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Arizona Daily Wildcat

Currently, there are the remains of over a thousand Native Americans in storage at ASU, being fought over by scientists and various Arizona tribes. The tribes wish to claim these remains and bury them, and the researchers at ASU think the skeletons are of too high a scientific significance to be turned over. Native Americans and archeologists might never be able to agree about what to do with remains of the ancestors. The scientists want to use these fossils as tools for uncovering the past, and the Native Americans wish to bury that past respectfully. After almost two hundred years of being "studied," Native Americans can hardly be blamed for doing everything in their power to keep these remains from scientists. Native Americans are demanding a respect for their past and culture that has never been given to them since the birth of this nation. So much of Native Americans' lives and control of their past has been taken from them; our nation must finally learn to respect what little of their past remains in their control.

I am not arguing that these remains would not be both enlightening and interesting to study. Much of our knowledge about the past comes from excavations. The data collected in this manner comes down to us in history books and in other educational avenues. Theories about the past are then formulated to give us new ways at which to look at our own times. Knowledge of our past is indeed important, but it is not without its political implications.

For hundreds of years, the people who have formulated the theories, written the history texts and done the excavations, have been white men. The way in which they saw the Native American cultures were not always flattering and the context for the data they collected was rarely ever supplied. Thus, the idea of the Native American as a savage was popularized and even supported through scientific research. The atrocities that were then visited upon the Native Americans are familiar to us all, and they were allowed to occur because the science of the time justified the subjugation of the inferior "savages." It is therefore not surprising that tribes would object to the studying of their descendants. They feel as though their ancestors should remain respectfully buried and currently have no desire to have them scientifically studied.

Native Americans also have a strong belief in a creation theory of their own and are not interested in hearing anything that would contradict that idea, or even expand on it. Though this kind of deliberate closed-mindedness may seem alien to many of us, if we were the people under the microscope being theorized about, we would also be uncomfortable. Scientists, after being allowed to study subjects without thought to those studies' impact, are having a difficult time adjusting to constraints put on their research. It must be frustrating to know there are so many remains that hold clues to a distant past, but that can never be studied. Perhaps these years will help future scientist to forge stronger relationships based on trust with the tribes they wish to study. If scientists gain a reputation of being respectful of the beliefs and knowledge they acquire, perhaps Native Americans in the future will be more willing to allow their ancestors to be studied.

I am not attacking science or archeology. Both of these disciplines are important to our intellectual growth. But sometimes, the sacrifices we make for other human beings are more important than the knowledge we can acquire for them. This is a matter of respect for the Native Americans. The remains in question do not really belong to researchers at ASU, but rather to the tribes claiming them. It is their decision to make regarding their ancestors and we must respect it. Out of a consideration for the Native American sentiments, we must surrender to them the physical remains of their pasts, no matter how much it pains us.