One university comes clean

At least Weselyan University comes clean and tries to comply, see:

http://wesleyanargus.com/2011/02/01/university-takes-steps-to-begin-complying-with-nagpra/

When will the Hearst and UC Berkeley?

Respect for the dead?!

Let's see the AAM and others are against the display of Native American remains. Okay, so the Hearst doesn't put any on public display, but they gladly display them via DELPHI...


http://pahma.berkeley.edu/delphi/object/108373

http://pahma.berkeley.edu/delphi/object/108374

http://pahma.berkeley.edu/delphi/object/108375

Hmm, over-reacting on our part? A double standard on the Hearst's part? Or a case of what where they thinking? Either way, it will be interesting to see how long these stay up!

More Univ. of Michigan news

U-M adopts ‘consultation first’ approach on transfer of Native human remains
By Staff reports

Story Published: Nov 24, 2010

Story Updated: Nov 23, 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The University of Michigan will take a “consultation first” approach to all interactions with American Indian tribes as the university further develops its policies and procedures for the transfer of Native American human remains.

Vice President for Research Stephen Forrest established the approach as part of his announcement that he has accepted the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Culturally Unidentifiable Human Remains.

The 12-member committee submitted nine recommendations that suggested a process for how the university might handle requests for the transfer of human remains and associated funerary objects now being held by the U-M Museum of Anthropology. The report was submitted Sept. 16.

Forrest accepted those recommendations, with some modifications, after weighing feedback he received during a month-long period of public comment during October.

rest at

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/greatlakes/U-M-adopts-consultation-first-approach-on-the-transfer-of-Native-American-human-remains-110193329.html

Cal NAGPRA

20 years after the inauguration of the National Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), California’s own NAGPRA law (or Cal NAGPRA) has been effectively quashed by a lack of state funding.

Cal NAGPRA was enacted in 2001 in an attempt to force California institutions with large Native American collections to return objects to their culturally affiliated descendants. The bill (AB 978) aimed to “streamline and add an accountability step to the repatriation process” to both federally and non-federally recognized tribes. Unlike other states, California does not have a process of recognition for federally unrecognized tribes. Consequently, the state has over a hundred such tribes, the highest number in the country.

The legislation was conceived after several university museums, particularly UC Berkley’s Hearst Museum, were accused by Native American tribal leaders of sidestepping National NAGPRA regulations and ignoring local tribal demands for the return of hundreds of thousands of sacred objects and ancestral remains.

“The bill came about because tribes were not consulted by the universities to establish cultural affiliations with property and remains,” said Lalo Franco of the Yokut/Wukchumni Nations and the cultural heritage director of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe.

rest at

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/The+end+of+Cal+Nagpra%3F/21690

SCIENCE MAGAZINE on the NAGPRA laws

We hope the tribes log in and give their two cents worth...

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From AAAS. You can see the articles with a free online registration.

Here is the link: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/10/returning-tribal-remains.html



Has NAGPRA (the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act) been good or bad for archaeology? We at Science have done a special news package on the law's impact, timed for its 20th anniversary. And because the law sparks passionate views on research and Native rights, we are hosting an online discussion on ScienceNOW, our online daily news site. Our reporters and editors will be monitoring comments and posting their views over the next day or so. Given your interests, we would like to particularly invite you to join the discussion. If you go to http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/10/returning-tribal-remains.html it's easy to participate. We look forward to hearing your comments.

Tribes sue over the Ruby Pipeline

For more than two years the Northern Paiute including Nevada's Fort McDermot and Summit Lake Paiute tribes and the California's Fort Bidwell tribe have lobbied to divert the pipeline around their traditional lands in northwest Nevada. Dean Barlese, a cultural and spiritual guide at the Summit Lake Reservation, says, "We're not against the pipeline. It's just the route has taken it through some of the most pristine areas still left in Nevada." He says the BLM and other federal agencies conducted inadequate consultations with the tribes.

Aaron Townsend, vice chair of the Fort Bidwell tribal council, says a pipeline man camp has gone up just south of an area where the pipeline will bisect "house rings, burials, prayer sites – you name it, we've got everything – obsidian quarries, petroglyphs." He describes looting of cultural sites as people hear about archaeological resources along the pipeline corridor. The Fort Bidwell tribe recently filed a petition for review over the BLM's approved right-of-way for the pipeline.

Read the entire article at:

http://www.hcn.org/hcn/blogs/goat/more-surprises-flow-from-ruby-pipeline

What's up with the Hearst?

While the Smithsonian repatriates cultural patrimony and sacred objects to the
Yurok, what is the story with the Hearst?

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The Smithsonian Institution has returned a trove of precious artifacts to the Yurok Indians in California in what is one of the largest repatriations of Native American ceremonial artifacts in U.S. history.

The Yurok, who have lived for centuries along California's Klamath River, received 217 sacred items that had been stored on museum shelves for nearly 100 years. The necklaces, headdresses, arrows, hides and other regalia from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian are believed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

"It's awesome. It's a big thing with our people," said Thomas O'Rourke, chairman of the Yurok, a tribe that lived next to the Klamath River in far Northern California for 10,000 years before Europeans arrived. "These are our prayer items. They are not only symbols, but their spirit stays with them. They are alive. Bringing them home is like bringing home prisoners of war."

To celebrate the return of the items, the Yurok will hold a Kwom-Shlen-ik, or "Object Coming Back," ceremony today in the town of Klamath.

The returned artifacts were sold to the museum in the 1920s by Grace Nicholson, a renowned collector of Indian art, who owned a curio shop in Pasadena in the early 20th century. Ceremonial Indian regalia was in vogue among wealthy Americans at the time.

The sacred cache is part of an ongoing effort around the country to return Native American burial artifacts, ceremonial items and remains taken by white settlers from Indian villages and indigenous sites.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F08%2F13%2FMN0O1ET3EI.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0wXSeX1yY

Oops, forget something? (Part 2)

You really have to give it to the Hearst and their clunky on-line museum catalog.
Once again, while they seem to be in a hurry and get a less than perfect search engine out there, they seem to have forgotten their NAGPRA obligations.

Take for example, catalog numbers of human remains from the Cardinal Site (SJo-154):

12-11273 through 12-11307

http://pahma.berkeley.edu/delphi/modules/browser/details.php?onum=12-11299

Once again, search the National NAGPRA database at the NPS. Take a guess what is missing from the culturally unidentified database...

Like we said before 43 CFR 10.11 can only work when the museums come clean on
what they are holding.

(PS--why do some people at the university also insist the Hearst has not taken in human remains since the 1970s when these were accessioned in the mid-1980s?)

Oops, forget something? (Part 1)

The clunky new search engine at the museum's website can be quite handy at times.

For example, look up 2-13845. Here is the link to what you will find:

http://pahma.berkeley.edu/delphi/modules/browser/details.php?onum=2-13845

Interesting to note, this has still yet to be registered with the National NAGPRA
database. I guess they assume scalps were freely taken...

40 CFR 10.11 can only work if the museums are honest in the first place!

UM news (again)

Returning Them To Their Tribe - Michigan Museums Returning Native American Remains Charles Manley

The University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropology has a collection of around 1,400 ancient Native American remains. But they'll lose those remains under a new federal law - and the ability to conduct research with them.

The room that stores the remains of about 1,400 Native Americans is on the ground floor of a non-descript building on campus, but it looks more like a basement. Rows of industrial shelving hold 24-inch long white cardboard boxes - lengthy enough to accommodate the longest human bone - a femur. Each box has a label of a human skeleton on its side, indicated by highlighter which bones the box contains.

Carla Sinopoli is the curator of the Museum of Anthropology. She says early archaeologists had basic questions - 'how old is it?' 'how did they get their food?'. But now they ask all kinds of questions.

"How societies are formed, how beliefs are structured, how communities communicate and move," says Sinopoli, "Political questions, social questions, idealogical questions, economic questions...and the more we know the sophisticated our questions become too."

Even DNA research of human remains is relatively new. Sinopoli says there's no telling what could be learned in twenty or thirty years. But that room and all the white boxes could soon be empty.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was created twenty years ago. The first version required all federally funded museums to take inventories of skeletal remains and try to figure out what Native American groups they belonged to. Many remains were returned to their tribes of origin, but researchers still had something to work with. The remains that couldn't be linked to tribes were left in museums.

But the law that went into effect last month requires that those remains be returned to tribes too. Sinopoli says the loss will be a permanent one.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/8/0/1658808/Arts..and..Culture/Returning.Them.To.Their.Tribe.-.Michigan.Museums.Returning.Native.American.Remains.