UC-Davis Reminds Faculty Not to Use Native American Artifacts in Class Without Tribe’s Permission
“consult with tribes regarding traditional practices for the care of ancestral human remains and cultural items”
Does this rule apply to artifacts from all cultures? If not, why not?
The College Fix reports:
UC Davis: No using Native American artifacts in class without tribe’s permission
The University of California Davis reminded faculty Thursday that they cannot use Native American “cultural items” in their classrooms or research unless they have “tribal and university approval.”
In the message, Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan said the policy, which applies to the whole University of California System, aims to bring institutions into compliance with the state and federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Acts.
The two laws require public institutions to return “ancestral human remains and certain cultural items” in their collections to Native American and Hawaiian tribes, Croughan wrote.
“I write to raise awareness of the policy’s requirements, to affirm UC Davis’s commitment to these laws and to the guiding principles and procedures of the UC policy, and to enlist your assistance ensuring the campus fully complies with this important human rights and cultural heritage effort,” she wrote.
Croughan then outlined several key points of the policy, among them a restriction on using “cultural items” for educational purposes.
The policy “[p]rohibits the use of Native American or Native Hawaiian human remains or cultural items in research or instructional activities without tribal and university approval,” she wrote.
Although the laws originally were written to ensure ancestral remains and a limited number of sacred items be offered to tribes, recent policy changes and federal guidelines have expanded the scope. For example, earlier this year, UCLA announced plans to return not just human remains but also photo negatives of petroglyphs and hundreds of other items from its museum to a California tribe, The College Fix reported.
Another part of the policy allows tribes to dictate how universities store cultural items that have not been repatriated.
University employees must “consult with tribes regarding traditional practices for the care of ancestral human remains and cultural items,” the vice chancellor wrote.
Campuses also must “proactively review” their collections to make sure tribes have the opportunity to reclaim these items, Croughan wrote in her message.
This may mean visiting and talking to artifacts that tribes believe are “relatives and shouldn’t be left alone,” The Fix reported earlier this year.
Universities also are supposed to set up a reporting system where students and employees can complain if they believe someone is not treating a Native American object “properly,” according to the message.
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Comments
hmmm didnt “native” americans murder each other before the whts came?
yes
didnt “native” americans own blks as slaves?
yes
etc etc
Yes, they did-across the American continents and in all corners of them. I remember reading about their tribal wars and conquests in different classes in undergrad, and the one professor commenting that “warfare is universal, and the idea that the native peoples were peaceful and non-territorial is nonsense”. He would know, as he was an Apache descendant and knew the history of his tribe quite well.
Yes, they did. How is that relevant to this article? They and their descendants have rights, just as we all do regardless of how our ancestors behaved.
It’s racist to assume that Indians are “Indian Givers.”
In most of these cases they never gave these items; they were taken without permission.
Before people jump in to criticize this policy, if you’re Catholic ask yourself how you’d feel if a university had a consecrated host in its collection, and what policy you think it should have about how that artifact should be treated.
And certainly when it comes to human remains, what policy would you want it to have if those were your grandparents’ remains. I know that if any university had any remains of my ancestors I would know that they were stolen, and I would demand that they be properly reburied in a cemetery, preferably in the person’s original grave, but if that’s not possible then in a grave.