Repatriation of Native American ancestors to tribes has been slow. Here's where ancestors still are held in Utah — and why that pace may finally change.
Repatriation has been slow. Now, an update to federal rules — and more staff — “opens up an opportunity for us to return the ancestors home.”
The new regulations “will now allow us to repatriate based on geography, rather than cultural affiliation,” which had been a “pretty high bar,” said Greenwald, who also is an assistant anthropology professor at the U.The change, she said, “opens up an opportunity for us to return the ancestors home that we didn’t have before.”
Many ancestors held by the museum come from “Fremont archaeological contexts,” Greenwald explained, “and there is not a strongly established line of descent between Fremont archaeological populations and a living cultural population.” “Some ancestors that remain in our collections came to either the University of Utah before the museum existed as a museum, or came to the museum shortly after it was officially established in the 1970s,” Greenwald said.
Some funeral objects and 168 of the ancestors at NHMU arrived there via agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Forest Service, National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, museum officials note. The earliest recorded acquisition date for the 248 ancestors under NHMU’s direct authority is 1917 and the most recent is 1982. The “majority of these ancestors were unfortunately excavated” from “projects undertaken by archaeologists, anthropologists affiliated with the U.,” Greenwald said. They are generally adults, she added.
But most of the ancestors, she said, are considered “culturally unidentified individuals,” which means “there is little to no cultural or scientific consensus on affiliation with an extant tribal nation, and no tribes made claims for repatriation.”Identifying a link to a tribe through scientific processes is tricky, Greenwald said, because many of those techniques can damage or even destroy remains. There’s also the issue of performing these tests without clear consent, she said.
Ayau had never heard of NHMU, he said, but when he recently became aware of it, he asked whether it held any ancestral remains or funeral objects. NHMU agreed, and the process, from inquiry to return, took two months, which Ayau said is “relatively quick.” The new regulations are “going to cause a gigantic explosion in our responsibilities,” Stanfield said, in addition to their many positive affects.
“That responsibility should be on them,” Stanfield said. “The taking of these ancestors and funerary objects was all done by people on the outside, by these large museums.” The Native Voices exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah.as they navigate the new NAGPRA updates. The Natural History Museum of Utah, as it notes in signage, “doesn’t exhibit human remains or objects associated with burials,” and hasn’t removed any items from exhibits.
The project highlights cultural artifacts, stories, traditions and people from the tribes. While creating its exhibit, Greenwald said, museum curators learned details from thethat they might otherwise have overlooked, such as the importance of putting it on the ground floor or placing it in a circular space.
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