De colección a genealogía. Reflexiones sobre la restitución de Sam Slick

Abstract

Every process of restitution of human remains housed in museums has its own peculiarities, since in these cases converge social actors with diverse trajectories, guided by heterogeneous objectives and interests that dialogue, juxtapose and/or confront between them. In this article, we will take as a case of analysis the trajectory of the mortal remains of Sam Slick –one of the sons of the Tehuelche chief Casimiro Biguá– whose skeleton exhumed at the end of the 19th century was part of the collections of the Museo de La Plata. We will reflect on the dispostifs that in a context of state and scientific violence turned indigenous bodies into an object of study and, also, on the role of genealogies and memories in the processes of political subjectivation of indigenous peoples in the Argentinean Patagonia.