Closing a historical duel: US museums accelerate the return of human remains to native tribes

One of the two rooms with indigenous vestiges that the Museum of Natural History in New York has closed. JOHH M. MANTEL (EFE)

Returning funeral remains to their place of origin, depositing them in the hands of their descendants, is not something that sounds unknown in Spain, immersed in a task of recovering historical memory that has not yet ended.

The United States undertakes a similar task: the restitution of human remains and grave goods to indigenous peoples, although in this case it does not dig them up from gutters.

Important American museums, the Natural History Museum of New York in the lead (one of the most visited in the country, with 4.5 million tourists in 2019), have closed rooms to comply with a federal law whose review, which has cost three years, came into effect in mid-January: the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990 and whose implementation had languished since then.

The objective is to return to the native nations all the human remains and cultural objects scattered throughout the country within a period of five years.

Unlike what has happened until now, responsibility for the inventory will fall to the museum and will no longer depend on the claim of the indigenous community.

In the context of the review of the collections of the main museums in the world, provoked by the debate on cultural property and a critical reading of history, the return of native remains and funerary utensils exhibited in display cases or collections represents a step further : It is not so much a question of cultural rereading, but of fundamental human rights: those inherent to any human being even after death.

Explains Shannon O'Loughlin of the Choctaw Nation (southeastern Oklahoma): “NAGPRA is a strong human rights law that requires government institutions and agencies to consult with Native nations, direct descendants, and Native Hawaiian organizations. [as the case may be] to repatriate Native corpses, their funerary belongings, cultural heritage and religious objects that have been stolen and appropriated” by cultural or educational institutions, such as the Peabody Museum at Yale University, which has repatriated the remains of about 500 natives but still has another 600.

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Museums in Europe and the United States confront their colonial past

Two years ago, Harvard's then-president raised a storm by confirming the existence of more than 22,000 sets of human remains in the university's holdings, including those of 15 likely enslaved Africans.

Museums across the country are accelerating the inventory of their collections, as the new law requires institutions to have the consent of the tribes to display native remains or objects.

The reevaluation affects, among many others, the Field Museum in Chicago, the third most important collection in the country - which was three days ahead of the law's entry into force -, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Nature and Science of Denver, which have recently closed or covered up, stealing from the public eye, exhibits of Native American artifacts.

Others, such as those in New York and the Illinois State Museum (almost 6,000 human remains and 30,000 funerary objects), and academic institutions such as Harvard recovered their health, ahead of the new legal deadline: the university published a list of remains in 2022, and the New York Museum of Natural History removed potentially sensitive objects in October, before closing two entire rooms dedicated to indigenous cultures at the end of January.

In the Harvard collections there were also hundreds of hair samples from indigenous people around the world, including those from some 700 native children who attended segregated boarding schools in the United States. It was bequeathed by an anthropologist at the house in the 1930s, when Many collections were not yet museums, but crowded cabinets of curiosities fed by the discoveries of archaeological excavations in reserves at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, or by the chance discovery of remains by farmers, workers or road workers during their work.

The NAGPRA law, continues O'Loughlin, lawyer and executive director of the Association of American Indian Affairs - an interlocutor in the processing of the law - “declares that these institutions and organizations do not have any legal right over corpses and cultural objects. of the natives;

However, they have continued to decide as if they were the owners of the bodies and cultural heritage of the natives.”

Why cultural institutions have taken so long to apply a 1990 law is the subject of multiple interpretations, but the Alliance of American Museums (AAM) has not responded to this newspaper's questions on the matter, nor has the Museum of Natural History of New York.

“After 12 years of fighting to strengthen the provisions of the law, new, even stronger regulations came into effect on January 12, requiring institutions to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of native nations, direct descendants and Native Hawaiian organizations, as the case may be, before disposing of the Native bodies and cultural objects in their possession.

This includes the display of any of these objects, but also research or any other purpose,” explains O'Loughlin.

There is no room for interpretation, he emphasizes: “The United States Congress has declared that indigenous cultural heritage is the property of indigenous nations and that they are the only custodians.”

Historic kayak and other artifacts on display at the Alutiiq Museum in Alaska, after its legal ownership was transferred last year by Harvard's Peabody Museum.Alutiiq Museum

Since 1995, American museums have reported the existence of more than 208,000 human remains in their holdings.

But in the last 33 years not even half has been returned, the

ProPublica

news portal explained last week .

Currently, according to the Government database that was used to draft the law, cultural and educational institutions still hold some 96,000 human remains.

The one in New York alone houses 2,200, in addition to thousands of funerary objects.

In the tug-of-war between indigenous communities and experts (curators, academics, researchers), the flawed criterion of granting credit, when determining the origin or final destination of remains, to written and non-written sources has also been planned. to the oral culture of the communities.

Hence, some museums have clung to this supposed pre-eminence of the written word - as if it were a superior culture: a clear trait of ethnocentrism - to delay their response or even resist its return.

Doubts about the origin of the remains have also contributed to the process taking forever.

“Since so much time has passed since NAGPRA was enacted in 1990, it was time to update it,” explains archaeologist Myra Masiel-Zamora, of the Pechanga tribe and curator of the Pechanga Cultural Center, in Temecula, California.

Oral culture versus written culture

“Many of the NAGPRA law updates rely on oral history and traditional knowledge as a starting point for making a legal claim, so tribes must no longer rely on ethnohistorical records or historical documentation written by non-governmental researchers.” natives,” adds the archaeologist.

Masiel-Zamora emphasizes that the equation of the oral history and tradition of the communities with the written documentation “allows our traditional knowledge to be elevated to the maximum importance and the greatest credit.”

The reform of the law also eliminates the concept of “culturally unidentifiable,” which has delayed return for decades.

Unlike the pieces object of colonial plunder that museums around the world are returning to their countries of origin, the restitution of human remains and funerary goods goes beyond the satisfaction of memory: it reaches the ineffable, the reverential taboo. that surrounds death and even the afterlife for some cultures.

The display of sacred, ceremonial objects out of context frequently made the indigenous public who visited the museums uncomfortable.

“The process of being able to take a family member and their belongings home to rest should always be considered the respectful action that it is and what needs to be done.

We should all treat people, things, places, and living and dead beings of all cultures in a respectful manner.

That is why we only ask that our family members and their belongings be treated in a culturally appropriate way,” says Masiel-Zamora.

In the spirit of the new law there are echoes of the tone set in the early 2000s by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a non-binding human rights standard.

Another factor that explains the delay in the implementation of the law is as prosaic as the lack of material resources;

That is, the precarious budget of centers that depend only on donations.

“Each museum has different financial resources, which has unfortunately affected the speed of NAGPRA implementation based on staff, time and overall resources available.

I hope that the new regulation will help museums prioritize NAGPRA and develop a more meaningful dialogue with the indigenous peoples of the United States,” concludes the archaeologist.

A dialogue that leads to the closure of a mourning, the most intimate and private, but also another communal one, that of societies passed away for decades.

“The repatriation of remains is not just a rule on paper, but it brings truly significant healing and closure to people and communities,” Bryan Newland, Undersecretary of Indigenous Affairs at the Government's Department of the Interior, explained in a statement. federal and former tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

The final point of a badly told story, that of the indigenous communities, with a posthumous dignity that in the official story of a country crossed by racism they rarely had.

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