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Repatriate Indigenous Ancestral Remains on College Campuses | Opinion


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Lily Gladstone made history when she became the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award in the coveted Best Actress category for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. The film chronicles the history of white colonization, violence, murder, and the chronic failure to recognize Native people, stolen lands, and the remains of Indigenous people in Oklahoma in the 1920s. In keeping with this, the Academy missed a chance to acknowledge Native Americans, at the Oscars, the biggest stage in film. However, universities and colleges around the U.S. can be catalysts for change.

Killers of the Flower Moon's story is not a thing of the past. Hundreds of thousands of Native ancestral remains and artifacts that were excavated and stolen by white settlers from Indigenous lands are still housed today in storage facilities at universities, museums, and federal agencies across the U.S. This is despite the fact that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA, was passed in 1990 requiring the return of Native American remains and cultural artifacts to their tribal homes by government agencies and universities. To further promote stalled repatriation efforts, in 2001, California established CalNAGPRA to offer additional support for non-federally recognized tribes that are exempt from NAGPRA.

On Sept. 18, 2021, San José State University (SJSU) anthropology Professor Elizabeth Weiss, who is white, posted a picture of herself holding the remains of a Muwekma-Ohlone ancestor with her bare hands, a blatant rejection of handling protocols, for the world to see. It's tempting to write this off as one rogue professor at one institution.

Pottery is seen for sale
Pottery is seen for sale during the 98th annual Santa Fe Indian Market, that hosts 1,200 Native American Artists from the United States and Canada in Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 17, 2019. LUKE E. MONTAVON/AFP via Getty Images

Reporting based on publicly available 2023 NAGPRA data that quantifies holdings by institution, show that most of the California State University (CSU) campuses hold remains, and the University of California Berkeley holds the largest collection of unrepatriated Native remains and items in the nation. According to the 2023 California State University Audit Report, 21 of 23 CSU campuses still house Native remains and cultural items and only 6 percent of artifacts have been returned. Some CSU campuses still do not have an updated inventory of their collections, more than half have not returned any remains, and two campuses that did repatriate remains did not follow NAGPRA protocols.

However, the fight to keep the remains to be used for research is fierce and ongoing, and accountability is non-existent. There are widespread unethical, unscientific, and illegal opposition efforts at universities, colleges, and campuses preventing the return of human remains to their rightful tribes.

There is hope at San José State University. On Nov. 29, 2023, just 11 months into her tenure, President Cynthia Teniente-Matson sent out a campus-wide Presidential Directive amending previous university protocols and solidifying the protection of all Native ancestral remains and artifacts at SJSU "until we reach our goal of complete repatriation."

What are the obstacles to repatriation?

In addition to a lack of oversight and accountability, perhaps the largest obstacles to repatriation are that the fields of anthropology and archaeology were founded on exhuming and stealing Native remains and artifacts for purposes of claimed scientific inquiry. Historically, anthropologists created and utilized racist ideology through the justification of "objective science," practices that have implications for racial hierarchies of intelligence and status that persist today. Further, the opposition states that repatriation laws mandating inhibit "science," an argument that is not evidence-based and does not hold weight in the scientific community.

There are deep cultural, spiritual, and emotional costs as institutions, including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, hold on to Native remains. Indigenous communities believe their ancestors' spirits cannot rest until they are ceremonially buried in the ground. Having their relatives dug up from the Earth, stored in basement drawers, and mishandled, relinquishes the dignity of their ancestors.

For the past many years, the CSU System Audit revealed that the Chancellor's Office has done little to offer guidance and campuses have failed to allocate the funds, policies, and staff to support repatriation. Another significant obstacle to repatriation is the determination of "cultural affiliation," which lacks objective, systematic measures. Thus the holders of remains have the power to control how tribal affiliation is decided whether repatriation is warranted. With a new CSU Chancellor in office, there is hope that Mildred Garcia will follow President Cynthia Teniente-Matson's lead.

Land acknowledgements, or formal statements recognizing the original Indigenous stewards of lands, have become common practice at universities across the nation. In our opinion, land acknowledgments have been used as a Band-Aid. We need more than land acknowledgments. The laws must be enforced, and tribes must be given full responsibility for their ancestral remains using proper protocols.

When we move beyond performativity, simply acknowledging historical, and contemporary wrongs, and move toward action plans that support Indigenous communities in regaining the rightful return of their ancestors' remains, we will begin to restore the humanity and dignity of Indigenous Peoples and their remains.

Veneice Guillory-Lacy, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership at San José State University, who descends from the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho, and is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

Tammie Visintainer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of science education at San José State University, who explores intersections of race, identity, learning, and justice in science, and is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

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