Possible change to grave protection law worries anthropologist
The addition of two words to the federal law that protects Native American graves will make scientific research into prehistoric civilization virtually impossible in this country, a UT anthropologist argued recently.
A small legislative change to the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 threatens to prevent archaeologists and anthropologists from studying any human remains found in the United States, said Richard Jantz, UT professor of anthropology, in a guest column in the Seattle Times.
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing 28 July 2005 on amending the law. If the change becomes law, Jantz said, "Congress could give modern Indian tribes control over remains of groups unrelated to them, or groups that left no descendents."
Jantz is one of eight archaeologists who sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for access to Kennewick Man, the 9,300-year-old skeletal remains found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996. The skeleton is one of the oldest and most complete found thus far in North America, researchers said. Four Indian tribes who sought to rebury the remains abandoned their efforts after a federal court ruled against them in 2004.
The scientists began to study the bones in early July, 2005. In a second phase of research, Jantz will start documenting the form and structure of the skull toward the end of the year.
The proposed amendment of the graves statute is a response to the controversy, Jantz said. The current version of NAGPRA makes the law applicable to remains "of or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to . . . the United States." Senate Bill 536 would add "or was" after the "is," broadening the protection of the law to include any burials, even those that significantly predate the formation of modern Indian tribes.
"Adding 'or was' places the material remains of the prehistory of all the unknown peoples of the American past under the exclusive domain of Indian tribes based simply on the geographic location of their present-day lands," Jantz said. "Public policy would automatically give tribes the authority to control all evidence that may contradict their particular religious beliefs and give tribes complete veto power over scientific research on those remains."
The change in the law would violate the First Amendment ban on the establishment of religion, Jantz said: "Public policy would sanction only a religious view and explanation of the continent's prehistory. Scientific access to and factual understanding of prehistory would be denied on tribes' religious ground."
"The North and South American continents were once empty of people," Jantz said. "Contrary to Indian religious beliefs that they have been here since the beginning of time, it is a fact that all humans, including the ancestors to modern Indians, came here from Eurasia."
A small legislative change to the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 threatens to prevent archaeologists and anthropologists from studying any human remains found in the United States, said Richard Jantz, UT professor of anthropology, in a guest column in the Seattle Times.
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing 28 July 2005 on amending the law. If the change becomes law, Jantz said, "Congress could give modern Indian tribes control over remains of groups unrelated to them, or groups that left no descendents."
Jantz is one of eight archaeologists who sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for access to Kennewick Man, the 9,300-year-old skeletal remains found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996. The skeleton is one of the oldest and most complete found thus far in North America, researchers said. Four Indian tribes who sought to rebury the remains abandoned their efforts after a federal court ruled against them in 2004.
The scientists began to study the bones in early July, 2005. In a second phase of research, Jantz will start documenting the form and structure of the skull toward the end of the year.
The proposed amendment of the graves statute is a response to the controversy, Jantz said. The current version of NAGPRA makes the law applicable to remains "of or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to . . . the United States." Senate Bill 536 would add "or was" after the "is," broadening the protection of the law to include any burials, even those that significantly predate the formation of modern Indian tribes.
"Adding 'or was' places the material remains of the prehistory of all the unknown peoples of the American past under the exclusive domain of Indian tribes based simply on the geographic location of their present-day lands," Jantz said. "Public policy would automatically give tribes the authority to control all evidence that may contradict their particular religious beliefs and give tribes complete veto power over scientific research on those remains."
The change in the law would violate the First Amendment ban on the establishment of religion, Jantz said: "Public policy would sanction only a religious view and explanation of the continent's prehistory. Scientific access to and factual understanding of prehistory would be denied on tribes' religious ground."
"The North and South American continents were once empty of people," Jantz said. "Contrary to Indian religious beliefs that they have been here since the beginning of time, it is a fact that all humans, including the ancestors to modern Indians, came here from Eurasia."
posted by Bill Dockery at 2:16 PM
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