Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence>
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Speaker 2 00:00:12 Where does evolutionary thinking lead greetings? I'm Tom Gilson today on ID The Future, we're sharing some disturbing answers to that question. Michael Medved interviews Discovery Institute, vice President and filmmaker John West, about the 20th century's human zoos and more. It's one thing that can come from thinking that we're all animals, but some of us are more than others.
Speaker 3 00:00:39 A pleasure to welcome back to the show. Uh, my friend John West, who is the senior fellow managing director and vice President of the Discovery Institute. Dr. West, uh, is in fact vice president of the Seattle Based Discovery Institute and managing director of the Institute Center for Science and Culture. He was formerly the chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University. He's an award-winning author and a documentary filmmaker who was written or edited, uh, 12 different, uh, books. His, um, documentary film, which, uh, was fascinating and alarming, was called Human Zoos. Uh, and when you use that term, John, just using the term human zoos, doesn't it sound like some awful science fiction film, uh, about aliens capturing human beings and then putting on them on displays if they were animals? But this is not aliens. This is us, right?
Speaker 4 00:01:53 Yeah, no, um, it is, and, and in fact, you're right, it does sort of sound like a science fiction movie or going back to the very first, the iconic, uh, planet of the Apes, where the humans were put on sort of, uh, displays. So, but yes, it involved us and where we put particularly indigenous peoples on displays, both at world fairs, but sometimes in actual zoos in New York City, the Bronx Zoo put on display, um, a young man from, uh, Africa OA on display in the Ape House, along with, uh, right next to an orangutan, uh, in a cage so people could gawk at him and the orangutan. So other times it was in places, like I said, world's fairs like the 1904 World's Fair, especially in, in St. Louis, where they brought in hundreds, uh, if not thousands of native peoples to be put on display. And some of these were cultural displays, but the way they were done, there were fences around them. The, the, the people were stared at and GED at, I mean, it wasn't just what you think of today as you go to a world's fair and you have a nice cultural display from another country. It was, they imported people often, not completely with their own permission or will, and then they put them in these displays where they were, you know, forced to live and in enclosures. And so it really was zoo like.
Speaker 3 00:03:12 Okay, you are specifically with, with this issue, um, focusing on one World's Fair, in particular, the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, which was, um, uh, actually convened because it was, uh, supposed to be representing the anniversary, the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Exposition and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, at the World's Fair in St. Louis. Uh, they had a particularly large display involving some Filipino tribesmen, and there were hundreds of them, at least according to what they were advertising for people to come and see. Uh, was this all in one large enclosure and were the people allowed to get out or they had to stay within the, the parameters of the zoo? Enclosures?
Speaker 4 00:04:11 That's a great question. So, um, the Philippine reservation, as they called it, was a rather large enclosure. I mean, they, they could go out, um, but sometimes it was going out because they wanted the, there were scientists that were sending who wanted to test them and do it, including doing pain testing of what lower races would, would feel like. And so, um, or, or they staged these games where they wanted the native people to compete against whites to sort of show that whites were superior. So, so they did get out of the enclosure for some things. Um, and, but in general, of course, I'm not sure that they would necessarily want to, because you'd have a lot of people who might be conceived of as hostile, but you actually, there are photos of, of what occurred and where you actually see the people sort of looking in and gawing at, at the people. Um, but you're right, the, the Philippines is in the news because of this, the story series of stories that the Washington Post has been, um, writing about and publishing since, uh, about last week.
Speaker 3 00:05:13 And, and this has to do with a, uh, a woman whose brain, uh, was, was stolen and then preserved and displayed and used for research. Her name was Maura.
Speaker 4 00:05:27 Yeah, Mara. Yes. And this is part of the story. So, uh, it's, it's really in fact, kind of horrific. The, the Smithsonian had a curator named Alka, and he wanted, he helped collect all sorts of human specimens, often without permission. I mean, he'd go to native villages and dig up bones without their permission. And so the, in fact, the Smithsonian became one of the world's largest repositories of human remains other than, you know, burial grounds. They had like 30,000 human remains, but her lipka didn't just want bones. He wanted what he called a wet well today would be called a wet collection soft tissues. And so he also collected a couple hundred brains from Native peoples. And so he actually went to St. Louis because they were anticipating that some of the native peoples who were brought in because of climate and disease would die.
Speaker 4 00:06:23 And he wanted to be there to get their bodies and get their brains and cart them back to the Smithsonian where the brains he stored in jars. In fact, today, in a facility, a private facility that people can't visit outside of Washington, dc it's in Maryland, they still have in these vats, uh, probably a couple hundred brains, uh, floating. Uh, and many of them, again, taken from people without their permission. And, uh, you know, Mara certainly didn't give her permission to have her brain, uh, you know, her cadaver taken apart, her brain harvested for, I guess, research purposes. It's not really used for research. But again, the, the bigger picture here, why was this done? This was part of, uh, many scientists at the time were committed social darwinists, and they thought that evolution to them showed that there were higher and lower races, and that they were trying to document, that they were trying to document.
Speaker 4 00:07:17 In fact, the, the SFR from the Philippines, which were one of the Filipino groups that were at the, the St. Louis World's Fair, there were actually pictures from the time where they put on the, the moniker missing link. So they actually thought that the interests were, were, you know, a missing link between humans and apes. And they did the same thing with the, with the, uh, pygmies from Congo. Um, and Oda Banga, who ended up, who was actually at there, were also, uh, these native Congolese, um, pygmies from, uh, who were also at the St. Louis World's Fair. And one of them, ODA Banger, was the one who was later put in a cage by the Bronx Zoo.
Speaker 3 00:07:57 Okay. You were talking before about playing, uh, games to show the superiority of white people. Yes. What kind of games are we talking about? Are we talking about games of physical strength, or are we talking about chess? What?
Speaker 4 00:08:11 Oh, yeah, yeah. No, well, the ones I was talking about were, were physical games of, of, you know, running, I don't know, javelin throwing sort of a, a mini Olympics to show that the, the superior of the whites. But in addition to that, yet, there was also in the bottom of one of the buildings, they did psychological and pain testing on the native peoples, again, because they thought they were Lester involved, and they wanted to document how superior whites were. So that was a separate, the testing they sent in scientists to actually do testing, including their pain tolerance.
Speaker 3 00:08:43 Why, why do we know specifically? Uh, it seems we know more about Maura, uh, as compared to other victims of the same hor horrific maltreatment. Why do we know more about her?
Speaker 4 00:08:57 Well, I think it's because since she died, she was, that, that was, she was one of the people who, it was written up at the time that she died, and that she was, you know, taken away to the hospital. And so that, that's part, so that's one piece of it. She, she was one of the people who was documented as having died. And then from the Smithsonian side, um, there was a, there are a couple of brains there that are identified as having come from the, uh, from the St. Louis world's fair indigenous people. So they sort of put that together.
Speaker 3 00:09:32 Okay. So this brain collection at the Smithsonian, uh, what was the purpose? Uh, how were these brains abused? Why and how did it get known and exposed? Now you've had a role in that. We'll be right back with John West of the Discovery Institute,
Speaker 5 00:09:55 Entertain your brain. Your
Speaker 3 00:09:56 Show is very entertaining
Speaker 5 00:09:58 Every day on the Michael Show.
Speaker 3 00:10:14 And Dr. John West is the senior fellow at Discovery Institute and managing director and vice president of the Institute. And, uh, John, uh, this fascination at the turn of the last century, and by the way, you, you comment that, yes, it was in St. Louis and, uh, where they had a, a, a large human zoo, uh, and this was part of the Bronx Zoo in New York, apparently, uh, it was also in Seattle, uh, the Alaska Yukon and Pacific Exposition didn't, they also have a large enclosure with, I believe they described them as Filipino tribesmen. This is back in 1913, uh, the Filipino tribesmen who were supposed to go about their business and, uh, virtually naked and, uh, and be treated like animals right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 4 00:11:20 That is exactly true. They did have a large Philippine, uh, enclosure display at the Alaska Yukon Exposition. I think it was, may have been 1909, but they currently on the, the grounds of the University of Washington is where that took place, um, because of course, that's where that exposition took place. Um, uh, and, uh, yes, so many, there were many around the world up until as late as the 1950s. Um, I think in Belgium was sort of, but the heyday was the early 20th century. The early, you know, the teens, the even the twenties.
Speaker 3 00:11:57 Okay, it as a medical matter, uh, there are these, uh, how many brains, uh, actually were, uh, collected by the Smithsonian Institution. I, I think
Speaker 4 00:12:09 The best estimates, it's around 200 or so. So out of the, you know, they had 30,000 human remains, but only about a couple hundred of brains. And these are primarily collected by this eugenic sorter who was their curator, uh, ska, originally born in, in what's now Czech, the Czech Republic. But he was trained here, uh, as a doctor and a medical guy. And so he headed their efforts to collect all these, both bone specimens, but also, uh, wet <laugh>, wet specimens. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3 00:12:44 Okay, this, this is also disturbing and weird, but is there any evidence at all that, uh, people can, uh, during an autopsy or, or a situation like that, they can look at, uh, the shape of a brain, the physi physiological characteristics of a brain after the person has passed away and then associated with a particular racial background?
Speaker 4 00:13:15 Uh, well, they, they certainly thought they could. Um, there, there are all sorts of problems with that because, uh, a lot of our, our bodies, uh, uh, and developments are also based off of the environmental influences we have. And then, uh, I mean, and also people even who are severely say, brain injured, sometimes the brain rewires itself. So it's, it's like, that's very hard. But they certainly thought they could, and, and their motivation, their underlying motivation was they thought that evolution showed that there were higher and lower races, and that some races were closer to apes than than others. And the other happened to be white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, pretty much in their view. And so they wanted to document that, and they wanted to supply the proof of that. And, uh, and also, you know, it was a whole underlying thing of just viewing human beings as specimens.
Speaker 4 00:14:03 Now, I'm not against obviously medical research and, and things like that, but there is something to be said for the older view of humanity that we are both created in image of God, and that we should have some sort of sense of awe about humans. And so there's a reason that humans are like other animals, bury people and bury their deaths in ceremonies, and to simply go wholesale without permission and, you know, take away cemeteries of people to, and some of the bones came from people that we killed in, you know, during the wars with the Indians, or in other cases, just without permission. There was another case, another brain case involving ska also in New York, where a group of Eskimos were brought down to be sort of studied, and the, the, there was a man and his son, and the man died. He got caught cold or something, you know, got sick and died.
Speaker 4 00:14:52 Okay, well, rather than when the Eskimos went back allowing, you know, his son to take the remains, his son was a little kid, they staged a fake burial, so the son could think that they were burying him when in fact, his dad's body was not in the coffin because they took his dad's body and stripped it to study the bones and harvested the brain. So ELs ska could write it up. In fact, you can actually go out there and get pictures of this guy's bones and brains and measurements, because this was written up in a scientific journal unbeknownst to his little child.
Speaker 3 00:15:31 Now, you, you've written about this, uh, extensively and before, and, and your, your film Human zoos, uh, is a remarkable documentary about a really forgotten chapter in, in our history, uh, this idea that people were profoundly, physiologically and intellectually different based upon race. That was an idea that Darwin himself was open to, wasn't he?
Speaker 4 00:16:01 More than that? He, he promoted it in his book, the Descent of Man. He was very clear that he thought, I mean, look, the logic, if the only thing that makes us human is this blind process of, of, of survival of the fittest based on whatever conditions, you know, we as a subpopulation encounter, then in Darwin's view, it's very rational to think that you'd have severe differences between different human beings. Now if you think human beings are all ultimately created by a creator, um, then you know that our most fundamental differences are because we, we are, you know, we're created and planned. That's one another thing. But if you think that our particular capabilities, I mean, all of our capabilities, our deepest capabilities are basically due to happenstance of how evolution was working on our subpopulation. We're not just talking about, you know, eye color or, you know, various strength things, but you know, our deepest differences are dictated by this blind evolutionary process.
Speaker 4 00:16:59 In Darwin's view, it was entirely rational to expect that different races would have severe differences. And he wrote about that in the dissent of man. And then his followers were even more, I mean, like, uh, in Germany, uh, uh, people like, um, uh, Ernst Heckle took this even more. And in fact, it led to some of the, the, the world's first official genocide. I mean, there's some debate over that, but sort of scientific genocide was in Namibia and in southwest German, Africa. And that, and also involved, actually, you had a German general saying that the, the laws of survival of the fittest won't allow us to be compassionate. We've gotta eradicate, uh, these herrero people. Um, wow.
Speaker 3 00:17:40 So, okay. Right now with the Smithsonian, and you're talking about several hundred brains in their collection, has there been any kind of formal apology, or dare I say it, reparations anything of that nature from the this August institution? Good,
Speaker 4 00:17:59 Good, good question. So, um, the, with regard to the overall human specimens, the 30,000 and the last several years, Congress passed a law. And so they are trying to, you know, if, if there is a culture or a tribe that things were stolen for, they are trying to repatriate, they've done a few thousand with regard to the brains, it's been a bit harder as far as I know, they've only returned a couple. So there was a brain from a Native American called Ishi in in California that a few years ago was returned this Washington Post, um, investigative series, although it's not new, the Washington Post still, you know, has a lot of clout. And so as part of that, the Smithsonian has sort of apologized, and I think you could expect them to move into higher gear efforts, to, uh, where, where they can identify things and where it's clear that they weren't taken with permission to return them.
Speaker 4 00:18:53 Um, so there has been a little bit, but it's been a long time coming. I mean, I know that with the Bronx Zoo, they finally apologized after 2020, when I did my documentary in 2018, uh, they wouldn't even allow filming on there. We had to get a drone to sort of film over, because they not only wouldn't apologize, they wouldn't talk about it. They wouldn't, you know, they did. And, and they, in their case, they actually put someone in a cage. So about a hundred thousand New Yorkers could come and gok to this person next to a, you know, next to an orangutan. And they, but after 2020, uh, when the, you know, the George Floyd and other things happened, things did begin to change somewhat. Um, but, uh, yeah,
Speaker 3 00:19:36 Well, we're still working on a work in progress. Uh, you can, uh, read some of John West's, um, unforgettable. You may want to forget it, but it's, uh, it's deeply troubling and very moving and very important. It's posted at our
[email protected], and also information about his documentary from 2018 Human Zoos about just how widespread and accepted and honored this, uh, process and this exploitation exploitation once was a John West Discovery Institute. Find out more about the work of Discovery Institute. It is precious and important, and, uh, you can find that information
[email protected], right here in this greatest nation on God's Green Earth.
Speaker 2 00:20:33 That was Michael Medved on his own, Michael Medved show, interviewing John West of the Discovery Institute on Human Zoos and more. Stay tuned
[email protected] for more on these important topics and for ID the future. I'm Tom Gilson. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 00:20:54 Visit
[email protected] and intelligent design.org. This program is Copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its Center for Science and Culture.
