This post was originally published on here
Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 edition of the Lassen County Times.
The battle continues for Native Americans who want scientists to return the bones of their ancestors, and for the scientists who want to keep them buried only to dig them up later for another look, another sniff from high-tech diagnostic equipment.
Protests at Berkeley, reams of letters and a flurry of e-mails are the ammunition for this war, with each side assuming they know where the other side is coming from.
On the side of scientists and educators is Tim White, Ph.D., professor of integrative biology, curator of biological anthropology, and human evolution research center director at UC Berkeley.
And on the side of local Native Americans is Gabriel Gorbet, tribal administrator for the Greenville Rancheria.
He thinks being forced to give back all of the bones would subvert science, the public interest and the Constitution.
White wages his battle in semantics, a seven-page letter of protest that promotes his opinions.
In Gorbet’s one-page letter, he is clearly outraged at White’s assumptions and assertions.
White wrote at length about the definition of the word disposition and his perception of what a cultural relationship should be.
These are the two things threatening his bone pile — the two things he attacks in the proposed rule that “specifies the disposition of culturally unidentifiable human remains in the possession or control of museums or federal agencies, thus implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.”
The proposed rule was published in October.
“It was never the intent of Congress to empty museums of skeletal remains and cultural objects,” wrote White. “Had it been, this would have been stated in the House and Senate reports accompanying the legislation, or in the act itself.”
Currently, a review committee monitors the repatriation process and facilitates disputes – at least that is how it is supposed to work.
White insists the proposed rule will change that and give the committee decision-making power that he insists only Congress should have when it comes to “this important legal matter of considerable national importance.”
White wants decisions about cultural affiliation to be evidence-based, and he insists, at great length, that the addition of “transfer of control: for a definition of the word disposition will undermine that traditional scientific process.”
He also insists that religious or spiritually based assertions have no place in the repatriation process – again at great length.
He accuses the repatriation program staff members who authored the proposed rule of subversion and trickery.
“Having created a pathway that insures all remains will be removed from museums (by defining ‘disposition’ as anything but their current ‘disposition’ i.e. in museums), your proposed rule then plays a legal trick to enable this regulatory maneuver,” he wrote to Dr. Hutt. “In order to abandon the evidence-based evaluation required for cultural affiliation, your staff has created an undefined category termed ‘cultural relationship.’”
The change from cultural affiliation to cultural relationship will extend rights to non-federally recognized Native Americans, White insists, and will thereby subvert the meaning and disenfranchise federally recognized tribes.
“Such a violation of the trust relationship the federal government has with federally recognized tribes was clearly never the intent of Congress,” he wrote.
He associates the non-recognized Native Americans with assertions of “creationist religious beliefs about ancestral relationships.”
Intermingled throughout his letter is his belief that religion and spirituality have no place in the evidence-based repatriation process, though the act itself allows something similar – folklore and oral tradition are classified as evidence.
Folklore is defined as beliefs, customs and stories of a community of people that have been passed down through the generations by word of mouth – like stories of creation and the creator.
“However heartfelt such spiritual and religious views are, they do not qualify as evidence of a relationship of shared group identity required by NAGPRA,” he wrote.
He held up the First Amendment to the Constitution as a precedent and as an example of how the proposed rule will violate the separation clause in the amendment “that prevents our government from aiding religion in any way.”
White goes on to point out that the proposed rule and its inclusion of non-recognized natives will burden museums with “enormous compliance costs.”
“All Americans have a ‘cultural relationship’ with these culturally unidentifiable collections, and the evidence they provide concerning the history of humankind,” he finished.
Back to Gorbet’s outrage – he begins by providing a context for his comments, a verbal illustration of the relationship with a government that legalized the oppression, murder and enslavement of California Indians.
“If vertebrate zoology, integrative biology and biological anthropology are so important to you, feel free to dig up your own set of grandparents and put them under the microscope,” Gorbet wrote. “You will be pleased to discover that you will get no more argument from your own grandparents than you do from ours.
“Just because our ancestors wound up in Uncle Sam’s unclean hands via a flawed set of federal and state policies over the last 200 years or so doesn’t mean you now have a legitimate right to declare that the supremacy of science trumps the rights of our ancestors — two wrongs do not make this right.”
Gorbet took particular umbrage that White referred to the ancestors as “relevant physical scientific evidence.”
He then went into graphic detail about Captain Jack (Modoc), his decapitation and how his skull was eventually returned; about Geronimo’s head hanging like a trophy on a men’s club wall; and other horrors perpetrated on other native peoples.
“And now you have the audacity to argue that said infernal legacy be continued with the remains of a murdered people?” Gorbet asked.
Gorbet insists the repatriation battle is one fought for civil rights, not for semantics and higher education.
He thinks people like White are typically too close to their fields to see the big picture.
White’s perception, in his view, is a bizarre level of disrespect, not only for native traditions and culture, but also for the very personal remains of their people.
“If you continue to argue that it is impossible to identify their cultural affiliation, they can be returned to any one of the regional Native American NAGPRA Coalitions, whose sole concern is to get the ancestors out of the very real physical and cultural formaldehyde which they presently inhabit, and set them free,” Gorbet wrote to White and copied to Dr. Hutt.
Gorbet doesn’t expect White to agree with him, but he does expect White to acknowledge the native presence on this issue, and to maintain the same professional and non-discriminatory position in their regard as he would to any other race or culture.
“Your comments confirm what your opponents have been saying about the supercilious, condescending attitude driving the ‘reorganization’ of the NAGPRA unit at UC Berkeley,” Gorbet wrote. “And it certainly confirms in me the belief that the ‘reorganization’ is not only an unacceptable humiliation for the ancestors, but was a calculated and deliberate exclusion of our people.”
“I suppose that, on account of our traditions and beliefs, Native Americans are not welcome in the great pantheon of science, especially when a particular scientist’s annual salary is on the line,” he finished.
