To:        

Peter Whiteley
Curator, North American Ethnology
American Museum of Natural History
New York City

Professor Whiteley —

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Northwest Coast Hall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I observed a number of impressive exhibits pertaining to the material culture of Indigenous Nations of the Pacific Northwest. According to your museum’s website, you have served as the Hall’s co-curator, along with Haa’yuups/Ron Hamilton, a Nuu-chah-nulth artist from the Hupacasath First Nation in (what is now) British Columbia. (As I have been unable to find contact information for Haa’yuups, I would ask that you pass this message on to him.)

I generally found these exhibits to be highly informative and visually impressive. However, I noticed an important factual error contained in an exhibit element pertaining to the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, which operated on traditional lands claimed by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in the B.C. interior.

Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (formerly known as the Kamloops Indian Band) is geographically removed from the Northwest Coast Nations that otherwise comprise the subject of your co-curated exhibit. Its main reserve, Kamloops 1, is a four-hour drive from the coast. As is clear from context, your purpose for including a reference to this outlying First Nation was to highlight the cruel treatment of Indigenous children in Canada’s network of Residential Schools.

Indigenous children from all parts of Canada—including both inland and coastal portions of modern British Columbia—were required to attend such schools. Many Residential-School attendees suffered cruel treatment. An exhaustive 2015 report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada indicated that over 3,200 of the roughly 150,000 enrolled students died, mostly due to tuberculosis. The resulting collective trauma is now widely regarded as a stain on Canadian history. And it is fitting that your museum should find a way to educate visitors about this important issue.

Unfortunately, the physical exhibit subtitled “Kamloops Indian Residential School, British Columbia, Canada” (see photo, below) misinforms visitors with its reference to “215 Indigenous children buried here in unmarked graves.” In fact, no such graves have been found.

This false claim originates with a May 2021 announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc leadership to the effect that researchers had conducted ground-penetrating radar (GPR) studies indicating soil dislocations consistent with the suspected presence of graves. Many journalists, being unfamiliar with the limitations of GPR technology, took the First Nation’s confidently stated claims at face value, and so wrongly inferred that actual graves had been discovered and even unearthed.

While the Canadian media was slow to correct its 2021 errors regarding this story, some outlets have now published corrections. This includes the CBC, Canada’s national news broadcaster: In an article published on 17 April 2025, the CBC corrected one of its own journalists, who’d repeated incorrect information about “unmarked graves” on a live broadcast. The CBC noted that what had actually been discovered with GPR surveys were “potential” burial sites (my emphasis).

Other media, in Canada and elsewhere, have also debunked the false reporting from 2021. These include the National Post newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and my own publication, Quillette. Beginning in May 2024, even the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation itself walked back its original use of the term “graves,” and instead began referring to soil “anomalies.”

That latter term is accurate: As those familiar with the use of GPR technology know, such anomalies can indicate not only graves, but also tree roots, rocks, pipes, or irrigation channels. To determine the cause of the anomalies, further research is required. (Given your own long history of field work with Indigenous groups investigating their traditional territories, you are presumably quite familiar with this fact.)

On your museum website, under the heading, “Selected features from the Northwest Coast Hall” (subheading: Haida), there appears the same memorial-service photo presented in the physical exhibit, along with an identically incorrect reference to “215 Indigenous children buried here in unmarked graves.” 

The text sources the accompanying photo to Reuters photographer Dennis Owen. A reverse Google search indicates that Owen took his photo on 31 May 2021. It was published on 1 June—just four days after the Canadian media began credulously repeating claims that “unmarked graves” had been discovered in Kamloops.

In fact, the associated Reuters story—titled, Indigenous groups call for Canada to identify graves after remains of 215 children found—took these false claims a step further by indicating that the remains of 215 children had been found. As indicated above, no “unmarked graves” have been found at GPR-indicated locations in Kamloops; let alone human “remains”; let alone the remains of small children.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that you, Haa’yuups, or any of your curatorial colleagues deliberately presented museum visitors with misinformation. All of the incorrect claims herein described were widely circulated in the media during 2021 and on into 2022. Public accounts indicate that this period corresponded to the time when you and Haa’yuups were finalising your preparations for the re-opening of the Northwest Coast Hall on 13 May 2024 following extensive renovations. And it would hardly be unusual or improper for someone in your position to rely on mainstream news media accounts that were then believed to be accurate. You had no way of knowing they were untrue.  

But four years later, things are different, and it is now apparent that the Kamloops-related information contained in your exhibit is incorrect. I would urge you to correct it in accordance with your museum’s stated mission to disseminate accurate information, scientific and otherwise, regarding the world around us.

Best regards,

Jonathan Kay

Ed. Note: This letter was sent to the American Museum of Natural History on 8 July, 2025. If and when museum staff respond, this article will be updated.