The Stories Behind ‘Searching for Maura’ of the Smithsonian’s Racial Brain Collection
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Washington Post’s “Searching for Maura” (Photo by Titchie Carandang)
Hrdlička, the Post reported, held “well-documented racist theories.” In his op-ed piece in the Post (August 20, 2023), Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, condemned Hrdličkas unethical acquisition of brains and other human remains to support finding “scientific evidence of white superiority,” stating that the Smithsonian was in discussions with the Philippine government regarding the disposition of the remains of the Filipinos in the collection.
Aleš Hrdlička (Source: Online Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 9521, Box 1, T. Dale Stewart Oral History Interview; and Record Unit 9528, Box 1, Henry B. Collins Oral History Interview)
The stories of two young women emerged from this report. One was of 18-year-old Mary Sara, of the indigenous Sami people from Scandinavia. She was visiting Seattle from Alaska in 1933, when she fell ill with tuberculosis and died. Her brain was collected and sent to the Smithsonian without her family’s permission. After the report was published, Sara’s brain was returned to her family.
The second story is about Maura, a Filipino woman from Suyoc, and a member of the Kankanaey tribe. Little is known about Maura. She traveled to the US as part of Philippine exhibit in the 1904 World's Fair held in St. Louis, Missouri. She got sick with pneumonia and died shortly before the World's Fair opened on April 30. It is believed that part of her brain, the cerebellum, was also sent to the Smithsonian. Hers is one of the four brains of Filipinos believed to have been unethically acquired during the 1904 World’s Fair.
An Igorot Family (Source: Rau, William Herman, Publisher. An Igorot family, Philippine exhibit, World's Fair, St. Louis. Photograph Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2023636777/>)
The Investigative Series
Maura’s story is part of the Washington Post’s “The Collection” project, a year-long investigation that has yielded 15 pieces that include stories, videos and audio stories.
There are three main stories: (1)The collection: Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘racial brain collection’” (2)The collector: “The Smithsonian’s ‘bone doctor’ scavenged thousands of body parts” (3) The collected: "Searching for Maura."
There are also supplementary stories providing more details on the research methods used, how the information was reported, and the findings from the research: “How The Post reported Maura’s story,” “How The Post reported on the Smithsonian’s human remains,” and “Key findings from The Post’s investigation on the Smithsonian’s human remains.” A follow up article was also written about Mary Sara: “Smithsonian returns woman’s brain to family 90 years after it was taken.”
Also produced were audio and video stories. There were podcasts in Post Reports, “Brain desirable, Part 1“ and “Brain desirable” Part 2.” Videos also can be watched in the Washington Post site or YouTube; namely, an animated illustrated version of “Searching for Maura,” and “How The Post reported on the Smithsonian’s human remains." A video on the making of the illustrated investigation was also made. There is also a book, Searching for Maura, on sale.
There are Filipino translations of the online story, “Searching for Maura” and also a Filipino version of the video, “Paghahanap kay Maura” and a book that is sold together with the English version.
The Beginning
Last year, Claire Healy, a newsroom copy aide for the Washington Post was working on a story about Janna Añonuevo Langholz, who was tracing the burial sites of Filipinos who died in relation to the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Langholz told Healy about the brains that were collected by the Smithsonian. When Nicole Dungca and KC Schaper learned of the Filipino connection in the Smithsonian’s brain collection, they immediately wanted to get involved. Dungca says, “That’s what I have been wanting to do in journalism my entire life, which is basically to tell the stories of our people.”
Nicole Dungca (Photo Courtesy of Nicole Dungca)
KC Schaper (Photo Courtesy of KC Schaper)
Schaper, a project editor at the Post, asked her manager if she could attend the initial meeting. She explains that at the Post people are assigned according to the needs of a project. As the Brain project grew bigger, it eventually had nearly a hundred individuals working on it, according to Dungca. Fourteen Filipinos were involved; those who were assigned and some who asked to be included. It’s rare to have so many Filipinos working in major American news organizations. But at the Post, Asians make up 12.2% of the workforce, a testimony to the diversity of its staff.
“Being able to harness that diversity so that we can tell stories in the right way” is utmost importance, says Dungca, who is also the president of the Asian American Journalists Association. She also believes that “projects like this are possible because of journalists like Maria Ressa and Sheila Coronel,” icons who paved the way for Filipino American journalists like her.
The original plan for the investigative series involved the three main stories, one podcast, and a possible video. Reena Flores, the senior supervising producer on the Post’s audio team, who has won numerous journalism awards, produced the two podcasts, “Brain desirable parts 1 and 2,” as part of the flagship daily new podcast, Post Reports.
As work on the story progressed, Schaper says they wanted it told “authentically” with “different points of view of different Filipinos around the newsroom.” So, they started recruiting more Filipinos to work on the project. Hannah Dormido, a University of the Philippines graduate, a graphic reporter and cartographer at the Post, was asked to help with the Filipino translation and to narrate the videos. Regine Cabato, the Post’s Manila-based reporter for the Southeast Asia bureau, and Ateneo professor Christian Gil Benitez also assisted with the translation.
As Dungca and Healy’s research unearthed materials, Schaper made sure that these were relayed on different platforms, in as many mediums as possible. “No matter how we told the story, where we told the story also mattered,” she explains. Thus, the supporting stories, the illustrated story, and videos were added to the original plan. The content may be similar, but each telling of the story is unique. Reading the news story is different from reacting to the stunning visuals created by artist Red Galeno, or hearing the voice of Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III explaining the plans of the Smithsonian.
Enthusiasm for the project extended beyond Dungca and Schaper. The whole team, Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike, knew that it was important. The team collaborated throughout the challenges, determined to share the story in the best way possible. When Schaper saw the need for a Filipino translation of the story, it made sense to the whole team: “Everybody understood that if we are going to tell a story about an indigenous Filipino woman, and the story of Filipinos who went to the fair, and we’re turning the perspective, why wouldn’t we tell it in their language?” Schaper knew that most Filipinos were proficient in English, but she wanted to make sure that the older generations, like her lola in the Philippines, would be able to read the story.
Being Filipino helped Schaper and Dungca. When Dungca was in the Philippines, she had an immediate bond with her interviewees as she was familiar with the customs and knew what to expect. Nuances that a non-Filipino would miss, were picked up by Schaper when they were translating from English into Filipino.
‘Searching for Maura’
In February this year, the Post reached out to Davao-based artist Ren Galeno for the story’s illustrations. Galeno at first couldn’t believe that the Post was asking her to do them. She worked closely with the Post’s Jenna Pirog, a visual enterprise editor in the Investigation Unit, and designer Hannah Good, who facilitated the exchange between Claire and Nicole. Hannah also shared Claire and Nicole’s script, research, and some 300 images that they found.
Ren Galeno (Photo Courtesy of Red Galeno)
One of the first things Galeno did was to use a vertical scroller so images are designed based on the dimensions of a mobile phone screen. Her first drawing was a view of Suyoc, layering the images of the mountains. An admirer of Manga artist Katsuhiro Oromo, Galeno loves line drawings and backgrounds.
Maura in Suyoc (Illustration by Ren Galeno for The Washington Post)
Because of the vivid script, it was easy for Galeno to visualize the images that went in “Searching for Maura.” Despite the abundance of research materials provided by the Post, the detail-oriented Galeno cross-referenced images that she thought needed more details, so she could make faithful replicas of places, objects, and people from 1904. One of her favorite drawings is of the Shawmut, the ship that brought Maura from the Philippines to Tacoma, Washington. She also found a replica of the train that took the Filipinos from Washington to St. Louis. Mullanphy Hospital where Maura died no longer exists, but Galeno was able to find architectural details such as the windows that figure prominently in the story. She also learned that red blankets were distributed to the passengers of the Shawmut, and she included that detail, creating arresting images of Maura wrapped in a red blanket.
The video on the making of “Searching for Maura” shows how the people in the story were based on the images of the Igorot who were at the World’s Fair. Galeno particularly enjoyed drawing a little boy named Singwa, whose image can be seen throughout the story. The Post team did not have an actual photo of Maura or an idea of how she looked like. They decided on depicting sections of her face based the details on the other Igorot women who were photographed at the World's Fair.
Perspective
The cover page of “Searching for Maura” shows her peeking out of small square. The opening images depict the hospital and its windows and how one window is lit; the image flips to Maura looking out that same window. Later in the story, Maura is seen again watching snow fall. According to historical records, it snowed on April 20, two days before Maura died. The snowfall is also the starting point for discovering her story. A resident of St. Louis, Janna Añonuevo Langholz was looking into previous spring snowfalls, and that’s how she learned about the World’s Fair of 1904 and the Filipinos in it.
Maura and Snow (Illustration by Ren Galeno for The Washington Post)
The stories and photographs from the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis were mostly from the American perspective of showcasing the newest territorial acquisition of the United States. The Philippine exhibit highlighted tribal groups, emphasizing the “primitiveness” of Filipinos. The exoticism eclipsed the brilliant performances of the Philippine Scouts and Philippine Constabulary Band, which rivaled the other bands at the Fair, and “exemplified” how the Philippines was greatly benefitting from being colonized by the Americans.
“Searching for Maura” reverses the perspective. Galeno wanted to give the viewer a sense of how Maura and her people might have felt, “allowing viewers to think about what it feels to be looked at, and to think what exists outside the frame.”
Flipped Perspective (Illustration by Ren Galeno for The Washington Post)
‘There is More to be Done’
The “Brain Collection” also emphasizes how Filipinos and the men and women whose brains were collected were seen as specimens and not as human beings. Schaper describes a “goosebumps moment” when the graphics team showed a depiction of the brains as belonging to humans, the final haunting image showing a person behind each brain in the Smithsonian collection. A reminder that every life matters.
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III told Claire Healy and Nicole Dungca in an interview, “Basically my goal is you never erase history, but you help people understand what that history tells us about the Smithsonian. It tells us about the way we treated people. And it should be a guide to make sure we never treat people that way again.” Although Healy and Dungca felt a “small sense of gratification” after speaking with Bunch, Dungca notes that “there’s a lot left to be done.”
Maura’s story is “dark and complex,” but for Dungca, it needs to be told. Schaper adds that “whether you’re Filipino or American, this is part of everybody’s history, this is our history.”
The following are the names of Filipinos and Filipino Americans who were part of the investigative series. Thanks to KC Schaper for providing the list:
Washington Post employees
1. Nicole Dungca – Reporter
2. KC Schaper – Projects Editor + Lead translations editor
3. Regine Cabato – Research contributor + translations editor + PR support for Filipino media
4. Reena Flores – Supervising Senior Producer for Post Reports (audio)
5. Audrey Valbuena – Design developer + Accessibility coach
6. Anjelica Tan – Copy editor
7. Hannah Dormido – Translations editor + Filipino voiceover for "Paghahanap kay Maura"
8. Isabelle Lavandero – Filipino voiceover for "Paghahanap kay Maura"
9. JJ Alcantara – Design Editor assist for design development
10. Angel Mendoza – Social media + Voiceover for "Paghahanap kay Maura"
11. Anne Branigin – Voiceover for "Paghahanap kay Maura"
Freelance contractors
1. Ren Galeno – Illustrations for “Searching for Maura”
2. Christian Benitez – Translations and editing
3. Aldwin Quitasol – Kankanaey translator
To watch the video:
Titchie Carandang is a freelance writer. Her articles have been published in the White House Quarterly, Northern Virginia Magazine, Metro Style, Connection Newspapers and other publications. She is the co-founder and was co-director of the Philippines on the Potomac Project (POPDC), where she researched Philippine American history in Washington, D.C. She has received awards from the Philippine American Press Club, the Mama Sita Foundation, and the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award for her writing.
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