The Roots of NAGPRA

How does the movement fit into the larger issue of indigenous people’s rights? Do you think the enactment of NAGPRA and fulfillment of its goals will help in the overall success of the larger movement?

Some "social scientists" call repatriation a political question, as if that was a dirty name. Some anthropologists are shocked that some tribes with no tradition of returning to their dead will still reclaim bones and have reburial ceremonies.

Let me speak for a moment as a thoroughly modern Indian with three degrees. Pretend that I have no concern with matters sacred (I do, but let’s pretend).

In the secular world, I live with Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, where the Supreme Court said Indian treaties may be abrogated. Now, that is bad enough, but when they say "abrogated" they do not mean the agreement is void and all parties return to the status quo ante. They mean the US gets to keep the land but also take back the reservations given in return.

In the secular world, I live with Sequoyah v. TVA, where the Supreme Court said it is all right to inundate my burial grounds and sacred sites—only to stop the same project in another case to save the snail darter, a fish that is apparently more important than what is left of traditional Cherokee culture.

In the secular world, I live with Ex Parte Crow Dog’s offspring, the Major Crimes Act, which takes away the right of Indians to make criminal laws for Indians on Indian land and makes rez crime the punishment detail for FBI agents, leading to a violent crime rate that exceeds that in your inner cities.

In the secular world, the Bill of Rights still does not apply to Indians. Until the sixties, some religious ceremonies were still banned. I am supposed to get a federal permit to possess the accouterments of my religious practices. The 10,000 year old peyote religion is "given" an exemption from prosecution with federal regulation of the blood quantum of those taking communion! Eagle parts mean a three year wait for a piece of roadkill!

Indians, most decorated of your GIs in wartime, can’t get into your all-volunteer military because they seldom finish the public schools where they are lied about and must listen to their traditions ridiculed. This applies to me personally. Had it not been for the Vietnam War, I could never have gotten a shot at the military and therefore a shot at college.

We live in a secular world where we only exist as mascots and commercial emblems. Driving to campus every day I pass a hundred foot "cigar store Indian" in front of a car dealer.

There is a Dairy Queen on IH10 in Arizona where for a small fee you can take your Blizzard into a "museum" and gawk at "The Thing," a dead Indian. (2003 note: It turns out "the Thing" is a fake. Steve remarks that "This is the political issue whether it is appropriate to disrespect live Indians by disrespecting dead Indians")

Living as an Indian in your country in the here and now is a daily ration of insult, ridicule or invisibility. We are supposed to be dead. We are not. How inconvenient.

The repatriation movement is an attempt to start at the bottom towards the goal of being recognized as living human beings, who have children and relatives—and ancestors. One way you distinguish human beings from other animals is that the former care for their dead. The political aspect of repatriation is quite simple: until our demand to be recognized as human beings is met, none of the other crimes and indignities we suffer can be addressed.

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