Caught Red-Handed #Looters #Murder #NAGPRA (updated!)

By Trace Hentz, blog editor

In the new book ALMOST Dead Indians, the expectation of dead Indians is pretty evident: after first contact: 1,000+ massacres, slavery, plagues they spread via blankets, rotten food commodities, poisons that killed entire tribal communities, numerous scalp bounties, then the Lake Mohonk rich men like General Pratt suggesting all kids attend residential boarding schools (Carlisle Indian Industrial School) - these ideas were the best way to assimilate and KILL THE INDIAN and SAVE THE MAN... it's all there... we have proof.

But looting graves and theft was yet another way to kill the Indian, to hide what they did: plus they'd make money, get a college degree from somewhere, while they leveled and robbed thousands of mounds (and tribal massacre sites) that held our dead and our sacred items.  See a pattern here?

It was expected we would all die... sooner than later... one way or the other.

Looting is proof.  Our bones in museum collections is more proof. These museums and the looters got caught red-handed.  Now they will pay for this atrocity.  We are exposing them.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chair Schatz Demands Institutions to Return Native Remains and Items to Tribes  

For centuries, Native people had everything stolen from them – their lands, their water, their languages, and even their children. It wasn’t that long ago that it was the official policy of the United States government to terminate the existence of tribes and forcibly assimilate their citizens. And a big part of that unrelenting, inhumane policy was that the remains of Native ancestors and culturally significant items were also taken from them. Not with permission, but by force. Not discovered, but stolen. On battlefields and in cemeteries, under the cover of darkness or the guise of academic research.

Think about that. The U.S. government literally stole people’s bones. Soldiers and agents overturned graves and took whatever they could find. And these weren’t isolated incidents – they happened all across the country. In my home state of Hawai‘i, the remains of Native Hawaiians – or iwi kūpuna as they’re called – were routinely pillaged without any regard for the sanctity of the burials or Native Hawaiian culture. 

And all of it was brought to some of the most venerable institutions – at home and abroad -- to be studied like biological specimens…displayed in museum exhibits as if they’re paintings on loan…or squirreled away in a professor’s office closet, never to be seen again.

The theft of hundreds of thousands of remains and items over generations was unconscionable in and of itself. But the legacy of that cruelty continues to this day because these museums and universities continue to hold onto these sacred items in violation of everything that is right and moral – and importantly, in violation of federal law.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/senate-committee-on-indian-affairs-chair-schatz-demands-institutions-to-return-native-remains-and-items-to-tribes

 Free BOOK PDF: email: tracelara@pm.me

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TODAY on NATIVE AMERICA CALLING

Why are museums taking down Native exhibitions?

New language in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is prompting museums to pull some Native items from public display. The rule went into effect in January that requires museums to consult with tribes more comprehensively when it comes to Native artifacts. That’s because, even though they may not be the human remains or sacred items that NAGPRA historically referenced, many items held by museums, universities, and other institutions could have been looted from Native sites or otherwise taken under suspicious circumstances.

 

LINK: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com

 

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Opinion

Return the Stolen Artifact, But Keep the Museum Label

Some museums have chosen to explain the removals they had made for reasons including not wanting to display racial stereotypes, reconsidering “whose perspectives receive prominence in our collections,” and discovering that an object was created by someone pretending to represent a cultural tradition. I have also seen signs in the Denver Museum of Nature and Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) explaining that an empty slot in a case was once filled with an artifact restored to a Native American community. 

 

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During District Attorney Bragg’s tenure, the ATU has recovered more than 800 antiquities stolen from 24 countries and valued at more than $155 million. Since its creation, the ATU has recovered nearly 4,500 antiquities stolen from 29 countries and valued at more than $375 million.

Under District Attorney Bragg, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) has repatriated more than 950 antiquities stolen from 19 countries and valued at more than $165 million. Since its creation, the ATU has returned more than 2,450 antiquities to 24 countries and valued at more than $230 million.

https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-returns-two-7th-century-antiquities-to-china/  

 

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the Roots of the NRA and the Second Amendment

FROM THE INTERCEPT PODCAST April 2018

JEREMY SKAHILL: There’s a new book that just came out that lays out a provocative argument for getting rid of the Second Amendment in its entirety, and the book asserts that the NRA has become a white nationalist organization. That book is titled “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” and it was written by the radical historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Her book tells a very different tale about the so-called gun culture in the United States and about how the Second Amendment was, at its core, a solidifying of the rights of white people to bear arms to steal native land by force, to capture so-called runaway slaves and to prevent rebellions from oppressed people. It wasn’t about hunting. It wasn’t about protecting against the tyranny of government. It wasn’t about simply protecting your property from criminals and thieves. Sure, those arguments are made by Second Amendment enthusiasm. They’re certainly representative of a lot of people’s motives for possessing guns.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of many books, including “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States,” “Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico,” and “Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War.” Her latest book, again, is called, “Loaded.”

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz joins me now. Welcome to Intercepted.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Thank you, Jeremy.

JS: If the United States has a gun culture, what is that gun culture?

RDO: It’s a weapon of settler colonialism, all over the world: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina, where settler colonialism was used. But in the United States, by putting it in the Constitution, that sacred document, as an individual right, it veered considerably from those other settler colonies.

From the very beginning, guns and ammunition were required in the colonies, in Virginia and then in Massachusetts Bay Colony and then in Virginia first, that every man, every household had to have firearm and a certain amount of gun powder and bullets. And if they couldn’t afford that, the colonial government would subsidize it.

So, what were they so afraid of? That they had to have all these guns because they were on land that they had stolen by burning people’s villages down, by killing, raping, maiming and driving Native people into the periphery where they fought back and tried to regain their land and also keep them from taking more.

So, U.S. settler colonialism was really required, the whole build-up of the United States, a white nationalist democracy: Every man a king with land. And, of course, then, institutionalized slavery took hold by the 1670s — out of these militias they carved slave patrols as well.

So that dual usage: you know, the right to own human bodies and land and to steal them, kidnap people, and kill people — really genocide — is just written into the very cellular structure of the United States: The Constitution, every institution.

And that, plus the militarism that lasted from before, during and after independence, and continued until 1890, more than 100 years of daily, moment-by-moment warfare against native people, at the same time invading other countries: The Barbary wars in 1806 and 1809, and then Mexico, 1846 to ’48, that just continued and continued and then jumped over the Pacific and into the Caribbean and then into the whole world. So, the militarism is the key component of it and only a third of the population even own a gun, and there’s a good portion of those who are combat vets.

JS: Hmm. The exact text, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” — now, I’m not asking you about more recent interpretations by various courts, but at that time, in 1789, when they were referring to a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, what was the historical context, and what did they refer to when they were talking about well-regulated militia?

RDO: Well they certainly weren’t talking about state militias, because those were provided for in the Constitution itself, that’s the genealogy of the National Guard. But the Bill of Rights which was, came later [than] the amendments, these were individual rights, very specifically individual rights, so they could only have referred to the existing citizen’s militias.

But they came to be self-organized — they were very well organized for selfish interests, for their own purpose — the state, the government had no authority over them whatsoever. And this was how the whole continent was taken, was these settlers themselves organized, that every, every settler a soldier, they’re all armed, they say, out in their fields and everything and they’re, they’re all well-organized, so they could in minutes call up of a militia and they knew what to do. It was in their self-interest, so.

JS: Well, what were these militia doing?

RDO: Killing Indians! Taking their land. And, then the land was theirs. And the slave patrols were also self-organized. It was really every white man had an obligation to keep an eye out, even if they didn’t own slaves to keep an eye out and turn in any stray black person that didn’t have a permit on him, that he’s doing some errand for the owner, and if he didn’t have that then he was considered a renegade — you know, had to be captured and returned to the owner.

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