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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 2012)
“I r More News from I notion Country Page 8 Spilyay T ym oo January 25, 2012 More ancient remains going to tribes DOI releases Navajo BERKELEY, California (AP) — O n a b lu ff o v erloo k in g a sweep o f Southern California beach, scientists in 1976 u n earthed what were among the old est skeletal rem ains ever found in the W estern H em i sphere. Researchers would come to herald the bones — dating back nearly 10,000 years > as a po tential treasure trove for under standing the earliest human his tory o f the continental United States. But a local tribal group called the Kumeyaay N atio n claimed that the bones, repre senting at least two people, were their ancestors and demanded them back several years ago. For decades, fights like this over the provenance and treat m en t o f hum an b ones have played out across the U.S. Yet new federal protections could mean that the vast major ity o f the remains o f an esti m ated 160,000 Native Ameri cans held by universities, muse ums and federal governm ent agencies, including those sought by the Kumeyaay, may soon be transferred to tribes. A recent federal regulation addresses what should happen to any remains that cannot be positively traced to the ancestors o f modern-day tribes. Museums and agencies are required to notify tribes whose current or ancestral lands harbored the re mains, then the tribe is entitled to have them back. Prestigious institutions from H arvard to the University o f C alifornia, Berkeley have al ready begun working through storehouses o f remains uncov ered by archeologists, highway and building contractors and others since the 19th century. A few are surrendering bones to N ative tribes, and others are evaluating w hether to do so. Tribes have hailed the rule, saying it will help close a long and painful chapter th at saw native peoples’ bones stolen by grave robbers, boxed up in dusty storerooms and disrespected by researchers. “D arn it, these are people,” said Louis Guassac, a member o f the Kumeyaay Cultural Re patriatio n C om m ittee. “This isn’t stuff. You don’t do this to people. I don’t care how long they’ve been there. You respect them.” The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act o f 1990 provided for the return o f remains connected to m od ern-day tribes. B ut it was n ot until 2010 that a rule on the dis position o f so-called culturally unidentifiable remains was final ized by the D epartm ent o f the Interior. Until then, more than 650 universities and other insti tutions had no clear guidance about how to return those re mains, which account for the bones o f about 116,000 people in their collections. That rule is still playing out, sometimes frac- tiously. Universities find themselves tugged one way by the law’s m andates, another by faculty research needs. Some anthro pologists say more remains will becom e o ff limits, imperiling study o f the diets, health, mi grations and o th er habits o f ancient peoples without guaran teeing that the remains will wind up with their true descendants. In recent months, Harvard’s Peabody Museum has received requests for about 500 remains and hired additional staff as they respond to the 2010 rule, said Patricia Capone, the museum’s repatriation coordinator. At the University o f Michi gan, officials have decided to transfer the bulk o f their 1,580 culturally unaffiliated remains to 13 Native American tribes who want them. In the meantim e, they have been p ut Off limits to researchers. “T he law is very clear th at they will be trans1- ferred,” said school spokesman Rick Fitzgerald. At UC-Berkeley, more than 6,000 o f the roughly 10,000 remains that were deemed cul turally unidentifiable are n o w subject to potential transfer to trib es. A n d th e P h o e b e A. H earst M useum o f A rchaeol ogy here has added four new staff m em bers to help match remains to tribes if possible and notify tribes whose lands held the remains. The small, eclectic museum recently celebrated the 100th an n iv ersary o f a re c o rd in g made by Ishi -* the last surviv- ***SKYN STYLE**** (Located At Plaza next to Deli) Open 7 Days a week!!! 10am-6pm M-F 10-4 Sat & Sunday BLAZER TICKETS ARE BACK!!!!!! Stop by & Enter your name for a pair of Blazer tickets today! (See store for more details) Native Jewelru Southwest Jewelry Name Brand Clothing A . t UC-Berkeley, more 6,000 o f the roughly 10,000 remains th a t were than deemed culturally unidenti fia b le are now subject to p o te n tia l transfer to tribes. ing m em ber o f the Yahi tribe w ho emerged from hiding in N o rth ern California in 1911. The museum displays artifacts su ch as Porno b ask ets, an Achumawi rabbit-skin blanket and arrowheads Ishi made out o f obsidian and glass — but not the remains o f native peoples. T he collection o f bones — one o f the country’s larg est^ is in storage. Officials declined to show them to The Associated Press during a recent campus visit on grounds that that could be offensive to tribes. The university currently has four pending requests for re mains. And Museum D irector M ari Lyn S alvador said th e regulation change has caused concern among researchers. “T here are very im portant opportunities to understand con temporary medicine... informa tion that could be very useful to these (Native) communities themselves in term s o f better u n d e rsta n d in g d iab etes and other illnesses,” she said. The university presents such information to tribes, she said, but lets the tribes decide whether to allow researchers to work with the bones. Tens o f thousands o f indi vidual Native American remains have been collected since the mid-19th century. Some grave sites were looted of excavated to support scientific research, including a study o f skulls pur p o rtin g to show th a t N ative Americans were inferior to Cau casians, according to R obert Bieder, an Indiana University professor who has written about the phenomenon. The bones in dispute at UC San Diego have long since been out o f the ground. They were excavated more than three de cades ago from land around the university chancellor’s house in La Jolla by a professor from coal plant study another school. But a photo o f the original discovery shows the FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) 9 and 16 percent, according to the outlines o f two skeletons with Requiring a coal-fired pow er study. The cost burden o f addi skulls, buried head to toe. Since their discovery in 1976; plant-on the Navajo Nation to tional retrofits or a shutdown they have been studied at the further regulate pollution would would fall most heavily on those Smithsonian and carbon dated n o t force its retire m en t b u t who get water from the canals at the U niversity o f O xford, would increase water rates for because unlike the plant's other a cco rd in g to M arg aret agricultural users and American owners, which are utilities, the Schoeninger, a professor in the Indian tribes by up to 16 per U.S. Bureau o f Reclamation has Departm ent o f Anthropology at cent, according to a recent study. no way to recover those costs, The U.S. Environmental Pro the study found. UCSD and the university's rep Reclamation and the Central resentative on Indian burial is tection Agency has been consid ering how to lower nitrogen ox A rizona W ater C onservation sues. When the Kumeyaay Nation ide emissions from the Navajo District rely on the plant for 92 S a dozen native bands with res Generating Station near Page. percent o f electricity needed for ervations in San Diego County T he pow er plant already has the canals, while other owners — first demanded the remains, low-nitrogen oxide burners, but o f the plant rely on it for be the university rejected its claim the ERA. could mandate that the tween 9 percent and 26 percent that they were the tribe's ances owners install more expensive o f their electric supply.; The Interior Departm ent has technology. tors. The federal government cre asked the EPA to hold off on a R esearch ers have said Kumeyaay rem ains w ere cre ated the 2,250-megawatt plant final decision for pollution con mated early in the tribe’s history, to ensure a low-cost water sup trols under a rule meant to re not buried. They have also ques ply for the C entral A rizona duce visibility in pristine areas tioned whether the remains are Project, which delivers the wa like the Grand Canyon while it even N ative Arherican, given ter through a series o f canals to analyzed the impacts o f retro their age, although the univer 80 percent o f the state's popu fitting the plant; a shutdown due sity has concluded that they are. lation. It also ensures that water to the cost o f retrofits, or no “ In te rm s o f w h at the rights settlements with tribes are action. The study also looks at the Kumeyaay have p u t forward, met. ! A significant increase in the cost o f compliance with EPA the only thing j ’ve heard is their belief, their deep tie to the land cost o f pow er from the plant rules, the impact to the Navajo and folklore,” Schoeninger said. w ould affect settlements with and H opi tribes, the impact on “We need empirical evidence.” ’ some tribes and could bump up energy production and the re T ribal rep resen tativ es say water rates between 13 percent maining life o f the plant. they have an oral history that goes back thousands o f years and connects them to the re mains. In light o f the recent rule, university officials did a réévalu ation, concluding that the skel eto n s cam e fro m the K um eyaay’s an c e stra l lands while still maintaining they were n ot the Kumeyaay's direct an cestors. In a filing in December, the university said it would turn the remains over to the Kumeyaay although it gave o th er tribal groups until Jan. 4 to come for w ard and d isp u te the — Kumeyaay’s claim. Kumeyaay repatriation offi cials say they will accept the re mains. “I t’s pleasing to know that these are going to finally be re turned and properly taken care of,” Guassac said. “They are go ing to be getting the respectful treatm ent they deserve.” MissWarm Springs 2012 Chloee Suppah is congratulated One option, he said, is that by family and friends, and previous Miss Warm Springs. the remains will be reburied. Judge reflects on Wounded Knee trials LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Aj It’s been more than 37 years since the federal trials o f protesters who took over the W ounded K nee massacre site in South D ak o ta, an d th e N eb rask a- based federal judge who presided remembers his efforts to respect the Native Americans and their traditions. U.S. D istrict Judge Warren Urbom spoke this m onth to stu dents involved in the N ative Sovereignty Y outh Project, a yearlong leadership project or ganized by the Nebraska Com mission on Indian Affairs with funding from the U.S. D epart m en t o f H ealth and H um an Services. Nearly a dozen students from each o f N e b ra sk a ’s trib e s— O m ah a, P b n ca, S an tee and W innebagd—have been in tro duced to university professors, politicians, attorneys, state sena tors and football coaches. U rb o m talked to the stu dents about the 1890 massa cre o f d o z e n s o f N a tiv e A m e ric a n s by U.S. cav alry troops and the 1973 standoff at the site betw een American In d ian M ovem ent p ro testers and federal officials. The protesters occupied the village o f Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and held it for 71 days. O ne FB I agent was paralyzed and two activists were killed during the siege. The tri als o f about 150 protesters be gan in 1974 a fte r th e siege ended, and they were consoli dated under Urbom. • U rbom said he tried to re spect the activists, even allow ing many o f them to be sworn in using a medicine pipe rather than a Bible. H e ignored a w arning that accom m odating the activists’ wishes would lead to chaos in the courtroom. “Nothing they did signaled to m e th a t they w ere th e re to cause trouble,” U rbom told the students. “T hey didn’t cause trouble.” Sòme witnesses were allowed to testify in the Lakota language, and Urbom let some tribal lead ers sit in the jury box. The judge dismissed charges against about 100 o f the activ- ists. T here wasn’t enough evi dence against them, he said. O f th e re m a in d e r, he found six guilty. T he 8th U.S. Circuit C ourt o f Appeals over turned four o f those convic tions, citing insufficient evi dence. Convictions against two for assaulting a federal officer and interfering with a federal officer were upheld. Both people got probation. Cherish Mallory, a 16-year- old from Winnebago, said she was impressed by U rbom ’s ac com m odation o f the activists’ cultural requests. “He was understanding about the traditions,” Cherish said. “It’s just interesting.” Native T-shirts Cell Phones Name Brand Shoes ND couple pleads guilty to tribal embezzlement F A R G O , N .D . (AP) _ A N o rth D a k o ta co u p le has pleaded guilty to stealing from a Spirit Lake tribal program. The U.S. attorney's office says 67-year-old William Kazena and 66-year-old M artina K azena pleaded guilty to conspiracy to embezzle from an Indian tribal organization, and aiding and abetting. A u th o ritie s say M artin a Kazena, as director o f the Spirit Lake Vocational Rehabilitation Program, illegally approved pro gram benefits to William Kazena and others. Each charge carries a maxi- m um penalty o f five years in prison. Five other people charged in the case are scheduled for trial March 13. L I I
