Hidden away for eighty five years, the tragic story of Minik, a boy who was said to have discovered his own father skeleton in a glass display case in the American Museum of Natural History, has come back to haunt the museum.
Lured to New York by false promises, exhibited to the public as a curiosity and forced to live in the basement of the museum, Minik died in 1918. His story raises unpleasant questions about the insensitivity of the scientific community of an era long past, when eminent anthropologists competed fiercely to bring live specimens of people to their laboratories.
The story is one of an alleged coverup at the turn of the century by museum authorities, including the famous anthropologist Franz Boas, and of deceit and betrayal by North Pole explorer Robert Peary. It involves a relentless campaign by a businessman from the Canadian Arctic to return dignity to Minik by having his father remains moved next to those of his son in a small cemetery in New Hampshire.
Details of the sordid treatment of Minik during his stay in New York were uncovered by Kenn Harper, a businessman who first heard the tale from his mother in law. She met Minik when he came home to his hamlet in Greenland in 1909. Harper spent eight years digging into the life of Minik, and he compiled his findings in a book titled: “Give Me My Father’s Body.”
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