was taken for the Smithsonian’s “racial brain collection”? Today, we find her descendants. And we find out how the Smithsonian is addressing the dark legacy of its “bone doctor,” Ales Hrdlicka. 

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The brain of a Sami woman who died at a Seattle sanitarium in 1933. The cerebellum of an Indigenous Filipino who died at the 1904 World’s Fair. These are just two of the brains collected, seemingly without consent, by the Smithsonian’s first curator of its physical anthropology division, Ales Hrdlicka. They were part of the institution’s “racial brain collection.” 

Now, a hundred years after this brain collection began, The Washington Post has pieced together the most extensive look at this work to date. In this second episode, we conclude our search for the descendants of Mary, the Sami woman whose brain was taken in 1933, and we hear from the Smithsonian about how it’s grappling with Hrdlicka’s troubling legacy.

If you haven’t listened to the first episode, make sure to listen to “Brain desirable,” Part 1.