Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Archaeology Gone Wrong

December 18, 2013

Ben Barnes, Second Chief of the Shawnee Tribe has written a thought provoking guest post for the Ohio Historical Society Archaeological Blog about genetic research and NAGPRA from a tribal member's perspective.

"We have not been stakeholders in the conversations about the treatment of our ancestors for far too long. I read of digs in other countries and the wealth of new understandings of the ancient past from the bones themselves. The difference between the Americas and the digs occurring in the rest of the world is that the community to which the remains belong were not involved in the conversations. Until we attempt to communicate with each other what it is we are trying to protect or to discover, neither side will have a fullness of knowledge, and that is what we all really want.

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