Emma Kowal draws on the history of problematic scientific research on Indigenous Australian bodies and populations to tell larger story of how that study continues to haunt contemporary genomics study about Indigenous biological difference.

A Note on Terminology  xi
Acknowledgments  xiii
Introduction  1
1. Living with Ghosts  11
2. Blood, Bones, and the Ghosts of the Ancestors  33
3. A Century in the Life of an Aboriginal Hair Sample  67
4. Race and Nation: Aboriginal Whiteness and Settler Belonging  91
5. Indigenous Physiology: Metabolism, Cold Tolerance, and the Possibility of Human Hibernation  119
6. Spencer’s Double: The Decolonial Afterlife of a Postcolonial Museum Prop  143
Conclusion  167
Appendix 1. Dramatis Personae  173
Appendix 2. Timeline of Relevant Events  175
Notes  181
References  199
Index  235

Emma Kowal is Alfred Deakin Professor of Anthropology at Deakin University, author of Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia, and coeditor of Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World.