Committee advances bill to ban ‘reprehensible’ buying and selling of human bones

“You could walk into an oddities shop not that far from here, today, and buy a human skull.”

With that opening, speaking Monday before the House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee, Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL-Roseville) described a bill she sponsors that would make it a felony to buy and sell human bones, including containers of cremated or hydrolyzed human remains.

It is currently legal to do so in Minnesota, she said, which “is simply just against our own sense of morality and respect for other human beings [and] the dignity we believe anyone should be treated with both in life and death.”

A Leech Lake Ojibwe descendant, Becker-Finn said she has a personal connection to this topic.

“There is a long history of Native remains and bones being displayed, sold, brokered, and otherwise used for, I guess, entertainment,” she said. “Obviously, I find that commodification of a human being reprehensible.”

The committee approved HF3490 and sent it to the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee.

Exceptions are provided, including licensed health care professionals at educational institutions with “legitimate medical or scientific purposes or for educational purposes.”

And law enforcement agencies, search and rescue units, and emergency management organizations could obtain remains “to conduct search and rescue training or to train dogs to locate dead human bodies.”

Representing the Minnesota Funeral Directors Association, Joe Sellwood said the buying and selling of human bones “goes against our customs, which is dignity in death.”

It is imperative that Minnesota enact this ban, he said.

“Absent a bright line, there remains a quiet but open market for the buying and selling of human remains gathered as morbid collectibles or used for questionable purposes,” he said.

Becker-Finn hopes her bill becomes law before the traveling Oddities & Curiosities Expo comes to the Minneapolis Convention Center May 18-19. Event organizers have previously promoted the sale of “all things weird,” including skulls and bones.