Scientists, Indians Battle Over Skeletons, Artifacts : Heritage: Efforts to return the remains to descendants create conflicts with research projects.

Phillip Walker, anthropologist and great-grandson of an American Indian, is a troubled man.

For years the UC Santa Barbara professor has been studying the birth defect spina bifida. The specific objects of his research have been remains of the prehistoric Indians of the Channel Islands, where the condition was common.

Looking at the bones of the 1,000-year-old victims, Walker says, gives him clues about the environmental and genetic causes of spina bifida. That in turn might help the living.

But Walker might not be able to complete his study because the bones may be gone, the subject of a growing national movement to return Indians’ remains and sacred artifacts to their descendants.

“If there aren’t any remains, then I won’t be able to see what the distribution of those conditions were, and what environmental and genetic factors explain it,” said Walker, whose Potawatomi ancestry influenced his choice of vocations. “I feel I’ve been working for Native Americans.”

But Indians and their advocates say reburial, which they refer to as “repatriation,” represents a long-overdue way to recognize Indians as human beings and restore dignity to a people whose spiritual beliefs have been trampled on.

Laws in more than 30 states already protect American Indian graves and require negotiations with living Indians if bones and related artifacts are unearthed.

Under a bill passed by the California Legislature and sent to the governor Friday, a complete inventory of Indian remains must be undertaken and descendants must be notified of the existence of the bones. The descendants would be entitled to take possession of the bones for reburial. The University of California, which has a collection of more than 1 million bones--many of them out of the ground for decades--vigorously opposed the bill.

Legislation pending in Congress would compel museum curators to inventory their archeological holdings, then deal with the tribes most closely affiliated with the deceased. Only successful negotiations with the living Indians, or proof that the bones and grave artifacts were obtained with tribal permission, would entitle the institutions to keep them.

A federal law passed last year has already commanded the Smithsonian Institution to inventory its collection of some 30,000 skeletal remains, of which an estimated 18,500 are those of American Indians.

Members of many of the 400 recognized tribes, which include an estimated 1.5 million people, believe the souls of the dead cannot rest if their graves are disturbed.

“If you disturb the dead, then it disturbs their spirit and causes it to become restless and wander and interferes with its residence in the spirit world or afterlife,” said Walter Echo-Hawk, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colo. “It can also bring harm or evil upon the relatives of that dead person.”

He says it’s a matter of racial discrimination as well.

“Right now, society guarantees that everybody gets buried, whether they are paupers, strangers or unclaimed remains,” he said. “That’s the mark of a civilized country. And the American Indian dead are just as entitled to a decent burial as anyone else.

“To see our dead bandied about in museum showcases or tourist attractions along with dinosaurs or snails--it sends a signal to Indian people and society at large that we’re not quite human, that we’re somehow different, and it’s OK to subject us to that kind of treatment when no one would tolerate that for anybody else.”

Scientists, however, fear that repatriation means permanent reburial. They liken the movement to book-burning and say it could destroy the best surviving evidence of preliterate cultures.

Bones, they say, reveal ancient people’s diets, diseases, causes of death, activities, environment and cultural evolution.

“This has been seen as a conflict between sacred Indians and evil scientists,” said Clement Meighan, a UCLA archeologist who chairs the American Committee for the Preservation of Archeological Collections. “But the real story is about a loss of cultural resources to the national heritage, to the Indians, and the throwing away of something that can never be regained.

“Fifty years from now everybody is going to look back and say: ‘How could these people have been so stupid? They squandered the birds, the trees, the water and all their cultural heritage at the same time. They threw it all away.’ ”

Bones can be profitably restudied as science changes, the academics say. For example, advances in tracing DNA from ancient bones could tell about the evolution of disease and migration.

Remains can also dispel historical falsehoods, according to Walker. He cites the dispute over whether Father Junipero Serra, the Spanish priest who founded California’s 18th-Century missions, should be declared a saint.

Serra is accused by Indian activists of mistreating Indians, while Roman Catholic advocates portray him as one who brought enlightenment. Walker said studies on mission Indians’ remains appear to challenge the record left by missionaries, whose journals said the Indians ate well.

“But analysis of the skeletal remains indicates their growth was stunted and they had a lot of health-related problems that could be nutritionally related,” Walker said. “So here’s an example of how this kind of research can dispel the myths propagated by the dominant society to minimize their guilt about what happened to Native Americans.”

Anthropologist Keith Kintigh of Arizona State University said grave artifacts can prove Indians were not “primitive.”

The elaborate jewelry and pottery buried with some Indians indicate “extremely complex societies with very strong leadership” and hierarchies, Kintigh said.

Advocates of repatriation are not impressed. They think collections of Indian remains are stolen property, their possession by whites a form of colonialism.

“You look at 500 years of what’s happened to Indians, and you can’t take that reburial issue out of those 500 years and say that a particular practice is not racist,” said Vine DeLoria Jr., a University of Colorado Indian studies professor.

He is equally unmoved by the fact that the study and display of the corpses, bones and artifacts of other groups, such as ancient Egyptians, arouses no controversy among their descendants.

“If you all want to do that to your ancestors, that’s fine with us,” DeLoria said.

“A lot of archeology is pure fantasy,” DeLoria continued. “They dig in these ruins and classify Indian societies according to the kinds of pottery they have, and then make up all these incredible stories about what they’ve learned from it.

“Now you can go to the dump and look at layers of Pepsi and then layers of Coke bottles. What would you say? The Coke people invaded and took over the Pepsi people? It’s absurd.”

American Indian groups have been assertive on the issue for years. Kintigh and DeLoria both attribute the present willingness to listen to a new generation of scientists, educated in the 1960s and sensitive to minority groups.

David Hunt, administrator of the Smithsonian’s anthropological collection, said the trend is catching on elsewhere. In Australia, for example, aboriginal populations have requested the return of skeletal remains.

Last fall, after years of negotiations with Indian leaders, Congress created the National Museum of the American Indian. To be built in Washington, D.C., it is to include the Smithsonian’s vast collection of Indian materials. But the law that created the museum also mandated that the Smithsonian inventory its skeletons, which could reduce its holdings.

Many states--including California, Nebraska, Arizona and Oregon--have adopted laws protecting Indian grave sites.

The legislation was prompted partly by open disrespect for Indian remains, often by “pothunters” who excavate for fun and profit.

In one well-known case in the 1930s in Salina, Kan., a farmer dug up an Indian cemetery on his property and created a tourist attraction which he advertised on billboards. For $3.50 a visitor could view the skeletons of 160 men, women and children.

The remains were finally reburied this year after the Native American Rights Fund lobbied successfully on behalf of three descendant Midwestern tribes.

Perhaps most offensive to Indians are remains in the Smithsonian and elsewhere that were collected for the late 19th-Century Indian Crania Study. The study, later debunked, was sponsored by the federal government during the Indian Wars. Scientists of the time considered it possible to evaluate intelligence and morals by measuring skulls.

“They decapitated slain warriors on the battlefield and had their heads delivered to the Army Medical Museum,” Echo-Hawk said. Not surprisingly, he said, the scientists found Indians to be inferior to whites.

Scientists tend to view the reburial legislation as political interference in academic freedom.

Meighan of UCLA said: “Sappy politicians love (the reburial movement) because it makes them look like they’re pro-minority. And it doesn’t cost anything--which is not true, but that’s their opinion--so they won’t have to put up any money for real problems such as education and housing.”

Bills in the U.S. House and Senate would ban the sale of grave artifacts, human remains and sacred ceremonial objects without the consent of heirs or tribal leaders.

Museums, universities and historical societies would face losing federal funding, which many depend on. Curators would have the burden of contacting Indian groups or heirs, and an advisory panel of Indians and scientists would be established to mediate disputes.

The Senate bill passed the Select Committee on Indian Affairs on Aug. 1. It is sponsored by Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the committee.

The House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs is scheduled to vote in September on a bill sponsored by its chairman, Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.). Steven Heeley, deputy director of the Senate committee’s minority staff, said both measures appear to have wide support.

In Sacramento, a bill by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), passed the Assembly by a 47-17 vote in June and passed the Senate on a 23-5 vote Friday. The University of California argued that the bones in its Lowie Museum at UC Berkeley, the third largest such collection in the country, are so old that it would be difficult to determine which tribe they belong to. Last month, a special UC panel recommended that bones be returned only to descendants whose biological or cultural ties can be proven, a criteria that would be very difficult to meet.

Some Indians and academics have managed to reach a compromise.

State museums in Arizona and New Mexico have worked out arrangements with Indian groups in which sacred objects remain displayed but are temporarily returned to the tribe for important religious ceremonies.

In Nevada, a specially built crypt contains 4,000 bones that were washed from their graves during floods in 1983.

Dedicated in 1988 and sealed with boulders, it will be reopened every five years to allow the placement of more remains and to admit carefully screened researchers. The local Paiute tribe and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must approve research on the bones, believed to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.

“The tribe selected a medicine man to purify the crypt and all the archeologists involved and members of the tribe who helped put the boxes in the crypt,” said Amy Dansie, collection curator for the Nevada State Museum. “The tribe is satisfied that their ancestors are buried in Mother Earth . . . and the remains are not lost to science.”