DIGGING UP A BURIED PAST: RECONCILING THE HISTORICAL INJUSTICES OF UNETHICAL MEDICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH WITH CURRENT INDIGENOUS STUDIES OF THE AINU PEOPLES

Abstract

In light of the upcoming 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics, Ainu activists are demanding indigenous recognition and political rights, putting pressure on the Japanese government to recognize diversity in their nation. Historically, Japan has perpetuated notions of Japanese uniqueness, or Nihonjinron, via the facilitation of nationalism-fueled medical and anthropological research.The Ainu peoples, subjects of such research, have withstood the seizure of basic human rights to land, intellectual property and self-identification as history has written them off as a “vanishing ethnicity.” Today, they fight for repatriation of the physical remnants of such atrocities: the pillaged skeletal remains of their ancestors. This paper will analyze the history of research across STEM and Humanities disciplines that have contributed to the cultural erasure of the Ainu peoples. After considering interviews of Ainu individuals about the state of their relationship with their own community, researchers and the Japanese government, I will then suggest solutions to synthesize protocolsfrom these contrasting fields of study: the indigenous right to self-representation in academic and social spheres can be restored by clarifying research goals, increasing engagement of indigenous peoples in research and discussing the social effects of publishing data.