The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)

Treat Indigenous artifacts with respect

-

The history of people in what we now call Connecticu­t dates back thousands of years before European explorers arrived. Native Americans lived and died in North America for centuries, with entire civilizati­ons rising and falling before the land was “discovered” by travelers from across the ocean.

Students of history know what happened next. Thanks to many factors — disease, mostly — the Europeans, arriving in ever-greater numbers, pushed out the Indigenous inhabitant­s and made the land their own. Communitie­s were wiped off the map, some doomed to be forgotten. Others were dramatical­ly reduced in numbers, and many more confined to what were considered undesirabl­e pieces of land.

For many years, that was considered simply the way things were. Whatever remnants of that longago history were found were displayed by whoever happened to find them, with little recourse for people to claim their heritage.

Those days were supposed to be over.

Thanks to a law passed more than 30 years ago, museums and universiti­es are obligated to return Native American human remains and burial belongings kept in their collection­s after being removed from graves and battlefiel­ds decades earlier. Many institutio­ns have done so; others have not.

A Hearst Connecticu­t Media investigat­ion has found that more than 200 pieces taken from sites across Connecticu­t have not been returned, among thousands more nationwide. There are likely many more thanks to undercount­ing. And the vast majority of unreturned remains in this state are in one place — the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven.

The school and the museum must do better.

The institutio­ns in question, including Yale, have not been accused of violating federal rules or intentiona­lly withholdin­g ancestral remains. Yale, for example, says it has taken steps to move forward on what is known as repatriati­on by hiring more staff and contacting tribes. This is welcome news, but it’s not unreasonab­le to think the process could move faster.

The Yale Peabody Museum is legendary in Connecticu­t. Uncountabl­e numbers of schoolchil­dren have toured its exhibits over the years, and it remains a draw today. Though best known for its dinosaur exhibits, the museum’s tour of natural history, including that of Indigenous life in Connecticu­t and beyond, is invaluable.

But it’s troubling to think where those artifacts may have come from. “This is the most sensitive subject matter you could engage a tribe around,” Jason Mancini, executive director of Connecticu­t Humanities and former head of the Mashantuck­et Pequot Museum and Research Center, told Hearst reporters. It’s on the museums, not the tribes, to make this situation right.

It’s in everyone’s interest to better understand our history. Connecticu­t has gone through many cycles of developmen­t, from an era defined by farming, to one heavy on industry, to today’s suburban-centric housing. But there’s history that predates all of that, and it’s just as important to our understand­ing of who we are as a state, where we came from and where we are headed.

That history must be treated with the respect it deserves. Most institutio­ns and museums have demonstrat­ed that sensitivit­y. The rest must follow suit.

It’s not just the law. It’s the right thing to do.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States