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ince the 19th century, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have obtained, studied, and stored more than 30,000 human remains, one of the largest such collections in the United States. In the past, many remains were studied in order to justify scientific racism. Now, the institution should rapidly offer to return most of these remains to lineal descendants or descendant communities, according to a report released last week by an institutional task force. “It’s important to face this past and try to repair the harms caused by our institution and so many others,” says Sabrina Sholts, curator of biological anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and member of the task force. The Smithsonian already has a process for repatriating Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native remains, as a 1989 federal law requires; it has returned more than 5000 of them. Now, the report urges that Indigenous remains be returned more quickly and that the effort extend to all human remains. However, it suggests prioritizing the remains of marginalized groups, such as the collection’s 15,000 Native American remains and 2100 African American remains, as well as the nearly 6000 remains of people whose names are at least partially known. The task force applies a bedrock principle of research on living humans—the need for informed consent—to the remains, a first for the Smithsonian. It advises that no research should be done without consent from the deceased or their descendants. Research would be permitted on ancient remains that cannot be linked to any of today’s communities—a small percentage of the total. Other new recommendations include returning as many remains as possible by 2030 and barring destructive sampling—to analyze DNA, for example—to identify descendants. Most of the Smithsonian’s human remains were acquired without proper consent in the early 20th century. Physical anthropologists collected many remains of Indigenous peoples and people of color from more than 80 countries in an attempt to prove now-debunked theories of white superiority. “It’s a collection that should have never been amassed, and we’re committed to dismantling as much of it as possible,” wrote Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch III last year in an editorial. Studies of the remains, such as DNA analysis of dental calculus to study pathogens, might be harder to carry out under the new recommendations. Although there’s no official moratorium, no new human remains research has been approved in recent years because of stricter requirements, Sholts says. She expects a pause on approvals while the new policy is established, but notes the report anticipates positive outcomes from future research.