White people in the soft sciences have studied Native people to death —
and beyond — and what they’re trying to prove is still a mystery.
One thing they’ve learned is how to use “studies” to diminish Native
people. Another thing they’ve learned is how to hold on to their
collections of Native people for future “studies.”
In the 1980s, when I was executive director of the National Congress of
American Indians, I selected a broad-based coalition of American Indians to
deal with museums about collecting and studying our dead relatives.
We were negotiating terms of accountability and protocol with the
Smithsonian Institution for three years before getting some straight
answers to our questions:
* How many Native human remains are in your collections?
* To what Native nations and tribes are they related?
* What studies are being conducted on them?
* How do those studies help living Native people?
Much to our surprise, it turned out that most of the federal and
federally-assisted museums, educational institutions and agencies did not
know what was in their collections.
This discovery led directly to the requirement in national repatriation law
in 1990 that all entities which receive federal monies must inventory their
collections and communicate with the affected tribes and other relatives
about their collections.
The Smithsonian’s preliminary inventory in the mid-1980s revealed a
collection of some 23,000 human remains directly related to existing Native
nations — 4,500 Indian heads and 18,500 whole or partial Native bodies.
These Native people were stored in long, green cardboard boxes stacked from
floor to ceiling in the National Museum of Natural History. For one Alaska
Native community, Larsen Bay, the Smithsonian had more human remains in its
collection than there were in the community’s own cemetery.
Smithsonian scientists explained that they needed the extensive collection
“for study.” When we inquired about the nature of these studies, we were
told that they were for “the Indians’ benefit.”
When we asked for an example, we were told, “We can prove conclusively that
you ate corn.” We could have told them that Native people ate corn and
still do eat corn, and saved them all that rooting around in Indian graves.
The Smithsonian’s 4,500 Indian heads came from the U.S. Army Surgeon
General’s “Indian Crania Study” of the late 1800s.
Specimens for that “study” were sought jointly by the Army Medical Museum
and the Smithsonian, which even advertised in newspapers for readers to
“harvest” Indian skulls and paid bounties for the dead. Indians were
decapitated at massacre and battle sites, at forts and prisons. Indian
bodies were exhumed from burial grounds, scaffolds and caves.
One Army officer reported waiting “until cover of darkness” after the
“grieving family left” the grave, then digging up and decapitating the
deceased.
What scientific methodology was used? The military man or the ordinary
citizen would weigh the brain, measure the skull, soak the head in lye and
ship it off as freight to Washington, D.C., where it was warehoused for
later “study.”
The study of heads was abandoned as invalid in 1898, when tests proved that
the French were not as smart as Cro-Magnon Man.
One of the collected heads was that of Kintpuash, the Modoc leader known as
Captain Jack, whose head was severed after he was hanged by the Army in
1873. His descendants learned that his skull was on the desk of a
Smithsonian scientist, being used variously as a paperweight or ashtray.
The scientist obviously had concluded his “study,” and Kintpuash’s
relatives took him home in 1984.
Relatives of Apache leader Mangus Colorado and other Indian leaders are not
so fortunate. The majority of heads collected for the “Indian Crania Study”
disappeared after being sent to American and European scientists and
museums for their “study.”
Native people continue to search for and mourn the loss of these fallen and
captured relatives. Many of the scientists look at Native remains as bones,
skeletons, specimens, material and property — everything except human
beings — and use language of white supremacy, such as “pre-history” and
pre-Columbian.”
Most of the “studies” seem designed to prove who is Native and who is not,
and to support the Manifest Destiny theories that Native people came from
anywhere but this hemisphere.
Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, the Smithsonian’s top scientist for 40 years until the
1940s, was an early proponent of the notion of a common origin for all
people. He came up with the bright idea that all Native people started in
Asia and came here across the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago. While there
is ample evidence to refute this theory, it continues to be taught in
schools.
One of Hrdlicka’s favorite “studies” was the “Indian scratch test.” He
would scratch a person’s chest with the nail of his forefinger. If it left
a mark, the person was not Indian. If no mark was visible, the person was
an Indian.
True to the legacy of Hrdlicka, the organization he founded — the American
Association of Physical Anthropologists — is pushing for federal
regulations to declare that increased numbers of Native human remains are
not American Indian and can continue to be “studied.”
U.S. repatriation policy prohibits studies of Native dead without the
consent of the next of kin or culturally affiliated relatives. If the dead
are declared to be not Native, then they aren’t covered by the repatriation
laws and can be studied until there’s nothing left to study.
This is the fate of the Ancient One, known as Kennewick Man, who was
judicially declared to be not Native, despite evidence that he is related
to living American Indian peoples.
When a repatriation amendment to fix this problem was proposed last year,
Hrdlicka’s progeny mobilized their brotherhood of professional and amateur
archaeologists and physical anthropologists to oppose the legislation.
Two of the Kennewick case plaintiffs, Drs. Douglas Owsley and Dennis
Stanford, both Smithsonian physical anthropologists/archaeologists,
organized the lobby effort against the amendment through the Smithsonian
e-mail system.
Their campaign started on Sept. 29, 2004, nearly 15 years to the day after
codification of the historic repatriation agreement between the Smithsonian
and Indian country in the 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act.
Their campaign was launched only seven days after the opening of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall and its
promise of a new day for Native people.
It is not clear what “studies” they want to conduct or are illegally
conducting on these Native human remains. The predictable response from the
would-be studiers is: What if studies could lead to a cure for diabetes?
Wouldn’t you want to have them?
Yes, of course. Native people are curious and practical, and are not
anti-science or opposed to beneficial studies. However, in the 27 years
since I was first asked that question, there have been no anthropological
or archaeological “studies” that have contributed to treating or curing
diabetes among Native people.
As with the scientific conclusion that we eat corn, they can prove that we
didn’t have diabetes and now we do. Will they continue to “study” until
there are no more Native Americans to scratch?
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. and a columnist for Indian
Country Today.
