What Happened with the American Anthropological Association?

This is just another e-mail submitted by Sandra Harris, Vice-Director of the Hearst Museum as evidence to the State Senate Hearings on February 26th, 2008. Once again, we have to ask, why is she reading the Director's email and submitting it as evidence? We also have to ask, was their an investigation from the American Anthroplogical Association? (Click on the image above to see it full size.)

Consultation After the Fact?

UC has steadfastly argued that they compiled and filed the inventories in accordance with Federal law. Yet, one of the documents submitted to the State Legislature for the February 26th, 2008 hearing draws this stance into question. One has to wonder why they are asking for money to do consultation in January 2001, after the inventories were filed with the Federal government.

Which tribes did come in for consultation? Which tribes had consultation after the inventories were filed?

(Click on each image to see it full size)

The WAC--archaeology as usual?

To the left is a scan of a document submitted to the State of California hearings by Sandra Harris, Vice-Director of the Hearst Museum of Anthropology. (Click on it to see a full, readable image.)

While the WAC (World Archaeology Congress) says it has special interest in protecting "the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples", one wonders if they sent similar messages to other stakeholders? If so, who?

Also, one has to ask why the Vice-Director is reading the Director's email and submitting it as evidence?

Statement by Otis Parrish

I am here to tell you what happened with the NAGPRA Unit at the Hearst Museum in May and June of 2007. It is hard for me to speak about this because what occurred was a breach of friendship and a violation of trust and honor. My tribe, the Kashia Pomo, and my relations have all given much to the Phoebe Hearst Museum and UC Berkeley. We have opened our tribe to working with Berkeley students and have hosted and been a part of the Fort Ross project. We have given freely of our knowledge, of our tribal ways, and have trusted in ties of friendship and respect. The University simply threw this away. Native Americans and a unit which fairly administered NAGPRA were lied to and treated with contempt and disrespect. This is not how you treat Native people, and it should not be how you treat any people.

The “outside review,” which was conducted on the NAGPRA unit on May 16th, 2007, was orchestrated in secrecy by the upper administration at the university and deliberately excluded Native Americans and tribal representatives. The review was a ruse, performed for these purposes alone: to rid the Museum of the autonomous NAGPRA unit, to turn control of NAGPRA over to research scientists and to take over NAGPRA funds. As a result, the Native American interests in the repatriation of their ancestors will not be fairly or adequately addressed. It is hard to stand up against the powerful when you have little power yourself. But we believe it is our duty. The Director of the Museum Kent Lightfoot, Deputy Director Sandra Harris, Vice Chancellor Beth Burnside, and Associate Vice Chancellor Robert Price all worked in secret to eliminate the NAPGRA unit, and with it, truly impartial NAGPRA services. They didn’t consult with the very people at the University who had the most knowledge and experience with both tribes and NAGPRA. And when we asked for Native American tribes to be represented on the review committee, the answer from the Vice Chancellor was an ABSOLUTE NO! Why? I can only assume that they believed tribes would reject their decision.

California Tribes…and all tribes were described by administrators such as Price as “outsiders”…with no relevant knowledge or experience in museums. Remember NAGPRA is a human rights issue – not a “museum efficiency issue” – and it was designed to give us a chance to repatriate our ancestors and rebury them as they deserve. No other Americans have had their ancestors’ graves pillaged and their bones taken away to museum shelves, to be researched on at the whim of scientists. The remains at the Museum belong to NATIVE AMERICANS, and yet the administrators say we have NO right to be included in policy decisions affecting our ancestors. This is ARROGANCE and this is RACISM…and it should not be permitted.

Testimony by Larri Fredericks

{Testimony to the California State Senate Committee on Governmetal Organization given by
Dr. Larri Fredericks on 2/26/2008. The full hearing is available from the Committee and can
be requested in writing from Suite 584, 1020 N Street, Sacramento, CA}

It is also my feeling that the “outside review” was orchestrated in secrecy, deliberately
excluded all Native Americans and tribal representatives for the sole purpose of getting rid
of the existing NAGPRA unit and reorganizing NAGPRA into the museum. The reorganization will subordinate NAGPRA services to the museum administration and further solidify the power of the Repatriation Committee’s involvement in the daily operation of NAGPRA and how it
conducts business. NAGPRA will now be caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

NAGPRA is an important issue at the Phoebe Hearst because they hold the largest collection
of Native American skeletal remains in the nation (only the Smithsonian has a larger
collection and they don’t come under the NAGPRA law). The operations of NAGPRA, in order to
serve the best interests of ALL, should be transparent, be in a neutral place and Native
American tribes should be represented. These are after all Native American remains…what
other group in America does not have a right to speak for their dead?

As tribal representatives on this panel will confirm, there has been a history of strained
relations between tribes and the museum in the past over NAGPRA. When I became Interim
NAGPRA Coordinator, I was determined to change this, and Otis Parrish and Mark Hall were
fully supportive. The way we wanted to change it was not by showing favoritism toward
tribes, but by listening to them, taking their requests seriously and treating them fairly,
and giving them the recognition that was required as the basic stakeholders in the process.

We did not want to “give away the store”; but we recognized that Native American ancestral
remains belonged to Native Americans. Our goal was to assist tribes understand the subtle
details of archival review, documentation, archaeological data, and so on, so they could
access and provide all of the legitimate evidence to present their claims to repatriation
committees that required extensive and detailed evidence based claims. We gave them the
tools: knowledge and access to the collections, the documents, and the libraries, including
the Bancroft.

We succeeded in gaining the confidence of many tribes, so much so that they rallied to our
support after the reorganization was announced. They sent countless letters of support and
protest to the Chancellor, passed tribal and National resolutions, joined coalitions, and
did a myriad of other things. How did we achieve this trust? By acknowledging the importance
of the repatriation of their ancestors, by treating them fairly and for bringing forth their
concerns and desires to the museum. Operating with at least semi-autonomy allowed us to
bring fourth their concerns and to ensure that collections in consultation were not accessed
for research, to remove exhibits from sites in consultation that were considered sacred
sites and to ensure that policy included their interests. At times this angered people in
the Museum, and, according to the Bettinger/Walker “review,” some of these people complained
that our relationships were “dysfunctional.” I should note, however, that Bettinger and
Walker did not interview most of the museum staff with whom we regularly worked and with
whom we had very positive relations. But more important, sometimes integrity requires making
people angry, sometimes we could not fairly and impartially administer NAGPRA, a federal
law, without stepping on Museum toes. I also feel that most of the staff at the museum was
supportive of the NAGPRA Unit and our actions.

On the other hand, we acted above and beyond our NAGPRA duties to help the Museum establish positive relations with tribal communities and with Native American organizations on campus. We assisted with outreach and educational programs, organized California Indian Day events, hosted the Summer Rez program for Indian undergraduates, mentored Anthropology graduate students and accepted two Native American interns, obtained funding from the City of
Berkeley for the Native California Cultural Gallery, and begged Museum administrators to
actually change the contents of that gallery (it had stayed the same for 6 years) and to
hold a major Native American exhibition (there hadn’t been one for many years, and none was
planned for many more).

No management official ever informed me or anyone on my staff that we were not performing
effectively. In fact, we were often praised by Museum Director Kent Lightfoot. No one ever
asked us how we might better integrate our activities into museum functions without
sacrificing the integrity of NAGPRA services. Hence, we were completely blindsided by the
sudden review and by the announcement of the reorganization only a few weeks later. No one
consulted us, and when we asked that the tribes be represented on the review committee, we
were answered with an “Absolute no.” I agree entirely with Otis Parrish: the review was a
set up, intended to give legitimacy to a decision that had already been made. Tribes were
excluded because they would have seen that decision for what it was: a coup by museum
scientists who wanted to keep the remains for purposes of research and by museum
administrators who wanted control of the NAGPRA budget.

Testimony by Mark Hall

{Testimony to the California State Senate Committee on Governmetal Organization given by Dr. Mark Hall on 2/26/2008. The full hearing is available from the Committee and can be requested in writing from Suite 584, 1020 N Street, Sacramento, CA}


Dear Senators, Ladies, and Gentlemen,

Good Morning. My name is Mark Hall, and I was formerly the archaeologist with the NAGPRA Unit at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. I was in this position from February 1, 2006 until June 30th, 2007.

As to my background, I finished my PhD in Anthropology (Archaeology emphasis) from UC Berkeley in Dec. 1992. Most of my career has been spent living, working and doing research in museums in Ireland, Japan and the United Kingdom. I am a registered Professional Archaeologist, and a Fellow in the Royal Society of Asian Affairs, and a Fellow in the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

While all this overseas experience my seem irrelavent,it needs to be stressed that I did quickly learn one thing. Local communities have an interest in their heritage. It didn't matter whether I was in Ireland or Mongolia, the local people all identified with the local archaeological remains
and museum materials. To do archaeology and research in these places required the involvement and permission from the community.

I see the same principles applying here in North America--to do research and study on prehistoric North American materials one needs the involvement and sanction of the Native American tribes.

I am here today not as a disgruntled, former employee, but as an archaeologist and museum professional who is outraged and disgusted with what has transpired with UC Berkley and its NAGPRA obligations.

First, I am outraged at the way the University covertly and with bias eliminated the NAGPRA unit. While our jobs made us the intermediaries between museum staff, researchers and Native Americans, the University sought only two UC faculty to evaluate and review us. While they were scheduled to question the NAGPRA staff for 20 minutes each, in my case, it was only a 10 minute interview--one member needed to work on getting a plane back to Santa Barbara, and the other wanted to complain about doing the review. In terms of the rest of their fact finding mission, they only bothered to question other museum employees that we interacted with only irregularly. There was no input from the Native American communities we served, and as Prof. Burnside's emails indicate, there was not to be any input from these communities. Further, while we were told this was for budget support from both Beth Burnside and Kent Lightfoot, the reviewers told us they were reviewing us on how we fit into museum operations and evaluate our job performance.

Moving on to other points. While UCB touts it is in compliance with the federal NAGPRA law, one can question its sincerity. In a 2000 report by Dr. Edward Luby, a former NAGPRA coordinator, he estimated that 48% of the inventories were done without full review of the documents available at UCB. While technically legal, is it really ethical and moral? One also has to wonder what impact does this have on the Hearst listing 80% of its collection as culturally unidentifiable? My personal feeling is that it will have a major impact--from what I have found in the paperwork, parts of CA-Lassen-7, CA-San Joaquin-42, CA-Tul-145, Humboldt and Hidden caves in Nevada should have been eligible for repatriation. Along similar lines, one also has to question the Hearst's title to some items in its collections. For example does UC Berkeley really hold title to the finds from sites NV-Washoe-177 through 180 that
were accessioned to the museum before 1970?

The process that the UC system has put into place for Native American tribes to file a claim is also a source of disgust. Whether through intention or accident, claims for items and human remains in the Hearst must be written and submitted as a formal report. This means it must be referenced, footnoted and with a bibliography. This is in contrast to most Federal agencies which accept a short letter and oral testimony. While NAGPRA recognizes oral traditions, linguistics, and history as relevant lines of evidence, the UCB repatriation committee in the months between February 2006 and June 2007 was noticeably lacking in members specializing in these fields. And unless changes have been made since June 2007, the UCOP Repatriation committee is also lacking specialists in linguistics, oral traditions/folklore, and history. Native American representation on both the Berkeley repatriation committee and the UCOP repatriation committee is also minimal. For the Berkely repatriation committee there was only 1. For the UCOP committee, there is 2.

And yes when a claim is filed it must go through two committees. It goes through the local campus committee first, and if it gets approved for repatriation there, it goes to the UCOP repatriation committee. The UCOP committee can accept or reject it. In essence you have a double jeopardy system.

Finally, the UCB mantra in this whole affair has been: "we want to be more like other museums." One has to ask though, do these other museums which the Hearst wants to emulate have a sizable Native American community living in their midst? in most cases it is no!
Also, one can ask when did UCB ever settle for being mediocre? The UCB I was trained by, taught us to be the best period. What is wrong with setting a new standard and a new path?

Thank you for your time and the oportunity to voice these concerns.

Coverage of the hearing

Berkeley accused of racism over failure to return tribal bones
By Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 27, 2008

SACRAMENTO -- -- State Senate leaders chastised UC Berkeley
administrators Tuesday for trampling on the civil rights of Native
Americans by not returning the remains of thousands of their
ancestors held in storage at a campus museum.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the incoming Senate leader,
accused the university of discriminating against Native Americans by
keeping the bones and artifacts at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of
Anthropology despite federal and state laws that established
procedures for returning them years ago.

"If there were remains of my ancestors, European Americans, in the
Hearst museum at one of the most respected universities in the
country, there would be an absolute outcry from people, and I
guarantee you something would be done about it quickly," Steinberg
told university officials at a hearing of the Senate Governmental
Organization Committee. "But because they're Native American remains,
somehow it is different."

For more than 40 years, the bones of about 12,000 Native Americans
have been kept in drawers and cabinets under the swimming pool of the
Hearst Gymnasium, next door to the museum. Most of the bones were dug
up by university archaeologists in the first half of the 20th
century.

Under the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act and a similar 2001 state law written by Steinberg,
the museum is required to identify the origins of bones and artifacts
in its collection and return them to the tribes they came from. So
far the museum has repatriated the bones of about 260 individuals.

UC Berkeley triggered new controversy over the bones in June when it
eliminated the staff unit within the museum that was responsible for
working with tribes and facilitating the return of the remains.

rest at

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-bones27feb27,1,6882753.story


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Senators accuse UC - Berkeley of discrimination, secrecy over ancestral remains Email this page Print this page
Posted: February 28, 2008
by: Shadi Rahimi


SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In a powerful show of support, state senators are rebuking the University of California - Berkeley for refusing to return thousands of Native human remains held in storage, calling the actions of university officials discriminatory.

Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Organization, said in a Feb. 27 letter addressed to UC - Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau that he had been inclined to give university officials ''the benefit of the doubt,'' but he was ''appalled'' after testimonies at a hearing at the state Capitol Feb. 26.

University officials ''systematically'' excluded Natives from ''having any involvement'' in a decision to eliminate a unit at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology - which houses the second-largest Native collection in the nation - that had helped tribes reclaim ancestral items under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.

''UC - Berkeley officials have acted secretly and without transparency to circumvent the mandates and the spirit of federal and state NAGPRA laws,'' Florez wrote in the letter, provided to Indian Country Today by a protest coalition representing 400,000 tribal members.

Florez is urging Birgeneau to meet with tribal leaders within 30 days. During the hearing, he had questioned why university officials have repeatedly refused to work directly with tribes and to meet with tribal leaders (even after they marched to his office this past fall).

rest at

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416712

Calif. Senate Committee Hearing!

CA Senate Committee on Governmental Organization to Examine UC Berkeley’s Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act Compliance Program: Tribal Voices to be Heard

When: February 26, 2008

Where: Room 3191 of State Capitol

Time: 9:30 a.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 19, 2008 – Native Americans and social justice allies are urged to
attend a Senate hearing to present their opinions on UC Berkeley’s (UCB) decision to
reorganize the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) compliance
program. The Senate Committee on Governmental Organization has mandated that UCB officials
participate in the hearing after many months of attempts by tribal leaders to negotiate with
UC Berkeley’s administration. The committee will hear of long-standing problems that tribes
have faced while trying to repatriate their ancestors from UCB, and tribal leaders will have
the chance to offer their solutions to these problems to the Senate committee.

UCB’s Phoebe Hearst Museum warehouses the remains of over 12,000 Native individuals. The
University scientists hold a professional stake in keeping these ancestors at the University
for their own research purposes. However, such activity violates Native American spiritual
and cultural practice and likely puts UCB into non-compliance with federal NAGPRA policy.
Museum and University officials argue that they adequately consulted with tribes on
returning the remains to their living tribal descendants. However, many tribes disagree and
are demanding that further effort be made by the UC system to fix the problem.

“Although the program has completed a number of NAGPRA-required tasks, there is still a
great deal to be accomplished,” said Reno Franklin, Member of the NAGPRA Coalition and
Kashia Pomo Tribe. “The decision to cut the program was based on a biased report written by
two archeologists who represent research interests that often conflict with tribal claims on
the museum’s collection of ancestral remains.”

“The UCB is a public institution that is obliged to adhere to the highest standards of non-
discrimination,” said Lalo Franco, Representative of the Coalition and Santa Rosa Rancheria
Tachi Yokut Tribe. “When a decision has an extremely negative impact on a specific
community; when that community is deliberately excluded from the decision process; and when
that same process heavily favors opposing stakeholders, internal management perogatives must
give way to concerns of public justice.”

Tribes and individuals can add their voices by contacting Senators Dean Florez (Chairman),
Jeff Denham (Vice Chairman), Jim Battin, Abel Maldonado, Gloria Negrete McLeod, Edward
Vincent, Patricia Wiggins, Mark Wyland, and Leland Yee at the Senate Committee on
Governmental Organization, Legislative Office Building, 1020 N Street, Room 584, Sacramento,
CA 95814, 916-651-1530, FAX 916-445-5258. Urge them to support the needs of tribes to
rebury their ancestors over the desires of UCB to use them as specimens.

For additional information on the UCB NAGPRA issue, visit http://nagpra-ucb.blogspot.com.

Longest Walk 2

Dear Tribes and Friends:

For those of you who have been sympathetically following the repatriation protest at UC Berkeley, I’d like to urge you to support the Longest Walk (http://www.longestwalk.org), which is described in the following introductory passage from the organization’s website:

On Feb. 11th, Longest Walk participants will embark on a
5 month journey from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. arriving
on July 11th. The Longest Walk south route is being led by
AIM co-founder Dennis J. Banks. It is an extraordinary grassroots
effort on a national level to bring attention to the environmental
disharmony of Mother Earth, sacred site issues, and to
commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original longest walk.

The journey will take fortitude, determination, courage, and much help from supporters along the way. Given the people involved and the significance of the issues, I’m sure the march will succeed. For complete details, please see the website.

The Longest Walk embraces many issues far beyond the sudden and secretive elimination of UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum NAGPRA unit, but organizers sympathize with our protest against turning complete control of the remains over 12,000 Native ancestors to radically anti-repatriation scientists like Osteologist Tim White. For this and other reasons marchers have chosen to stop at Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus at 12 noon on this Monday, February 11 for a press conference. Please attend if you possibly can. At that time, speakers will be asking you to support and be present at a California State Senate hearing on February 26 investigating the reorganization and the possibility of setting up a mediation board between tribes and the UC system. Please attend this too – it’s very important to show strength, numbers, and solidarity.

Regarding the NAGPRA unit: in a letter to National NAGPRA on proposed rules for culturally unidentifiable ancestral remains, Susanville Rancheria has perhaps spoken most eloquently about Mr. White’s argument that he deserves complete control of repatriation at the Hearst Museum:

Dr. Tim White … claims that “he and his colleagues in such fields as medicine, physical anthropology, evolutionary biology, forensics and archaeology rely heavily on the use of skeletal remains.” He states further that “no students in these fields could be properly trained without direct access to relevant physical scientific evidence.” How many ancestors must you have to study? It seems to us that you have amassed more human remains than you will ever need to train your up-and-coming scientists. How useful can human remains be, if you identify them as culturally unidentifiable? The ancestors have been dug up and exposed, stopping the journey to the other side; Native Americans have the right to be buried. This is a human rights issue! Their journey has been disturbed. It is time for them to come home, and return to Mother Earth.

Even if Mr. White thinks human remains are so scientifically important, why he is so covetous of Native American remains. Wouldn’t it be fairer to share the burden? Shouldn’t he use his same arguments to request governmental permission to dig up the graves of Caucasians, say at Forest Lawn or even Arlington? President Kennedy is buried at Arlington; he was a brilliant man and surely his remains would yield interesting “scientific” results. Should we desecrate his grave in the name of Mr. White’s precious “science”? Most people would be rightfully shocked. Why are they so complacent about Native American human remains?

I urge you again to support the Longest Walk.
Corbin Collins

A quick note

Dear tribes and friends:

While the Native American NAGPRA Coalition (NANC) believes the LA Times article is by and large fair, there a few factual errors.

The article seems to insinuate that ancestral remains cannot be repatriated to non-recognized tribes. According to NANC member, archaeologist and Stanford faculty member Jon D. Daehnke, Ph.D, this is incorrect. “There is absolutely nothing in NAGPRA that precludes the repatriation of human remains or cultural objects to non-recognized tribes and in fact repatriation to non-recognized tribes has occurred across the nation (and has been applauded by the National NAGPRA Review Committee). The distinction is that repatriation in these cases is at the discretion of the museum or federal agency. In this sense, a museum's relationship with non-recognized tribal entities is very illustrative of their overall feelings toward ownership of bones and the concerns of Native Americans. Museums that choose not to repatriate to non-recognized tribes, or even to consult with them, typically reflect a patronizing and colonial view of their authority and control over these human remains. Therefore, Professor Tim White's assessment that these objects are not being repatriated because they are affiliated with non-recognized tribes is both ethically and legally incorrect, and is indicative of his true attitudes.”


The reporter states that "Larri Fredericks and her husband, Corbin Collins, organized a coalition of tribes opposed to the museum reorganization." This is extremely misleading and must have come from a campus source; the Coalition was organized by tribes themselves and many other Native Americans, including Fredericks. (Collins did not even know tribal members prior to the dispute). The Chancellor perpetuates this myth because it is in the reorganization’s interest to blame our protest on a “small group of critics.” All of the resolutions (including the National Congress of American Indians’), the letters, the protests, and nationwide expression of support put the lie to the Chancellor’s disinformation.


The University now claims that NAGPRA unit was disbanded because it was "dysfunctional"; but prior to the reorganization, the University and the tribes had nothing but praise for the Unit's performance. Indeed, administrators rationalized the “integration” of the unit into the museum as a means of better drawing on the staff’s highly regarded expertise. The only "dysfunction" was that the Unit's efficient, fair and impartial administration of NAGPRA threatened the professional goals of scientists such as Tim White who want to keep the collection of Native American human remains intact for research. The administrators who ordered the reorganization are allies of these scientists, in opposition to tribal concerns. To this day, neither the Chancellor nor higher UC officials such as Rory Hume will even deign to meet with leaders of sovereign tribal governments.