Museum Returns Native American Sacred Artifacts

Imagine trying to identify the owner of the objects in every lost and found collection across the University.

Harvard's Peabody Museum has to complete a task far more difficult.

As a result of a 1990 law, the museum is required to compile a detailed summary or inventory of the approximately eight million North American artifacts in its possession.

The law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), requires museums to identify and possibly return all human remains and many types of burial artifacts to the Native American tribes with which they originated.

But because cataloging and inventorying the more than eight million pieces in its collection is such a time consuming task, the museum may be forced to cut back on other activities to comply with NAGPRA.

The Act

NAGPRA requires the cataloging of all human remains and associated funerary objects, unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony, which are objects owned by the entire group or tribe and not by one individual or family.

Each museum or agency which falls under the act was required to produce a summary, rather than an item by item description, of unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects and cultural patrimony by November 1993.

By November 1995, the museums are required to produce a complete inventory, including cultural and geographic affiliation, of all human remains and associated funerary objects.

Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations have been granted access by request to records and data from any museum to determine the ownership and method of acquisition of all relevant objects.

Once a claim is established and a native group shows a right of possession, the museum must carry out the repatriation of the object or remains unless it can show that the objects were obtained by legal means. The museum pays for the inventory and the consultation with the tribes, and the tribes must pay for the repatriation of the object, said Barbara Isaac, the assistant director of the Peabody Museum and the coordinator of the repatriation project.

Disputes regarding right of possession or repatriation of objects are reviewed by a seven-member committee organized by the Secretary of the Interior.

Although the definitions and responsibilities are given in the act, many agree that NAGPRA is subject to many different interpretations.

According to an internal document provided by Isaac, various topics within the legislation remain unclarified.

For example, the document says conflicts can occur in such areas as what is meant by a "culturally unaffiliated" object and the problems of claims by unrecognized Native American groups.

Staffing and Finances

Compliance with NAGPRA is now dominating the Peabody Museum's budget.

"Repatriation is now the primary focus of activities in the museum, meaning that other worthy activities including collection care are not being met as they should be," said Lawrence J. Flynn, assistant director of the Peabody Museum.

The Peabody Museum originally estimated that it had about 800,000 Native American artifacts in its collection and estimated that compiling an inventory would take about five years, according to Isaac.

However, the estimate was based on an approximation based on the number of collections, Isaac said. The museum actually found as it inventoried the items that it had about eight million pieces in its collection, she said.

In order to process this larger project, the museum now has seven or eight full-time employees working on the NAGPRA project as well as other museum staff, Isaac said.

Peabody Museum Director David Pilbeam said just over one-third of the total staff was working on the NAGPRA project.

This year, Harvard has given $250,000 to fund the NAGPRA project which brings its total over the last five years to just more than $1 million, according to Peabody Museum documents.

While the museum had originally estimated that the inventory project would be completed by 1995, Isaac said she expected the full inventory would take at least five to ten more years.

The Peabody Museum has applied for a five year extension of the deadline on the NAGPRA inventory, which they are likely to get because the law allows for extensions as long as a museum can demonstrate that it has made a "good faith effort" towards its inventory project.

But future University funding of the project remains in question.

"Major issues are raised by the probable non-continuance of support from the president's office," an internal document reads.

"At the moment, a very large fraction of the support for the program comes from special funds from the central administration who have been extremely generous," Pilbeam said. "Their support cannot continue indefinitely in the future."

"There are likely to be some impacts on our ability to perform other museum activities that I think are important," he said. "I am not optimistic because resources are scarce and it is difficult to raise money for the museum."

Pilbeam said if the funding from the University was cut, he would probably decrease the size of the repatriation effort, but if he had to maintain the current pace of the repatriation effort, he would have to cut back on the museum's other activities.

"If I had to shift them, we would do less publication or have less staff to deal with the use of collection for teaching or for faculty research or visitors' research," he said.

"This is the law," Isaac said. "Somehow or other, we have to meet with it."

And other museums are facing the burden of similarly large costs for compliance with NAGPRA.

"The Berkeley campus has funded for a period of time...compliance with the NAGPRA," said Fritz Stern, NAGPRA coordinator at the University of California at Berkeley. "Between the spring of 1993 and June 30, 1996 Berkeley will have spent $300,000 per year for the three years."

The Repatriation Effort

According to documents from the museum, the Peabody Museum has human remains of about 12,000 individuals, about 40,000 associated funenary objects and about 400,000 unassociated funerary objects.

"We are in full and enthusiastic compliance [with NAGPRA]," Pilbeam said. "We have been in contact with some tribes and initiated the repatriation of some material and human remains before we were legally required to do so."

He said the Peabody Museum has repatriated three collections of human remains, including 50 individuals to the Narragansett in 1972, before NAGPRA, six individuals to the Northern Cheyenne in 1993 and 167 individuals to Hawaii in 1994.

"All I know is that they were human skeletons representing the remains of individuals," he said.

Isaac said the condition of the human remains vary by individual.

"Some we have a complete skeleton," she said, "sometimes just one bone."

Isaac said the museum has also repatriated some artifacts as well.

The Peabody Museum returned a sacred pole to the Omaha in 1989 and a war god artifact to the Zuni, according to Isaac.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, a member of the Hui Malama group of native Hawaiians, said his organization's experiences with the Peabody Museum were positive.

Hui Malama, a group caring for the ancestors of Hawaii, was the recipient of the 167 human remains from the Peabody Museum.

"We approached [Peabody Museum] by writing a letter requesting any information about Hawaiian remains," Ayau said. "The museum responded that they [had remains, so we began the] consultation process."

"We visited the museum in 1993 to consult with them about the inventory of our ancestors' remains," he said. "We then returned in 1994 to repatriate them."

Ayau said the remains were flown to Hawaii and were turned over to the families of the individuals for reburial.

The Law and Research

Some anthropologists and archaeologists have questioned whether returning the items is the best action to take because academics will no longer be able to study the objects.

But others respond that returning the objects is the right thing to do.

Ayau, who actually helped draft the NAGPRA law while working for Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), said "the law recognizes a fundamental right of any society to his right to the dead."

"I believe that reburial of remains that were taken without consent of the families is the right thing to do," Ayau said.

"There is a conflict between those who wish to curate these remains and study them and those who would rather rebury [them]," he said. "For us the bottom line is whether one is family and if so they have the right to determine proper treatment."

Isaac said she agreed that the human remains should be returned to the tribes, but thought that it could hinder further academic work in the field.

"If all the objects went back, archaeologists may lose much of the documentation for prehistory," she said. "I don't know how that will be resolved."

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Carole A.S. Mandryk said, "here are a number of items that were essentially stolen from particular groups of people and it's only fair for them to ask for them to be returned."

"I suppose if somebody was in a big rush to get their stuff back and it had never been studied that would really be too bad," Mandryk said. "On the other hand, it seems there is an awful lot of things that sat around various museums, I don't know about Peabody in particular, for years and years and no one-studied them anyway."

And associate director of the Peabody Museum Flynn, said he thought the preservation issue didn't apply to the repatriation act.

"The preservation issue is irrelevant to the repatriation act," he said. "The tribes have the right to have that object [and] the tribe will do with it what they wish."

"If the tribe is happy to leave the object in the museum, this sort of compromise position is exactly what we would like to foster," he said, "but the judgmental view of what is better for the object is irrelevant when we talk about repatriation.

The act is also beneficial because it has created greater dialogue between Native American groups and museums, Flynn said.

"The legislation has promoted interactions between museums and tribes on a faster track than had been going prior to the legislation so the net result is more interaction and new interaction with the still evolving culture of native peoples," Flynn said.

"The act is facilitating a real dialogue that a lot of museums hadn't been involved in before," said Stern, the Berkeley NAGPRA coordinator.

But Pilbeam was not concerned with the overall impact of the act.

"At the moment, my own personal opinion is that with the exception of human remains, far fewer objects will be returned than originally thought."

He said he believed based on his observations that many tribes have quite narrow definitions of the relevant categories of objects.

"While we might consider a set of objects sacred and include those in a list we send to the tribe, the tribe might view only a few as being sacred from their perspective," Pilbeam said. "But they might also decide that an object is sacred that we might not have included on the list and that comes out on a visit. It seems at the moment that fewer objects are affected than anticipated."

Pilbeam said there were instances where a tribe had agreed to leave an object with the museum rather than repatriate it.

According to Isaac, the Zuni decided to leave some human remains with the Peabody Museum because burial is by clan and each clan has different customs. Since the specific clan could not be identified from the remains, the Zuni decided not to repatriate those remains.

Disputes

Some have said the lack of clarity in the law may lead to disputes over what artifacts need to be repatriated.

Ayau said his group had a dispute with the Hearst Museum at the University of California at Berkeley.

"The Federal Repatriatism Process requires an identification of the human remains. The Hearst Museum did not believe the two sets of remains were native Hawalian and therefore refused to return them," the said.

"Our group raised this dispute with the Review Committee stating that the evidence established the remains were Native Hawailan," Ayau said. "The committee ruled in our favor and the remains were reburied."

Pilbeam said that the Peabody Museum had not had any disputes.

Isaac said the tribes must demonstrate right of possession.

"You can't make a claim for something that is not yours," she said.

"Somebody shouldn't think that because they're an eighth Navajo that they can back up a truck to a museum that happens to have Navajo artifacts," Stern said.DOUGLAS M. PRAVDAJOHN STUBBS (front), curatorial associate for archeology, and STEPHANIE LEE RITARI (rear), assistant for repatriation, work on cataloguing artifacts yesterday.

By November 1995, the museums are required to produce a complete inventory, including cultural and geographic affiliation, of all human remains and associated funerary objects.

Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations have been granted access by request to records and data from any museum to determine the ownership and method of acquisition of all relevant objects.

Once a claim is established and a native group shows a right of possession, the museum must carry out the repatriation of the object or remains unless it can show that the objects were obtained by legal means. The museum pays for the inventory and the consultation with the tribes, and the tribes must pay for the repatriation of the object, said Barbara Isaac, the assistant director of the Peabody Museum and the coordinator of the repatriation project.

Disputes regarding right of possession or repatriation of objects are reviewed by a seven-member committee organized by the Secretary of the Interior.

Although the definitions and responsibilities are given in the act, many agree that NAGPRA is subject to many different interpretations.

According to an internal document provided by Isaac, various topics within the legislation remain unclarified.

For example, the document says conflicts can occur in such areas as what is meant by a "culturally unaffiliated" object and the problems of claims by unrecognized Native American groups.

Staffing and Finances

Compliance with NAGPRA is now dominating the Peabody Museum's budget.

"Repatriation is now the primary focus of activities in the museum, meaning that other worthy activities including collection care are not being met as they should be," said Lawrence J. Flynn, assistant director of the Peabody Museum.

The Peabody Museum originally estimated that it had about 800,000 Native American artifacts in its collection and estimated that compiling an inventory would take about five years, according to Isaac.

However, the estimate was based on an approximation based on the number of collections, Isaac said. The museum actually found as it inventoried the items that it had about eight million pieces in its collection, she said.

In order to process this larger project, the museum now has seven or eight full-time employees working on the NAGPRA project as well as other museum staff, Isaac said.

Peabody Museum Director David Pilbeam said just over one-third of the total staff was working on the NAGPRA project.

This year, Harvard has given $250,000 to fund the NAGPRA project which brings its total over the last five years to just more than $1 million, according to Peabody Museum documents.

While the museum had originally estimated that the inventory project would be completed by 1995, Isaac said she expected the full inventory would take at least five to ten more years.

The Peabody Museum has applied for a five year extension of the deadline on the NAGPRA inventory, which they are likely to get because the law allows for extensions as long as a museum can demonstrate that it has made a "good faith effort" towards its inventory project.

But future University funding of the project remains in question.

"Major issues are raised by the probable non-continuance of support from the president's office," an internal document reads.

"At the moment, a very large fraction of the support for the program comes from special funds from the central administration who have been extremely generous," Pilbeam said. "Their support cannot continue indefinitely in the future."

"There are likely to be some impacts on our ability to perform other museum activities that I think are important," he said. "I am not optimistic because resources are scarce and it is difficult to raise money for the museum."

Pilbeam said if the funding from the University was cut, he would probably decrease the size of the repatriation effort, but if he had to maintain the current pace of the repatriation effort, he would have to cut back on the museum's other activities.

"If I had to shift them, we would do less publication or have less staff to deal with the use of collection for teaching or for faculty research or visitors' research," he said.

"This is the law," Isaac said. "Somehow or other, we have to meet with it."

And other museums are facing the burden of similarly large costs for compliance with NAGPRA.

"The Berkeley campus has funded for a period of time...compliance with the NAGPRA," said Fritz Stern, NAGPRA coordinator at the University of California at Berkeley. "Between the spring of 1993 and June 30, 1996 Berkeley will have spent $300,000 per year for the three years."

The Repatriation Effort

According to documents from the museum, the Peabody Museum has human remains of about 12,000 individuals, about 40,000 associated funenary objects and about 400,000 unassociated funerary objects.

"We are in full and enthusiastic compliance [with NAGPRA]," Pilbeam said. "We have been in contact with some tribes and initiated the repatriation of some material and human remains before we were legally required to do so."

He said the Peabody Museum has repatriated three collections of human remains, including 50 individuals to the Narragansett in 1972, before NAGPRA, six individuals to the Northern Cheyenne in 1993 and 167 individuals to Hawaii in 1994.

"All I know is that they were human skeletons representing the remains of individuals," he said.

Isaac said the condition of the human remains vary by individual.

"Some we have a complete skeleton," she said, "sometimes just one bone."

Isaac said the museum has also repatriated some artifacts as well.

The Peabody Museum returned a sacred pole to the Omaha in 1989 and a war god artifact to the Zuni, according to Isaac.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, a member of the Hui Malama group of native Hawaiians, said his organization's experiences with the Peabody Museum were positive.

Hui Malama, a group caring for the ancestors of Hawaii, was the recipient of the 167 human remains from the Peabody Museum.

"We approached [Peabody Museum] by writing a letter requesting any information about Hawaiian remains," Ayau said. "The museum responded that they [had remains, so we began the] consultation process."

"We visited the museum in 1993 to consult with them about the inventory of our ancestors' remains," he said. "We then returned in 1994 to repatriate them."

Ayau said the remains were flown to Hawaii and were turned over to the families of the individuals for reburial.

The Law and Research

Some anthropologists and archaeologists have questioned whether returning the items is the best action to take because academics will no longer be able to study the objects.

But others respond that returning the objects is the right thing to do.

Ayau, who actually helped draft the NAGPRA law while working for Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), said "the law recognizes a fundamental right of any society to his right to the dead."

"I believe that reburial of remains that were taken without consent of the families is the right thing to do," Ayau said.

"There is a conflict between those who wish to curate these remains and study them and those who would rather rebury [them]," he said. "For us the bottom line is whether one is family and if so they have the right to determine proper treatment."

Isaac said she agreed that the human remains should be returned to the tribes, but thought that it could hinder further academic work in the field.

"If all the objects went back, archaeologists may lose much of the documentation for prehistory," she said. "I don't know how that will be resolved."

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Carole A.S. Mandryk said, "here are a number of items that were essentially stolen from particular groups of people and it's only fair for them to ask for them to be returned."

"I suppose if somebody was in a big rush to get their stuff back and it had never been studied that would really be too bad," Mandryk said. "On the other hand, it seems there is an awful lot of things that sat around various museums, I don't know about Peabody in particular, for years and years and no one-studied them anyway."

And associate director of the Peabody Museum Flynn, said he thought the preservation issue didn't apply to the repatriation act.

"The preservation issue is irrelevant to the repatriation act," he said. "The tribes have the right to have that object [and] the tribe will do with it what they wish."

"If the tribe is happy to leave the object in the museum, this sort of compromise position is exactly what we would like to foster," he said, "but the judgmental view of what is better for the object is irrelevant when we talk about repatriation.

The act is also beneficial because it has created greater dialogue between Native American groups and museums, Flynn said.

"The legislation has promoted interactions between museums and tribes on a faster track than had been going prior to the legislation so the net result is more interaction and new interaction with the still evolving culture of native peoples," Flynn said.

"The act is facilitating a real dialogue that a lot of museums hadn't been involved in before," said Stern, the Berkeley NAGPRA coordinator.

But Pilbeam was not concerned with the overall impact of the act.

"At the moment, my own personal opinion is that with the exception of human remains, far fewer objects will be returned than originally thought."

He said he believed based on his observations that many tribes have quite narrow definitions of the relevant categories of objects.

"While we might consider a set of objects sacred and include those in a list we send to the tribe, the tribe might view only a few as being sacred from their perspective," Pilbeam said. "But they might also decide that an object is sacred that we might not have included on the list and that comes out on a visit. It seems at the moment that fewer objects are affected than anticipated."

Pilbeam said there were instances where a tribe had agreed to leave an object with the museum rather than repatriate it.

According to Isaac, the Zuni decided to leave some human remains with the Peabody Museum because burial is by clan and each clan has different customs. Since the specific clan could not be identified from the remains, the Zuni decided not to repatriate those remains.

Disputes

Some have said the lack of clarity in the law may lead to disputes over what artifacts need to be repatriated.

Ayau said his group had a dispute with the Hearst Museum at the University of California at Berkeley.

"The Federal Repatriatism Process requires an identification of the human remains. The Hearst Museum did not believe the two sets of remains were native Hawalian and therefore refused to return them," the said.

"Our group raised this dispute with the Review Committee stating that the evidence established the remains were Native Hawailan," Ayau said. "The committee ruled in our favor and the remains were reburied."

Pilbeam said that the Peabody Museum had not had any disputes.

Isaac said the tribes must demonstrate right of possession.

"You can't make a claim for something that is not yours," she said.

"Somebody shouldn't think that because they're an eighth Navajo that they can back up a truck to a museum that happens to have Navajo artifacts," Stern said.DOUGLAS M. PRAVDAJOHN STUBBS (front), curatorial associate for archeology, and STEPHANIE LEE RITARI (rear), assistant for repatriation, work on cataloguing artifacts yesterday.