Notes on Indigenous Identity, NAGPRA, and Ancient Cultures mod 9 done

Identity

  • To be legally classified as an indigenous person in the United States and Canada, an individual must be officially listed as belonging to a specific tribe or band.
  • This issue of identity is sensitive and reminds us of the continuing impact of colonial policy.
  • Contemporary artists like James Luna (Pooyukitchum/Luiseño) and Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes) address the problem of who decides who or what an Indian is.
  • Luna's Artifact Piece (1987) and Take a Picture with a Real Indian (1993) confront issues of identity and stereotypes of Native peoples.
  • In Artifact Piece, Luna placed himself in a glass vitrine with personal items, like museum artifacts.
  • In Take a Picture with a Real Indian, Luna changes clothes three times (loincloth, loincloth with feather and bone breastplate, and street clothes), highlighting the problematic idea that he is less authentically Native when dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
  • Even naming conventions need to be revisited. For example, the term "Anasazi" was used for the ancestors of modern-day Puebloans, but "Ancestral Puebloans" is now considered more acceptable.
  • "Eskimo" designated peoples in the Arctic region, but this word has fallen out of favor because it homogenizes the First Nations in this area. It is preferable to use a tribe or Nation's specific name when possible, and to do so in its own language.

Global Connections: Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

  • Historically, archaeologists and art historians have been associated with grave robbing, particularly Indigenous graves.
  • Museums have been problematic in collecting and showcasing human remains, often refusing to repatriate them.
  • A recent New York Times video highlights the pressing issues facing many Indigenous communities concerning the search for graves of Canada's Indigenous children in residential boarding schools.
  • Archaeologists are combining oral interviews with elders from the Muskowekwan First Nation community (survivors of the boarding schools) and advanced ground-penetrating radar technology to scan the ground and find unmarked graves.
  • This approach validates reports acknowledged within the community, brings abuses to the surface internationally, and offers communities a chance to heal, grieve, and give their ancestors proper burials.
  • This fusing of oral tradition and advanced scientific technology is important to archaeology and art history because:
    • It underscores that this is not ancient history; ongoing contemporary issues persist around the treatment and restitution of human remains and ancestral items.
    • It reminds viewers that graves and artifacts are about real people and family members—ancestors—and not just objects.
    • It prompts art historians to listen to and trust Native communities, particularly in the face of such violent pasts.
  • Research teams are forging new roads for art history and archaeology by returning the decision-making power and sovereignty to local communities, allowing them to determine what is best.

The History and Future of NAGPRA

  • In 1990, the United States passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
  • NAGPRA dictates that certain Native American cultural items (human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony) be returned to lineal descendants, Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.
  • Since its passage, NAGPRA has been largely successful in helping to return certain treasured and sacred objects.
  • The Biden-Harris Administration is planning regulatory adjustments to speed up the repatriation process and require museums and institutions to complete the affiliation process in identifying remains and artifacts.
  • Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo and first Native American to hold a cabinet post, is leading this move and drafting the regulatory changes, in consultation with tribal and Native Hawaiian communities.

Calls for an International NAGPRA

  • NAGPRA only applies to the United States.
  • Many ancestral human remains and sacred objects still lie in museum collections internationally.
  • The 2015 documentary Te Kuhane O Te Tupuna (The Spirit of the Ancestors) documents one Rapanui family's search for repatriation (Rapa Nui is a Polynesian island, often called "Easter Island").
  • The film demonstrates the need for an international NAGPRA, particularly from former colonial superpowers who often still hold an abundance of looted artifacts and human remains that remain sacred to the original owners and ancestors.

Fort Ancient Culture: Great Serpent Mound

  • The Great Serpent Mound is located in rural, southwestern Ohio, and is the largest serpent effigy in the world.
  • Numerous mounds were made by ancient Native American cultures along the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers.
  • The Great Serpent Mound measures approximately 1,300 feet in length and ranges from one to three feet in height.
  • The mound is both architectural and sculptural and was erected by settled peoples who cultivated maize, beans, and squash and who maintained a stratified society with an organized labor force, but left no written records.
  • The serpent is slightly crescent-shaped, with the head at the east and the tail at the west, with seven winding coils in between.
  • Some scholars read the oval shape as an enlarged eye, others see a hollow egg or even a frog about to be swallowed by wide, open jaws.
  • Many native cultures in both North and Central America attributed supernatural powers to snakes or reptiles and included them in their spiritual practices.
  • The native peoples of the Middle Ohio Valley in particular frequently created snake-shapes out of copper sheets.
  • The mound conforms to the natural topography of the site, which is a high plateau overlooking Ohio Brush Creek.
  • The unique geologic formations suggest that a meteor struck the site approximately 250-300 million years ago, causing folded bedrock underneath the mound.
  • The head of the serpent aligns with the summer solstice sunset, and the tail points to the winter solstice sunrise.
  • The curves in the body of the snake parallel lunar phases or align with the two solstices and two equinoxes.
  • Halley's Comet appeared in 1066.
  • The leading theory is that the Fort Ancient Culture (1000-1650 CE) erected it in c. 1070 CE.
  • This mound-building society lived in the Ohio Valley and was influenced by the contemporary Mississippian culture (700-1550), whose urban center was located at Cahokia in Illinois.
  • An alternative theory is that the Fort Ancient Culture refurbished the site c. 1070, reworking a preexisting mound built by the Adena Culture (c. 1100 BCE-200 CE) and/or the Hopewell Culture (c. 100 BCE-550 CE.).
  • The mound contains no artifacts, and both the Fort Ancient and Adena groups typically buried objects inside their mounds.
  • Although there are no graves found inside the Great Serpent Mound, there are burials found nearby, but none of them are the kinds of burials typical for the Fort Ancient culture and are more closely associated with Adena burial practices.

Mesa Verde

  • The Ancestral Puebloan peoples (formerly known as the Anasazi) built more than 600 structures (mostly residential but also for storage and ritual) into the cliff faces of the Four Corners region of the United States (the southwestern corner of Colorado, northwestern corner of New Mexico, northeastern corner of Arizona, and southeastern corner of Utah) beginning after 1000-1100 CE.
  • The dwellings are located in southwestern Colorado in the national park known as Mesa Verde.