Who Owns the Past? The federal government should fix or drop new regulations that throttle scient...

The original intention of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990, was to facilitate the return of Native American bones and sacred objects to descendants and culturally affiliated groups. NAGPRA sought to balance the rights of Native Americans to reclaim ancestral remains with the right of society as a whole to learn about our collective past. By and large, the law was succeeding. In recent years scientists and representatives of Native peoples have been working together to everyone's gain. For example, archaeologist Alston Thoms of Texas A&M University has been consulting with Native Americans about their cooking techniques, to gain insights into the subsistence strategies of people who lived on the South Texas plains thousands of years ago. Members of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation -- who consider themselves the descendants of those ancient Texans -- have, in turn, been learning about ancestral foods and incorporating them into their diet to counter the high rate of diabetes in their population.

Indigenous Archaeology
Dr. Anthony Cagle
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
I've gotten through several of the papers in response to McGhee's original paper on Indigenous Archaeology (IA). I'm afraid they are not pursuading me of any essential incorrectness of McGhee's central argument, though I think there is some talking past each other going on. Few address what I think is McGhee's central thesis, whether IA is contributing or has the potential to contribute to archaeological explanation. Lots of assertions are made about how Indigenous peoples can provide special "insight" or "perspectives" on archaeological remains, but that strikes me as largely polemical. What insight and is it in any way supportable? Croes has been the most specific so far, giving a few actual examples, but these are pretty unimpressive in my view. Largely it revolves around tribal "elders" (did you know that a contemporary tribal "elder" would have grown up in the 1950s? How does that relate to having expertise in explaining something from 2,000 years ago?) providing "detailed knowledge" of certain artifacts or features. Stating that only begs the question of whether this "knowledge" is in any way accurate or demonstrable. He mentions one instance where they tested some interpretations of shanked fishooks experimentally, but that is neither a new idea nor sufficient to establish anything beyond plausibility. He also goes into some basketry traditions that may have some elements of design spanning thousands of years and miles, but that's really not an IA question either, but a longstanding archaeological problem.

....The colonization of the New World was a watershed in the odyssey that carried Homo sapiens from its African birthplace to the entire globe. The stories of the trailblazers who accomplished that feat deserve to be told. Their remains are the shared patrimony of all Americans and, indeed, all peoples everywhere....

That says it all!

The law is blatant thuggery passed by Liberals to make nice-nice with “native Americans.” Ever growing evidence that “native Americans” were no such thing — that the first Americans came from Europe and were later slaughtered by the ancestors of today’s “native Americans” — drive the PC crowd insane. Cultural anthropology is now as much of a “science” as social justice.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.


GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.