[_redbird_]

Originally Posted by karibear

I wasn't referring just to the petroglyphs, and I certainly wasn't intending to sound as if I were writing anyone off!

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like you were writing anyone off either. That is one of the drawbacks of communicating online. I apologize if it came across that way.

[karibear]

Originally Posted by redbird4848

If you show you are of good heart and not just looking to write a book or a college term paper, or whatever they will eventually open up. Sometimes its how we carry OURSELVES that determines whether or not they speak to us.

This bit made me laugh - not because it's funny, but because it's so utterly unlikely that anyone could or would mistake me for a college student! I'm on the downhill side of 60, and retired!

[_redbird_]

Yeah, same here. My term paper days are way over. I just threw that in because there was a time back in the Dances With Wolves craze when it became "hip" to be Indian that a lot of academic type people were going to the reservations and doing papers.

I had a friend who did that on petroglyphs and medicinal herbs. And the consensus was if a person is picking someone's brain for publication, they would get nada. If a person was genuinely interested, then it was okay.

I went with her once and to tell the truth, I got more from spending three hours with this one elder than I did spending 6 months with a therapist.

The elderly gentleman was so cool. He still gathered herbs and plants. I love those kinds of experiences. Beats the heck out of reading a book.

My worst experience in academia was dealing with archeologists. My professor had no problem picking apart a grave for "academic purposes". In fact, she enjoyed being callous over it. I think a lot of the younger profs at least TRIED to be sensitive to Native beliefs. I ended up doing a lot of museum archival work with archeology collections.

Did you know there were literally thousands of Native AMerican human remains in museums? And most just sat on shelves. Some estimate it was over a million. I worked in that realm and that is how I got to know a lot of tribal peoples from OK, NM, and TX. Loved working with tribal people on cultural stuff.

[karibear]

Doesn't it kind of make you wonder about the state of mind of people who go around collecting human remains of any sort? I can see hunting dinosaur bones, but people bones? I don't THINK so!

As for the archeologists, they're just people. I rather think the ones who live in their ivory towers are a lot less in touch with reality than those who actually do field work.

[peggydavis]

People collect the human remains because they are curious about those people. We are very curious about Egyptian mummies, for example. I don't know why a million NA remains had to be collected. Greed, in a way. Every sacred object they could get their hands on was also collected.

[_redbird_]

Scientific study has its place, but when the archeologists start raiding burial grounds to sell them to Europe is where I draw the line.

When NAGPRA was passed, a lot of latent racism came to the forefront.

Educated Native Americans began to question the ethics of science on internet forums and it got ugly. The collection and storage of human remains in museums was just a whole chapter in America history that no one knew about.

[peggydavis]

Some museums are still trying to hang on to their collections, example being UC at Berkeley of all places.

[karibear]

Originally Posted by mkfarnam

I guess that's where "The Bible Belt" comes in.

And I grew up right smack in the middle of the buckle.

I never much cared for missionaries, not that I don't think a lot of them do great and important work, but it's always seemed to me that they'd do better to lead by example rather than by words from a pulpit. I had a cousin who was considerably older than me who married a missionary - at least, that's what they ended up doing. They spent a little over 11 months each year on a reservation in either NM or AZ, then would come back home with their hands out to the church. Since the church sponsored them, and it was a small non-affiliated, non-denominational church, there were fund raisers going on all year to support their ministry. There probably weren't more than a couple hundred people all together, and a lot of them were members of large families, but they were still expected to contribute. I just didn't think it was fair.

[karibear]

Originally Posted by peggydavis

People collect the human remains because they are curious about those people. We are very curious about Egyptian mummies, for example. I don't know why a million NA remains had to be collected. Greed, in a way. Every sacred object they could get their hands on was also collected.

Mummies fascinate me, too, and I have no problem with historic/prehistoric archeology. The difference there is that there aren't any contemporaries or closely related heirs to any of the mummies. I can't explain it, but a body preserved by natural mummification in a desert or a peat bog over thousands of years doesn't bother me, but when the children/grandchildren/great gandchildren are still alive and kicking, it's just plain grave robbing.

[karibear]

I have to make a comment here.

I've been a newsgroup junkie for over 10 years, from the days when usenet was separate and browsers automatically brought up any newsgroups you might want to see. Then there was Deja and RemarQ, and things started getting ugly. Attacks got personal, people started flame wars that went on for literally years, and there werer some real psychopaths out there trying to stir things up. I finally quit, it's hard enough for me to read things without suffering through 100+ posts by some idiot telling all and sundry how to commit suicide and encouraging them to do so.

Now I limit myself to a few blogs, a couple fan sites, and life is so much more pleasant. And I'd like to say that this is one of the most diverse groups I've come across, yet you are all considerate, thoughtful, and polite to each other. It's one thing for a group to have a single common interest and be upbeat and cheerful and polite, it's quite another for a large cross section to do the same thing.

Applause for all of you.