UC struggles to repatriate Indian remains
Nearly seven decades ago, a UC Berkeley archaeologist named Robert E. Greengo dug deep into the wet clay of Fresno County and felt a portion of the soil give way to something harder.
Bones. Hundreds of them. From the ooze, Greengo extracted partially complete human skeletons of two adults and a male teenager from a depth of 7 feet, near the town of Firebaugh. The year was 1951. The archaeologist also pulled out a mortar fragment, the long bone of an animal and two large pieces of obsidian — a flake and a point — all used by native people to honor the dead.
He gave the objects to the Phoebe A. Hearst
Museum of Anthropology on the UC Berkeley campus, which today houses one of the largest collections of Native American remains and artifacts in the country.
Don’t expect to see any of it. A recognition has been unfolding at the University of California that nearly 9,000 sets of human remains — 8,189 at UC Berkeley alone — and an even larger number of funerary artifacts are not owned by the six campuses that possess them. They belong instead to the tribes whose grandparents they once were, as required by the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. The Native American remains and artifacts, acquired between the late 19th century and the 1980s, were unearthed not only by archaeologists like Greengo, but by bulldozers and earth movers as California built its roads and dams, and from other donors across the country.
Over the years, UC has published notices in the Federal Register saying it has nearly 6,000 Native American human remains, and more than 200,000 funerary artifacts to return to tribes that claim ownership, if that can be established under the law. UC Berkeley has returned 1,011 sets of human remains with 490 more sets ready to go.
On Wednesday, the UC regents, meeting at UCLA, acknowledged that while the university complies with the letter of the repatriation law, it hasn’t always complied with the spirit.
“Our history as a university is deeply flawed” on this matter, said Regent John Pérez, who described UC’s approach to repatriation as “overly technical and dehumanizing.”
In a report to the regents, UC staff said conflicts sometimes arise with tribes over handling and storing remains because determining whether bones are human or animal, for example, means touching them.
“Even with consultation, there is not always agreement,” the report said. “Some tribes would prefer that the remains not be handled at all.”
Several tribes contacted by The Chronicle did not return requests for comment. But Brice Obermeyer, director of historical preservation for the Delaware Tribe headquartered in Oklahoma, said that a common frustration tribes have with museums is not with repatriation, but with their recalcitrance to formally declare remains to be “culturally affiliated” with a particular tribe.
That’s important, he said, because museums control what’s said about the items, “and they train the next generation of academics. The Delaware feel strongly about affiliation.”
At UC Berkeley, for example, just 14 percent of native remains have been culturally affiliated, while 28 percent of funerary artifacts have been linked to a tribe.
At the regents meeting, UC officials acknowledged that campuses often fail to consult sufficiently with tribes and, as a result, their process of linking remains with a particular tribe can be mired in red tape. And they admitted that they take too long to return native remains and artifacts to their rightful owners.
In August, UC President Janet Napolitano wrote Provost Michael Brown asking that he convene a group to overhaul the university’s policy for dealing with such remains — last updated in 2001 — so that it reflects “a fundamental value in support of repatriation.”
At the regents meeting, Napolitano said a revised policy should also ensure greater consultation with tribal representatives.
Bones and artifacts held by UC Berkeley are available only to native people who want to see them or use them in a ceremony, and to the few researchers whose projects meet rigorous standards. UC Berkeley has granted only 12 research requests in two years, and only on materials not yet linked to a tribe. Five requests were denied.
Its collection is held at the Hearst Museum, secreted away and encased in locked metal cabinets, all carefully labeled.
The public is not welcome. Out of respect for tribal privacy, UC Berkeley allows no photos of any artifacts, even those not linked to a tribe.
Even Linda Rugg, UC Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor for research, hasn’t seen them. She said tribes contact the campus two or three times a year asking that items be returned. But she would not refer to any tribe by name and avoided describing any negotiation for bones.
A viable policy for addressing repatriation, Brown said, should lay out a clear, uniform approach to some unclear issues: How to determine if material actually belongs to the tribe that requests it. How to give tribes access to materials they aren’t ready to reclaim. And what to do if a tribe lacks the federal recognition required by law for repatriation.
Fewer than 600 tribes have that legal imprimatur, while hundreds of others do not — but they may still be legitimate descendants of the dead.
“No one wants to make a mistake,” Brown said.
For UC Berkeley and other campuses, it’s been a delicate dance to figure out what belongs to whom and who has a legal right to possess it.
“One of my goals has been to build better relations with native communities, and repatriation is absolutely key to that effort,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ.
In July, Christ announced changes to the campus committee that recommends to the regents which items to repatriate. For example, the committee has doubled in size to 12 people, six of whom identify as Native American. Before, the latter number was one.
“It’s wonderful to hear that an institution like the University of California has recognized the need for a change in direction and is taking repatriation seriously,” said Obermeyer.
But he said the Delaware Tribe has been frustrated with UC Berkeley and the Hearst Museum.
“They’re in possession of a small number of individuals that we’re seeking to repatriate,” he said.
The Delaware Tribe learned in 2011 or 2012 that the museum has the remains of four native people unearthed at some point near Trenton, N.J. Although it’s unclear how the Hearst acquired them, Obermeyer said similar remains have found their way to other major museums around the country, as well.
No one disagrees that the bones came from the Trenton area, which the Delaware people occupied for 5,000 years before being forcibly removed in the 18th and 19th centuries and sent west, said Obermeyer, also an associate professor of anthropology at Emporia State University in Kansas.
“I don’t see any resistance from the (museum) to transfer control, and they always roll out the red carpet and facilitate our work,” Obermeyer said.
The problem, he said, is that the museum has declared the bones to be “culturally unidentifiable” — not linked to any particular tribe — because officials there are not persuaded by circumstantial evidence that the bones are Delaware.
The situation “puts us in a kind of ethical dilemma,” Obermeyer said, because even though the museum will let the tribe recover the bones, “if we do, we are confirming the ‘unidentifiable’ status of these remains that we feel are ancestral.”
Obermeyer said that’s the kind of dig-in-your-heels problem he encounters across the country — at the Museum of Natural History in New York, at the Field Museum in Chicago and at the Hearst at UC Berkeley. In 2015, the tribe invited representatives from all of them to Oklahoma to talk it over together. It didn’t help. “It’s frustrating,” he said. “Yeah.”