Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains?

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Devon Abbott Mihesuah
U of Nebraska Press, 2000 M10 1 - 335 pages
In the past decade the repatriation of Native American skeletal remains and funerary objects has become a lightning rod for radically opposing views about cultural patrimony and the relationship between Native communities and archaeologists. In this unprecedented volume, Native Americans and non-Native Americans within and beyond the academic community offer their views on repatriation and the ethical, political, legal, cultural, scholarly, and economic dimensions of this hotly debated issue. While historians and archaeologists debate continuing non-Native interests and obligations, Native American scholars speak to the key cultural issues embedded in their ancestral pasts. A variety of sometimes explosive case studies are considered, ranging from Kennewick Man to the repatriation of Zuni Ahayu: da. Also featured is a detailed discussion of the background, meaning, and applicability of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as well as the text of the act itself.

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Contents

1 The Representations of Indian Bodies in NineteenthCentury American Anthropology
19
Reflections on the Cultural Background of Collecting
37
The Current Debate
57
The Looting of Americas Past
59
4 Why Anthropologists Study Human Remains
74
5 American Indians Anthropologists Pothunters and Repatriation Ethical Religious and Political Differences
95
A Pawnees Perspective
106
Legal and Ethical Issues
121
11 A Perspective on Ethics and the Reburial Controversy
200
Semiotic Sovereignty and the Debate over Kennewick Man
211
Studies in Resolution
237
13 Repatriation at the Pueblo of Zuni Diverse Solutions to Complex Problems
239
The Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia 19221980
266
A New Beginning Not the End for Osteological Analysis A Hopi Perspective
282
16 A New and Different Archaeology? With a Postscript on the Impact of the Kennewick Dispute
294
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
307

7 The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Background and Legislative History
123
8 Secularism Civil Religion and the Religious Freedom of American Indians
169
9 Ethics and the Reburial Controversy
180
10 Some Scholars Views on Reburial
190
Contributors
321
Source Acknowledgments
325
Index
327
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About the author (2000)

Devon A. Mihesuah is Professor of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University. She is the author or editor of several works, including Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about American Indians (Nebraska 1998) and The Roads of My Relations.

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