Petition

In October 2016, after the Municipality of Lisbon (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa - CML) approved the project, a group of twenty-four Portuguese biological anthropologists representing the discipline in Portugal filed a request to the Minister of Culture, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Home Affairs, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and the Secretary of State to revoke the donation to SFU of the remains. The petition can be found in the PDF file below.

In this document, the group of biological anthropologists express their support for the curation and study of unclaimed human remains and the development of documented skeletal collections in Portugal since the late 19^th Century. However, these colleagues argue that:

• The donation of unclaimed human remains to a foreign institution, such as Simon Fraser University (SFU), is illegitimate, lacks legal context, and the opinion of the National Committee for Ethics in the Life Sciences is not binding and does not support the exportation of human remains;
• Portuguese authorities cannot guarantee privacy of data about the decedents in other countries such as Canada, given that the remains are those of unclaimed but identified/known individuals;
• Specific legislation needs to be approved to regulate exportation before Dr. Cardoso's project is given the green light.

In February 2017, a letter was also sent to the President and Vice-Chancellor of SFU in protest against the donation of unclaimed human remains to SFU. One month later, the Chair of the Department of Archaeology replied stating that a donation is against the department's human remains policy. While the request to the Municipality of Lisbon was initially framed as a donation (see panel #2 of the timeline under "Approached CML", as per that policy the goal of the project had always been to return the remains/reverse the donation. A copy of the letters can be found in the PDF files below.