Society for American Archaeology

Indians, Archaeologists, and the FutureAuthor(s): Vine Deloria, Jr.Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp. 595-598Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/280822 .Accessed: 25/01/2015 19:05

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INDIANS, ARCHAEOLOGISTS, AND THE FUTURE

Vine Deloria, Jr.

The most recent encounter between American Indians and archaeologists, over the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (P.L. 101-601), has left hard feelings on both sides. From the Indian point of view, conflict will be inevitable so long as archaeologists maintain a stance that privileges their interests as scientists over all other human considerations. Nonetheless there are some areas where American Indians and archaeologists might develop cooperative ventures, for example, in the investigation of Precolumbian contact and diffusion, and in clarifying the status of sacred sites.

El encuentro mds reciente entre indios americanos y arque6logos en torno al Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (P.L. 101-601) ha dejado sentimientos agitados en ambas partes. Desde el punto de vista del indio, los conflictos serdn inevitables mientras los arque6logos pongan sus intereses como cientificos por encima de las demds consideraciones humanas. Sin embargo, existen algunas dreas en las que indios americanos y arque6logos podrian colaborar, por ejemplo, en la investigaci6n de contactos precolombinos y difusi6n y en la clarificaci6n de la naturaleza de sitios sagrados.

I realize that there is still considerable emotional baggage connected with the reburial issue that has been the most recent encounter between American Indians and archaeologists, and while I do not wish to reverse the progress made to date, I do feel a responsibility to represent some of the residual feelings that we see present in Indian minds across the country.

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) did finally come to a compromise position that supported the Indian efforts to get the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Public Law 101-601) passed, although not without some doing. Some representatives of the SAA feel that their final efforts of support should thereby mask what were some dreadfully arrogant attitudes earlier in the struggle. It may well be that we should simply move forward and make the best of the present situation, but we should also recognize that it will take more than a few repre- sentatives gathering together in civil conversations to erase the hard feelings on both sides of the issue.

Some of what I can gather as hard feelings from the Indian point of view stem back to the position that the scholarly community has enjoyed for the past century, i.e., that only scholars have the credentials to define and explain American Indians and that their word should be regarded as definitive and conclusive. Indians reject that attitude out of hand, and therefore when the reburial issue was first raised and we heard cries of "Science" and its sanctity given as the excuse for not considering the repatriation of Indian human remains and funerary objects, Indians naturally got their backs arched and resentments built quickly. We have been the objects of scientific investigations and publications for far too long, and it is our intent to become people once again, not specimens.

Science today has the edge in establishing itself as the primary source of truth because of the spectacular success of technology which, in the minds of the general public, is devised by people in white lab smocks busily providing us with more gadgets. Some scholars, particularly people in California, adopted the attitude that the Indian interest in human remains was purely political and had no emotional or religious substance while they, as scientists, were impartial and stood above the battle. Nothing could be further from the truth of course. Considering the vast financial and

Vine Deloria, Jr., Department of History, Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America, Campus Box 234, University of Colorado, Denver, CO 80309-0234

American Antiquity, 57(4), 1992, pp. 595-598. Copyright ? 1992 by the Society for American Archaeology

595

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596 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 57, No. 4, 1992

status rewards that the academic community bestows on its members, the chances are that scientists would lie, cheat, and steal in order to advance their personal careers. But the implication of crying out "Science" whenever reburial was mentioned was just the opposite -Indians were made to appear as if they were looting the scientific heritage instead of receiving back the remains of loved ones who had been illegally and immorally taken from them a century or more ago.

Conflicts will always arise, and increasingly so, as long as a substantial number of people in the academic establishment insist that their careers and research come before all other human consid- erations. This conflict is probably inherent in the nature of the academic enterprise itself. We have a society so wealthy that we can pay people outrageous salaries to become experts on butterfly wings, verb tenses of obscure Indian languages, and custodians of fragments of old pottery abandoned by earlier people. But in the extreme example, only the National Socialist German Workers' party of the 1 930s and 1 940s in Germany insisted they had the absolute right to use and dispose of human beings and human remains without giving any other people a voice in the proceedings.

I wish some of you could hear the descriptions of the medicine men who conducted the reburial ceremonies for some of the tribes. In these ceremonies the spirits of the people whose remains were being returned appeared. They asked surprisingly practical questions for spirits. Some wanted to know if it was possible to get the indelible ink removed from their bones. Others said their remains had no feet or no head and they wondered at the kind of people who would remove these parts of the body and what they thought human life was. I don't much care whether any of you believe in spirits or a life hereafter. I think it is foolish to pretend on the basis of a wholly materialistic science (which can only measure quantities) that there is nothing spiritual and nonmaterial in our universe. It is this attitude, as much as anything, that distinguishes Indians from the rest of American society and most certainly from the scientific endeavor. Whether there is sufficient proof of the Indian beliefs and experiences or not, it is a hazardous thing to assume without good cause that the Indians are lying or simply superstitious. Indeed, large numbers of non-Indians are now embracing the Indian beliefs in increasing numbers, so in some sense materialists are on the losing side of this crest of the historical/emotional wave of sensitivities.

Archaeology has been a suspicious science for Indians from the very beginning. People who spend their lives writing tomes on the garbage of other people are not regarded as quite mentally sound in many Indian communities. And to define Indian civilizations by watching the change of pottery styles as archaeology once did is not exactly a process of compiling irrefutable knowledge; it is mere White man speculation and fiction and should be regarded as such. We all of us still carry the baggage of former days, and it should be a task in the days ahead for archaeologists who truly want cooperative ventures with American Indians to begin to communicate about some of the new techniques that are being used and the changes in dogmas and doctrines that are occurring as a result of the new instruments and processes available to you.

In this respect I wonder at the isolation of archaeologists today. I have in the neighborhood of 80 books dealing in one way or another with Precolumbian expeditions to the Western Hemisphere. These books range from utter nonsense to rather sophisticated and careful review of your own archaeological reports and the addition of new interpretations and efforts to interpret the anomalies that you seemed unable to understand at the time. I began to take this expanding body of literature seriously when I happened to mention Barry Fell's writing to people in the Smithsonian. Before I could even say whether I agreed with Fell or not, William Sturtevant and Ives Goddard got ex- ceedingly heated and began to argue with me about Lybian verb tenses and some translation, or purported translation, of an inscription that Fell had made.

My rule of thumb is that the Smithsonian is the last bastion of nineteenth-century science, so if people there are against any new theory, the chances are they are dead wrong. Thus I have maintained a lively interest in the possibility of proving that some of the theories embraced by lay people regarding Precolumbian America will someday be demonstrated. I will willingly grant that we have nothing in the way of small artifacts at some of these sites and that seems puzzling if the other aspects of the site seem to hold. But the "official" explanation I have received about the stone chambers in New England and the ogam inscriptions which seem to abound in other places is simply ludicrous.

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Deloria, Jr.] INDIANS, ARCHAEOLOGISTS, AND THE FUTURE 597

Without even examining some of these sites, scholars have told me that they are root cellars or simply marks made by colonists' plows or Indians sharpening their arrows. Now some of the locations where these alleged ogam inscriptions are found are on inaccessible cliffs, and I have great difficulty imagining colonists hitching up their teams and suspending their plows over some abyss in order to make these marks. Additionally, there seems to be an abundance of old coins found in various parts of the country but most noticeably in the eastern United States. If I were to accept the usual scholarly explanation I would come to believe that the ships that brought immigrants from Europe were stuffed with British, German, and French coin collectors who brought hoards of old coins to this continent and then casually scattered them all over Ohio as a joke. In fact so many of these sites have been declared to be hoaxes that American society seems to have been filled with practical jokers during most of the 300 years of European occupation. Looking at the presidential candidates every four years is almost irrefutable evidence for your present interpretation of the alleged Pre- columbian sites but I am still uncomfortable with the idea that NO contacts were made between Europe and North America before Columbus.

As a side note to this problem, I have been told that there is great debate between diffusionists and others over the interpretation of some digs and that many people feel they cannot advocate Precolumbian contact for to do so would mean demeaning the Indians and suggesting that they could not have made discoveries on their own Strangely this debate also rages in Indian circles, and a few of my best friends are adamant about maintaining the theory of isolation in order to enhance the achievements of our ancestors. Here I part company with other Indians and urge you to take a good look at all possible theories of Precolumbian contacts and even the transmission of every cultural trait that is found elsewhere. Samuel Eliot Morrison is now dead, and we need no longer cringe in fear that he will discredit us for believing that someone besides Columbus visited these shores.

Unpleasant though it may be to some Indians, we need to know the truth about North American prehistory, and indeed that of the Western Hemisphere. I personally feel that unless and until we are in some way connected with world history as early peoples, perhaps even as refugees from Old World turmoils and persecutions, we will never be accorded full humanity. We cannot be primitive peoples who were suddenly discovered half a millenium ago. The image and interpretation are all wrong, and we are regarded as freaks outside historical time. During the Wounded Knee trials I was forced to go along with Bering Strait advocates and argue that Indians had come across from Siberia, during one of those times that you people manipulate by increasing or decreasing the amount of water tied up in the glaciers, and bringing along a very sophisticated culture and a protoscientific technology.

Standing in the hall of the courtroom one day, a non-Indian approached me and said "I am very interested in this Bering Strait theory. It proves we are all natives." I said that being here perhaps 40,000 or even 100,000 years is a little more than having arrived in third-class steerage in 1920. I don't think he got the point since he was a Nebraska intellectual, and we all know that the "N" on Nebraska football helmets represents "Knowledge." But the point I wish to make is that this migration from Siberia is regarded as doctrine, but basically it is a fictional doctrine that places American Indians outside the realm of planetary human experiences. So I hope you will stop being so staid and respectable and begin an era of courageous speculation and openness and try to give Precolumbian expeditions serious consideration.

Finally, in recent months I have been working hard with the coalition of American Indians seeking to get federal legislation clarifying the status of sacred sites, and naturally archaeology is involved or eventually will become involved in this problem. I must honestly report to you that many Indians are looking to your discipline for specific technical assistance in this struggle. One problem is the requirement of courts, at the present time, to insist that the location be a longstanding sacred site, and so it will make a big difference whether or not continuous or at least consistent use of the site is demonstrated by scholarly means as well as by traditional religious leaders. Some locations have very little evidence of use because they were considered of sufficient spiritual power that few individuals were allowed to go there. Consequently the locations show very little evidence of Indian use. It's not as if annual Methodist picnics and camp revivals were held at these locations.

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598 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 57, No. 4, 1992]

You will be pleased to know that some very powerful Indian spiritual leaders have decided to find a reliable archaeologist or group of archaeologists who can help them completely cover and record what is present at some of these sacred sites. These people are very worried that if the site is declared sacred it will be invaded by hundreds of New Agers looking for a spiritual experience. So there is concern that plants, paths, shrines, rocks, and other aspects of the site be carefully and accurately recorded in case the place is desecrated by the curious in the years to come.

We can look forward, therefore, to creating a more constructive relationship between scholars and the people they study if we look at the present and future and make an effort to leave the past behind us. One difficulty in making this transition is that we already have a large body of data which represents the efforts of the previous century, and we are stuck with these writings and with the language they represent, which is often derogatory and demeaning to American Indians. Students continue to have access to these materials and consequently old attitudes and stereotypes are perpetuated even in spite of our best efforts. Archaeologists might well consider what the field of law has done in a comparable situation. In law we have what basically amounts to modernization of concepts through the device of scholars and practicing attorneys working to create "restatements" of the law.

One project that might be considered in the decades ahead would be a cooperative effort between archaeologists and interested Indians to rework and restate the findings of major importance in terms and language that eliminates cultural bias and attempts to give an accurate summary of what is known. That task seems formidable, but with some few exceptions is not only manageable but probably an effort that is easily funded. We may not be able to promote such a project on a national scale, but we can certainly consider the beneficial impact such a recasting would create with respect to specific tribes and scholars and perhaps come up with a solution or alternative way of establishing good relations for the future.

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