In his book Letters of Stone professor Steven Robbins tells the deeply moving story of his quest to find out what happened to the family members he only knew from a picture on the wall of his childhood home in South Africa.

In this interview Steven reveals the surprising connections between his family members murdered in nazi death camps, the race science done by people like Rudolf Pöch in the Kalahari and the connections between struggles of land and identity across time and space. All of which is connected to the sleepy town of Williston in the middle of the Karoo.

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This is the first in our new episode format: ARC Interviews — conversations with people whose stories and work challenge the way we see the world.

We begin with Brain Miennies — community leader, activist, and a key voice in Unburied. After sharing the episodes of Unburied with Brain, we sat down with him to reflect on the series, the ongoing struggle for the repatriation of Indigenous ancestors, and why this work is about more than returning bones. It’s about forgotten history, dignity, and ultimately— justice.

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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As Rudolf Pöch prepared to leave Southern Africa in 1910, he left behind a legacy of exhumed graves, stolen bones, and silenced voices. But he also left behind a trail — one that leads, unexpectedly, to a small cemetery in Kuruman and a moment of reckoning.

In this final episode, Unburied follows the remains of Klaas and Trooi Pienaar, two ordinary people caught in an extraordinary story. Thanks to the disturbing decisions of Pöch’s assistant Mr. Mehnarto, their bodies — packed in barrels of salt — were preserved and labeled. Unlike the hundreds of others, their names survived.

We follow the global effort to return their remains: from a conference in Vienna that turned into a reckoning, to a ceremonial reburial we are reminded why this matters: “As long as they don’t rest, we can’t rest.”

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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