Dan Hicks

(3/3) For too long the category of culture has been invoked by politicians and major-generals
to seek to justify what’s presented as the status quo—but in reality is always another backward step towards genuine barbarism.

time to resist this non-humanism, and the violence it attempts to justify.

(2/3) Many have written about that. For my own part, I did so in #BrutishMuseums, and again in #EveryMonumentWillFall. Now we need collectively to contextualise this propaganda and resist its framing every time we encounter it.

"BARBARIC SAVAGES" (Hegseth).

We've been served up this line before. It's got a history. Dehumanisation in the service of destruction.

We need to understand that history (1/3)

Drinking water warning issued for millions as Iran war threatens supply Conflict is placing drinking water at risk as missile and drone strikes encroach on desalination plants that sustain the region.

I spoke to Newsweek on desalination and the war in the Gulf.

www.newsweek.com/drinking-wat...

Vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums decried by MPs and experts Exclusive: Guardian study finds UK museums hold more than 260,000 items of remains, often in sacrilegious ways

good evening to everyone except the very small albeit rather vocal minority of bioarchaeologists and physical anthropologists terrified of transparency and public debate about the retention of ancestral remains in collections www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Jai déjà partagé hier mais j'avais pas pris le temps de lire ce travail du Guardian sur les restes humains dans les musées britanniques. 260k restes, 80k individus, 30k restes extra européens.

💥 Every Monument Will Fall
Paperback Tour

✨ Birmingham, London, Oxford, Manchester, Bristol

💫 30 April to 7 May

🙏 with MainMusié Sadia Habib, Paula Akpan Sarah Stein Lubrano and Corinne Fowler

🔥 see you there x

tickets>> www.danhicks.uk/talks

This FOl enquiry for the Guardian has taken up a great deal of my life for the past 2 years. (1/3)

the three @theguardian.com articles are here 👇

💥 Every Monument Will Fall
Paperback Tour

✨ Birmingham, London, Oxford, Manchester, Bristol

💫 30 April to 7 May

🙏 with MainMusié Sadia Habib, Paula Akpan Sarah Stein Lubrano and Corinne Fowler

🔥 see you there x

tickets>> www.danhicks.uk/talks

the three @theguardian.com articles are here 👇

bsky.app/profile/prof...

Descendants of Zimbabwe resistance heroes urge UK to locate looted skulls Relatives call on institutions to help them find remains of ancestors who led fight against British colonisers in 1890s

And the article that’s at the heart of this issue - on the Chimurenga Heroes and Zimbabwe

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Descendants of Zimbabwe resistance heroes urge UK to locate looted skulls Relatives call on institutions to help them find remains of ancestors who led fight against British colonisers in 1890s

And the article that’s at the heart of this issue - on the Chimurenga Heroes and Zimbabwe

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Just to remind you, I am one of those curators

“a disservice” to curators is definitely not how the descendant and diasporic communities represented in the Guardian reports would describe it

the lack of transparency is in direct contravention of the Guidance — it’s time for regulation as proposed by the original 2003 DCMS Working Group

Exactly right; the current deregulated situation and lack of basic transparency is repeating the violence against descendant communities

I simply don’t understand why people are so worried about transparency and accepting the current non-regulatory landscape isn’t working?

(Not least because we looked at the whole of the UK, and the data show the majority of records of human remains currently held are not recorded as from UK archaeological excavations)

this is the first time an audit across the UK has been tried since the 2002 Scoping Survey that informed the current DCMS guidance

the FOI investigation data are very different from back then—and the many lacunae this snapshot reveals are themselves evidence that self-regulation just isn’t working

this is the first time an audit across the UK has been tried since the 2002 Scoping Survey that informed the current DCMS guidance

the FOI investigation data are very different from back then—and the many lacunae this snapshot reveals are themselves evidence that self-regulation just isn’t working

Let’s collectively imagine the world otherwise — Archaeology, Anthropology and World Culture Museums can be more than some legacy colonial death cult 💫

Which human remains are held in UK museums – and where? Institutions including the Natural History Museum and Cambridge University hold more than 263,000 human remains, Guardian investigation finds

“Explainer” piece here with more on the data revealed by the FOIs >> www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Which human remains are held in UK museums – and where? Institutions including the Natural History Museum and Cambridge University hold more than 263,000 human remains, Guardian investigation finds

There’s an “explainer” piece here and the full data will be published in due course — if anything is unclear across the three pieces do let me know and I will try to help www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums decried by MPs and experts Exclusive: Guardian study finds UK museums hold more than 260,000 items of remains, often in sacrilegious ways

good evening to everyone except the very small albeit rather vocal minority of bioarchaeologists and physical anthropologists terrified of transparency and public debate about the retention of ancestral remains in collections www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Since when did transparency and informed public debate involve being “thrown under a bus”?

The descendant and Survivor communities have a very different framing

Very sorry to read this @boothicus.bsky.social — this is a unique snapshot of how self-regulation is working and it’s a very different picture from what one might’ve imagined back in 2002 when the DCMS Scoping Survey was done

Sue, are you suggesting the FOI responses weren’t accurate?