Why Repatriation Matters

By Christopher Wolff  

As an archaeologist, you picture yourself traveling to some remote location, digging into the ground, and returning to a lab in a university or museum to study the remains of past civilizations, with hopes of answering important questions.

In contrast, I’ve often found myself working to return those remains to their rightful cultures.  Repatriation is the process of returning ancestral human remains and important objects to descendant populations.   Since the passing of the National Museum of the American Indian Act in 1989 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, it has become an increasingly important part of archaeological practice, yet about 110,000 ancestors remain in collections.

This work is about more than legal obligations.  To many researchers such as myself, it is a matter of human rights.

When first enacted, these laws were controversial among archaeologists. Much of this anxiety stemmed from worries about losing access to research opportunities. Some concerns were shaped by legal battles surrounding the remains of “Kennewick Man,” whom Indigenous people refer to as the “Ancient One.” This man’s remains were found in Washington state in 1996 and dated to over 8,000 years ago. Scientists won the legal right to study them, in opposition to local tribal nations’ requests, until a 2016 law returned the remains of the individual to those groups. 

KEEP READING: https://theconversation.com/repatriation-to-indigenous-groups-is-more-than-law-its-human-rights-an-archaeologist-describes-the-day-that-lesson-hit-home-247763

Strangers in Their Own Land

As law and sociology professor Dorothy Roberts puts it, “No sooner had the Human Genome Project determined that human beings are 99.9 percent alike than many scientists shifted their focus from human genetic commonality to the 0.1 percent of human genetic difference. This difference is increasingly seen as encompassing race.”

Source: DNA Tests Make Native Americans Strangers in Their Own Land | The Nation

Canada accused of hiding child abuse evidence

Archive Photo

11/01/2014 · by aboriginalpress 

"I was given that porridge I got sick on and I had to eat that … And if you don’t eat, then you’re going to get beat up some more, and you’re going to get punished – and if you throw up again you’re going to have to eat that too, so what choice do you have?” Metatawabin, 66, says at times he and his classmates were forced to sit in an electric chair – either as punishment or as entertainment for the staff at St Anne’s Indian Residential School, which operated from the early 1900s to 1976 in northern Ontario province.  Now, Metatawabin says, the government is hiding information about the school... St Anne’s was part of a government-supported school system to "assimilate" aboriginal children.  About 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families by the federal government for decades starting in the 1800s and put into church-run residential schools. Many suffered physical and sexual abuse and squalid living conditions, and a Truth and Reconciliation Committee recently said at least 4,000 children died – a number that could be much higher..."

via Canada accused of hiding child abuse evidence – Features – Al Jazeera English.