September 05, 2007

The right to control the dead

Who owns the past?If asked to enumerate their human rights, I doubt that most Americans would mention the right to control their dead. This is not because there is no such right; rather, the entitlement is so basic and universally extended that it is hardly recognized as a "right" by most people. But suppose America were occupied by a foreign invader whose scientists pillaged our cemeteries and shipped our ancestors' remains home for research. I have little doubt that most Americans would regard this as a fundamental violation of human rights and dignity.

The United States, of course, allowed this to happen to its indigenous people. Although our government acknowledged almost every other group's spiritual and legal claim to their dead, for much of American history it did not extend this basic human entitlement to Native Americans. Huge quantities of their ancestral remains and sacred objects were shipped to research institutions such as UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum, which houses the second largest such collection in the nation. In 1990, Congress tried to redress the injustice by passing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which requires museums to repatriate human remains and sacred objects to tribes.

5 comments:

writerfella said...

Writerfella here --
Interestingly, there is a scene in ANASAZI The Screenplay wherein writerfella's Mandan character, Nathan BigHawk, disapproves of the fact that Smithsonian anthropologists have come to Chaco Canyon looking for a particular Anasazi grave. They counter that they are trying to find and then to preserve knowledge of Native cultures in their researches. He asks, "What would happen if I dug up George Washington, just to prove whether or not he had wooden teeth? You people would be all over me, and I'd go to jail!" They avoid answering the question, as EuroMan always has and does, instead questioning his reasoning and saying that their purposes outweigh any such protests in the name of their sciences.
In any case, concerning 'Kennewick Man,' it quite may be soon that scientists will hire Patrick Stewart to do infomercials for their pursuits, since he so closely resembles both the reconstructed 'Kennewick Man' and the Stonehenge skeleton found in England. Question: who handles human remains older than 13,500 years old EVERYDAY and thus could have planted 'Kennewick Man's' remains in Oregon? Enh, enh! Oh, I'm sorry, that's Beulah The Buzzer, your time is up. You do not win the lounge suite...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

Rob said...

Re "What would happen if I dug up George Washington, just to prove whether or not he had wooden teeth? You people would be all over me, and I'd go to jail!" I've asked questions like that before. For instance, in Professor Says Indians Rely on "Victimhood," "White Guilt" I wrote:

Would Custred agree to dig up Arlington National Cemetery for scientific purposes? Maybe exhume a few of the Unknown Soldiers and send various bits and pieces to labs to be ground up and tested? Why not, if he believes in "rational" science? What's more rational than treating dead bodies like random mineral deposits?

The principle is exactly the same. Native people generally hold all burials as sacred as we hold the "special" ones in Arlington. They also hold ancestors who are hundreds or thousands of years old as sacred as we might hold our parents or grandparents. So unless Custred is willing to plop his mother's bones into an acid bath for chemical analysis, his argument fails.

Rob said...

Nevertheless, it would be good to see the questions asked in a major motion picture. Why? Because movies are a major source of our perceptions about Natives and Native beliefs.

Rob said...

I believe the so-called Picard reconstruction was based only on one researcher's opinions and assumptions. In other words, it was speculative guesswork.

Here's a summary of the Kennewick Man controversy and a telling comment:

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/11129

Funnily enough, Vine Deloria, Jr. has pointed out that Kennewick Man/Picard is also the spitting image of an 1833 portrait of Chief Black Hawk.

writerfella said...

Writerfella hjere --
Oh, wow! If anyone sets out to do a film about Chief Black Hawk, then WHO would be the most obvious choice to play him? writerfella can see Chief Black Hawk point outward at the US Army on the Plains and say, "Engage!"
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'