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NAGPRA Issues in Hawaii, 2022.

Coverage of NAGPRA-related topics in Hawaii first came to this website in 2003 when the national NAGPRA review committee decided to devote its national meeting to the Kawaihae (Forbes Cave) controversy. Forbes cave was the most intensively covered topic from 2003 to 2007. But other topics also came to public attention, including Bishop Museum, the Emerson collection repatriated and reburied at Kanupa Cave, the discovery of ancient bones during a major construction project at Ward Center (O'ahu), construction of a house built above burials at the shorefront at Naue, Ha'ena, Kaua'i; etc.

Eventually a "mother page" for NAGPRA issues in Hawaii was created, explaining the dispute between the the ethnic Hawaiian activist group Hui Malama i na Kupuna o Hawai'i Nei" headed by Eddie Ayau, which favors repatriation/reburial, vs. some recognized ethnic Hawaiian cultural leaders. For example, Rubellite Kawena Johnson was a claimant opposing Hui Malama for control of the Mokapu bones; Herb Kawainui Kane was a claimant competing against Hui Malama for control of the Forbes Cave artifacts; and both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Kane publicly opposed Hui Malama's assertion that the Providence Museum Spear Rest was a manifestation of the living spirit of a warrior. The mother page provides an overview of these issues and a list of links to all the annual NAGPRA-Hawaii compilations. See
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagprahawaii.html

The Forbes cave controversy up until the NAGPRA Review Committee hearing in St. Paul, Minnesota, May 9-11, 2003 was originally described and documented at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagpraforbes.html

The conflict among Bishop Museum, Hui Malama, and several competing groups of claimants became so complex and contentious that the controversy was the primary focus of the semiannual national meeting of the NAGPRA Review Committee meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota May 9-11, 2003. A webpage was created to cover that meeting and followup events related to it. But the Forbes Cave controversy became increasingly complex and contentious, leading to public awareness of other related issues. By the end of 2004, the webpage focusing on the NAGPRA Review Committee meeting and its aftermath had become exceedingly large, at more than 250 pages with an index of 22 topics at the top. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagpraforbesafterreview.html

That large webpage became so difficult to use that it was stopped on December 29, 2004; and a new webpage was created to collect news reports for NAGPRA issues in Hawai'i during year 2005. An index for 2005 appears at the beginning, and readers may then scroll down to find the detailed coverage of each topic. For coverage of NAGPRA issues in Hawai'i in 2005 (about 250 pages), see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagprahawaii2005.html

For year 2006 another new webpage was created, following the same general format. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagprahawaii2006.html

NOW BEGINS YEAR 2022

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LIST OF TOPICS FOR 2022: Full coverage of each topic follows the list; the list is in roughly chronological order of the first occurrence of a topic, created as events unfold during 2022.

(1) On January 27, 2022: the National Association of Scholars held a 90-minute webinar panel discussion on Zoom entitled "The Repatriation Debate: What Is It?" This event was an extremely rare occasion when conservative scholars had the courage to attack the political and cultural viewpoint of NAGPRA activism. Ken Conklin's online comments from the Zoom chat are included. A link is provided to view the 90-minute event on YouTube.

(2) February 1, 2022: OHA monthly newspaper cover story describes how bones and associated objects of a high-ranking Hawaiian chiefess were uncovered at Red Sands beach and how those bones and artifacts were handled and studied to identify who she was and her role in history. Does this handling, photographing, and moving of the bones constitute a desecration, even though it was done by ethnic Hawaiians to improve cultural and historical knowledge and seems to be celebrated by OHA?

(3) February 7-8, 2022: Germany will return to Hawaii ancestral remains stored in German museums, and also funerary items that were removed from Hawaiian burial caves around 1885. 6 photos of handover ceremony (not showing bones or artifacts).

(4) February 9, 2022: Indian Country Today online newspaper reports NAGPRA has been useful but is long overdue for changes. So said several people testifying at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing last week. Testimony by OHA chair Hulu Lindsey about examples from Hawaii; comments by committee chair Hawaii Senator Schatz. National Park Service has hired an investigator for claims and violations.

(5) May 1, 2022: OHA Monthly newspaper describes a project at Windward Community College, supported by a grant from the Administration for Native Americans, whereby people are trained in ancient Hawaiian burial techniques, and protocol for modern reburials of bones repatriated from outside Hawaii or bones that must be moved now that were discovered inadvertently or to accommodate ongoing construction projects.

(6) June 1, 2022: OHA monthly newspaper "Hawaiian Ancestral Human Remains and Treasures Repatriated from Ireland." Article describes the items and why they are historically/culturally significant and how they got repatriated.

(7) June 5: Lengthy SFGAte article with photos: Decades after racist scientists looted their graves, thousands of Native Hawaiian bodies still sit in military bunkers (Marine Corps base, Mokapu, O'ahu).

(8) June 9: It�s been over a decade since hundreds of Native Hawaiian burials were unearthed during a construction project at Kawaiaha�o Church, setting off a storm of controversy and legal dispute that went all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court. ... the fate of those skeletal remains was finally determined by the Oahu Island Burial Council, which approved a plan to allow interment of iwi kupuna as close as possible to their original burial places at Honolulu�s oldest church.

(9) June 12: Bones of 3 Hawaiian natives were returned to Oahu from New Zealand museum. The effort to return the remains is the latest in a 30-year campaign that has brought some 3,000 iwi kupuna back to the islands from museums and institutions overseas.

(10) July 29: Indigenous peoples want sacred items returned from Catholic museums Pope�s Canadian visit spurs renewed interest in church�s collections of Indigenous artifacts

(11) Sept 8: The Alabama Department of Archives and History announced this week that it is beginning the process of returning the remains and funerary objects held in its collections to tribes as required by federal law. The department also announced it had removed the funerary objects from displays where the artifacts had sat for years, viewed by school groups and other visitors. The remains of Native American people who once lived in Alabama were dug up a century ago � often by amateur archaeologists � and given to the state along with the jewelry, urns and other objects buried with them.

(12) Oct 19: 'It felt like a calling': Native Hawaiian students, professor step up to return iwi kupuna from Yale University

(13) Dec 27: President Biden signed a new law that protects export of sacred Native American items from US. Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes. The effort largely was inspired by pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Arizona who repeatedly saw sacred objects up for auction in France.

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FULL TEXT OF ARTICLES FOR 2022

(1) On January 27, 2022 the National Association of Scholars held a 90-minute webinar panel discussion on Zoom entitled "The Repatriation Debate: What Is It?" This event was an extremely rare occasion when conservative scholars had the courage to attack the political and cultural viewpoint of NAGPRA activism. Ken Conklin's online comments from the Zoom chat are included. A link is provided to view the 90-minute event on YouTube.

The event was announced a week ahead and was available through Zoom for anyone who registered. Attendees were able to send questions or comments either to the panel coordinator or visible to all attendees through the Zoom chat feature, and some commenters used the chat to respond to previous comments; however, the chat file is no longer available. Ken Conklin participated in the chat, and his posts are included here along with the NAS announcement describing the viewpoint of the panelists, which might be called "politically incorrect".

Afterward, a YouTube video recording of the 90-minute event was made available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf-1duS6IoE

https://www.nas.org/blogs/event/webinar-the-repatriation-debate-what-is-it
National Association of Scholars blog

Webinar: The Repatriation Debate: What Is It?

Over 30 years ago, in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. NAGPRA is a federal law that mandates the return of human remains and cultural items to modern American Indian tribes. This push for repatriation occurs even if the remains or items are thousands of years old with little evidence to connect the artifacts with the present-day tribes.

NAGPRA, and other similar state repatriation laws, have ignited a debate�which human remains and artifacts should be repatriated and reburied and which should be preserved and studied? What information, such as DNA, historical accounts, or oral traditions, should be treated as evidence? Which evidence should take precedence? And how closely related do remains and artifacts need to be for repatriation to occur?

Rather than work on these issues and the many other repatriation issues, pro-repatriation anthropologists and archaeologists have painted those who are skeptical of repatriation as insensitive to the heritage of present-day tribes, and at worst racists. Furthermore, repatriation ideology has developed into a post-modernist and decolonization movement working to control anthropological researchers by handing control of scientific inquiry to contemporary American Indian communities and their allies.

This webinar will feature Elizabeth Weiss, Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University; Bruce Bourque, Chief Archaeologist and Curator of Ethnography at the Maine State Museum; and Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars.

Ken Conklin Chat post #1:
Native Hawaiians before 1800 buried bones and associated objects not only in caves or sand dunes but also under their houses or on their agricultural lands. Thus "ancient" bones are found everywhere, and when doing construction of roads or trains or even a recreation building belonging to a church, these projects are blocked by repatriation activists. In effect, ethnic Hawaiians (who might have extremely low native blood quantum) have a legally enforceable lien on all the lands of Hawaii such that their permission must be sought before construction or land-use policies can be adopted. See
"How Hawaiian racial entitlements take away rights from private and government landowners in ways unique among the 50 states."
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/RacialEasementsOnLand.html

One commenter asked whether it happens frequently that repatriation activists infiltrate state government agencies which have jurisdiction over land-use policies.
Ken Conklin Chat post #2:
Regarding infiltration: In Hawaii we have a branch of the state government called OHA: Office of Hawaiian Affairs. By law they appoint "spies" to sit as voting members of numerous government departments and boards where racial entitlements are a factor.

There was some discussion of state-level legislation related to NAGPRA-type issues.
Ken Conklin Chat post #3:
A bill which already has had a hearing in Hawaii legislature demands $638 Million in arrears plus $79 Million per year in future for OHA, in lieu of 20% of revenue generated from state government lands; the money will be exclusively for "betterment of Native Hawaiians" who comprise 20% of Hawaii's people. And of course NH also benefit from all other govt programs.

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(2) February 1, 2022 OHA monthly newspaper cover story describes how bones and associated objects of a high-ranking Hawaiian chiefess were uncovered at Red Sands beach and how those bones and artifacts were handled and studied to identify who she was and her role in history. Does this handling, photographing, and moving of the bones constitute a desecration, even though it was done by ethnic Hawaiians to improve cultural and historical knowledge and seems to be celebrated by OHA?

https://iskh447eqhe3kks2q2rvzg06-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/KaWaiOla-February2022.pdf
Also available at
https://kawaiola.news/cover/development-at-oneula-and-the-discovery-of-an-unknown-chiefess/

Ka Wai Ola [OHA monthly newspaper], Vol 39, No.2, February 1, 2022 pp. 18-21

Development at Oneʻula and the Discovery of an Unknown Chiefess

By Kai Markell, OHA Compliance Enforcement Manager

Twenty-one years ago, while digging in the sand at Oneʻula Beach to start a fire to cook his dinner, a Kanaka ʻŌiwi uncovered human bones. He immediately notified the police. As required by law, the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) was also notified.

The iwi kupuna was buried in an extended position with an extensive array of necklace beads made of clay, shell, bone, glass and ceramic. Determined to be a female, there were also two whale teeth around her neck in the lei opuʻu style (uncarved cetacean teeth), five whale ivory kupeʻe around her wrists, and in her hands, nestled together, were two large lei niho palaoa.

Photo: Ahu over the burial site of Kaomileika'ahumanu In October 2012, cultural practitioners built an ahu over the burial site of Kaomileikaʻahumanu. Several months later they returned to find the ahu maliciously and deliberately destroyed. - Photos: Kai Markell
Photo: Cultural practitioners, government agencies, community members and elected officials gathered at One'ula Cultural practitioners, government agencies, community members and elected officials gathered at Oneʻula for a site visit in December 2011 to discuss burial sites and practices.
Photo: Ahu at One'ula An offering made to the ancestors buried at Oneʻula by cultural practitioners in 2010 consisted of koʻa (coral), ʻopihi (limpets), paʻakai (salt) and ʻopae (shrimp).

She was clearly a Hawaiian chiefess of significant rank, and the fact that trade beads were among her burial possessions indicated that she was buried after 1778.

Over the years, the mystery of her identity deepened as she awaited some type of final disposition. Eventually, her discovery would alter 200 years of Hawaiian history.

This is my personal testimony and only part of the story.

Moʻolelo of Oneʻula

Oneʻula Beach is in ʻEwa, Oʻahu, and has long been a gathering place for the community. Oneʻula, arguably, translates into �blood sands� or �royal sands.�

Conditions there are ideal for limu. It is said that the area seeds limu in the currents from Waikīkī in the east and as far as Nānākuli in the west. Limu practitioners referred to the area as �Hale o Limu.�

Photo: Offering of pa'akai After finding that the ahu for Kaomileikaʻahumanu had been destroyed, cultural practitioners Michael Lee, Tom Lenchanko, Kai Markell, Darren Panoke and Alika Silva made an offering of paʻakai as part of a healing ceremony.
Photo: Gathering at One'ula Cultural practitioners, government agencies, community members and elected officials gathered at Oneʻula for a site visit in December 2011 to discuss burial sites and practices.
Photo: Cultural Practitioners In July 2010, cultural practitioners gathered to collect more information and ʻike Hawaiʻi at the burial site of Kaomileikaʻahumanu and other aliʻi believed to be interred at Oneʻula.

At Oneʻula, the fresh waters of Kāne flow both overland and through the underground karsts, limestone and coral caverns, which permeate the ʻEwa region, to meet and embrace the salt waters of Kanaloa. Some accounts also describe these caverns as where the mysterious ʻōlohe (hairless ones) resided.

Kaloʻi Gulch, which empties at Oneʻula, originates mauka not far from Mauna Kapu in the Waiʻanae Range at Pālehua in a place called Waiwānana (prophetic waters). This is where Hawaiian life begins, in the powerful, healing shoreline waters where coral, limu, fish fingerlings, and other important elements of Papa thrive.

Development at Oneʻula

Photo: Cultural practitioners review a cultural site overlay on an archaelogical survey map During a site visit on April 7, 2010, cultural practitioners review a cultural site overlay on an archaeological survey map that would be presented the following week to the Oʻahu Island Burial Council which later voted unanimously to recognize the burial site of Kaomileikaʻahumanu and of other aliʻi believed to have been buried in the area. Many of the cultural sites identified during the developer�s archaeological survey were deemed �insignificant� and destroyed during the development of the 1,100-acre Oneʻula coastline. - Photos: Kai Markell
Photo: Excavator working at One�ula Despite the discovery of the iwi, and passionate opposition from OHA and other Native Hawaiian and environmental groups, construction on the proposed marina continued in 2011-2012.
Photo: Excavator working at One�ula Despite the discovery of the iwi, and passionate opposition from OHA and other Native Hawaiian and environmental groups, construction on the proposed marina continued in 2011-2012.
Photo: Excavator working at One�ula Despite the discovery of the iwi, and passionate opposition from OHA and other Native Hawaiian and environmental groups, construction on the proposed marina continued in 2011-2012.
Photo: Excavator working at One�ula Despite the discovery of the iwi, and passionate opposition from OHA and other Native Hawaiian and environmental groups, construction on the proposed marina continued in 2011-2012.

In the 1970s, a Japanese corporation began planning to develop the 1,100-acre coastline of Oneʻula with luxury homes, resorts, commercial properties, a golf course, and a marina.

As was standard, an archaeological survey of the area was conducted. The dry coral plains of ʻEwa, overgrown with keawe and haole koa trees, were viewed as a desolate wasteland with no significant habitation or use by ancient Hawaiians.

But the ʻEwa Plain has changed over time. It was once a place where wiliwili and diminutive ʻōhiʻa lehua trees flourished. In moʻolelo, a spring there called Hoakalei was visited by Hiʻiakaikapoliopele during her epic journey. Because of its relative isolation, an ancient name for the area was Kaupeʻa (crisscrossed) a name that references kapu, as with pūloʻuloʻu (kapu sticks) crossed to indicate something forbidden. The region had a reputation for being �ao kuewa,� a place where ghosts wander.

The developer�s archaeological survey recorded 56 cultural sites in the area, however, only six were deemed �worthwhile� and identified for preservation. Of the remaining six, several were carelessly destroyed during construction activities.

In the early 1990s, the developer sought a Conservation District Use Permit (CDUP) from the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) to traverse and use state lands, including submerged lands, to construct a marina entrance channel through the beach and reef.

Despite passionate opposition by Native Hawaiian and environmental groups, BLNR approved the permit in 1993.

In 1994, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and other advocates initiated a contested case. For weeks, evidence and witness testimony was presented, but BLNR confirmed their previous approval of the CDUP stating that �there are no fishing villages, burial grounds, or other spiritual sites in the area where the proposed channel is to be constructed.� OHA appealed BLNR�s decision to the First Circuit Court, where the Honorable Judge Wendell Huddy found in favor of BLNR. OHA then appealed Huddy�s decision to the Hawaiʻi State Supreme Court.

More Challenges and Controversy

The prophetic waters of Pālehua emptied into the sea as controversy arose and bulldozing at Oneʻula began while the matter was still before the Supreme Court.

In February 1998, cultural practitioners from across the pae ʻāina descended upon Oneʻula. Vigils and protests were staged as a kāhea went out to bring attention to the area�s imminent destruction. Protestors were unified in their objection to the archaeological survey findings (the evaluation and significance of sites) and the destruction of the cultural landscape.

The Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches, representing 18 Hawaiian churches, and the Hawaiʻi Ecumenical Coalition submitted a petition stating that Oneʻula holds a rich array of sites with �great historic and religious significance.�

By March, as protests mounted, the Hawaiʻi State Supreme Court issued a decision, by way of an unpublished �Memorandum Opinion,� finding that the CDUP violated the state�s duty to protect the traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians �to the extent feasible.� They returned the case to BLNR and directed the board to address the following questions:

Are traditional and customary native Hawaiian rights exercised in the petition area? If such rights exist, to what extent will they be affected by the proposed action? If these rights are found to exist, what feasible action should be taken by BLNR to protect these rights?

These questions formed the genesis of the landmark three-tier test used in the seminal Native Hawaiian rights case, Ka Paʻakai o ka ʻĀina v. Land Use Commission, State of Hawaiʻi.

To comply, BLNR held another contested case but, once again, they determined that there were no culturally significant sites in the area and, once again, granted the CDUP to the developer � ultimately leading to the destruction of countless irreplaceable cultural sites.

Less than a year later, in January 2001, the remains of a high-ranking aliʻi wahine were discovered almost dead-center of the proposed marina entrance.

Identifying the Chiefess

Determining the identity of the chiefess buried at Oneʻula took almost a decade.

In April 2010, after reviewing an array of historical documentation and discerning spiritual messages and hōʻailona, the Oʻahu Island Burial Council (OIBC) identified her as Kaomileikaʻahumanu, or the �lei that causes suffering to Kaʻahumanu.�

Kaomilei was a chiefess of Kalanikūpule and her name in life was Namahanakapukaleimakaliʻi. She was the half-sister of Queen Kaʻahumanu. They shared a father, Keʻeaumokupapaʻiahiahi. She endured the jealous wrath of Kaʻahumanu when she became pregnant with twins, not by Kalanikūpule, but by Kamehameha I. She died from blood loss while giving birth to the twins at the birthing stones of Kūkaniloko and was buried beneath the sands of One- ʻula within an underground cave system known as Waipouli.

Driven by vindictive rage, Kaʻahumanu erased the genealogy of Namahanakapukaleimakaliʻi from the chants, and upon her sister�s death, renamed her Kaomileikaʻahumanu.

On a dark, quiet night in 2014, in a solemn, torch-lit procession of kāhili-bearers and chanters, Kaomileikaʻahumanu was carried by recognized cultural descendants and other ʻohana and reinterred elsewhere at Oneʻula. No longer unknown; no longer erased.

A Revelation Dismissed in Favor of Development

Based on their findings, the OIBC strongly recommended that SHPD recognize and protect Oneʻula, as it was revealed that along with Kaomileikaʻahumanu, other aliʻi and commoners were also buried in the Waipouli cave system at Oneʻula.

However, SHPD never took any formal action on OIBC�s recommendation.

Then, in October 2018, several more burials were disturbed by development activities about 30 yards mauka from where Kaomileikaʻahumanu was found. They were again found near the proposed marina entrance where twice before BLNR determined that no burial or spiritual sites existed.

The iwi, quickly covered up and not properly investigated, reportedly possessed the same type of beads found with Kaomileikaʻahumanu, and thus may be her moepuʻu (death companions).

Much like the punitive erasure of the genealogy and existence of Namahanakapukaleimakaliʻi, the important historical and cultural resources at Oneʻula continue to be diminished and deliberately erased as development in the area continues.

Oneʻula, the Royal Sands, the Blood Sands, the prophetic waters indeed. He ʻonipaʻa ka ʻoiaʻiʻo � the truth is unchangeable.

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https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2022-02-07/germany-to-return-ancestral-remains-to-hawaii-from-museums
Hawaii Public Radio February 7, 2022

Germany to return ancestral remains to Hawaiʻi from museums

By Associated Press

BERLIN � The body overseeing Berlin's museums will hand over Hawaiian ancestral remains collected by a German naturalist in the 19th century to authorities in Hawaiʻi.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation said Monday that the remains of 32 individuals, known as �iwi kūpuna," will be handed over Friday to a representative of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a semi-autonomous state agency directed by Native Hawaiians.

Most of the bones are probably several hundred years old and were collected from a beach at Waimānalo on Oʻahu. Two more skulls came from a place in Hawaiʻi that can't be identified precisely, the foundation said. �Human remains from colonial contexts have no place in our museums and universities,� Germany's culture minister, Claudia Roth, said a statement. �Their return must be a priority.�

The remains were part of collections that the heritage foundation took over from Berlin's Charite hospital in 2011 and whose provenance it is researching. The foundation said the bones were acquired by collector and naturalist Hermann Otto Finsch around 1880 during a voyage to the South Pacific and were sent to Berlin.

Discussions about repatriating the remains had been ongoing since 2017. The German foundation has said it will return human remains from �colonial contexts� if the countries and groups they come from are known and their return is desired. In addition to the human remains, the Berlin foundation plans to return to Hawaiʻi this year funerary items that were removed from burial caves around 1885.

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https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/02/08/breaking-news/germany-to-return-ancestral-remains-to-hawaii-from-museums/
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, February 8, 2022; breaking news at 5:29 PM

OHA delegation travels to Germany to bring ancestral remains back to Hawaii

By Star-Advertiser Staff and Associated Press

Related Photo Gallery: Germany to return ancestral remains to Hawaii from museums

BERLIN >> The body overseeing Berlin�s museums this week began the process of handing over over Hawaiian ancestral remains collected by a German naturalist in the 19th century to authorities in Hawaii.

Officials with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are in Germany to repatriate a total of 58 iwi kupuna from four institutions in Germany and one in Austria.

OHA said in a news release today that the repatriation of the iwi kupuna is the culmination of years of research and coordination between OHA and European museum, anthropologic and academic institutions.

�There has been much change in the last decade amongst museum professionals and anthropological scholars that demonstrates a better understanding of Indigenous peoples and the past injustices committed against us. We certainly acknowledge this and applaud the re-humanization of these individuals and institutions,� OHA Board Chair Carmen �Hulu� Lindsey said in the news release.

The remains were part of collections that the heritage foundation took over from Berlin�s Charite hospital in 2011. The foundation said the bones were acquired by collector and naturalist Hermann Otto Finsch around 1880 during a voyage to the South Pacific and were sent to Berlin. The ancestral remains were collected from Kauai, Molokai, Maui and Hawaii Island, according to OHA.

The repatriations began today as the OHA delegation received eight iwi po�o (skulls) from Ubersee Museum. By Monday, the delegation is scheduled to also receive iwi kupuna from two German universities and another museum, and from a Vienna museum. �Human remains from colonial contexts have no place in our museums and universities,� Germany�s culture minister, Claudia Roth, said a statement. �Their return must be a priority.�

Discussions about repatriating the remains had been ongoing since 2017.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has said it will return human remains from �colonial contexts� if the countries and groups they come from are known and their return is desired.

In addition to the human remains, the Berlin foundation plans to return to Hawaii this year funerary items that were removed from burial caves around 1885.

�We acknowledge the anguish experienced by our ancestors, and take responsibility for their well-being (and thereby our own), by transporting them home for reburial,� Edward Halealoha Ayau, a member of the OHA delegation, said in the news release. �In doing this important work, we also acknowledge and celebrate our respective humanity � Germans and Hawaiians together in aloha � as we write a new chapter in our historic relationship as human beings.�

Related Photo Gallery: Germany to return ancestral remains to Hawaii from museums [6 photos of ceremony; not of bones or artifacts]
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/02/08/photo-gallery/germany-to-return-ancestral-remains-to-hawaii-from-museums/

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https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/changes-coming-to-better-handle-native-human-remains-cultural-objects
Indian Country Today, February 9, 2022

Changes coming to better handle Native human remains
NAGPRA �allowed Native Hawaiians to bring thousands of our ancestors home to be respectfully venerated and ceremoniously reburied�

by JOAQLIN ESTUS

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act has been useful but is long overdue for changes. So said several people testifying at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing last week. NAGPRA is a tool for Native Americans seeking the return of ancestral remains and funerary, sacred and cultural objects. The National Park Service, which administers the law, said it has consulted with 71 tribes and plans to soon release proposed changes to the law for public review.

Carmen Hulu Lindsey, Native Hawaiian, elected trustee and chair of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, described conditions before the law was enacted in 1990. �Just over 30 years ago, the mass excavation of the sacred remains of over 1,100 men, women, children, and infants out of their final resting place occurred at Honokohau on my island home of Maui to build a large hotel resort. At the same time, hundreds of remains were being disinterred at another large resort in another area of Maui.� Now, she said, �while we continue to address ongoing disinterment and desecration of our ancestral burial sites in the islands,� NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) has �allowed Native Hawaiians to bring thousands of our ancestors home to be respectfully venerated and ceremoniously reburied.� She said almost 4,000 Native Hawaiian ancestors were repatriated from one museum alone on the island of Oahu. �Native Hawaiians are humbled and grateful to be of service to our beloved ancestors, knowing that but for them, we simply would not exist. In the increasingly contentious times now present in our world and in the greater story of humanity, caring for our ancestors guides, strengthens, and teaches us the enduring value of Aloha, which embodies the concepts of love, compassion, and forgiveness,� Lindsey said.

Committee chairman Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said when Congress enacted NAGPRA, it estimated it would take 10 years to complete the work of returning human remains and cultural items to tribes and Native Hawaiians. �Now more than 30 years later, over 200,000 ancestral remains, and approximately 2.5 million associated funeral items have been identified� but less than half the ancestral remains and only 70 percent of cultural items have been repatriated, he said.

The hallmark law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires museums and federal agencies to identify Native human remains� and other objects of cultural significance� then return them to the tribal nations to which they belong. David Barland-Liles was hired by the National Park Service as a civil penalties investigator.

One of the biggest problems, said panelists at the hearing, is the lack of a clear process for resolving disputes over ownership. As it stands now, if cultural affiliation with a tribe can be established, that tribe may claim human remains or cultural objects.

However, researchers sometimes contest tribal claims. And, items may be affiliated with more than one Native American entity. In fact, officials say cultural affiliation has not been identified for 94 percent of the items listed in inventories but not yet returned.

Disputes go before a review committee but its findings are not binding. Rosita Worl, Tlingit, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, is a former chair of the review committee. �We would like to amend NAGPRA to require review committee findings in disputes as mandatory rather than advisory. Tribes go to a great deal of effort and expense to bring the case before the committee, a committee comprised of scientists, museum professionals, and tribal members, without any guarantee that the committee's findings will be acted upon,� Worl said. Worl also said the law needs to be amended to clarify that Alaska Native corporations are eligible to take part in NAGPRA. Co-chair Sen. Lisa Murkoswki, a Republican from Alaska, said the proposed change would allow the Native corporations to add to the efforts of tribes and regional nonprofits who work on repatriation efforts in Alaska. One change Worl doesn�t want to see has to do with notification of tribes. Worl said, �we strongly object to the removal of the requirement by the federal officials to notify and initiate consultation with any known linear descendant and likely culturally affiliated Indian tribe or a Native Hawaiian organization within three working days of receipt of a written confirmation of discovery.�

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, said the issue of timeliness has arisen before. She mentioned the case of the 8,000 to 9,000-year-old Kennewick man, or the Ancient One. His skeletal remains were discovered in 1996 but due to lengthy disputes over tribal affiliation were not transferred to a tribe until 2017.

Joy Beasley, associate director for Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science with the National Park Service, said museums and federal agencies do wield significant power in determining what items will be repatriated. �We hope that this imbalance can be corrected through the regulatory changes that we're proposing. And we hope that the Congress will support that effort by affirming in the hearing record that the purpose of NAGPRA is repatriation,� Beasley said. She said, �I want to emphasize that the department's committed to strengthening to the maximum extent possible the requirements for consultation with Indian tribes, Alaska Native villages and Native Hawaiian organizations on any discovery or excavation on federal lands. �The revisions to the regulations that would streamline the process and make clear what the steps are for federal agencies and federal land managers should assist both Indian tribes and federal agencies through the process.�

Schatz asked if the National Park Service, which handles NAGPRA complaints and investigations, has a backlog of allegations that remain unaddressed. Beaseley said the agency will soon follow up with a status report on that and other committee questions.

Executive Director Valerie Gressing, of the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, said proposed amendments to NAGPRA have come up before, including some changes recommended in a Government Accounting Office report issued in 2011. �My and our chairman's predecessors testified before the House Natural Resources Committee in 2000, and before this committee in 2011. Unfortunately, the recommendations and report findings remain relevant today.� She said more funding is needed to implement NAGPRA. �A system that makes tribes compete for limited funding for the most sacred and foundational restorative work is retraumatizing. The time is now for the federal government to fulfill its promises to fund agencies� consultation requirements and to fund tribes so that they have a seat at the table complete with the meal and utensils,� Gressing said.

The Department of Interior said in a prepared statement its proposed changes would:

Strengthen the authority and role of Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations in the repatriation process
Address barriers to timely and successful disposition and repatriation
Document and address requests of Indian tribes and NHOs when human remains or cultural items are discovered on federal or tribal lands before items are further disturbed
Increase transparency and reporting of holdings or collections

Panelists suggested additional changes, including:

Increased penalties for non-compliance
Shift oversight from the National Park Service to another Interior department agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Authorize federal agencies to allow the reburial of ancestral human remains at the site from which they were taken
Increased funding for tribes, museums, and tribal historic preservation officers
Update definitions
Establish, fund a task force to stop illegal trafficking of human remains and cultural items
Fund tribal preservation officers specifically to work on NAGPRA issues
Recognize traditional knowledge and oral tradition as a valid form of knowing

Meanwhile, the National Park Service last week hired an investigator, its first, to go over NAGPRA claims and alleged violations. David Barland-Liles will present his findings to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo.

==============

https://kawaiola.news/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/KaWaiOla-May2022.pdf
Ka Wai Ola [OHA Monthly newspaper, May 2022, Vol. 39, No. 5, page 21

Project Iwi Kuamoʻo: Building Capacity to Care for Iwi Kūpuna

By Edward Halealoha Ayau

Project Iwi Kuamoʻo is a three-year project developed by ʻAha Kāne and supported by a grant from the Administration for Native Americans. ʻAha Kāne is an organization of Native Hawaiian men whose purpose is to normalize Native Hawaiian worldviews and cultural practices.

Thus, the purpose of Project Iwi Kuamoʻo is to build capacity within our lāhui to provide care and protection of ancestral bones and burial sites. The project focuses on training and developing competency in traditional and contemporary repatriation and reburial practices in the following areas: cultural protocols, producing reburial materials, building reburial platforms, repatriation advocacy, and burial sites management.

The expertise required for teaching these practices was acquired over the past 30 years, originating with Kumu Edward Lavon Huihui Kanahele and his wife Pualani Kanahele Kanakaʻole.

Photo: Haumāna at the ʻAha Kāne/ANA project training at Windward Community College Haumāna at the ʻAha Kāne/ANA project training at Windward Community College on March 13.

These hīnaʻi lauhala were used to ceremonially prepare 27 iwi kūpuna originating from Oʻahu that were repatriated from Germany in February 2022 by Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo. � Photo: Courtesy Following the events at Honokahua, Maui, the Kanaheles established Hui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna O Hawaiʻi Nei and trained its members in cultural protocols related to the handling of iwi kūpuna, teaching them to prepare ancestral bones for reburial and how to create reburial materials. Members practiced what they were taught and cared for the ancestral bones through repatriation and reburial. In addition, the expertise of traditional mason Billy Fields was sought to build reburial platforms and seal burial caves.

In year one, the trainings offered by Project Iwi Kuamoʻo are being held on Oʻahu and Kauaʻi. In year two they will be offered on Maui and Hawaiʻi, and in year three on Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi, plus additional trainings on Oʻahu.

The Iwi Kūpuna protocol training includes learning the traditional chants and prayers originally taught by the Kanaheles. These oli and pule help reconnect the living to their own ancestors in order to request all the tools necessary to be successful in wrapping the ancestral bones and conducting reburial ceremonies.

Reburial materials training involves making kapa cloth, from cleaning and stripping the bark of the wauke (paper mulberry tree) and meticulously beating it into soft cloth. The training also includes weaving of hīnaʻi (baskets) from lau hala.

Repatriation advocacy training covers national repatriation laws (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the National Museum of the American Indian Act) and international policies (United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and the 30-year history of Native Hawaiian repatriation efforts � including the strategies successfully used to return the bones for reburial. Burial site management training involves teaching state burial laws including HRS Chapter 6E and Hawaiʻi Administrative Rules Chapter 13-300.

Finally, alakaʻi training is also offered for Native Hawaiians who already have experience in the care of ancestral bones or who possess exceptional leadership qualities and desire to learn advanced practices and strategies to elevate their care of the iwi.

ʻŌiwi interested in learning more may contact Desiree Cruz at project.iwikuamoo@gmail.com for information about upcoming trainings.

Edward Halealoha Ayau
Edward Halealoha Ayau is the former Executive Director of Hui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna O Hawai�i Nei, a group that has repatriated and reinterred thousands of ancestral Native Hawaiian remains and funerary objects from the collections of museums and institutions worldwide. He trained under the direction of Edward and Pualani Kanahele in traditional protocols relating to care of nā iwi kūpuna (ancestral remains) and moepū (funerary possessions). He resides in Panaʻewa, Hawaiʻi.

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https://kawaiola.news/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/KaWaiOla-June2022.pdf
Ka Wai Ola [OHA monthly newspaper] June 2022 p. 8

Hawaiian Ancestral Human Remains and Treasures Repatriated from Ireland

By Alice Malepeai Silbanuz

Following ongoing dialogue with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo, the National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI) hosted an official handover ceremony at Ulster Museum in Belfast in May and successfully repatriated iwi kūpuna (ancestral Hawaiian human remains) and five mea makamae pili aliʻi (treasures associated with aliʻi) which were a part of the museums� World Cultures Collection.

The repatriation process involved a private ceremony followed by a public ceremony at Ulster Museum. Hawaiian representatives, NMNI colleagues, and delegates from the United States Embassy were in attendance.

�The return of the iwi kūpuna and mea makamae pili aliʻi to this delegation of Native Hawaiians, so that they may be re- turned home to Hawaiʻi, is an act of com- passion and understanding that is much needed and long overdue,� said OHA Board Chair Carmen �Hulu� Lindsey.

Following extensive research into the provenance of each of the materials, it is believed that Gordon Augustus Thomson, who had travelled to Hawaiʻi Island in 1840, had removed iwi kūpuna from burial caves and donated them to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1857. The iwi kūpuna were included in a 1910 donation to the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, a precursor to NMNI.

Kathryn Thomson, chief executive at NMNI said: �National Museums Northern Ireland believes it has legal and ethical responsibilities to redress the injustices shown to Native Hawaiian cultural values and traditions, and so through ongoing dialogue, it was agreed that these iwi kūpuna and mea makamae pili aliʻi should be returned by repatriation to Native Hawaiians through the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a self-governing corporate body of the State of Hawaiʻi.

�We are re-evaluating our World Cultures Collection on an ongoing basis, to better understand the complex global stories of some 4,500 items � and how and why they came to be in Belfast. We understand and respect cultural values and are in ongoing liaison with source communities and their representatives to establish if items within the collection can and should be returned to their ancestral homes. We remain open to further repatriations as these engagements develop.�

The return of the iwi kūpuna and mea makamae pili aliʻi has great significance on a cultural level for the people of Hawaiʻi. The five mea makamae pili aliʻi are considered sacred by Native Hawaiians and incorporate either human hair, bone, or teeth. The use of human remains was done purposefully and with meaning to infuse objects with mana, spiritual power. The lei niho palaoa, whale tooth necklaces, were traditionally provided to aliʻi (chiefs) and worn around the neck to show a connection between the chiefly class and the akua (gods). The bracelet and fan intertwined with human hair were reserved for aliʻi and used only during ceremonies rather than for everyday use. The wooden ipu kuha (spittoon) and ipu ʻaina (scrap bowl) were made exclusively for aliʻi so their attendants could carefully dispose of food scraps and bodily remains, lest the material fall into the hands of a kahuna ʻanāʻanā (sorcerer) and be used to harm or kill the chief.

In modern times, Hawaiian leaders and cultural practitioners still revere the use of such objects and typically or use them during ceremonies. The fan, in particular, is one of a very few early 19th century styles not typically available to Native Hawaiians today for ceremony, due to their rarity.

On the same trip, the Hawaiian delegation also repatriated an iwi poʻo (skull) from Surgeons� Hall Museums in Edin- burgh, and engaged in repatriation consultations in London. The iwi kūpuna will be reburied on Molokaʻi and Hawaiʻi Island from which they were taken. The five mea makamae pili aliʻi will be properly stewarded by OHA.

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https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/Native-Hawaiian-graves-dug-up-Mokapu-Hawaii-17217662.php
SFGAte Sunday June 5, 2022

Decades after racist scientists looted their graves, thousands of Native Hawaiian bodies still sit in military bunkers

by Christine Hitt

** Photo caption
On the Windward side of Oahu, more than 1,500 iwi kupuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) were unearthed from the sand dunes of the Mokapu Peninsula�s shoreline. The remains of babies, teens, adults and elders were taken from their final resting places in a series of excavations and isolated finds from 1915 to 1993.
�Mark A Johnson/www.markjohnson.com

Skye Razon-Olds� family has been battling to bury her ancestors since before she was born. Now 32, she, too, has become a warrior, part of the long fight to get thousands of iwi kupuna, or Native Hawaiian ancestral remains, out of the hands of colonizers and into graves where they belong.

An untold number of native burial sites have been desecrated since the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Some were disturbed as the result of land development, but many were intentionally disinterred by white anthropologists and sent to the Bishop Museum, where scientists who considered Hawaii a �racial laboratory� studied them to further bigoted psuedosciences, including eugenics, the so-called "science" of creating "perfect" human beings.

For decades, the Bishop Museum, still Hawaii�s preeminent cultural history museum, was a collector of iwi kupuna, many of them from the Mokapu Peninsula, now most widely known as the home of Marine Corps Base Hawaii. The museum�s director even offered bounties for the remains of Native Hawaiians, effectively turning grave robbery into a scavenger hunt. The sand dunes on the beaches of Mokapu soon proved to be a bountiful playground for the scavengers.

All told, the iwi, or skeletal remains, of as many as 3,000 babies, teens and adults were taken from Mokapu and given to the Bishop Museum between 1915 and 1993. For much of that time, the museum lent the collection out regularly to anthropologists for study, including eugenicists and other race "scientists."

�Our black and brown bones were not treated as human remains,� Razon-Olds told SFGATE. �It was just a fun way for archaeologists to see and learn, and you know, it was like a reward for them to dig up our family.�

The shoreline of the Mokapu Peninsula, on the Windward side of Oahu, is the location of the largest burial site desecrated in Hawaii. More than a century later, the iwi kupuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) that were taken from their final resting places are still waiting to be reburied.

** Photo caption
The shoreline of the Mokapu Peninsula, on the Windward side of Oahu, is the location of the largest burial site desecrated in Hawaii. More than a century later, the iwi kupuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) that were taken from their final resting places are still waiting to be reburied.
�Mark A Johnson/www.markjohnson.com

Mokapu is the largest burial site to have been desecrated by Americans in Hawaii, but such grave robberies are hardly isolated. That history of systematic dehumanization is an ongoing source of anger, frustration and grief for native communities. In 1990, spurred by the tireless efforts of Indigenous activists, the federal government passed landmark legislation demanding that universities, museums, government agencies and other institutions return their collections of native remains and cultural artifacts, �repatriating� people�s skeletons to their descendants for reburial.

The work has moved slowly. Between 1990 and 2020, American institutions reported owning the remains of nearly 200,000 native people; 116,857 of those have yet to be given back.

Razon-Olds is part of a new generation pushing for burial of the Mokapu iwi; her great-aunt first became an advocate for the cause in the 1980s. Officially, the bodies found on the Mokapu Peninsula are among the 82,000 returned to their descendants: In 1998, much of the Bishop Museum�s collection of iwi was legally relinquished to a group of 21 Native Hawaiian organizations that include cultural organizations and descendants, such as Razon-Olds� family.

But efforts to rebury the iwi have been hindered by disagreements between the 21 groups, and with the military. Under the law, all legal claimants must come to an absolute consensus on what to do with the remains; no one person or group can make a decision for all. Now, two decades into those negotiations, the remains of thousands of people still sit in boxes around the Marine Corps base.

�All of the iwi kupuna there, we�re connected to, because we have a connection to Mokapu,� Razon-Olds told SFGATE. �It�s a responsibility that�s incredibly heavy.�

�Nothing more than hewa and desecration�

The Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Bishop, an American businessman and Hawaiian Kingdom citizen, in memory of his late wife, the Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

The museum offered payment for native remains in 1912, but it was museum director and Yale anthropologist Herbert Gregory who, after beginning his tenure in 1919, began offering the museum�s resources to visiting anthropologists. At the time, many scientists � a significant number of them eugenicists � found Hawaii fascinating for its unrestricted multiracial population, often referring to it as a �racial laboratory.�

** Photo caption
On the Windward Side of Oahu, more than 1,500 iwi kupuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) were unearthed from the sand dunes of the Mokapu Peninsula�s shoreline between Kuau (aka Pyramid Rock) to Ulupau Crater. The remains of babies, teens, adults and elders were taken from their final resting places in a series of excavations and isolated finds from 1915 to 1993.
DAGS Hawaii

Visiting scholars often wanted to use the museum�s collection of remains, along with physical measurements of island natives, to try and solve the �Pacific problem,� a faddish term for understanding where the Polynesian race originated and defining a �pure� Native Hawaiian. Such �research� was popular with mainstream anthropologists for decades; the Bishop Museum received funding from and established partnerships with premier cultural institutions, including the Rockefeller Foundation, Yale, the University of Hawaii and the Carnegie Institution, to work on the �problem.�

In 1920, Gregory threw open the museum�s doors to the eugenicist Louis Sullivan, who worked at the American Museum of Natural History under Henry Osborn, one of the founders of the American Eugenics Society. With Osborn�s guidance, Sullivan measured and cataloged upwards of 10,000 Native Hawaiians, living and dead, including taking blood draws and measurements of the skulls of children at a school associated with the museum. The museum also provided Sullivan with an expert to help in �handling the natives� and talk them into being part of his studies.

The Bishop Museum continued to collect human remains for decades, often loaning them out to anthropologists trying to racially characterize Native Hawaiians. Indeed, the majority of the Bishop Museum�s collection of iwi from Mokapu was unearthed between 1938 and 1957, when the Bishop Museum and the University of Hawaii conducted large-scale excavations. (More graves would be disturbed when the military began using the dunes as a commercial sand mining operation.)

** Photo caption
The Bishop Museum faced its role in promoting racism at a �(Re)generations� exhibit last year. It displayed the different tools used in the pseudosciences of phrenology and anthropometry, as well as some photos and busts from Sullivan�s collection.
Bishop Museum

In the 1940s, anthropologist Charles Snow took over much of the research on the Bishop Museum�s collection of Mokapu remains. He and his team separated the iwi into piles of teeth, skulls, spines and pelvises, to be measured and categorized. That intermixing of bones would later cause debate about how many individuals were included in the collection; experts believe the bones come from the remains of somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 people, or even more.

�The recovery of skeletal material from the sand dunes of Mokapu afforded the opportunity for scientific investigation of the physical characteristics of the Hawaiians who lived and died before European contact, thereby adding a chapter to our knowledge of their racial heritage,� Snow wrote, in his 1974 book, titled �Early Hawaiians: An initial study of skeletal remains from Mokapu, Oahu.� The book discussed what the people of Mokapu looked like, how long they lived and what diseases afflicted them, while comparing them to other �races,� including �Mongoloids� and �American Negroes.�

�The images within this book are really hard for me, seeing the piles of bones being thrown and tossed together on different tables with different measuring tools,� said Razon-Olds. �It�s nothing more than hewa [sin, offense] and desecration.�

For Native Hawaiians, the trauma of this kind of scientific cruelty goes beyond the dehumanization of human bodies. They believe that ancestral remains contain mana, a spiritual power that can be found in both people and objects; that power, they believe, is stolen when the iwi are taken.

�Damaging the bones to take measurements or DNA samples, these are the things that happen when people want to study our kupuna,� or ancestors, Razon-Olds said. �Our iwi, our ancestral remains, should never touch the light.�

** Photo caption
Native Hawaiians lived on the Mokapu peninsula for 500 to 800 years prior to the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778. The Native Hawaiians who lived at Mokapu thrived on the bounty around them, including taro and sweet potato crops, and their own sustainable fishponds. Now known as Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Mokapu is inaccessible to the general public.
�Mark A Johnson/www.markjohnson.com

�The living cannot agree�

The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was signed into law in 1990, with the goal of returning human remains and artifacts to their descendants all around the United States. The law gives priority to lineal descendants who can prove an unbroken genealogical tree. This is nearly impossible for Hawaiians, who preferred anonymous � and sometimes secret � burials. They believe mana remains in human bones after the person dies; historically, many were buried in unmarked graves, without identifying objects, to stop competing chiefs or families from stealing the mana of a specific individual.

�It was really drafted for Native American tribes and Alaska Natives,� says June Cleghorn, senior cultural resources manager for the Marine Corps base on Mokapu, which repatriated the museum collection under NAGPRA. Cleghorn is of Native Hawaiian descent. She and two of her staff manage archaeological sites and historic buildings around the base.

** Photo caption
NAGPRA has enabled Edward Ayau (second from left) and various other Hawaiian organizations, such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to bring home iwi kupuna from museums and universities from around the world. Also pictured is Mana Caceres next to him. On this trip earlier this year, they brought back 58 iwi kupuna from Europe.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs

In place of lineal descendants, the Marine Corps accepted claims from individuals, families and organizations that could show they were affiliated with Mokapu in any way. Twenty-one groups came to the table; in 1998, legal ownership of the remains transferred to all of them, each with their own opinions and interests.

That was more or less the last time the majority agreed on anything. Until 2018, the Bishop Museum held onto the remains. Then, after a two decade stalemate, the iwi were handed over to the Marine Corps, which put them in storage.

One of the biggest sticking points is where to rebury the iwi, according to Mana Caceres, who has been on the Oahu Island Burial Council, a public agency tasked with cultural preservation, since 2016. The Marine Corps, for instance, proposed a plan for a mass burial site near the base, where descendants could visit without accessing a restricted area. Some claimants, though, said they preferred the bones be buried separately, in the land they were taken from.

There is also disagreement about what should happen when new remains are discovered on the Marine Corps base. The Marine Corps hasn�t made a public announcement about any new discoveries since 1994, although finding new iwi �has occurred and continues to occur periodically,� Cleghorn admitted to SFGATE, while saying that the military was following the law.

** Photo caption
On the Windward side of Oahu, more than 1,500 iwi kupuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) were unearthed from the sand dunes starting in 1915 on the shoreline of Mokapu, a peninsula that juts out into the Pacific about 4 miles long and divides Kaneohe Bay from Kailua Bay.
�Mark A Johnson/www.markjohnson.com

While Razon-Olds agrees that the military has the power to put newly discovered remains into storage with the other bones, Caceres argues that the Marine Corps is violating the law by not making new findings public.

It�s hard to know what else, exactly, the claimants and the military disagree on. For the past 20 years, negotiations have been held behind closed doors. Most of the families and organizations have agreed to a kapu, or ban, on speaking to the public about the negotiations.

�The No. 1 reason why there are thousands of kupuna waiting at Mokapu for reburial [is] because the living cannot agree,� Caceres told SFGATE.

Hoping to bring more transparency to the process, Razon-Olds started giving updates about the closed-door negotiations at public meetings of the Oahu Island Burial Council. A few months later, the council was hit with a cease-and-desist letter from two claimant families. The letter said that public updates could lead to �legal jeopardy and proceedings,� and said it violated an �agreement with the Marine Corps.� (Cleghorn told SFGATE that the Marine Corps is not enforcing any kind of gag order.)

�I truly believe that the pride and ego of a few select claimants have stood in the way of planting our kupuna back into the aina [land],� Caceres told SFGATE. �The only thing that comes to mind is that the original claimants are shame to let the other Native Hawaiians know that it�s taken this long to bury iwi kupuna.�

Repatriation of iwi kupuna is certainly possible under NAGPRA, according to Edward Halealoha Ayau, former executive director of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei. (Hui Malama was one of the original claimants of the Mokapu iwi, but backed out 23 years ago, when the families became territorial.) Since the passage of the federal law, Ayau said, Hui Malama and other organizations have been able to reclaim 6,000 iwi kupuna.

�It�s hard that we�re going all around the world to bring our ancestors home and the largest collection of Hawaiian remains at a single site still sits waiting to be reburied,� Ayau told SFGATE.

Trauma that never ends

It�s impossible to know how many other iwi kupuna have been desecrated in all of the islands of Hawaii, but commercial and real estate developments continue to unearth them. Ayau also says he and other activists are still finding remains in museums and institutions overseas.

�Every time we celebrate bringing them home, we find out there are more and more and more. So we just keep looking,� Ayau told SFGATE.

Ayau feels great responsibility for taking back possession of iwi kupuna and giving them the dignity of a safe resting place. Because Native Hawaiians have no traditional prayers for reburial after grave robbery, Ayau�s kumu, or teacher, created new prayers, asking the ancestors to forgive their descendants for allowing desecration of their remains, and offering humility to assuage their anger.

** Photo caption
Earlier this year, Mana Caceres took part in a handover ceremony, where eight iwi kupuna from the Ubersee-Museum Bremen in Germany were returned to representatives of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. OHA has been involved in 120 repatriation cases over the past 30 years.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs

Razon-Olds, meanwhile, feels a great deal of urgency in getting younger generations involved in the repatriation process. Many of the descendants who have been leading the charge are now elderly, she told SFGATE. But even after the Mokapu iwi are buried, there is no end in sight for the lasting trauma of colonization and development of Hawaii.

�There truly are iwi kupuna everywhere. Anywhere you develop, you have potential to disturb, to desecrate,� Razon-Olds said. �As long as there�s building going on anywhere in Hawaii, our job will keep going.�

Even if she knows there will still be work to do for her children, she truly hopes the Mokapu iwi will be buried in her lifetime, so she doesn�t pass the responsibility onto them.

�As I know my children will also be iwi kupuna advocates, I hope they don�t have to shoulder something as heavy as Mokapu,� she says. �It�s hard. It was hard on my Auntie Nalani. I know it�s hard on all the other iwi kupuna advocates.�

Written By Christine Hitt
Christine Hitt is the Hawaii contributing editor for SFGATE. She is part-Native Hawaiian from the island of Oahu, and a Kamehameha Schools and University of Hawaii graduate. She's the former editor-in-chief of Hawaii and Mana magazines.

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https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/06/09/hawaii-news/after-more-than-a-decade-of-controversy-council-recommends-burial-plan-for-kawaiahao/
Honolulu Star-Advertiser Thursday June 9, 2022

After more than a decade of controversy, council recommends burial plan for Kawaiaha�o

By Timothy Hurley

It�s been over a decade since hundreds of Native Hawaiian burials were unearthed during a construction project at Kawaiaha�o Church, setting off a storm of controversy and legal dispute that went all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court.

On Wednesday the fate of those skeletal remains was finally determined by the Oahu Island Burial Council, which approved a plan to allow interment of iwi kupuna as close as possible to their original burial places at Honolulu�s oldest church.

When the council approved the Kawaiaha�o Joint Burial Treatment Plan on a 5-0 vote, the crowd filling the state Department of Land and Natural Resources board room broke into applause. Afterward, hugs and tears were seen in the breezeway outside the board room.

�Indescribable joy and relief� is how Edward Hale�aloha Ayau described his feelings. Ayau is a burial and iwi kupuna repatriation expert who has been helping to work toward a resolution of the dispute for years. �It took so long,� he said.

Following the vote, the descendants walked down Punchbowl Street to the historic church, where they prayed with Kahu Kenneth Makuakane and then paid their respects to the remains of their ancestors, which have been stored in the Mark A. Robinson Chapel beneath the main sanctuary since the bones were unearthed more than 10 years ago.

Among the descendants were council members Mana Caceres of Ewa and Diane Fitzsimmons of Waialua, each of whom recused themselves from Wednesday�s vote and then excused themselves from the rest of the meeting to join the procession to Kawaiaha�o. Council member Brickwood Galuteria, a member of the Kawaiaha�o congregation, also recused himself from the vote. The approved burial plan, jointly written and supported by the church and the majority of recognized descendants, affects the remains of more than 600 individuals.

�The hard work starts now,� Suzanne Boatman, chairwoman of the Kawaiaha�o board of trustees, said outside of the church. �It�s about meeting their needs,� she added, pointing to the 18 or so descendants inside the sanctuary. There are 84 living recognized descendants. There are also government permits needed to get the reinterment going and several lawsuits that require resolution, she said.

The controversy dates back to Kawaiaha�o�s attempt to construct a $17.5 million multipurpose building adjacent to the church sanctuary in 2006. The project started with the demolition of two buildings, a social hall and an administration building, which contained the church restrooms and elevator to the church sanctuary.

Ayau said the church�s leadership, with the blessing of DLNR, went forward with the project even though officials knew it was highly likely bones would be unearthed. He said the church gambled with the law and brought the lawsuits and controversy upon itself. �Burial law is designed to make sure something like this never happens,� he said.

Protest, controversy and several lawsuits followed, including one that ended up at the state�s highest court, which upheld a lower court ruling that said the state violated its own rules in allowing construction of the building without requiring the church to do an archaeological inventory survey first. An injunction in 2011 reduced all fieldwork to hand tools only and essentially halted any progress on the building.

Ayau credited a change in administration at the church for helping to put divided church members and the descendants on the same path. Makuakane, in an interview, said he could feel the controversy tearing apart the church when he came on board in 2018. �When I came in, I saw broken families,� he said. �I felt my responsibility was to reunite, not break apart families. The church is supposed to be a healing place.� Makuakane announced at a burial council meeting in 2018 that the church�s trustees were recommending the discontinuation of the planned multipurpose center and had instead favored the development of a burial treatment plan.

Ayau said families in recent years met 138 times regarding the reburial efforts during weekly meetings that acted in part like a support group. �There was a lot of pain,� he said.

Boatman said the church plans to continue working with the State Historical Preservation Division to achieve a final signoff to the burial plan. This could take up to 90 days, she said, but church officials are hoping it can happen sooner. The church is currently operating under an injunction that allows only the use of hand tools within the reburial area. The church, she said, will petition the court to lift the injunction and apply for the required demolition and grading permits.

Boatman said the project�s general contractor, Hawaiian Dredging, will be operating during regular daytime hours to minimize the disturbance to nearby residents. The project should take about two months when final approval comes through. �The church and the recognized descendants are anxious to start and complete before the next rainy season,� she said.

------

** Commenter maggihall wrote:
I'm stunned a house of God even became embroiled in such a controversy by wanting to continue digging. Shocking really!

** Ken's online reply:
What you SHOUD be stunned about is that the huge diningroom/recreationroom was built right on top of all those burials decades ago, and nobody thought there was anything wrong with it; yet now the activists have adopted a new set of values about burials which says burials should not be disturbed and should not have anything built on top of them. Remember, the dead people were Christians, whose Christian families buried them next to a Christian church -- they did not adhere to the pagan Hawaiian religion nor to today's historical revisionist version of what the old religion demands about not disturbing burials because the souls of the dead folks remain alive in their bones. Today's activists disrespect the decisions made by their ancestors by imposing upon them a set of beliefs they claim their ancestors SHOULD have held but did not.

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https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/06/12/hawaii-news/iwi-kupuna-returned-to-oahu-from-new-zealand-museum/
Honolulu Star-Advertiser Sunday June 12, 2022

Iwi kupuna returned to Oahu from New Zealand museum

By Timothy Hurley

The remains of three Native Hawaiians, illegally taken from Oahu in 1860, found their way to New Zealand, where they were housed in the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch for more than 150 years. Now they have been brought home to be buried again as part of the latest repatriation effort of Hawaiian remains from distant institutions. The skulls of the individuals were brought home late last month following extended negotiations with the museum.

Mehanaokala Hind of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, along with Makoa Caceres and Kaipo Torco of Hui Iwi Kuamo�o, took part in a traditional powhiri ceremony at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand in Wellington followed by a formal hand�over ceremony.

The three ancestors � a male age 20 to 30, a female age 20 to 30, and a female in her 40s � were taken in 1860 from the ahupuaa of Waikiki during the time of King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma. According to provenance information from the museum, William Green and R.J. Langhern Desha stole the skeletal remains from their burial grounds and gave them to William Henry Symes, who took them on a ship to New Zealand. In 1873, Symes, a medical doctor, donated a number of skulls to Julius von Haast, founder of the Canterbury Museum.

The effort to return the remains is the latest in a 30-year campaign that has brought some 3,000 iwi kupuna back to the islands from museums and institutions overseas. That includes the 62 iwi kupuna that were recently returned in the last few months from Germany, England, Ireland and Scotland by Hui Iwi Kuamo�o in conjunction with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Native Hawaiians traditionally believe that the mana, or the spiritual essence and power, of a person resides in the bones, or iwi. For many Hawaiians, it is important for the bones of a deceased person to complete their journey and return to the ground to impart their mana.

The latest repatriation is the result of years of work by veteran iwi kupuna hunter Edward Halealoha Ayau and Hui Iwi Kuamo�o to research and navigate the protocol involved in returning remains. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs also followed with a claim to the Canterbury Museum.

Hind, CNHA�s senior director of community programs, was in New Zealand in 2014 while she was employed by OHA, scoping out potential exhibit items at the Canterbury Museum for showing in Hawaii. She said she asked the museum�s director face to face if there were any skeletal remains from Hawaii there, and he said no. Three years later, however, a Ph.D. candidate working at the museum reached out to Ayau to say there were in fact three Indigenous skulls from Hawaii there. Winding negotiations followed until the museum finally agreed to give up the remains in 2020. But then New Zealand went into lockdown when the coronavirus swept over the globe, so the hand-off was delayed for a couple of years. �We still had to jump through COVID hurdles (last month) but it�s something we had to do,� Hind said. You never know when a museum status change, such as a new director, could shut the door on an opportunity, she said.

Since January, CNHA has committed $25,000 in funding to support Hui Iwi Kuamo�o�s efforts, which include significant travel costs abroad. �Caring for our lahui (nation) means supporting not only our people today and the generations yet to come, but also our ancestors who came long before us,� Kuhio Lewis, CNHA chief executive officer, said in a statement. �CNHA is humbled to kokua Hui Iwi Kuamo�o in its efforts to finally bring our kupuna home.�

=================

(10) July 29: Indigenous peoples want sacred items returned from Catholic museums Pope�s Canadian visit spurs renewed interest in church�s collections of Indigenous artifacts

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/indigenous-peoples-want-sacred-items-returned-from-catholic-museums
Indian Country Today Friday July 29, 2022

Indigenous peoples want sacred items returned from Catholic museums
Pope�s Canadian visit spurs renewed interest in church�s collections of Indigenous artifacts

MARY ANNETTE PEMBER

One of the Vatican museums� least-visited collections of Indigenous artifacts is fast becoming its most contested.

As the world�s attention is focused on Pope Francis� visit to Canada to apologize for abuses Indigenous peoples suffered at the hands of Catholic missionaries in residential schools, Indigenous groups are calling for the Vatican to return tens of thousands of Indigenous artifacts and art held by the museums.

The Vatican�s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum houses feathered headdresses, carved walrus tusks, masks and embroidered animal skins all described as gifts given by Indigenous peoples to Pope Pius XI, who served from 1922-1939. Museum curators claim that most of the items were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens.

Indigenous leaders were shown a few of the objects last spring when they traveled to the Vatican to meet with the Pontiff. Now they are questioning how the items were actually acquired, and some say they want them returned. �These pieces that belong to us should come home,� said Cassidy Caron, president of the M�tis National Council, who headed the M�tis delegation that asked the Pope to return the items.

In June, ICT notified leaders at Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario about a 2012 article in The Christian Science Monitor describing a birch bark scroll sent by citizens of the tribe in 1887 to Pope Leo XIII. In an interview with ICT, Jason Fobister, cultural keeper for the tribe, said that this was the first he or other tribal citizens had heard of the scroll. �We have lost so much over the years,� Fobister said. �We are trying to recover our language and ways. Those scrolls were used in the Midewiwin religion and we would like to know more about it.�

ICT sent an email to media and museum representatives at the Vatican seeking comment but have not received a reply. Restitution of Indigenous and colonial era artifacts, a pressing debate for museums and national collections across Europe, is one of many issues for the pope to address during his Canadian trip.

This particular issue, however, reaches far beyond Canada and the Vatican museums. It seems likely, with their larger and longer history of operating Indian boarding schools in the United States, Catholic entities in the United States also engaged in the same Indigenous artifact-gathering activities as their Canadian counterparts.

Vast collections

Many of the orders of Catholic priests and nuns that operated U.S. Indian boarding schools currently hold historic Native artifacts in their archives and collections, and school leaders likely sent items to the Vatican during the 1925 call for Indigenous items to be included in the exhibition.

This painting by the late Peter Whitebird, a Bad River tribal citizen, was among 39 items repatriated back to the tribe on June 1, 2022, by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Whitebird was well-known artist who made paintings for nuns in the 1930s as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. He died in the 1930s but his descendants live in Bad River. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

ICT observed a number of items such as moccasins, beaded knife sheaths, pipes and paintings in the archives during a recent visit to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at their Mother House in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The order operated only one Indian boarding school, St. Mary�s, on the Bad River Ojibwe reservation in Wisconsin. Jane Comeau, with the communications team of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, told ICT that on June 1 the order participated in a private repatriation ceremony with the Bad River Band of Wisconsin Chippewa in which they returned 39 cultural items to the tribe including several paintings by tribal member Peter Whitebird. The collection in La Crosse appeared to number fewer than 100 or so items, but some Catholic orders and former school holdings could be extensive; it is impossible to know the number and extent of the collections.

In addition to its extensive holdings of contemporary Native art, the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota stores thousands of historical Indigenous artifacts that have landed in their hands for a variety of reasons. Since 1968, the center has hosted the Red Cloud Indian Art Show each summer offering Native artists an opportunity to showcase and sell their work, with fees going directly to the artist. The center also acquires art from the shows and has accumulated a large award-winning collection of pieces. As a result, the center has become a sort of de facto storage facility for historic Native artifacts that are given to or sometimes anonymously dropped off at the organization�s offices. �Non-Native people have brought us historical artifacts that they claim were collected by their great-grandparents or other relatives who may have lived or worked on the Pine Ridge reservation,� said Ashley Pourier, curator at Red Cloud�s Heritage Center. �Often they are uncomfortable keeping these things and ask us to take them.�

Pourier, of the Lakota Nation, said there are very few places for people to return items to tribes. �We have accepted it all since we are one of the safest places for these items right now. It�s mainly a storage issue,� she said, adding, �We are running out of space. Hopefully, a tribal or nonprofit entity can act as a repository for these items in the future.� Unfortunately, few of the artifacts brought to the center have any information attached to them, she said. �We have reached out to families on the reservation to return items that have identifying information attached,� Pourier said.

Pourier also reaches out to tribes about items that could be repatriated, but she is the sole curator at the center and the work far outweighs resources. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual situation for institutions such as Red Cloud school, the Heritage Center and others, said Shannon O�Loughlin, chief executive and attorney for the Association on Indian Affairs. According to its website, the association is one of the oldest nonprofits serving Indian Country and serves an important role in consulting with tribes and other entities regarding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.

NAGPRA, a federal law enacted in 1990, provides for the repatriation and disposition of certain human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony by any museum or other organization that receives or has received federal funds. O�Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said that any organization that has received public funding is subject to NAGPRA. Denominational schools such as Red Cloud and organizations such as the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration who founded Viterbo University, and Marquette University, which holds the archives for the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, could be subject to NAGPRA laws.

But not everyone agrees. Amy Cooper Cary, head of special collections and university archives at Marquette University, told ICT in an emailed response to questions that they would review the issue. �I think the majority of the (Marquette) collection is not subject to NAGPRA specifically because it was created by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions,� Cary said. �I would have to consult with our legal counsel to get a definitive answer on this.�

Many institutions claim ignorance about the law or say they don't have the capacity to address potential issues of repatriation, O�Loughlin said. �But this law has been on the books for 32 years so there�s really no excuse,� she said. �Plus, there are a number of grants available to organizations to catalog their holdings and pursue repatriation in consultation with tribes.� O�Loughlin said there is a civil complaint process through which citizens can file a complaint about organizations holding Native artifacts. Organizations that don�t comply with the NAGPRA process can potentially be fined for each item in their collections. �Sometimes the possibility of a monetary penalty is enough to convince organizations to comply with NAGPRA,� she said.

Path to the Vatican

The path along which some Native artifacts came to be in some institutions' collections are fraught with uncertainty, according to O�Loughlin.

Although the Vatican claims the Indigenous items in its collection were gifts from Indigenous peoples, O�Loughlin points out that the Code of Indian Offenses enacted in 1883 banned Native dances and other expressions of Indigenous spirituality in the United States. Offenders were subject to fine or imprisonment. Some of the artifacts held by religious organizations could have been confiscated by Indian agents or other reservation authorities from Native peoples, according to O�Loughlin.

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed in 1978, rescinded the Code of Indian Offenses� religious restrictions. Official Canadian policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries also aimed to suppress Indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions, including the 1885 Potlatch Ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Government agents confiscated items used in the ceremony and other rituals, and some of them ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe as well as in private collections. The Vatican�s catalog of its Americas collection, for example, features a wooden painted mask from the Haida Gwaii islands of British Columbia that is �related to the Potlatch ceremony.�

During a visit this spring by Indigenous Canadians to the Vatican, Natan Obed, who headed the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami delegation, raised the issue of an Inuit kayak in the collection that was featured in a 2021 report in The Globe and Mail newspaper. Obed was quoted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as saying the museum head, the Rev. Nicola Mapelli, was open to discussing its return. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni didn�t rule out that Pope Francis might repatriate some items during the current Canadian trip, telling reporters, �We�ll see what happens in the coming days.� The Pope is set to be on Inuit lands, in Iqaluit, Nunavut, on Friday, July 29, before flying home to Rome.

There are international standards, as well as individual museum policies, guiding the return 0f Indigenous cultural property. The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for example, asserts that nations should provide redress, including through restitution, of cultural, religious and spiritual property taken �without their free, prior, and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.�

While it is possible Indigenous peoples gave their handiwork to Catholic missionaries for the 1925 expo or that the missionaries bought them, historians question whether the items could have been offered freely given the power imbalances in Catholic missions and the government�s policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions. Canada�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the policies �cultural genocide� in its sweeping 2015 report. �By the power structure of what was going on at the time, it would be very hard for me to accept that there wasn�t some coercion going on in those communities to get these objects,� said Michael Galban, a Washoe and Mono Lake Paiute citizen who is director and curator of the Seneca Art and Culture Center in upstate New York.

The Holy See�s Indigenous collection began centuries ago, with some pre-Columbian items sent to Pope Innocent XII in 1692, and it has been amplified over the years by gifts to popes, especially on foreign trips. Of the 100,000 items originally sent for the 1925 exhibit, the Vatican says it has kept 40,000. It has repatriated some items. In 2021, Vatican News reported that the Anima Mundi had recently returned to Ecuador a shrunken head used in rituals by the Jivaroan peoples of the Amazon. In its 2015 catalog of its Americas holdings, the museum said they demonstrated the church�s great esteem for world cultures and its commitment to preserving their arts and artifacts, as evidenced by the excellent condition of the pieces.

The catalog also said the museum welcomes dialogue with Indigenous peoples and collaborated with Aboriginal communities in Australia before a 2010 exhibit. The collections director, Mapelli, a missionary priest and an associate visited those communities, took video testimonies and traveled the world seeking more information about the museum�s holdings. Official Vatican museum tours don�t include the Anima Mundi. Private guides say they rarely take visitors there because there is no explanatory signage on display cases or wall text panels.

Margo Neale, who helped curate the Vatican�s 2010 Aboriginal exhibition as head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges at the Australian National Museum, said it is unacceptable for Indigenous collections today to lack informational labels. �They are not being given the respect they deserve by being named in any way,� said Neale, a member of the Kulin and Gumbaynggirr Nations. �They are beautifully displayed but are culturally diminished by the lack of acknowledgement of anything other than their exotic otherness.�

Museums and governments around Europe � in places like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium � are grappling with the question of their colonial and post-colonial collections and leading the discussion of legally transferring property back, experts say.

In Canada, the Royal British Columbia Museum has gone so far as to create a handbook empowering Indigenous communities to reclaim their cultural heritage.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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https://www.lewistownsentinel.com/life/lifestyles/2022/09/archives-to-return-native-american-remains-burial-objects-to-tribes/
Lewistown Sentinel [Alabama] Thursday September 8, 2022

Archives to return Native American remains, burial objects to tribes

** Photo caption The entrance to the to an exhibit about Native Americans in Alabama is closed to the public at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, Ala., Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022. The department announced Thursday that it has removed funerary objects from displays and is returning them along with Native American remains to tribes as required by federal law. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) � The remains of Native American people who once lived in Alabama were dug up a century ago � often by amateur archaeologists � and given to the state along with the jewelry, urns and other objects buried with them.

The Alabama Department of Archives and History announced this week that it is beginning the process of returning the remains and funerary objects held in its collections to tribes as required by federal law. The department also announced it had removed the funerary objects from displays where the artifacts had sat for years, viewed by school groups and other visitors.

�The origins of those materials and the way they came into our possession is really quite problematic from today�s perspective. and we very much honor and agreed with Native perspectives on what is and isn�t a proper type of material to show in a museum exhibition,� Steve Murray, the director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, said Thursday.

The funerary objects were,�the personal property of someone who was buried and then that burial was later disturbed without permission,� Murray said.

The 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions, such as universities, to return Native American remains and cultural items to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. However, the return has been slow to happen.

The Associated Press reported last month that 870,000 Native American artifacts � including nearly 110,000 human remains � are still in the possession of colleges, museums and other institutions across the country, according to data maintained by the National Park Service.

The first materials to be returned from the Alabama archives will be 37 sets of human remains and 349 associated funerary objects that were excavated from burials at two sites in Montgomery and Lowndes counties in the early 1900s. The graves were of people who lived in Alabama in the 18th century although some dated back to the 1600s, Murray said.

State archives have a total of 114 sets of remains taken from 22 sites across the state plus the objects that were buried with those people, Murray said. University of Alabama museums are the largest holder of Native American remains and artifacts in Alabama.

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(12) Oct 19: 'It felt like a calling': Native Hawaiian students, professor step up to return iwi kupuna from Yale University

https://www.kitv.com/news/it-felt-like-a-calling-native-hawaiian-students-professor-step-up-to-return-iwi-kupuna/article_b42a74a0-5022-11ed-9354-c37a92147bec.html

KITV News Thursday October 19, 2022

'It felt like a calling': Native Hawaiian students, professor step up to return iwi kupuna from Yale University

By 'A'ali'i Dukelow

After more than a century away from their resting place -- iwi kupuna, or human remains, have been laid to rest back here in Hawai'i. A Native Hawaiian from O'ahu, Hi'ilei Hobart recently started teaching at Yale University and made a visit to the school's Peabody museum.

After finding out the facility still had iwi kupuna or human remains that were supposed to be returned to Hawai'i, she felt the need to act. "I was like, are we going to get those home ASAP?," Hobart recalled asking a museum representative, adding it was the right question at the right time that started the effort to take back the iwi.

The remains included jaw and teeth bones that had been a part of the Peabody collection in New Haven, Connecticut for more than 150 years. The museum sent back more than 100 iwi back to Hawai'i in 1994 and and several more in 2014, which is when Hobart said the third round of iwi were meant to be sent back -- but they were separated from the rest.

KITV-4 reached out to the museum for an explanation and are awaiting a response. When Hobart asked how that happened, she said she was told, "sometimes this just happens, right, somebody who was processing it isn't careful, isn't mindful, things get separated and later discovered." "But for me the most important thing was to just make sure that we work quickly to correct it."

Hobart enlisted a few kanaka maoli or native Hawaiian students at Yale to help her transfer the iwi, including Kala'i Anderson, Connor Arakaki, and Joshua Ching. "It was kind of hard to manage my time, but I knew that this kind of repatriation project was really important to me, so I made it a priority" Anderson said.

In the midst of midterms, the group had about a week to prepare, meeting with cultural practitioners Mana and Kalehua Caceres daily via zoom to learn new pule or prayer and oli, chants, for a ceremony to remove and transport the iwi.

Earlier this month, the four took the iwi to repatriation expert Halealoha Ayau, who happened to have scheduled a trip to Vassar College about an hour drive away to retrieve iwi from there himself. "I didn't feel like I was worthy of doing it, but because there weren't many other native Hawaiians at Yale, it kind of felt like sort of a calling," Ching said. "Doing the repatriation project felt like a calling for me to build a space for native students at Yale and to respond to the call of duty," Arakaki said.

The kuleana of helping to return the iwi was both grueling and gratifying for Hobart and the three students, as they're relieved to know the remains have been returned to their proper resting place.

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https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2022/12/27/hawaii-news/law-protects-export-of-sacred-native-american-items-from-us/
Hawaii Tribune-Herald Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Law protects export of sacred Native American items from US

By FELICIA FONSECA Associated Press

** Photo caption: A Native American feather bonnet from 1890 made of eagle feathers, rooster hackles, wood rods, porcupine hair, wool cloth, felt, and glass beads, is displayed as part of an exhibition at the High Museum of Art on Oct. 31, 2013, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. � Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes, immediately making some crimes a felony and doubling the prison time for anyone convicted of multiple offenses.

President Joe Biden signed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act on Dec. 21, a bill that had been introduced since 2016. Along with stiffer penalties, it prohibits the export of sacred Native American items from the U.S. and creates a certification process to distinguish art from sacred items.

The effort largely was inspired by pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Arizona who repeatedly saw sacred objects up for auction in France. Tribal leaders issued passionate pleas for the return of the items but were met with resistance and the reality that the U.S. had no mechanism to prevent the items from leaving the country.

�The STOP Act is really born out of that problem and hearing it over and over,� said attorney Katie Klass, who represents Acoma Pueblo on the matter and is a citizen of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. �It�s really designed to link existing domestic laws that protect tribal cultural heritage with an existing international mechanism.�

The law creates an export certification system that would help clarify whether items were created as art and provides a path for the voluntary return of items that are part of a tribe�s cultural heritage. Federal agencies would work with Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to outline what items should not leave the U.S. and to seek items back. Information provided by tribes about those items would be shielded from public records laws.

While dealers and collectors often see the items as art to be displayed and preserved, tribes view the objects as living beings held in community, said Brian Vallo, a consultant on repatriation. �These items remain sacred, they will never lose their significance,� said Vallo, a former governor of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. �They will never lose their power and place as a cultural item. And it is for this reason that we are so concerned.�

Tribes have seen some wins over the years:

� In 2019, Finland agreed to return ancestral remains of Native American tribes that once called the cliffs of Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado home. The remains and artifacts were unearthed by a Swedish researcher in 1891 and held in the collection of the national Museum of Finland.

� That same year, a ceremonial shield that vanished from Acoma Pueblo in the 1970s was returned to the tribe after a nearly four-year campaign involving U.S. senators, diplomats and prosecutors. The circular, colorful shield featuring the face of a Kachina, or ancestral spirit, had been held at a Paris auction house.

� In 2014, the Navajo Nation sent its vice president to Paris to bid on items believed to be used in wintertime healing ceremonies after diplomacy and a plea to return the items failed. The tribe secured several items, spending $9,000.

� In 2013, the Annenberg Foundation quietly bought nearly two dozen ceremonial items at an auction in Paris and later returned them to the Hopi, the San Carlos Apache and the White Mountain Apache tribes in Arizona. The tribes said the items invoke the spirit of their ancestors and were taken in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The STOP Act ties in with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that requires museums and universities that receive federal funds to disclose Native American items in their possession, inventory them, and notify and transfer those items to affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiians or descendants.

The Interior Department has proposed a number of changes to strengthen NAGPRA and is taking public comment on them until mid-January.

The STOP Act increases penalties for illegally trafficking Native American human remains from one year to a year and a day, thus making it a felony on the first offense. Trafficking cultural items as outlined in NAGPRA remains a misdemeanor on the first offense. Penalties for subsequent offenses for both increase from five years to 10 years.

New Mexico U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who introduced the House bill, said time will tell whether the penalties are adequate. �We should always look at the laws we pass as not static but as living laws, so we are able to determine improvements that can be made,� she said.

Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, the former cultural preservation director for the Hopi Tribe, said the enhanced penalties are helpful. But he wants to see countries embrace a principle of mutual respect and deference to the laws of sovereign Native American nations when it comes to what�s rightfully theirs. For Hopi, he said, the items are held by the community and no one person has a right to sell or give them away. The items can be hard to track but often surface in underground markets, in museums, shows, and auction house catalogs, Vallo said. He said Finland, Germany and the U.K. shared intentions recently to work with U.S. tribes to understand what�s in their collections and talk about ways to return items of great cultural significance. �I think if we can make some progress, even with these three countries, it sends a strong message that there is a way to go about this work, there is a mutual reward at the end,� he said.

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LINKS

This present webpage covers only the year 2022.

For coverage of events in 2005 (about 250 pages), see:

https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagprahawaii2005.html

For year 2006 (about 150 pages), see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/nagprahawaii2006.html

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Send comments or questions to:
Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

GO BACK TO: NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) as applied to Hawai'i -- Mokapu, Honokahua, Bishop Museum Ka'ai; Providence Museum Spear Rest; Forbes Cave Artifacts; the Hui Malama organization

GO BACK TO OTHER TOPICS ON THIS WEBSITE