Senate Committee Probes Top Universities, Museums Over Failures To Repatriate Human Remains

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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=1455839
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There are significant moral, legal, and institutional issues here but the misalignment of political and archaeological/research timelines – the former quite short, the latter very long – pretty much guarantees frustration and conflict no matter how agreeable anyone wants to be.

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I don’t care. They’re dead fer chrissakes

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You don’t have to care. Yes, they’re dead. But for people’s ancestors to sit in boxes ni a university or museum storeroom is unacceptable.

It takes resources to process the remains and make certain they end up in the right spot and institutions have not been willing to put the resources necessary into the process, so the remains sit there.

Maybe the solution is to let tribal authorities be the stewards of identifying where the remains should go.

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If they are Repubs ,keep them.

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thank you (x infinity) for posting that.

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Maybe you care about live children but I wouldn’t put money on it.

Foundation for Government Accountability behind child labor law rollbacks, emails show - The Washington Post

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White European/American culture says “Who cares - they’re dead. And we had a lot to do with that.”

“Finders keepers you savages.”

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This is Iron Eyes Cody who posed for an anti-littering ad in the 1970’s

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Things have changed all over the world in the just passed half century or so. How many museums have Egyptian artifacts?

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I was so bummed to find out he was Italian-American. Not Native at all.

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Easier than removing a corrupt Supreme Court Justice (or two)? Possibly.

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Early ‘archeology’ was often actual vandalism. The vandals went for the goodies and did not follow the pain-staking procedures of modern archeology.

My dad was an anthropologist and spent some summers as an U Chicago student in the 1920s digging up Native grave mounds. In Wisconsin, a state park has roads that cut through Native grave mounds there.

Some US museums have artifacts and even rooms that were seized from foreign countries.

How many of our European-based immigrants think it’s OK to desecrate the graves of their ancestors here?

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At the moment I am watching the movie Dr Strangelove
Gen. Jack Ripper is out to protect his precious bodily fluids…

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Speaking of human remains. Sorry I don’t mean to be flippant but……

The dead speak! According to Twitter, that is. Countless late celebrities—including Michael Jackson, Chadwick Boseman, and assassinated Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi—have been given blue checkmarks “because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number,” according to their profile pages.

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Mostly agree. Cemetery relocation isn’t unusual. I’d say anonymous remains that are over 200 years old can reside anywhere. Including that of my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. (Should I roll that back to 250 years?)

I support some sort of process that balances the feelings of the descendants with the benefits of scientific research. But to the extent that this program is a priority, I’d recommend that it receive federal funding during the next downturn. No big rush.

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The majority of the problem is that non-Native Americans won’t or can’t take the effort to look at it from the Native Americans perspective. You don’t care, therefore the Native Americans should just shut up. And here we are.

I’m not going to say that there may not be valid reasons to look at these bones, but I’m absolutely positive most of them are just sitting on shelves in boxes gathering dust. If you had a reason to keep some negotiate a timeline and return them. I think the Universities just don’t feel any real urgency, so why spend the cash.

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And that’s probably part of the rub. I’d guess there are lots of remains with dubious provenance. Who would you turn those over to?

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A related issue is that many groups and individuals demanding bones are not even descended from Indians—they’re pretenders.

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My understanding is that the Huntsman family in Utah has the largest collection of American Indian/Native American blankets in the world, adorning their numerous lodges. Maybe in addition to donating to cancer causes, because they all seem to die of cancer because they are inbred Mormons, they could give some of those artifacts back to the Tribal Nations they were taken from.

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