Peck, Danielle and Alex Seaborn
1998 Bones of Contention: Native American Archaeology. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Notes: VHS, color, 49 mins. BBC production; written/produced by Danielle Peck & Alex Seaborne; narrator, Sara Kestelman; photographer, Bill Megalos; videotape editor, Simon Coldrich; film editor, Christine Garner. More details: http://www.films.com/item.cfm?bin=7427 .Reviewed 26 Feb 2001 by:
Raymond A. Bucko <bucko@creighton.edu>
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USAMedium: Film/Video Subject
Keywords:Culture conflict - United States - History
Indians of North America - Antiquities
Indians of North America - Culture Archaeology - United States - History - 20th century
ABSTRACT: This documentary explores contemporary human rights, representation, property, colonialism, and legislation in historical context of Native American relationships with non-native society. A variety of voices and perspectives use narration, interviews, visual historical recreation, historical photographs, footage of contemporary reservations, museums and archaeological areas, and maps to bring a lively and challenging perspective.
This documentary (http://www.films.com/item.cfm?bin=7427) explores the essential and pressing contemporary issues of human rights, representation, cultural and human property, colonialism and legislation in the context of the historical relationships between Native American peoples and the now dominant majority culture. The film brings together a variety of voices and perspectives to carefully examine these issues in a lively and challenging manner through the use of narration, interviews, visual historical recreation, historical photographs, footage of contemporary reservations, museums and archaeological areas, and maps.Beginning with a visual tour of filing cabinets in a museum storage area, the narrator speaks of the tens of thousands of human Native remains collected in the name of science. In the context of the historic colonial intrusion of whites into North America, the film links genocidal activity with the collecting of scientific curiosities. The basic sides of the issue here are set up among scientists who hold that these bones contain vital scientific data useful to Natives and must be preserved for the good of all, Natives who do not want to be objects of scientific study but simply want their ancestors returned for burial, and those who counsel for a science respectful of Native traditions. The film builds on the nuances of all three of these arguments through statements of both Native persons and the scientific community.
The film moves among Native oral testimony, state and federal legislation, narratives from scientists explaining and contesting the usefulness of study of Native human remains with an overlay of historical recreations chronicling the collecting and use of Native human remains and cultural property. Beginning with the first law enacted to protect Native graves and associated cultural properties in Iowa in 1974, Maria Pierson, a Yankton Sioux, describes her role working with the state to enforce the law in a respectful manner. The film then moves on to the more stringent laws of California, explaining a specific case in which an archaeologist had to pay $18,000.00 in court costs because he was accused of deliberately collecting human bones. The case was thrown out of court but the individual decided to retire from archaeology, with his finances and zeal drained.
The film also explores the historical motivations for collecting bones and artifacts: to preserve what was considered by whites to be doomed cultures and to prove, through "scientific" measurements, the racial superiority of whites. Samuel Morton's quest to establish the science of racial biology (a disaster all around) moved private collectors and the government to collect in often macabre and chilling contexts the bodies of numerous Native peoples for the scientific community. Over 4,000 skulls were collected for this purpose.
Native author and cultural authority Suzan Harjo describes her work with museums to sensitize them to the Native perspective as a representative of the Congress of American Indians. In 1985 the Smithsonian human remains inventory revealed that they held 18,000 Native American remains. Through the activity of Native advocates, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 was passed. The film chronicles, in part, the consequences of this piece of federal legislation as well as state legislation in California and Iowa.
The film goes on to allow a variety of physical anthropologists make cases for the importance of these collections for scientific investigation. Ethne Berres of Wichita State University suggests human remains can be used to reconstruct migratory routes taken by Natives into North America through tracking genetic defects visible in bones. Repatriation would stop this study.
Bronco Lebeau, a Lakota (Sioux) provides a narration which simply rejects the whole idea of migration to the United States, stressing the importance of traditional Native cosmologies which contend that Natives were always here and originated, in the case of the Lakota, from caves in the Black Hills. Claiming the right to discard the dominant scientific paradigm, Bronco vehemently holds throughout the film the position that all bones, whether association with historical tribes can be proven (a requirement of NAGPRA) or not, should be returned to Native people.
The film goes on to investigate the problem of associating bones with historical tribes, a sometimes difficult or impossible task. Some scientists make the case that bones can be used to trace the origin and diffusion of diseases and, through paleopathology, understand the history of diseases in specific groups and help address contemporary health problems. Some natives remain unconvinced that there is any value in this study and the film points to the often contradictory findings within the scientific community over these types of analyses.
Returning to Iowa, the film documents the emotional impact of an incident of the desecration of a Native burial through the vivid words of Maria Pierson. The narrator points out that the protection preservation of a village and burial site discovered in the course of road construction cost the state 1.25 million dollars.
While much of the film contrasts the often strained relationship between Indians and some archaeologists (the narration of archaeologist Larry Zimmerman provides a tone more mediating and advocating for Native rights), the documentary moves on to the Omaha reservation to give a portrait of a successful collaboration between scientists and the Omaha Tribe. Tribal historian Dennis Hastings advocates for the scientific study of remains to allow Native peoples to reclaim important parts of their history. In this case, bones were examined, scientists provided their results in useful form to the tribe, and the remains were then respectfully buried.
Moving to another root issue in this controversy, the right to portray one's own history and culture, the film digresses into a description of the National Museum of the American Indian Act. Missing the point that the main museum is yet to be built on the mall in Washington DC, the film documents the important work of the satellite museum housed in the US Custom's House at the base of Manhattan. Suzan Harjo compellingly and humorously explains the importance of allowing Natives to portray their own cultures, and, equally important, of demonstrating that these cultures are not artifacts of the past but vital today. Finally, the film ends with contending voices in a situation which remains one of both collaboration and contention.
This is a very useful film for introducing individuals to the complicated and often tumultuous history revolving around the collection and preservation of Native remains. NAGPRA covers many aspects of Native American cultural and human remains and itself contains several problematic elements which are not covered in the film, particularly the repatriation of cultural artifacts, the difficulties of proving cultural association and identifying cultural provenance of poorly documented remains and artifacts, the cost of this act to museums and to Native peoples, the situation of Native individuals and groups not recognized as such by the federal government, and the problems of dispute among Native groups over cultural property. The film also omitted what is probably the most contentious event to be dealt with in NAGPRA's history, the discovery of "Kennewick Man" in 1996. The film's approach is largely qualitative. Beyond statistics of the numbers of bones formerly held by museums it does very little to statistically document the positive gains in repatriation made through NAGPRA and similar pieces of legislation.
Nevertheless, in the 49 minutes that the film runs, this documentary provides a human face and heart to the controversy and successfully orientates the viewer to the variety of positions--personal, scientific, and governmental--held in the ongoing debate over research on and repatriation of Native American remains. Unfortunately, beyond acknowledging the institutions and individuals which assisted in the creation of the documentary, the film provides no references or study guide outside itself.
For further information:
[Ed.: these links will not be maintained.]Individuals interested in NAGPRA can read the actual legislation and ancillary materials (including information on Kennewick Man) at the National NAGPRA database sponsored by the National Parks Service:http://www.cast.uark.edu/other/nps/nagpra/nagpra.html .
A site at San Francisco State University provides a helpful explanation of the terms used in the legislation:http://www.sfsu.edu/~nagpra/defs.htm .
Information on the state of Iowa's burial policies can be found at:http://www.uiowa.edu/%7eosa/burials.htm .
Further information on Kennewick Man can be obtained at a site sponsored by the Burke Museum of Natural History: http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/kman/exhibit.htm .
A second site on Kennewick Man, more frequently updated, is sponsored by the Tri-City Herald:http://www.kennewick-man.com/ .
The National Museum of the American Indian, which will eventually have three facilities (New York and Maryland are completed and the foundation of the Mall museum is being dug) has its own web site at: http://www.nmai.si.edu/ .
You can view the National Museum of the American Indian Act on the Smithsonian's American Museum of the American Indian web site: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/repatriation/nmaiact.htm .
The Smithsonian also keeps its own Repatriation web page which contains updates on progress made in complying with NAGPRA:http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/repatriation/ .
Finally, the National Congress of American Indians also maintains its own web site that provides an overview of the topic of reburial and repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural artifacts: http://www.ncai.org/ .
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Bucko, Raymond A.
2001 Review of Bones of Contention: Native American Archaeology. Anthropology Review Database. February 26. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1516, accessed February 10, 2010.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)