Reznet

Michael Stafford of the Cranbrook Institute of Science holds a pottery vessel from a habitational site near Traverse City, Mich. The prehistoric ceramic vessel is from the Late Woodland period, about 700 A.D. Reznet photo by Joe Grimm

Museum Sets Example With Return of Remains

By Annie Greenberg

The Indians in the cupboards will soon be returned.

By the end of this summer, the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan hopes to turn over the remains of 65 individuals believed to have been Native American to the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, a federally recognized tribe in northern Michigan.

Eric Hemenway, a research repatriation assistant for the Little Traverse Bay Band, has been working on having the remains returned for over a year. He explained that taking care of the dead is traditionally a strong practice among the tribe.

"Just because someone's dead doesn't mean they're gone — they're still with us, in our community, and that relationship has to be maintained," he said.

Hemenway stressed the Little Traverse Bay Band is not the only tribe involved; it has simply been acting as the main representative for the state's other dozen tribes throughout the repatriation process. They will decide together how and where the remains will be laid to rest.

Museum Takes Unique Stance on repatriation

The Cranbrook Institute, based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., has taken the unique stance of being for the repatriation of Native remains — in no small part because of its director, Michael Stafford.

Pointing to Denmark's scientific community, which makes a clear distinction between remains from the Stone Age and those of their contemporary Native people, Stafford said its example made him want to set one of his own.

"I'm an archaeologist, and sadly, remains uncovered in the quest of archaeological investigations are all too often treated like data," he said. "I feel it's a moral imperative to recognize the rights of Native people ... By virtue of us (repatriating remains), maybe we will encourage other institutions to follow suit."

The treatment of Native remains and artifacts is a contentious subject — the University of Michigan refused to return some 400 remains to the Saginaw Chippewa tribe in January 2008, which has resulted in a plethora of internet petitions to return those and the other estimated 1,000 Native remains the university keeps in its collections.

And earlier this month, 24 individuals in the Four Corners region were indicted for stealing and then selling more than 250 Native artifacts from tribal land.

According to the affidavit, one of the indicted told an undercover federal agent that he had accidentally dug up ancient remains while on his quest for sellable artifacts.

Path to Repatriation is a Winding One

The repatriation process is as complicated and convoluted as the issue itself. Because the remains were unaffiliated, meaning they couldn't be traced back definitely to a specific tribe, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, they are not required to be returned.

If a museum does agree to repatriate the remains, they have to get on the agenda of the NAGPRA review committee — which meets only twice a year. It has to provide paperwork to prove the remains are Native, using both the history of surrounding tribes and forensic anthropology to prove the case.

Once the committee votes on the petition, it's sent to the Interior Department for final approval. Then the museum must compose a Federal Register notice, to run consecutively for 30 days before the rights to the remains can be transferred to the petitioning tribe.

Now that they are in the home stretch of this process, Hemenway says he is looking forward to the remains to be laid to rest. He said that reburials are a new type of ceremony for Native people, and must be treated with respect.

"We didn't dig up our dead, they were already buried, so this is new to a lot of tribes," he said. "But for me, the reburial goes beyond the actual ceremony — it's making the contacts, doing the legwork, making the drive to pick up (the remains) ... bringing them home encompasses a lot more, the reburial is just the climax."

Annie Greenberg, Eskimo, is a journalism student at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She worked as a reporter at the Navajo Times for one year and interned as a reporter at the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

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