"There it is, there's where the old guy was originally found." I lean out of the pickup window, pointing to the rocky bluff where two looters had dug up a prehistoric skeleton the autumn before. "A pretty place to rest, isn't it?"
"You bet," my friend Howard replies. His dark eyes squint slightly, crow's feet adding character and that hint of timelessness, which seems to mark his people, the Ute Indians. An elegant silver concha on his hatband contrasts with his black felt Stetson. "We'll make sure he's peaceful once again," he assures me. "It's a shame we never recovered the burial items that went with him."
My friend Howard is a Ute elder, a holy man. He represents his tribe whenever American Indian skeletons are found and eventually reburied, or "repatriated." Today he's quiet, respectful of this possible ancestor whose reburial ceremony he will perform. I've been invited along for the drive, having furnished a Navajo blanket as a "dignified" cover for the remains. This gesture of deference, however, does not qualify me for the ceremony itself, even though I'm an archaeologist and have known Howard for years.
The ceremony is hosted by the United States Congress, which in 1990 passed what's known as NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. NAGPRA established Indian nations as the owners of Native American cultural objects, including human remains, that are found on Federal land. The act also requires that museums, universities, and government agencies around the country inventory their human remains and burial objects and eventually turn these over to the Indian nations. The law applies to all Federal lands, whether Forest Service, BLM, or Park Service.
To date, approximately 14,000 skeletons (out of over 200,000) have been returned to various tribes. The majority of the remains that haven't been returned supposedly can't be identified by tribe. Many of the skeletons have sat for years in museum, university, and Federal archives, along with countless cultural artifacts, gathering dust and forgotten by researchers who must concentrate on grant-writing and analysis of the more "glamorous" finds that make for appealing public displays.
Howard's people, the Utes, have been affected by NAGPRA, as have all American Indians. Recently, a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing was conducted to address complaints by tribal leaders about the act, who claim that delays by museums, as well as loopholes in the law, are preventing thousands of Indian remains and sacred artifacts from being returned to the tribes. They also claim that Federal agencies have too little money and staff to enforce the law. The tribal leaders would like to see it extended to private lands. NAGPRA has become a hot topic for American Indians and Federal agencies alike.
On our way home after the burial ceremony, my friend Howard is more talkative. I ask him how he feels about NAGPRA.
"We wish to bring each of our relatives home and bury them," Howard says in his quiet but dignified manner. "Imagine that you and your family go out to visit the graves of your ancestors, only to see a bunch of people with shovels who in the name of science are digging up the bones to be placed in a research laboratory for study. Imagine going into a museum and seeing a display that includes the skeleton of one of your relatives, displayed with family heirlooms."
He doesn't seem angry, but instead speaks with resignation. "We also know that some of the archaeologists who work for the Federal government and who are supposed to protect our heritage have extensive private collections of cultural objects from Federal lands. A lucrative market exists for antiquities - many rich private collectors will pay well for items that belong to my people. We have no interest in selling these things, even though some are quite valuable. We would never sell our heritage."
We're both quiet for awhile. The truck drones on and Howard's dark eyes Look straight ahead into the unmoving sagebrush horizon. His square profile against the pickup window is backlit by setting sun. He continues.
"I once had a dream, where I saw a beautiful olla, all hand-coiled and pinched and with a wide rim - made for carrying water. A gentle Indian woman had made the pot and blessed it with her skill and artistry. But after many years the olla was abandoned and after many more years it weathered into many pieces. There it lay for centuries, but even though in pieces, it was still whole in concept. But come this century, the pieces were picked up, one by one, by various visitors and taken to many different countries. The olla's integrity was lost. How can it ever come back together to fulfill its original purpose? Until we can reclaim the whole, we are doomed to see only whichever little piece we happen to hold at that time. We Indians still mourn our lost continent."
Howard's feelings are echoed by non-Indians also, who recognize the complex situation American Indians face trying to reclaim and preserve their heritage.
Bob McKeever, a Forest Service archaeologist in Norwood, Colorado, is responsible for overseeing more than one million acres of Federal land. Approximately 20% of his time is spent in obtaining funds for archaeology, and he depends heavily on partnerships with non-Federal entities such as local counties and historical societies for seed monies. Much of this previous year was spent doing salvage archaeology for a pipeline, a ski area expansion, various timber sales, and a proposed power line.
"Whenever I find something, I document it, sketch and photograph it, then return it to its site. I only take things in that would be regarded as significant finds, such as obsidian, which can be indicative of trade routes. I've been in many museums throughout Europe and have seen extensive American Indian collections from the United States, including artifacts from my own region. The American Indians were never asked if they wanted to share their culture with the world - we just made that decision for them. This has deeply damaged their culture."
Given a probable culture of letting nature take its course, it seems unlikely that Spirit Cave Man would have wanted to share his remains for the past 60 years with researchers at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. Discovered by archaeologists in Spirit Cave in western Nevada, the 10,000 year old mummy has been at the center of a legal battle between the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe and the BLM, who recently decided that the mummy was not affiliated with any contemporary American Indian group.
The Paiutes have been trying under NAGPRA to obtain the remains for reburial, but the BLM maintains that there is no cultural, biological, or physical evidence to show Spirit Man was their ancestor. A report released in mid August by the Nevada State BLM office states, "There is no geographic evidence indicating how long the Northern Paiute have occupied the Spirit Cave area prior to European contact in the early 1800s and none indicating who, if anyone, lived there at any earlier time. The remains predate contemporary Northern Paiute tribes and cannot reasonably be culturally affiliated with any of them."
Archaeology deals primarily with physical evidence, but anthropology (of which archaeology is a branch) deals with any kind of evidence it can get, integrating the historic with the prehistoric, the living with the dead. Studies in cultural anthropology can influence the field of physical anthropology, and more and more evidence indicates that ethnohistoric and ethnographic data from living people can be accurately used to examine their origins and development. A people's perceptions and oral histories of their land and ancestors can underlay valid theories about their origins and history, and anthropological evidence shows that groups can retain memories of critical events for thousands of years.
Interestingly enough, the Paiutes of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau have no memory of ever conquering the area, and their creation stories indicate they were created here. Evidence also exists that the Paiutes (along with the Utes) are related to the Hopi, who have a long tradition in this area (both groups speak a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language, which linguists hypothesize had its origins in Northern America, but no one knows how long ago).
Perhaps we archaeologists need new paradigms for determining who peopled the high deserts of the West. Perhaps we need to re-examine why a people's memory and knowledge of their land shouldn't be valid in the courtroom.
Another prominent battle for repatriation rights has been over the 9,000 year old bones of Kennewick Man, who was discovered in 1996 when two young boaters stumbled across a skull alongside the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington. The battle has evolved into a skirmish between the Yakima Nation, who wants to bury the remains, and scientists, who want to study the remains. The case has stalled while the government performs DNA tests to link the bones with a specific tribe. The Department of the Interior is scheduled to announce this fall whether it has been able to determine such an affiliation.
In Utah, State Administrative Rule R230-1 (i.e., the state's interpretation of the federal NAGPRA law) states that: "Native American burials are regarded as spiritual and sacred ceremonies where the deceased is prepared for their journey into the next dimension of life. Once the deceased, the grave and the funerary objects are blessed, consecrated and dedicated to the care and keeping of the creator the burial site is then considered holy ground, never to be disturbed. Native American burial sites discovered on state lands must not be disturbed except as allowed by this rule and other applicable law. This rule provides procedures designed to preserve the sacred nature of Native American burials by protecting Native American burial sites and insuring that the final disposition of unidentified Native American remains, discovered on state lands, shall be in keeping with that sacred nature. Remains are to be treated at all times with dignity and respect."
But state and federal lands have served as collectors' playgrounds for years, from those who pick up surface finds (usually "arrowheads"), to the more serious grave diggers looking for pots and grave items to sell. American Indian burial sites have been plundered across the United States since the arrival of the first non-natives. In the Southwest, many sites had been completely dug and looted by as early as 1900. The Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding, Utah, has over 900 Anasazi pots that were donated by one local family. Making news more recently is the case of the Redd family, the only doctor in Blanding, who was arrested with his wife for plundering an ancient grave. Local politics tried to downplay the case and have it thrown out, but after public outrage it's still in the political arena.
Even the national parks have been and still are looted, as resources don't exist to patrol such large areas. Capitol Reef National Park is now in its final year of a five-year archaeology survey, which staff archaeologist Lee Kreutzer says focuses on learning who lived in the region and how they used the land, not on finding artifacts. The park is guided by a preservation policy and has no plans to do full-blown excavations.
My own frequent trips to Capitol Reef often include the visitor center, home to three bison-hide shields found in 1925 near the park. The shields have intricate designs of red, green, and yellow, and may indicate a connection between the Fremont and Plains Indians. Because of NAGPRA, the shields will eventually be returned to whichever Indian tribe can make the strongest case for ownership. Knowing this, I study the unique shields, much as a mountaineer would study that hard-won view before the final descent. Each time I feel privy to some cultural secret, much as I've felt when watching Indian ceremonies. I feel something, but it's unconnected to my own Anglo tribe and is thus out of my own frame of reference and difficult to quantify.
Bob McKeever says, "Archaeologists are human - we're just as obsessed with collecting as anyone, but we justify our collecting as being a scientific endeavor. We hope to someday understand the past through our analyses. What some archaeologists have to come to grips with is the fact that the Indians feel a strong spiritual component in these things that we view simply as artifacts. That spiritual connection can be broken when we remove these things. This is a very important religious belief for them and one we often disregard."
But now it's getting late, and I've dropped Howard off at his own truck. He's on his way home, a Ute elder with an English name driving a Japanese pickup. But Howard knows who he is and knows his heritage better than many of us. We archaeologists want to find all those scattered pieces of the olla in Howard's dream and glue them back together to form a theory about what it was for, how and when it was made, and who made it. We want our theories to hold water, so to speak. And we are human scientists, in both senses of the phrase. We feel we have the right to study these things - perhaps we'll find missing links to human behavior that will give us insights into the whole human tribe. Since this would benefit us all, it's in the common good, we rationalize.
But do we really have that right? Should our desire to reintegrate the past with the present take precedence over the cultural connections of a group of people who were here long before we were?
I continue my drive home in the dark, and a picture of the burial place of some of my own ancestors comes to mind, an ancient cathedral, where final resting places included the floor and walls. I see a sign in my mind's eye: "Westminster Abbey: No digging or looting."
Some things we hold to be unalienable rights. Don't we?