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Article: Repatriation battles. (Native Americans)
- Article from:
- The Progressive
- Article date:
- July 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 The Progressive, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1993, Tom Kolaz took a group of Native Americans into the bowels of the Arizona State Museum, to a room full of thousands of human bones. The tribal chairman stopped, picked up a small bone, and turned to Kolaz. Crying, he said, "I can hear the spirits here. They are asking us to take them home."
"It really showed what we are dealing with," Kolaz says. "They see the bones as having life."
As the assistant ethnographic curator of the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Kolaz's job is to help his museum comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Under the Repatriation Act, every one of the ...