Indian Skeletons May Never Leave Museums

Aug. 10 -- When a huge truck filled with the bones of over 2,000 people left the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Mass., last year, tribal members of the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico started walking.

To commemorate the occasion, hundreds of pueblo residents walked some 80 miles to meet the truck near the site of their ancestors’ original graves, which had been excavated by archaeologists early last century. In a private ceremony, the remains were reburied in what was the largest repatriation of its kind.

While some ancestors of the Pueblo of Jemez have been returned to their intended resting places, the bones of nearly 200,000 other American Indians still sit in drawers and wooden boxes of American museums across the country. Many involved in the repatriation process say most remains will stay there, despite a federal law that requires federally funded museums to attempt to return them.

A Danger to the Living

Until 1990, when Congress passed the law, Indian remains were in the permanent collection of at least 700 museums across the U.S. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires federal agencies and museums to return Indian skeletons and many culturally vital artifacts to appropriate tribes, who determine what to do with the bones. In most cases, tribes say the remains will be reburied.

But a decade after it was passed, the remains of only 19,000 individuals, or about 10 percent of the Indian remains held in collections, have been returned. Museum officials say they are overwhelmed by the amount of material the law covers while tribes are inundated with notices from museums. And some tribal leaders say NAGPRA clashes with their traditional beliefs.

“Tribal elders don’t want us to handle the bones,” says Gerald White, the repatriation coordinator for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. He says the disturbed spirits of the dead can wreak havoc on the living. Ojibwe elders would rather have archaeologists or museum officials rebury the bones, says White.

Other Indian communities don’t want the remains returned to their land at all.

“Zuni don’t believe in repatriation [of skeletons] back to Zuni lands,” says Dan Simplicio, a member of the Zuni Pueblo tribal council in New Mexico. Zuni traditions require a ceremony to bury the dead, but there is no ceremony to rebury the dead, says Simplicio.