Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1996

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Unknown Native Remains
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STORY: The first thing you notice as you enter the basement of the University of Alaska Museum is the noise of the air conditioning system that maintains the room at a constant temperature and humidity. The second thing you see are shelves holding dozens of cardboard boxes containing the remains of Alaska Natives. Gary Selinger is charged with returning the remains to Native groups throughout Alaska.

"This is all human remains, so this whole, um, up to about . . . right here is all human remains. This is a shelving area, it's probably about 25 feet long, about 12 feet high and I think it's about three feet deep of boxes, containing human remains of Native groups in Alaska and down in the Lower 48."

But while most of the remains have detailed records of where they were excavated, the remains of about 185 people do not. That makes returning them especially difficult. Gary Selinger:

"We also have a group of human remains that are being determined as culturally unaffiliated. That means we know it's Alaskan, the material, the human remains are from Alaska Natives, but we don't know where. There's human remains in every museum for which there is no data, essentially. Some of the human remains we know it's like, Bering Sea skull, something like that."

Ironically, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act--the federal law requiring museums and agencies to return Native American remains--left open the question of what to do with remains that cannot be linked to a specific Native group or tribe. Deciding how such remains will be repatriated is the task of a review committee made up of Native leaders and scientists. The committee proposes a concept called "shared group identity." Under the proposal remains would be returned to Native groups that share cultural ties. Tim McKeown heads the National Park Service's repatriation program.

"The committee I think is very concerned to try to make sure that as many tribes have a chance to repatriate as many of the human remains that are in collections as possible. There may be more than one tribe that has a shared identity with particular remains, so there's really not an obligation to narrow it down to one tribe or Native village or corporation in the case of Alaska."

McKeown says this approach may work well because most of the unidentified remains offer clues that point to groups of Native Americans, although not specific tribes. He sites one case in which several Washington state tribes cradled newborn infants on wooden boards, a practice that flattened the backs of infants' heads.

"I do know we've recently published a notice from a museum in Washington State where there were several skulls that exhibited flattening on the back of the head, such that you would get from cradle board. And they basically looked at the ethnographic literature to identify which tribes in that area practiced that to help narrow it down to a smaller group of tribes."

The skull identified by Alaska's Gary Selinger as being from the Bering Sea region of Alaska is another example. Under the current law, several Alaska Native groups could claim the skull. If the committee's proposal becomes law, these groups could legally share ownership.

Vera Metcalf is a Siberian-Yupik Eskimo and the repatriation coordinator with the Bering Strait Foundation in Nome. She believes such an arrangement would benefit all the region's Native groups.

"All the regions should agree to something and come up with one location where all of these unidentified Alaska remains can be reburied. But I certainly would like to see some form of memorial or some form of site that would be designated as a reburial for those unidentified remains."

But not everyone is happy with the concept of shared group identity. Archeologists and museum anthropologists say determining ties between today's Native cultures and human remains that are hundreds--sometimes thousands of years old--isn't possible. The review committee will decide the issue at its November meeting in Florida. If the committee decides to move ahead with the concept, it will clear the way to returning thousands of culturally unidentified Native remains.

Reporting from Fairbanks, this is Debra Damron for Arctic Science Journeys.