Unburied

Open graves in the Kalahari

In the early 1900s, an Austrian anthropologist exhumed the bodies of more than 170 Indigenous people from the Kalahari and shipped them to Vienna. Unburied is a series by Minority Africa and ARC, that traces how those stolen bodies laid the groundwork for race science — and how their descendants are now demanding their return.

Editors: Sarah Etim and Caleb Okereke.
Story and Audio Produced by: Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

Open Graves

Chapter one

This chapter begins our investigation into Rudolf Pöch. We follow Pöch’s trail through the red dunes of the Kalahari, to the archives of Vienna, and into the lives of those living with his legacy.

Read: The Scientist who Robbed the Kalahari of its Dead