Posted on 01/27/2008 7:58:31 PM PST by blam
Ancient bones found at UCSD
By Tanya Sierra
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 27, 2008
Locked away in a museum safe near Escondido are perhaps the oldest skeletal remains found in the Western Hemisphere. More than 30 years after the relics were unearthed during a classroom archaeological dig at UC San Diego, the county's Kumeyaay tribes are fighting to reclaim the bones that anthropologists estimate are nearly 10,000 years old.
OVERVIEW
Background: What may be the oldest skeletal remains found in the Western Hemisphere were discovered during a classroom archaeological dig on UCSD property in 1976. Kumeyaay Indians are trying to have the relics returned.
What's changing: The Kumeyaay and a UC San Diego committee met last week to discuss the issue and lay out benchmarks the tribes would have to meet to have the remains repatriated.
The future: If the Kumeyaay can prove the remains belong to their ancestors, federal law says the bones must be returned.
“We think it's the oldest multiple burial in the New World,” said UCLA anthropology professor Gail Kennedy, who participated in the 1976 dig with a University of California San Diego professor. “We don't know anything about these people other than they lived on the coast and they were fishermen.”
The remains, which a UC consultant says have been dated between 9,590 and 9,920 years old, make them older than Kennewick Man – skeletal remains found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996. That collection, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle between American Indian tribes and archaeologists – dates back 9,300 years, scientists say.
Kennewick Man now rests in The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Washington state while the case is being litigated.
The Kumeyaay don't care how old the remains are. They simply want to put what they say are their ancestors to rest.
Getting in the way, they say, are garrulous explanations and bureaucracy.
The Kumeyaay also are at odds with UCSD over its plan to tear down University House and replace it with a new one. Tribes say it would further disturb their ancestors' burial ground.
According to members of the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee, which was created in 1998, about 29 remains were excavated in 1976 near University House, a home for the UCSD chancellor. Only three, in the safe near Escondido, are accounted for.
“We would like to bury those remains,” said Steve Banegas, chairman of the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee. “We no longer want them disrespected.
The odyssey
Although the intact skeletons are being stored only 30 miles from where they were found, the bones have twice been shipped across the country – in the same kind of boxes that hold frozen chicken in a grocery store, an Indian lawyer says – and have been stored in two San Diego County museums.
In 1976, anthropologists took a class to University House to participate in a dig, knowing skeletons had been dug up from the area in the past. They were amazed at what they found, Kennedy said.
A young man and an older woman were buried together. He was placed at her feet. Two of his fingers were severed and put in his mouth. Both of their skulls were cracked. The condition of the third skeleton was not as good.
Kennedy does not know what the severed fingers denoted but said some cultures amputate fingers as part of a ceremony.
Kennedy said she took the remains to UCLA, where she examined them for a year before giving them back to UCSD. Many details of where the bones have been for the past 32 years are missing.
In the past decade, they were sent to Balboa Park's Museum of Man before going to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2007.
They were sent back to the Museum of Man last year, then to the San Diego Archaeological Center near the San Diego Wild Animal Park, said Courtney Coyle, an attorney who represents a member of the repatriation committee.
The archaeological center is a museum and repository that was founded to care for collections that have never been curated after excavation, said Cindy Stankowski, the center's director.
The frequent moves have compromised the integrity of the remains, said Bernice Paipa, a delegate for the La Posta Band of Mission Indians.
“When we looked at the bones, they had some type of varnish on them,” she said. “They weren't even in curation boxes. They were in bubble wrap, and when they were being unrolled, one fell out and it hit the floor.”
Representatives from the Museum of Man and the Smithsonian did not return repeated phone calls.
Process of repatriation
About 20 delegates of various tribes from the Kumeyaay Nation, whose historical territory extended from San Diego and Imperial counties to 60 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, met Thursday with a university committee at the Barona Indian Reservation to reiterate their demands and learn why the parties responsible for the remains haven't turned them over yet. It's not a simple process.
The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires museums and federal agencies to return remains and artifacts to federally recognized tribes that request them.
Last April a UCSD committee was created to determine whether the remains are Kumeyaay. Margaret Schoeninger, a UCSD anthropology professor, is in charge of the group.
Bones can't be returned until Schoeninger's group tells a systemwide university repatriation committee whether it believes the remains are Kumeyaay. To do that, the university committee needs to meet certain standards of proof.
The Kumeyaay say they can prove their link to the remains but are insulted they are even being asked. The nation says it has been here since the beginning of time and the remains could not have belonged to any other people.
“I don't know what else we can prove short of someone rising from the ground or coming back from the dead and saying, 'Yes, these are my relatives,' ” Banegas told Schoeninger at the meeting.
The tribes gave a presentation outlining their centuries-long ties to the area, including maps and historic songs and poems referring to the La Jolla area.
“I know what you have here is what you firmly believe in,” Schoeninger said to Banegas, “but I need proof.”
The Kumeyaay committee has recovered 20 remains since it was formed. Dealing with UCSD has been the most difficult, Paipa said.
“We've never had this big of a problem,” she said. “We've even collected (remains) from the Smithsonian and it was not a big problem.”
The fight here is reminiscent of a battle in the Bay Area, where American Indians are trying to reclaim thousands of remains stored under the Hearst Gymnasium swimming pool at UC Berkeley. The remains are part of the University of California system's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
Schoeninger said she hopes to have a committee recommendation by March. The issue would then go before the UC system's repatriation committee. That committee would forward the matter to university Provost Rory Hume, who has the ultimate say.
“I can understand why they're frustrated,” Schoeninger said. “They just want their remains back.”
GGG Ping.
You are likely correct.
But, gathering these bones, and burying them, with government acknowledgment that they belong to their ‘tribe’, means a continuation of government funding.
It means they establish permanently that they ‘owned’ the North American continent, tribe by tribe, and we owe them for it.
Ironic, coming from a culture that professed to not being able to ‘own’ the land.
I guaran-damn-tee-ya that, if the Indians who now exist had ANY relationship with the ones represented by the bones, they were MORTAL FREAKIN' ENEMIES AND HAD NO USE FOR EACH OTHER! What a bunch of claptrap the present tribes raise with predictable regularity. It is a freakin' joke.
How curious, that once dead these humans become chattel! The profit motive overpowers the gift economy. Capitalism wins!
Why not? They'd make a great tourist attraction for their casinos.
Interesting post.
This tribe also in the eastern part of San Diego County has a large Resourrt Hotel and Casino along with Spas, restaurants, Golf courses, Tennis, etc.
Why do "native Americans" (among whom I have ancestors) figure they are the exception?
I remember reading a long time ago about a native group in that area, called the San Dieguito Indians, who were much more primitive than any of the other tribes of the area, and eventually disappeared.
The chances are there were many different tribes there over the millennia. The linguistic evidence might help determine how long the Kumayyay (sp) were there--who are they related to?
Currently the oldest such connection within California is 5,300 years (ancient skeleton to living lineal descendant).
There is an even older connection (10,300 years) between a southern Alaskan skeleton and living descendants stretching from southern California to the tip of South America.
Both of these seem to be associated with one or more early coastal migrations.
” Why do “native Americans” (among whom I have ancestors) figure they are the exception?”
One of my ancestors (grandmother) was a full blooded squaw from Oklahoma.
I actually think this came about when the government went on a rampage to try to eliminate the native tribes, instead of allowing them to live peacefully, which had been agreed to.
Then it turned into an opportunity for the selected ‘leaders’ of the tribes to gain wealth and power, while their tribesmen were confined to filth and squalor.
Once big money was involved, politics took over.
Hence, Indian owned gambling casinos.
“how we gonna help the Indians?”
“Uh... let’s help them build gambling casinos with free liquor!”
“I thought we were going to give them blankets and tents.”
“We no longer want them disrespected.”
Let’s see...if science could learn something important from examining the bones of one of my distant ancestors, I would oppose it because...
Anybody? I’m stuck.
I actually think this came about when the government went on a rampage to try to eliminate the native tribes, instead of allowing them to live peacefully, which had been agreed to.
I have to disagree with you here. In fact, I believe the opposite. I believe it's the advantage of victimhood.
I live near the New York-New Jersey border. There is a group in the Ramapo Mountains who claim to be an Indian tribe who intermarried with Hessian Soldiers during the Revolution. The last "chief" of the "tribe" took a name so ridiculous that it could only have come from a 1950's B western. Of course, they wanted recognition so they could build a casino. They have not been recognized by the feds, and, in my opinion, correctly. In a former career I had extensive contact with many of them and I believe the whole thing was made up. The local paper, of course, bought into the the whole thing.
It was probably just a tenured professor.
“You found out you were directly related to Hillary”
All right, now, that’s crossing a line.
There was case in Washington a few years ago of a skeleton found in Kennewick WA. The problem was, after reconstructing his face from the scull, he looked an awful lot lake a white guy. Looked a lot like Patrick Stewart actually.
The local tribes immediately sued to have all research stopped, and the remains handed over to them. Their argument was basically the same.
"Our people have been here since the beginning of time, so he must be one of our tribe. And how dare you question us anyway."
It did raise a lot of questions about human migration to North America, and put a serious dent in the claims of the Indians who have always claimed to be the "First Americans".
Google "Kennewick Man"
Here is the issue the article does not mention. Kennewick man was not native american genetically. White most likely, possibly japanese. OOpsie big problem if you are native american that claim that you were basically born out of the land... ( I am choctaw) all the sudden there is another older group of inhabitants in the land... then the question comes....
If we came second, can we be called “Native americans” ?
And if we survived and drove the real native americans off the land that really screws up our whole iron eyes coty ( Who was Sicilian not indian btw) victim image.
So tribes are trying to bury these guys as fast as possible.
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