scholarly journals The repatriation of the Palaeoamericans: Kennewick Man/the Ancient One and the end of a non-Indian ancient North America

BJHS Themes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 79-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANN M. KAKALIOURAS
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
American Indian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
American People ◽  
Family Tree ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
Genetic Results

AbstractThis article considers the repatriation of some the most ancient human skeletal remains from the United States as two sorts of ending: their end as objects of scientific study, and their end as ancient non-American Indian settlers of North America. In the 1990s, some prominent physical anthropologists and archaeologists began replacing ‘Palaeoindian’ with the new category of ‘Palaeoamerican’ to characterize the western hemisphere's earliest inhabitants. Kennewick Man/the Ancient One, a nearly nine-thousand-year-old skeleton, convinced some anthropologists that contemporary Native American people (descendants of Palaeoindians) were not biologically related to the very first American colonists. The concept of the Palaeoamerican therefore denied Native American people their long-held status as the original inhabitants of the Americas. New genetic results, however, have contradicted the craniometric interpretations that led to these perceptions, placing the most ancient American skeletons firmly back in the American Indian family tree. This article describes the story of Kennewick Man/the Ancient One, the most famous ‘Palaeoamerican’; explores how repatriation has been a common end for many North American collections (Palaeoindians included); and enumerates what kind of ending repatriation may represent materially and ethically for anthropological science.

NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains and Cultural Objects

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Thornton ◽  
Jamie Geronimo Vela
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
The United States ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Cultural Patrimony ◽  
Sacred Objects

Hundreds of thousands—some say 1 million—Native American skeletal remains are held in institutions around the world. Probably half are in the United States. How many tribal objects are held is unknown, but the number is in the many millions. Hundreds of remains and thousands of objects are uncovered every year in the United States, mostly by construction projects. That Native American tribes and individuals have been disenfranchised from ancestral remains and important tribal objects is a terrible facet of American history; it is also of great discomfort to Native Americans. The situation is exacerbated as some remains and objects are from atrocities in American Indian history, e.g., the 1890 Wounded Knee and 1864 Sand Creek Massacres. Many objects are symbolic and sacred, necessary in Native American ceremonies and rituals. On occasion, repatriation requests were granted by museums; but Native Americans were virtually at their mercy. Native Americans lobbied for the eventual passage of two federal laws preventing further disenfranchisement from remains and objects, and requiring their repatriation. In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. It provided legal protection to Native American and Native Hawaiian graves. It also mandated repatriations to lineal descendants or federally recognized tribes of culturally affiliated human remains, funerary objects (objects associated with burials), objects of cultural patrimony, and sacred objects held in institutions receiving federal funding. A year earlier, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Act of 1989 had passed. It called for only the return of human remains and funerary objects held at the Smithsonian. (Given this act, the Smithsonian was excluded from NAGPRA; the NMAI Act was amended in 1996 to include objects of cultural patrimony and sacred objects.) State laws at this time were limited in scope or not applicable, and mostly referred to burials. The most well-known are Iowa’s Burial Protection Act of 1976, and Nebraska’s Unmarked Human Burial Site and Skeletal Remains Protection Act of 1989. Subsequent to NAGPRA, repatriation state laws were enacted, e.g., California developed a law along the lines of NAGPRA. Most relevant institutions now have created repatriation policies in line with, and sometimes going beyond, NAGPRA and state laws. While causation is hard to ascertain, these developments—especially NAGPRA—have influenced international repatriation, either within or between countries. Too, international events have influenced the United States, and the United States has repatriated to other countries, and they to the United States.

3D Dead

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3–4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Robbins Schug ◽  
Kristina Killgrove ◽  
Alison Atkin ◽  
Krista Baron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
The United States ◽  
3D Scanning ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
3D Scanners

Humans have interacted with the remains of our dead for aesthetic and ritual purposes for millennia, and we have utilized them for medical, educational, and scholarly pursuits for several centuries. Recently, it has become possible to use digital technologies such as 3D scanners and printers for reconstructing, representing, and disseminating bodies. At the same time, there is growing interest among academics and curators in taking a more reflexive approach to the ethical and social dimensions of conservation. This paper considers theoretical and practical aspects of ethics as they apply to the 3D scanning and printing of human skeletal remains for curation or dissemination, provides case studies from our work in the United States, and suggests guidelines for best practices.   Los seres humanos hemos interactuado con los restos humanos de nuestros muertos por razones estéticas y rituales por milenios. Asimismo, estos restos han sido utilizados para conducir investigaciones médicas, educativas, y académicas por varios siglos. Recientemente, con la ayuda de la tecnología digital de los escáneres e impresoras 3D ha sido posible reconstruir, representar, y difundir estos cuerpos. Al mismo tiempo, los académicos y los conservadores proponen ser más reflexivos al lidiar con las dimension eséticas y sociales del campo de la conservación. Este artículo considera los aspectos teóricos y prácticos de la ética de los escaneos e impresiones 3D de restos óseos humanos para su conservación y diseminación, aporta casos prácticos de nuestros trabajos investigativos en los Estados Unidos como ejemplos, y sugiere normas para una práctica adecuada. 

Intolerance toward Native American Religions

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
John Corrigan ◽  
Lynn S. Neal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Native American Religions

Settler colonialism was imbued with intolerance towards Indigenous peoples. In colonial North America brutal military force was applied to the subjection and conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. In the United States, that offense continued, joined with condemnations of Indian religious practice as savagery, or as no religion at all. The violence was legitimated by appeals to Christian scripture in which genocide was commanded by God. Forced conversion to Christianity and the outlawing of Native religious practices were central aspects of white intolerance.

Native American Ethnicity: a View from the British Museum1

2000 ◽  
Vol 73 (182) ◽  
pp. 221-238
Author(s):  
J. C. H. King
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native Identity ◽  
Native North America ◽  
American Ethnicity

Abstract Identity in Native North America is defined by legal, racial, linguistic and ethnic traits. This article looks at the nomenclature of both Indian, Eskimo and Native, and then places them in a historical context, in Canada and the United States. It is argued that ideas about Native Americans derive from medieval concepts, and that these ideas both constrain Native identity and ensure the survival of American Indians despite accelerating loss of language.

scholarly journals “You Can't Say You're Sovereign if You Can't Feed Yourself”: Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in American Indian Community Gardening

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hoover
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Tribal Culture ◽  
American Indian Community

Within the context of the broader food sovereignty literature, and with a specific focus on notions of America Indian sovereignty, this article explores how members of thirty-nine different Native American community farming and gardening projects in the United States describe and define food sovereignty, as both concept and method. This article further distinguishes how principles of food sovereignty are being operationalized in the broader goals of promoting community health, sustainability, and local economic systems, and of reclaiming and maintaining tribal culture.

scholarly journals Tribal child welfare practice in the United States

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Byers ◽  
Dallas Pettigrew
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
State Compliance ◽  
Tribal Nations

Tribal child welfare in what is now the United States encompasses hundreds of tribal nations engaged in a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Please note that tribal, native, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native American are used interchangeably. Each tribe has distinct languages and customs. Within this diversity the factors that bind tribal nations to make a discussion of tribal child welfare meaningful are communal childrearing, colonization, trauma, contemporary disparities, sovereign status, and detrimental federal policies. Communal cultures provide children with multiple caregivers that assure the youngest are cared for daily. This web of relations combined with high levels of respect for children within the life cycle guarded against abuse and neglect prior to colonization. The establishment of the United States, and federal-level assimilation policies created immense trauma and cultural disruption for tribal nations and child welfare. Government-funded boarding schools and the practice of placing tribal children in non-native homes are two specific assimilation practices that explicitly targeted children. The ability of tribal nations to protect their children and maintain their cultures has been strengthened by a federal law designed to give tribal nation’s a stake in child welfare proceedings. Many tribes now have their own child welfare programs, courts, and other services. State compliance with the law is an ongoing issue. Increased collaboration, respect for the sovereign status of tribes, and evaluation with clear implications for noncompliance needs to ensue are necessary to fully empower tribal child welfare. In addition, truth and reconciliation related to the separation of children from family and culture based on past federal policy practices is necessary to foster communal and generational healing for American Indian and Alaska Native peoples.

scholarly journals American culture: A sociological perspectives

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Andrew Woods
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Latin American ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Way ◽  
Asian Pacific

The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western origin but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Pacific Island, and Latin American people and their cultures. American culture encompasses the customs and traditions of the United States. The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot" in which different cultures have contributed their own distinct "flavors" to American culture. The United States of America is a North American nation that is the world's most dominant economic and military power. Likewise, its cultural imprint spans the world, led in large part by its popular culture expressed in music, movies and television. The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western culture (European) origin and form but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American people and their cultures. The American way of life or simply the American way is the unique lifestyle of the people of the United States of America. It refers to a nationalist ethos that adheres to the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Generational Locus of Multiraciality and Its Implications for Racial Self-Identification

2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Morning ◽  
Aliya Saperstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Indian ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black American ◽  
Family Tree ◽  
Theoretical Rationale ◽  
Empirical Demonstration

Estimates of the size of the multiracial population in the United States depend on what prompts people to report multiple races on censuses and surveys. We use data from the 2015 Pew Survey of Multiracial Adults to explore how racial self-identification is shaped by the generational locus of an individual’s multiracial ancestry—that is, the place in one’s family tree where the earliest interracial union appears. We develop the theoretical rationale for considering generational heterogeneity and provide its first empirical demonstration for U.S. adults, by estimating what shares of the population identify multiracial ancestry in their parents’ or grandparents’ generation, or further back in their family tree. We find that multiracial generation is related to—and likely confounded with—the ancestry combinations that individuals report (e.g., white-Asian, black–American Indian). Finally, we show that later generations are less likely than their first-generation counterparts to select multiple races when they self-identify. Consequently, we argue that generational locus of multiracial ancestry should be taken into account by demographers and researchers who study outcomes for multiracial Americans.

Women and Religion in Colonial North America and the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Brekus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Catholic

Historically, women in colonial North America and the United States have been deeply influenced by their religious traditions. Even though world religions like Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam are based on scriptural traditions that portray women as subordinate to men, women have made up the majority of most religious groups in America. While some Americans have used religious arguments to limit women’s legal, political, and economic rights, others have drawn on scripture to defend women’s dignity and equality. Women’s religious beliefs have shaped every aspect of their lives, including their choices about how to structure their time, their attitudes toward sexuality and the body, and their understanding of suffering. Unlike early American Catholic women, who saw their highest religious calling as the sisterhood, most white colonial women identified their primary religious vocation as ministering to their families. In the 19th century, however, white Protestant women become increasingly involved in reform movements like temperance, abolitionism, and women’s suffrage, and African-American, Native American, Asian-American, and Latina women used religious arguments to challenge assumptions about white racial supremacy. In the 20th century, growing numbers of women from many different religious traditions have served as religious leaders, and in some cases they have also demanded ordination. Despite these dramatic changes in religious life, however, many religiously conservative women opposed the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s and early 1980s, and in the first decades of the 21st century they have continued to identify feminism and religion as antithetical.

US Indian Policy, 1783–1830

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Nichols
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Indian Children ◽  
American Indian Policy ◽  
Frontier Settlers

From 1783 to 1830, American Indian policy reflected the new American nation-state’s desire to establish its own legitimacy and authority, by controlling Native American peoples and establishing orderly and prosperous white settlements in the continental interior. The Federalists focused on securing against Native American claims and attacks several protected enclaves of white settlement (Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee), established—often violently—during the Revolutionary War. They used treaties to draw a legal boundary between these enclaves and Indian communities, and annuities and military force to keep Indians on their side of the line. The Jeffersonian Republicans adopted a more expansive plan of development, coupled with the promotion of Native American dependency. Treaty commissioners persuaded chiefs to cede road easements and riverfront acreage that the government used to link and develop dispersed white settlements. Meanwhile, the War Department built trading factories whose cheap merchandise would lure Indians into commercial dependency, and agents offered Indian families agricultural equipment and training, hoping that Native American farmers would no longer need “extensive forests” to support themselves. These pressures helped engender nativist movements in the Old Northwest and southeast, and Indian men from both regions fought the United States in the War of 1812, reinforcing frontier settlers’ view that Indians were a security threat. After this war’s end, the United States adopted a strategy of containment, pressuring Indian leaders to cede most of their peoples’ lands, confining Indians to enclaves, financing vocational schooling for Indian children, and encouraging Native peoples voluntarily to move west of the Mississippi. This policy, however, proved too respectful of Indian autonomy for the frontier settlers and politicians steadily gaining influence in the national government. After these settlers elected one of their own, Andrew Jackson, to the presidency, American Indian policy would enter a much more coercive and violent phase, as white Americans redefined the nation-state as a domain of white supremacy ethnically cleansed of indigenous peoples.

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