In his capacity as Assistant Curator at the American Museum of Natural History, Franz Boas requested that Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary bring one Inuk from Greenland to New York. Peary obliged and brought six Inuit to New York in 1897 who lived in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History. Four of them died from tuberculosis within a year of arriving in New York, with the exception of one young boy, Minik Wallace. Boas staged a funeral for the father of the boy, and instead of resting the remains in peace, Boas had the remains dissected and placed in the museum. Later Minik Wallace realized that his father's bones were kept at the museum and requested their return. Boas then no longer worked at the museum, but the museum did not want to return the bones. Minik eventually was able to return to Greenland, but Boas did not help him or pay any attention to the plight of the Inuit whom he had brought to New York. Boas has been widely critiqued for his role in bringing Minik and the five other Inuit to New York, and his disinterest in them once they had served their purpose at the museum