Posted on 01/29/2024 8:03:24 AM PST by bitt
American historian Howard Zinn once said, “If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything.”
The American Museum of Natural History announced Friday that it will immediately close two halls showcasing Native American cultural artifacts in order to comply with updated federal regulations on repatriating indigenous remains and sacred objects to tribes, according to NBC News.
The museum is shutting down its Hall of Eastern Woodlands and Hall of the Great Plains, which together contain thousands of items related to Native American tribes. Smaller objects across other galleries will also be removed from public view, according to The New York Times.
The American Museum of Natural History will close 2 major halls exhibiting Native American objects. Leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on items. pic.twitter.com/WEMnLcAS5P
— Lakota People’s Law Project (@lakotalaw) January 26, 2024
In December, President Biden signed an executive order directing new support for tribal self-governance. One action called on the Interior Department to finalize updates to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which President George H. Bush signed into law in 1990.
That federal law enabled tribes to reclaim ancestral remains and cultural artifacts removed from tribal lands.
The revised rules require museums and federal agencies to get tribal consent before displaying Native American human remains and sacred objects.
The new regulations give museums five years to return all Native American remains in their collections and also require them to defer to tribes’ oral histories when determining which groups to send sacred cultural patrimony items back to, according to The Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Remove the Indian, keep the land! Typical paleface behavior.
“That federal law enabled tribes to reclaim ancestral remains and cultural artifacts removed from tribal lands”
Good. Unless there is documentation or valid oral history that artifacts were sold or freely given the removal of them was theft. As for remains, they should have been returned a long time ago. If the tribes consent to the placement of artifacts or remains in museum that should be the deciding factor.
Think of this like artifacts stolen during WWII by the Nazis being returned to rightful owners.
“You’d think that if all that stuff was so sacred, they’d have taken better care of it and not scattered it all over the landscape or sold it.”
I guess it didn’t matter before Whitey showed up. Indians allegedly had no concept of property ownership, but they certainly warred among the tribes over the use of it.
Probably not but if objects considered sacred to him were stolen by Nazis he would have every right to put in a claim to have those returned.
No problem with this.
Get permission to exhibit.
Of course, if tribes don’t give future consent, people won’t be able to see these items and learn their history.
This happened on a local level a few years ago. A nearby band asked for and had returned several items that were on exhibit. They’ve declined to loan the items for future exhibits.
The local historical society was gracious about having them to previously exhibit, and they’ve also been fair and honest when they tell visitors that the band has declined to loan items for future exhibit.
That does not mean they did not have objects they considered valuable and even sacred.
I agree. How would any of us like seeing the bones of our ancestors just piled willy nilly on shelves in some storeroom?
American exhibits aren’t sacred enough to be locked away.
Did the term “two red cents” originally refer to Indian headpennies?
Museum of Natural History could’ve avoided sudden shutdown of Native American exhibits if it made effort to ‘reconcile’ with tribes: leader
If it involves the tribes, it involves money.
Agreed, but in that comment I was talking about land. I wonder if the arrowheads and awls found on my family ranch are sacred. The piles of worked flint? The mother-stones?
I think I’ll declare my old family ranch to be sacred. I don’t have pay taxes on “sacred”, right?
My grandfather was an old line Democrat who would never, ever consider voting Republican. Just after the Reagan Presidency, he and I would get into some great arguments.
One day, my wife and I were going to visit him. he was in his late 80’s. She told me in no uncertain terms not to argue with him lest we cause a heart attack.
About an hour later, as his front door closed, I looked at her and said “He started it!”
In actuality, he enjoyed the verbal sparring, as did I.
So the law has been kicking around since 1990 and they couldn’t manage to get permission from any of the tribes for this stuff? And now they’re finally going to comply? Sounds like a real lazy bunch of museum administrators. The U of A natural history museum has tons of Indian stuff, all with plaques about tribal permission. It’s not that tough.
So now honoring American Indians (I’m a “native American” Cuz I was born here) is prohibited. Good to know.
My immediate reaction to the use of that Zinn quote was ROFLMAO. He was right, though. And he used that fact to indoctrinate a whole generation of historically naive children from his perch at Boston University. The same place that gave AOC her “economics degree”. A good friend actually took his undergrad course, and 45 years later he still hasn’t recovered.
Everything east of the Mississippi River, was tribal lands.
Everything.
Most of that land was taken by treaty.
A lot of land west of the Mississippi River, was taken by conquest - no treaty.
There are many - tens of thousands of - arrowheads that centuries of people have collected with little to no indication of the original owners.
There are untold numbers of relics collected by hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries . . . with unknown numbers of, and degrees of, provenance - chains of custody.
There are likely several tens of thousands of items that ARE COPIES - NOT ORIGINALS - that were sold to tourists.
Hundreds of thousands of silver works produced - SOLD - and NOT the property of anybody but the buyers, no matter what the federal government and the Big White Father Biden say.
Indians took scalps, and so did a lot of other people. Sometimes a mark might truthfully indicate provenance, but there is nobody to confirm what is a true mark and who created it.
So . . . as the stuff in the nation’s attics, is return to the tellers of tales and whatever lore recalled (especially in New York State?), what are the Indians going to do with all that stuff?
Try and sell it . . . AGAIN?!
The only thing of value, other than proven sacred burial grounds, is the land.
The lies told by the liberals all trying to signal their virtuosity in forcing the tribes to reclaim whatever the liberals define to be “Native American Property,” are worthless.
Some Indians will be able to prove, that a piece of Wisconsin was taken because of the deceipt of lawyers involved in writing the treaty.
Now, in New Mexico, there are areas that were “granted” back to the Indians - but I have forgotten the technical details why . . . Yet, the Indians promptly cut down dozens of old solid trees that shaded the land, because a few of the tribal leaders - DEMOCRATS - figured on building a casino.
The result was, no casino . . . and no shade. “Science.”
Yeah. Sarcasm.
No doubt, some items and properties returned, are of great importance to some Indians.
By the way, “Chief” is not an Indian name - it can be traced back to Scotland and several other leadership positions.
BTW2, when Indians discovered steel knives at trading posts, the Indians quickly abandoned their stone knives.
Nope. Just the idiot liberal ones or the ones needing attention. But I repeat myself.
Unconstitutional: any person or institution has the right to make exhibits under the 1st Amendment, and any law mandating return is invalid without compensation.
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