This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1446999
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1446999
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Sometimes I find it hard to reconcile our “exceptionalism” with human decency.
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We are now seeing just how much the influence of a President of the United States can influence a nation.
We entered an Era in which Trump and Trumpism still hold too much sway.
How would Biden and Trump react to this story?
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I visited a burial site on private land that was open to the public until 1989 near Salina, KS. There were claims that the remains of the males indicated they were over six feet tall, with one claim of seven feet tall. The laws changed, the site was closed, and the remains were covered in blankets and reburied by members of the Pawnee Nation, presumably the closest extant relatives of the individuals in the burial site. Sometimes the right thing gets done eventually.
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It goes beyond bad karma to charge admission to further dishonor ancestorial graves.
Hopefully tfg’s corpse will not be allowed to desecrate any National Cemetery.
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Politics in this country have left an often brutal legacy.
Those national leaders who ascend to prominence will influence others…and in some cases, that is unfortunate, especially those occasions in which people living in the same country are induced to became adversaries.
THAT is Trump’s legacy. I have seen few individuals with a more damaging influence.
Imagine a story like this one in which two people have diametrically different reactions.
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I had heard of Dixon Mound, but never went there, Cahokia was right across the river.
We have to remember that attitudes and practices around cemeteries have changed through the years.
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Unfortunately, the attitudes and practices under pilfered remains is suddenly “gee, what can’t be sure who they belong to, so we’ll keep exhibiting it and making $$”
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I don’t know how long it will take to erase the idea that just because one is not a white person of European ancestry that they are lesser. How long will we still hang on to Colonialism?
As I got older and traveled I got more, I got more uncomfortable with “America is #1!!!”.
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His kids will probably bury him on the golf course next to Ivanka and charge admission. There are millions of people in this country stupid enough to pay for it.
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So the British museum wants us to use the phrase “mummified person” instead of “mummy.” Fair enough, it definitely seems like a good idea to acknowledge that an exhibit is human remains. However, this article shows us how treating the dead of other cultures with disrespect can cause lasting harm to living people. The entire idea of the dead being disinterred and put on display is wrong.
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Disinterred is one thing. There could be any number of reasons why persons remains would need to e disinterred. I don’t even have to much trouble with studying the persons remains. But displaying them has always seemed like un-needed disrespect. Most of us know what skeletal remains look like, note that human remains were found keep it private and return the remains to the most appropriate local authority. This kind of activity has made Native Americans rightfully hostile to allowing examination of remains in all cases. Which makes it harder for us (all of us) to understand that pre-history.
What happened here is very much like the display people in the Victorian era. Villages of “primitive” people displayed for entertainment and to make the viewer feel superior.
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Exceptionally inappropriate, certainly by today’s standards (not to mention the standards of the 1990s), is the legacy of sooooo much of our history.
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My family visited here in a trip when I was a kid. The experience was what I imagine visiting the Egyptian pyramids must be like. I’d seen mummies in museums before and this seemed similar. Not excusing this display in any way. Different time.
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Elvis at Graceland. And yes I’ve been to Graceland, what surprised me is how much that house reminded me of my grandparents’ house. Bigger, but the color scheme and some pieces were the same. I can pretty much say unequivocally that they weren’t copying him.
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How to be racist without realizing it? Systemic Racism!
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Will there be an extra charge to pee on his grave? Asking for a friend.
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Yep! The West has a long and fascinating history of mucking about with the dead, and we’ve always displayed them for public consumption–even today, we still have open casket funerals. Oh, did you know that a common pastime in fin-de-siecle Paris was to stop by the city morgue to look at the bodies fished out of the Seine? People are weird.
It seems to me that this particular display of remains did not spring from racism so much as this human fascination with death. I also suspect that the important issue here was the age of the remains, rather than the cultural origins: that is, these people had been dead long enough to not seem real.
Had this family stumbled across the graves of a bunch of super-wayward Vikings, I doubt that they would have had any compunction about putting those remains on display, either, because once you’ve been dead hundreds of years, you’re no longer one of us.
We need to remember that white people have had no problem putting white people on display, either, although the particular contexts for this have varied over time. Basically, this is a culture clash between two different philosophies over the proper handling of the dead, and I think we need to avoid the tiresome lambasting of Western traditions simply because they are Western.
In any case, the Dixon Mound remains probably have no archaeological value anymore, so it seems to me that reburying them in situ should be an easy decision to make.
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After my Mom died I was going through some really, really old family photos from her side of the family. There were pictures of dead relatives laid out in the parlor of someone’s house. I asked my sister if she’d was OK if I destroyed them. I remember seeing them as a kid and they creeped me out then, but since these folks were 3 generations removed from me I didn’t feel the need to keep them.
I did keep the pictures of their cats. 
(cats were alive in the pix)
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Why? We have a long tradition in the West of disinterring saints in order to venerate them–the bone chips of an ancestress of mine are on display somewhere (the British Museum?) and I think it’s awesome.
And here’s a quandary: is it only bad when Westerners dig up and display bodies, or will the same level of opprobrium be leveled at non-Western traditions, such as those of the Toraja people? What about shrunken heads? They were always meant for public display, and the dead certainly didn’t consent to any of it, so why is it okay for the headhunting tribes to display them, but not Western museums?
Displaying the dead is not a simple black or white issue, and there are a lot of different cultural issues at play. And once we have piously stripped the museums of all remains (plenty of people will cavil against the display of animal remains as well), will that be enough? What about photos? Are photos of these remains also disrespectful, or, given their remove, are they okay? What about photos of bodies that are displayed in museums, even if the bodies themselves were buried?
Our ancient tradition of memento mori–keeping Death before our eyes–is at war with our modern impulse to scrub death out of our lives as thoroughly as we can. I don’t see how allowing either side a total victory is beneficial, so it seems that the trick is finding accomodations: we’re not going to dig up our relatives and live with them, nor are we going to pretend that death is a neat, sanitary thing that happens when no one is looking.
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