Latest news with #humanzoos
ABC News
25-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Thousands of Indigenous peoples were objectified in human zoos, including in Australia
WARNING: The following story contains information that may cause distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers, who are advised to exercise caution. The term says it all: human zoos. Strange as it may seem, human beings — largely Indigenous people from across the globe — were recruited to perform in ethnographic displays, also called human zoos, from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, mostly in Europe and the United States. It's estimated that 60,000 people were trafficked in this global trade — including three documented Aboriginal groups: three Badtjala people from K'gari in south-eastern Queensland in 1882, and eight Bwgcolman or Manbarra-speaking people from Palm and Hinchinbrook Islands in north Queensland in 1883, who were followed by nine of their compatriots in 1894. There was an appetite to see Indigenous people in their "natural state" and, as popular demand surged, the staging of human zoos grew into more exaggerated displays. Some featured reconstructions of housing, enclosures and other encampments with domesticated animals tended by familial groups of Indigenous people in "traditional" clothing. At the peak of these degrading spectacles, entire "villages" were constructed in some of Europe's biggest zoological gardens — including the Tierpark in Hamburg owned by exotic animal trader Carl Hagenbeck, as well as zoos in Dresden, Berlin, and Basel in Switzerland. The phenomenon is often attributed to Hagenbeck, who, according to the records kept by Dresden Zoo, was the impresario behind the first documented exhibition of Aboriginal people in Germany in 1882 — that of the three people from K'gari. Human zoos became a feature of world expositions and international trade fairs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although ethnographic displays had figured since the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace in 1851, the first world fair. One of the last to include such reconstructions was the Paris Colonial Exhibition, held in a park in the Bois de Vincennes in 1931, which featured replicas of the temples of Angkor Wat, a Javanese temple and Mount Vernon, the plantation owned by George Washington. As the title would suggest, only countries with colonies or overseas territories — Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Japan and the US — participated in the exhibition. Human zoos were not only made possible by colonial networks; they derived much of their meaning from colonialism itself. It's possible to consider the entire phenomenon of the human zoos in Europe and the United States as the performance of white supremacy, or the obscene fulfilment of colonial subjugation. Sometimes, acting alone and with a degree of impunity, showmen (so-called "impresarios") or their agents from Europe's colonial powers — primarily Germany, Britain and France — would export people from "subject" populations, recruiting them to perform in the displays. However, it was a Canadian, RA (Robert) Cunningham, who removed the two groups of Bwgcolman or Manbarra-speaking people from North Queensland — initially, in 1882, at the request of an agent acting on behalf of American circus showman PT Barnum. The three people from K'gari meanwhile travelled from Maryborough with a German expatriate, Louis Müller, who later acted as their impresario, and were the first such documented group to reach Europe in 1882. As well as Australia, people were trafficked from Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, Asia, the South Pacific and even the Arctic — most under meagre contracts or a form of indenture. I've been researching the strange and disturbing phenomenon of human zoos since 2010, but my particular interest has been in the traffic of Indigenous people from Australia to Europe. Until recently, I had no idea that such ethnographic displays were staged here — but indeed, a human zoo existed in Australia. It's hard to justify the existence of human zoos, which is perhaps why the practice has been the subject of a deliberate forgetting in the West — although the human zoo phenomenon is now a burgeoning field of research. While, like many blackfellas, I find this material deeply disturbing, I would suggest that collective white shame and guilt has — somewhat conveniently — submerged these histories. Repressing collective memory of the phenomenon has also, in effect, buried the personal stories and lives of those recruited to perform in these bizarre, degrading and objectifying displays. To conceal evidence of the human zoos denies the existence of the three groups of Aboriginal people who were trafficked abroad in the late-19th century, all of whom died overseas from respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza and pleurisy. One was even mummified and displayed in a dime museum in Cincinnati, until his body was repatriated to Palm Island in the 1990s. No doubt many would prefer that this history remain submerged, arguing it on a point of relevance. But some things refuse to be stifled and eventually rise to the surface. In the 1920s, an anonymous donor to the Melbourne Museum discovered a strange relic in Royal Park, adjacent to Melbourne Zoo, which is possibly material evidence of Australia's human zoo. Under a layer of topsoil, the donor found a boomerang — but this one was quite unusual. It was a miniature version of the versatile tool and aerodynamic weapon, clearly made for smaller hands — perhaps as a training device. Kimberley Moulton, curator of the TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles, has long been fascinated by the mystery of the child's boomerang, which was donated to Melbourne Museum some years after it was collected. Once accessioned in 1938, the object was labelled more or less generically. "This boomerang called to me for a long time … And it sat in this drawer labelled 'Port Phillip,'" Moulton recalls in an interview with me for ABC Radio National's The Art Show. The Yorta Yorta woman began working with the Museum's collection of Indigenous material culture 15 years ago, and spent seven of those years in the senior curatorial role. "And that was it, you know. And it always made me really sad, because it's this beautiful little child's boomerang", Moulton says. The mystery so possessed Moulton that it followed her when she moved into an entirely new field of curatorship — as adjunct Indigenous curator at London's Tate Modern. When she was invited to curate the latest instalment of TarraWarra Biennial, Moulton created space for the boomerang and its maker alongside 22 new commissions or existing works by living artists such as Shireen Taweel, Warraba Weatherall, Nathan Beard and Iluwanti Ken. A self-described "history nerd", Moulton discovered the site where the boomerang was found was designated a public park by Victoria's first colonial governor. Later, known as Camp Pell, the area had been used as a place of temporary settlement. It was the site occupied by the Melbourne Zoological Society and the now infamous Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, which introduced several invasive species as game, to make the settlers feel more at home — hence acclimatised. Whether the settlers felt more acclimatised or not, we know that the now pestilential carp, deer and foxes would outnumber, predate upon or disturb the habitat of native animals. Moulton's research into the child's boomerang eventually led to a startling realisation. "If it was found in 1920 under soil, it's 19th century," she says. "What was there in maybe 50 or so years, you know, around that time? "And that led me on a path to the Aboriginal encampment that was there in 1888 — which was essentially a human zoo — established by Albert Le Souef, who was the director [of Melbourne Zoo]". At this point in the interview, I do a verbal double-take. "As in a zoo where people would be exhibited, and people would come along and look at them?" I ask incredulously. "Yes. So it was 1882 — the encampment — basically, it was all of these bark huts, these humpies, there were spears and, essentially, a diorama scene of Aboriginal life," Moulton replies. Until Australia's centenary in 1888, Le Souef's tableau in the scrub in Royal Park next to the zoo's waterfowl enclosure was empty. But the zoologist was also a member of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, which would have led to an acquaintance with the government-appointed manager of Coranderrk, the highly successful Aboriginal reserve and mission station established north-east of Melbourne. "And so, in 1888, [Le Souef] activated [the tableau] with real people. And that was obviously coinciding with the [Centennial celebration events] that were happening across the city … and the International Exhibition that was being held at the Royal Exhibition Building," Moulton says. "[Le Souef] worked with Joseph Shaw, who was the manager of Coranderrk, to bring men, women and children into this encampment and to sort of activate it on the weekend. So it was about revenue. It was about bringing people to the zoo. "People [would] pay to come and see Aboriginal people living this kind of imperial nostalgia," Moulton says. Melbourne-based artist Tom Nicholson was on a residency at the State Library of Victoria when he discovered an etching of the "native encampment" in Royal Park, and in 2010, along with writer Tony Birch, he created a performance work called Camp Pell. Kimberley Moulton met up with Nicholson and exchanged research notes. Moulton has since found a few extremely rare photographs of the encampment, empty and occupied. In one, three separate groups of Aboriginal people in possum-skin cloaks sit under bark shelters, some of which are hung with dilly bags and baskets. A panoply of traditional weapons — including hunting boomerang, spear and spear-thrower — is staked in the ground. Off to the side of the main group, in the foreground, is a bizarre set piece: a stuffed dingo, with one of its front legs slightly raised as if distracted by the viewer's presence, and its tail curled impossibly. This image has a disturbing parallel in the photographic evidence of the human zoos. It's a photograph taken by Prince Roland Bonaparte in a Paris studio in 1884, of the three survivors of the first group of human zoo performers recruited from Palm and Hinchinbrook Islands in north Queensland by R. A. Cunningham. A man, a 10-year-old child and his mother stare blankly at the camera with almost limpid eyes. They don't seem to notice what is disturbingly clear to the viewer, in sharp focus in the foreground: a stuffed French bulldog, with bulging eyes and lolling tongue. These two completely unnecessary props — the dingo in Royal Park and the bulldog in Paris — bring this history home for me in ways that I find hard to describe. But perhaps these taxidermied animals speak to an unconscious desire that Indigenous people be frozen in time. In the course of her research, Moulton has identified some of the Aboriginal people who "activated" Le Souef's diorama — including two Dja Dja Wurrung ancestors — DeardjooWarramin, also known as Tommy Avoca, and his wife, Rosie. "This history emerged from me looking into this boomerang because I do feel it is likely from this event. It's collected in the same area. It's only 30 years after this encampment," Moulton says. "We know the encampment was there until at least 1901 and it was definitely activated between August 1888 and January 1889. "They were there through that time, performing and performing regularly … they were sitting there in their possum-skin cloaks. They were making fires. They were surrounded by this mass of cultural material. "The people were there. There's evidence also of [Wurundjeri clan leader William] Barak going there to throw boomerangs." The eagle-eyed curator felt a twinge of recognition when she spotted a particular shield while scanning one of the extremely rare photographs of the Aboriginal encampment. She knew she had seen it before. Following her nose, Moulton found the shield in the drawers of the Melbourne Museum — to which Le Soeuf was a donor and where she had been a custodian of the collection of Aboriginal material culture. Then, she found another photograph in the State Library Victoria collection. It was of Tommy Avoca and his wife sitting outside a house at Coranderrk with three small children. Moulton discerned a shape in the hands of a little boy in the photograph, which was taken in 1888, when Tommy was performing with several other Coranderrk residents — including children — in the Aboriginal encampment at Royal Park. "It was an incredible moment," Moulton says. "One of the little boys is holding a toy boomerang in the photo." "And so there's all of these threads of history coming together," she says. "I feel like this story — I don't know — it was wanting to be told". TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles runs until July 20 at TarraWarra Museum of Art (Healesville, Victoria).
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- General
- Washington Post
How a Salvadoran prison became a political human zoo
At the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, amid pavilions featuring X-ray machines and edible curiosities (including a butter sculpture of President Theodore Roosevelt), there were 'anthropological' displays in which Indigenous people from around the world inhabited elaborate dioramas designed to resemble their native lands. These 'human zoos' — a popular form of entertainment at the time — featured Tehuelches from Patagonia and Mbuti 'pygmies' from the Congo region of Africa, as well as Apache leader Geronimo, who was required to pose for photographs with fairgoers — when he wasn't playing Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull in daily reenactments of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Among the most notorious of these displays was the Philippine Exposition, a 47-acre exhibit that featured various ethnicities from the United States' newly acquired territory in Southeast Asia. A star attraction was the display of Igorot people from the island of Luzon, presented in a village of thatch huts and identified in the related literature as 'head hunters.' As part of ritual ceremony in their homeland, the Igorot occasionally sacrificed and ate dogs, and the fair's organizers turned this sacred tradition into an attraction, requiring the Igorot to eat up to 20 dogs a week for the benefit of prurient crowds. The spectacle promoted the idea that some races were more 'advanced' and others more 'primitive.' It courted fairgoers with the promise of an exotic encounter that came with a whiff of menace. One image from the exhibit shows White men in suits milling about a group of Igorot men and boys in loincloths who look as though they would rather be anywhere else. A group Igorot men and boys at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. (Jessie Tarbox Beals/Missouri Historical Society) Igorot men kill a dog at the 1904 World's Fair. (Jessie Tarbox Beals/Missouri Historical Society) The demeaning spectacle of the human zoo comes to mind as one U.S. official after another has traveled to El Salvador for photo ops inside the notorious prison known as CECOT (in English, the Terrorism Confinement Center). Opened in 2023 and designed to incarcerate top-level gang members, this maximum-security detention center has become infamous for its austere conditions — partly because Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele loves to share slick social media videos about it that show prisoners being frog-marched to warehouse chambers where they reportedly never see the light of day. In late March, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem (and her $50,000 Rolex) made an appearance at the prison, where she stood before a cell stuffed to the rafters with tattooed inmates on metal bunks to deliver a message to would-be immigrants to the United States: 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.' Less than a month later, she was followed by Republican Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia, who used the opportunity to throw a double thumbs-up and take selfies in front of a similar cell. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement They are not the first outsiders to use CECOT as a place to manufacture content. Last year, then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) appeared on Bukele's TikTok feed praising the prison as he walked between rows of cells. And social media stars such as Luis Villar Sudek, a Mexican influencer better known as Luisito Comunica, along with Nick Shirley from the United States, have also toured the prison (at least, the parts the Salvadoran government allows them to see). Both posted breathless videos about the facilities — which featured the now-obligatory footage of crowds of men peering stoically from behind bars. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem tours CECOT in El Salvador on March 26. (Alex Brandon/AFP/Getty Images) In these videos, the inmates, most of whom have Indigenous features, remain, for the most part, mute — removing their shirts at the command of the wardens to reveal for the cameras the gang tattoos that cover their bodies. 'This group alone, which is behind my back,' Shirley exclaims, as he stands in front of one such cell, 'is very possibly directly or indirectly responsible for more than 200 homicides. What a bloodcurdling piece of information.' Though how exactly Shirley arrived at this information is unclear. Later, as he babbles on about the lack of privacy in the crowded cells, the camera cuts to a man attempting to urinate. The grotesque images that have emerged from CECOT, like the human zoos that preceded it, are about presenting a barely contained savagery, reinforcing the idea that some people don't qualify as fully human. I don't mean to apologize for gang members who have, over the years, held El Salvador in their violent grip — running drugs, extorting business owners and mercilessly killing or kidnapping those who have gotten in their way. Permanently seared into my brain is a 2018 episode of the podcast Radio Ambulante in which a young woman in San Salvador relayed a harrowing tale of being targeted for the color of her hair. In a photo released last year by the press office of El Salvador's president, alleged gang members are held at CECOT. (El Salvador presidential press office/AFP/Getty Images) In a photo released by the press office of El Salvador's president, an alleged gang member deported by the United States kneels down as his hair is cut at CECOT on April 12. (El Salvador presidential press office/Reuters) In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to CECOT on March 16. (El Salvador presidential press office/AP) But the display of these men — in a prison that flouts international standards of incarceration, under a regime where due process can be more rumor than fact — is not only unseemly. It has turned them into props in a propaganda war that visually conflates undocumented immigration with membership in a criminal organization. In his video, Gaetz states ominously, 'A lot of the people behind me would have found a way to make their way to the United States and harm Americans.' Never mind that the reason many Salvadorans have fled the country has been to evade gangs. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Noem described the prison as 'one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.' Before her arrival, the U.S. government had sent 238 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT — without due process — alleging they were 'Tren de Aragua terrorists' (a Venezuelan gang), along with almost two dozen Salvadorans it accused of being members of the MS-13 gang. In a post on X, accompanied by a video set to ominous music, Bukele described the detainees as 'murderers and high-profile offenders.' Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego García was deported to CECOT in April, spurring nationwide protests. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images) Yet, as '60 Minutes' reported in April, the overwhelming majority of the Venezuelans who were shipped to CECOT have 'no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.' And at least one of the Salvadorans — Kilmar Abrego García — has no verifiable connection to a gang; federal officials admit that his deportation was an 'administrative error.' (Abrego García has since been sent to a low-security prison within El Salvador, as the Trump administration continues to defy an order affirmed by the Supreme Court to facilitate his return.) In sending these men to CECOT, then using the prison as a public stage from which to issue public statements about immigration, officials such as Noem and Moore deliver the message that to be undocumented or to seek asylum is to be a criminal — especially if you are a brown man with tattoos. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement And what a stage CECOT is. Inmates share stark concrete cells and sleep on triple-stacked bunks without bedding. Lights are kept on day and night, and there is no outdoor exercise space. The prison's director told the BBC last year that external nongovernmental organizations are not allowed to enter the prison to evaluate conditions, but he insisted that CECOT complies with international standards. An extensive report published by BBC Mundo in 2023, however, calculated that the cells do not meet the minimum floor space requirements as established by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Moreover, the prison violates a number of the standards put forth by the United Nations' Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, which require access to daylight, fresh air and a prison library, as well as space for outdoor exercise. In 2023, Spanish media outlet El País described El Salvador's prisons as 'a hell,' and a 2023 report issued by the U.S. State Department describes 'harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.' A prison officer guards a cell at CECOT last month. () In a photo released by the press office of El Salvador's president, guards arrange alleged gang members at CECOT on March 16. (El Salvador presidential) Prisoners look out of their cell at CECOT on April 4. () Bukele has said in the past that CECOT has space for '40,000 terrorists' — namely, high-level gang members who had been running their organizations remotely from other, less-punitive prisons. But there is little transparency about who is housed at CECOT and why, partly because inmates are held incommunicado. Since 2022, Bukele has governed under a 'state of exception' that has suspended basic rights such as freedom of assembly and has undermined due process. Along with gang members, plenty of innocent people are imprisoned on the flimsiest of allegations — and they remain in prison until their cases are heard. Human Rights Watch estimates that 1.7 percent of the Salvadoran population is incarcerated. The State Department's travel advisory regarding El Salvador, updated last month, notes that 'tens of thousands of people are currently in prison under the State of Exception,' including 'several U.S. and other foreign citizens' who 'have yet to face trial.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Worse yet: The Salvadoran government has negotiated with gangs to tamp down the violence, allegedly offering 'financial incentives,' as well as prison privileges to jailed gang leaders that include cellphones and visits from prostitutes. In 2021, the U.S. government sanctioned two Salvadoran officials for their roles in such negotiations, which included requests to have gang leaders back Bukele's political party. This month, the Salvadoran news outlet El Faro published eye-popping interviews with two high-ranking leaders associated with the Barrio 18 gang, who described coercing the inhabitants of their territories into voting for Bukele. One gang member, who goes by 'Liro,' told the cameras: 'From the gang, it became obligatory to say, 'You're going to tell your mother, you're going to tell your uncle, you're going to tell your nephew, you're going to tell your grandmother, you are going to tell your wife, and your wife's family, to vote for Nayib. If you don't do it, we'll kill them.'' President Donald Trump greets President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador at the White House on April 14. (Al Drago/For The Washington Post) The allegations, if true, transform CECOT into a bit of a fiction. Bukele has held up the prison as evidence of how he has cracked down on gang violence and made El Salvador safer. But an election pact with gang leaders would suggest that the president has simply weaponized gang violence to his benefit. The degrading display of the tattooed men in cages is therefore a show — for the benefit of his supporters and an international right wing enamored of his theatrical displays of mano dura (hard hand) policies. It's perhaps no coincidence that many of the available images of CECOT are supplied by the Salvadoran government itself. And this raises the question: Who are the prisoners who don't get trotted out before the cameras? In what conditions do they languish? Inside CECOT, as in the human zoos of old, the display takes fragments of the truth, then twists and sensationalizes them to transform reality into something brutish, inhuman and extreme — all for entertainment on TikTok.
