Indigenous Remains at California State Universities
700,000 remains and cultural items across California State University System- 21 of its 23 campuses.
Indigenous tribes and state legislators Tuesday (8/29/2023) urged the California State University system to speed up the return of Indigenous remains and cultural belongings. The hearing comes after a state audit found the system has almost 700,000 remains and cultural items across 21 of its 23 campuses. Since a federal law was passed in 1990 that mandates repatriation efforts, California State has repatriated just 6 percent of the remains and cultural items systemwide. 1
“I’d ask all non-tribal people to picture your family, your ancestors and their belongings that you hold near and dear, that they’re used under the guise of an artifact on display for public learning and teaching, which is the unfortunate reality of my people,” said Johnny Hernandez, the vice chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. “We’re talking about humanity and human rights. We need to finally get this right and bring all our people home.”
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, a federal law mandates that remains and artifacts be repatriated in a timely manner.2
After Damning Audit, Tribal Leaders Demand Cal State Return 700,000 Indigenous Remains, Cultural Items. Chronicle of Higer Education, AUGUST 29, 2023.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov). Since 1990, Federal law has provided for the repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. By enacting NAGPRA, Congress recognized that human remains of any ancestry "must at all times be treated with dignity and respect." Congress also acknowledged that human remains and other cultural items removed from Federal or tribal lands belong, in the first instance, to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. With this law, Congress sought to encourage a continuing dialogue between museums and Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations and to promote a greater understanding between the groups while at the same time recognizing the important function museums serve in society by preserving the past. (US Senate Report 101-473).
I'm not Native American, but I have a feeling that the artifacts of my ancestors are currently in museums or may end up there some day. I'm more than okay with that, as they would have the tools to preserve them, and realistically people cannot cart those things around forever. As it is, my sibling and I cannot accommodate all the photographs of our parents and aunts and uncles.
As a non-tribal old person with no direct heirs, the thought of my grandmother's needlework, my own artworks and writings, and or the music of my late husband and friends migrated from reel-to-reel tapes and preserved for now digitally, ending up in an inevitable dumpster/landfill saddens me beyond measure. That is the reality for these treasures however. Were a museum interested in preserving or at least extending the life of these artifacts, it would lend me a measure of inner peace. As it is, I content myself with the only means of immortality for this record of our time here on earth which is that it exists permanently on the time-space continuum.
I can't help thinking that relics in a museum are stand-ins for well justified grievances, and pitiful substitutes for the restoration of water rights and the return of stolen lands which would actually address legitimate injustices and atrocities.
“I’d ask all non-tribal people to picture your family, your ancestors and their belongings that you hold near and dear, that they’re used under the guise of an artifact on display for public learning and teaching, which is the unfortunate reality of my people,” said Johnny Hernandez, the vice chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. “We’re talking about humanity and human rights. We need to finally get this right and bring all our people home.”