In late August of 2005, the London Zoo staged a brief but very popular exhibit that consisted of eight scantily clad human beings displayed in a zoo enclosure that might once have housed orangutans or bears. Billed as “the world’s first ever human zoo exhibit,” the display was intended to turn the tables on the viewing public and to teach spectators “that the human is just another primate,” as spokesperson Polly Wills said.
London Zoo officials may not have been aware that their exhibit was in fact far from being the first human zoo in the world, and that its precursors were never so egalitarian in their intended messages. In the last half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, human zoos appeared throughout Europe and North America, displaying specimens of “uncivilized” peoples taken or enticed from their homes in remote regions of the globe. These specimens were paid or coerced to practice their cultures before rapt audiences of Europeans and...
Warren Cariou teaches aboriginal literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.
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