Artifacts, Bones Spark the Last of Indian Battles

The calls and letters to the Smithsonian Institution in recent weeks have been “like a flood,” says spokeswoman Madeleine Jacobs, who ticks off the big and small media throughout the country that have covered the issue. “Even important topics like our divestment from South Africa didn’t get this much attention.”

The deluge has come from the debate over what to do with the 35,000 American Indian remains and funerary objects held by the Smithsonian for more than a century. In mid-September, the institution agreed to ease repatriation of their large collection of Indian skeletal remains and burial artifacts to tribes nationwide.

The oral agreement will be part of legislation--now moving in Congress--authorizing the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Disposition of Indian remains, which has been at the top of Indian agendas for a decade, was the major stumbling block in that effort.

Now the Smithsonian will return remains where a “preponderance of evidence” links them to specific tribes, as opposed to close relatives, which was the old standard.

Still a Fight

But though the influential Smithsonian has acquiesced, the fight is far from over. According to estimates, there are more than 600,000 remains nationwide in universities, research institutions, museums and even roadside tourist attractions.

The issue, therefore, is likely to remain a hot topic in anthropological and museum circles and an emotional rallying point for Indians for a long time to come.

“We are a living, viable, ongoing Indian culture, but America has not yet resolved who we are and what we want,” says Suzan Shown Harjo, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest Native American advocacy group with 1.5 million Indian constituents. “We accept nothing other than total compliance to our requests. The remains don’t belong to anyone, and there’s no point to collecting when it’s so deeply morally offensive to other human beings.”

The level of emotion is not surprising.

Washington, more than any other city in the United States, is well-suited for the issues involving the proper honoring of the dead, with perfectly groomed Arlington National Cemetery set prominently on a hill across the Potomac River and monument after monument dedicated to those who have passed before.

But no more proof is needed than the startling statistics. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the most popular tourist spot in Washington with more than 1 million visitors yearly.

Who can say why graves are important? To remember those we have loved, to honor those we respect, to show our decency as human beings. But there is perhaps another reason: Cemeteries remind people of their own mortality.

This national respect for the dead seems to have turned to historical indifference when it comes to American Indians, however, who often note that the old axiom from Westerns, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” still is in full force. Today’s attempts to keep Indian remains locked up in museum vaults, Indians say, is like “racist grave-robbing.”

In testimony before the Senate in 1987, Bill Tall Bull, spiritual leader of the Northern Cheyenne tribe of Lame Deer, was graphic: “How would you feel if your grandmother’s grave were opened and the contents were shipped back east to be boxed and warehoused with 31,000 others . . . and itinerant pot-hunters were allowed to ransack her house in search of ‘artifacts’ with the blessing of the U.S. government?” he asked. “It is uncivilized . . . savage . . . barbaric . . . inhuman. It is sick behavior. It is un-Christian. It is punishable by law.”

“When most people discover this is going on, they are horrified,” says Harjo, “and there is nothing in our traditions to deal with this. None of our enemies before the white man has ever disturbed or violated our burial grounds.”

That is particularly upsetting for American Indians, who believe that when you upset a grave, you disturb the journey of a spirit. Indians believe their dead cannot rest until they are buried.

Not Unique Belief

It is not a unique belief. The Vietnamese, for example, consider the ceremony surrounding dying a fine art, and death anniversaries are far more important than birthdays.

Therefore, Indians believe they are responsible for the care of their collective ancestors’ spirits.

Of the more than 500 Indian tribes recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, nearly all believe a person’s burial place is sacred and should not be disturbed. Some tribes believe holding remains causes sickness, and others avoid speaking the name of a dead person.

The emotional trauma and spiritual distress is so high over the situation that today’s older Indians, says Harjo, are directing that their bodies be cremated, because they are afraid their remains will be disturbed and their spirits will be forced to walk the Earth for eternity.

Their fear is well-documented.

Even though the American Indian population faces a number of serious problems, the systematic grave violations reveal some of the grisliest stories of all.

Straight From Battle

Many Indian bones were collected in the early 19th Century right off the battlefield. In 1868, the surgeon general of the Army directed medical officers in the West to collect Indian craniums for study of infection and disease. Much of this collection was done by the plundering of grave sites, and 4,000 of these specimens were transferred from the Army Medical Museum to the Smithsonian at the turn of the century.

The practices continue today. Indian grave sites are destroyed and bones scattered as looters search for artifacts. A roadside Indian bone pit in Kansas--billed as a tourist attraction--only recently was closed down.

Even President George Bush was dragged into the fray when it was asserted his college secret society, Skull & Bones, had the skull of warrior Geronimo in its possession, taken in a raid led by none other than Bush’s father, Prescott Bush.

And though the Smithsonian has come around, 166 bones still are on display in its museums. “You can imagine your dismay if Thomas Jefferson’s bones were removed from his grave and displayed on a museum shelf,” said Chief Nelson Wallulatum of Oregon’s Wasco tribe to a Senate panel in 1987. “You would feel even more strongly if he were your great-grandfather.”

‘Crimes of the Past’

Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams, who worked on the remains agreement, says he has grown more sympathetic. “After some years dealing with Native Americans, their story takes on an anguish . . . and becomes a weight one cannot carry,” he says. “As I read more about the atrocities, the tragedy takes on a horrible deepness. These are the crimes of the past we cannot afford to repress.”

Scientists and anthropologists, meanwhile, are nervous over the new trend to repatriate, likening it to burning books, since the bones can chronicle the history of disease, diet and migration patterns. Scientists now are even able to extract DNA from bones to study genetic disorders of long ago.

Therefore, burying the bones has been compared with throwing away treasure. “It is certainly a loss, because the evidence is extremely valuable,” says Adams. “As a scientist, I can’t help but feel that, of course.”

Some scientists say that they should not have to pay for the legal and ethical standards of the time, likening the fight to the Evolution vs. Creation battle.

“All that wandering souls stuff is dramatic for the media,” says one New York anthropologist. “We are doing important work that benefits all mankind, and we’re portrayed as grave robbers.”

There also is an undercurrent of betrayal for many anthropologists who believe they played an integral role in protecting most of the Indian artifacts that have survived to this day. The American Anthropological Society has clung to its right to study ancient bones, though it allows the return of remains to close relatives--a task that is sometimes impossible for Indian tribes to prove.

Indians have not accepted the scientific justifications, refusing to be rated as artifacts and resources for the scientific community when other racial groups are not.

Without Consent

Much of the unearthing of the dead was done without the consent of the affected tribes, and the Indians often equate it to Nazi experimentation during World War II. Claiming that Indians should enjoy equal protection under the law and free exercise of religion, the tribes mostly feel that racial biology should not be allowed without the full consent of those studied.

“We would allow some testing if we were asked,” says Walter Echo-Hawk, an attorney for the Native Americans Rights Fund (NARF), which pursues Indian repatriation requests. “They have had decades for study, eons to examine the hoarding of our ancestral remains. The science should be done by now.”

Indian groups even question the good of some of the scientific inquiry. NARF released a letter from Emery Johnson, retired assistant surgeon general for the U.S. Public Health Service, to the Assn. of American Indian Affairs. “In response to your recent questions about the value of collections of Indian skeletal remains to the present medical care of American Indian and Alaska Native people, I can only say that I am not aware of any current medical diagnostic or treatment procedure that has derived from research on such skeletal remains,” he wrote. “Nor am I aware of any during the 34 years that I have been involved in American Indian-Alaska Native health care.”

Pending legislation may make all arguments moot. Though laws in all 50 states rule against disturbing or mistreating the dead, often graves located on private land were exempt. The 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act says nothing about private sites.

But Kansas, Washington, Kentucky, Nebraska, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana and New Mexico have recently passed stiffer laws protecting Indian burial sites. In a forward-looking solution, Delaware will require reburial, but is pushing for special vaults that make the bones available for scientists.

Around the country, a trend is emerging. Last year Stanford University gave back the remains of 550 Indians to the Ohlone-Costanoan tribe. The University of Minnesota has released 1,000 Indian remains. And Seattle University soon will return 150 boxes of bones to Indian tribes in that state.

Five Bills Pending

In Congress, five “bones” bills are pending, besides the new Smithsonian repatriation agreement, to stop the plunder of Indian graves. “It’s a cooperative effort all the way around,” says Frank Ducheneaux, counsel on Indian Affairs to the Interior committee of the House. “And the Smithsonian action is a quantum leap forward.”

The Smithsonian decision is expected to have a ripple effect. “The Smithsonian is king of the hill when it comes to museums,” Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, D-Colo., said at a recent Capitol Hill press conference. “This represents the best of mainstream ethics and it will have a profound effect.”

The agreement calls for a 2- or 3-year inventory of the collection, which will cost $1 million. The Smithsonian then will inform tribes of their interests and remains will be returned, creating further hardship for the impoverished tribes who will have to pick up the tab for the reburial of their kin.

The Smithsonian’s Madeleine Jacobs cautions against elevated expectations: “If it passes, the funding is not authorized until 1991, so nothing is going to happen instantly. I hope people realize that.”

That may be true, but if museums and lawmakers did not act, they might have faced lawsuits from Indian groups. “There were a lot waiting on the front porch, pending a lot of these talks,” says Harjo. “But we wanted to take the least contentious manner to arrive at a solution that matches today’s ethical standards.”

Harjo is excited by the prospect of visiting the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History again, where most of the bones are now housed. She says she could not before, because of the spirits of her ancestors in torment there. “Indian tribes will now come forward to claim their dead, because they now feel welcome,” she says with a sigh of relief.

Still there are tragedies. “These acts are full of vision, goals and aspiration,” says Harjo, “but there is a continuing sadness, because many of our dead have no people to claim them at all and they will never rest.”