In Piedmont (Northern Italy), there are numerous ethnographic and archaeological collections from the Center and South America. Most of them are gathered in museums of missionaries (“Don Bosco” Ethnological Mission Museum in Castelnuovo Don Bosco, Asti); some of them are being stored in small civic museums; while a core of about 200 objects are at MAET’s - Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin - currently closed to the public. This last collection consists of objects that come from different areas: you can admire several tiaras, arrows and arches from Botocudos and Bororo (Brazil), collected from Catholic missions, or wooden and stone jewelry from scientific-naturalistic expeditions in the Chaco area (Bolivia and Paraguay). The ships travelling back to Europe also carried anthropological findings, such as mummified pre-Columbian human bodies. At the Museum of Natural History "Pietro Calderini" in Varallo (Vercelli) is preserved a mummy arrived with the scientific expedition which traveled around the world with the ship called “Magenta”. Furthermore at MAET’s there is a mummy with tattoos both on the face and on the arms, a gift from a Fascist hierarch to the founder of the Museum in the 1930s. The present paper aims to illustrate the scientific and historical researches which can be useful for reconstructing the entire story of this mummified body and, on the other hand, can represent a deep reflection on the ethics of exposing human bodies and, in general, on the decolonization of the collection.  

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