What happens when human remains are objectified, when they are assigned serial numbers in a catalog and placed into storage? a shelf of my ancestors confronts this objectification, contrasting these impersonal identifiers with human emotions and experiences. These poems weave together stories of the ancient Indigenous people who the bones may have belonged to, the foreigners who took the bones away, modern Indigenous peoples’ struggles against oppression, and the Indigenous author who is working to bring their ancestors’ remains back home.