Skullduggery

There are times when one is humbled by a familiar and

Tiresome story. Tonight I felt pity, the sort that

may exonerate misunderstanding and alienation.

A recent story, one close to home was told.

A friend revealed a relative was an arrow

hunter and went to the Columbia River to dig up

arrow heads before the area was inundated by the

Dalles Dam in the late fifties. What was an innocent

passion turned into a type of hoarding deadly to

the human spirit. The revealed secret was a catalyst

for two families to own up to a dark secret, and for

one of the families to break a long silence about

generations of pain. One shared with her Indian friend

a family secret. She was surprised to find out this

truth was onerous to her.

The seret teller's relative had found a human skeleton.

It was an "old" one, as he described the

find to his descendants. Which meant there was no

family to contend with, and in that day, no one

cross-examined his right to take the skull home.

The tribes had another unimaginable grief, the loss of

homeland for a millennium. The loss of Celilo Falls,

and of the family responsibility to fishing grounds

and ceremonial grounds for the people, as a whole. He

valued the piece and reverently took care of it. His

relative said, "He honored it as it should be

honored." Which did not make sense, since there is

little honor to be found in stealing human remains.

Can anyone exalt and respect a grave robber? Can one

make excuses for someone who possesses a skull,

albeit an "old" one and one that used to be Indian?

Especially when the event seemed so dim and small in

consequence as killing a bird for shooting practice. It's

only a bird and this is only an Indian.

I have a hard time understanding why people do not

want to return human remains. Demanding the return

from their present keepers is like accusing them of

being the pilot who dropped the atom bomb, or being a

murderer. They are only a small bead in a chain, and

there is no beginning to the pattern, but segment

after segment, the weave moves into the next bead.

How do you react when cultural theft becomes the norm

and pain as a constant pulse matches the heart,

automatic and certain? Pain in this country is big,

numbing treadmill. It only works when people are

ready to exalt denial. It doesn't when people

become humane, become vulnerable and sensitive.

People prepare and bury their dead for a reason. We

participate in a system designed to ease grief,

circumvent extreme attachments to the dead, and

designate a place to honor their memory by placing

them into the earth and cosmos with reverence. We

bury our loved ones with ceremony so we can go on and

they can become part of everything. We do not dump

our beloved people out in the open, even today. Even

if they are ashes, we put them out carefully,

conscientiously.

What happened next? Should I talk of suspicion and

resentment? Should I talk of grief and fear? These

tsunami of feelings about our bones boxed somewhere

in a place other than the intended resting place.

This is illegal. The law is of little value when we

are dealing with people who act above laws, of both

humanity and nature. The skull was reinterred. In a

place that will not be revealed. In a boxed lined with

buckskin made by a sensitive friend, lead out by

respected elders of my tribe. The skull was a Tenino

human being once. A relative in a certain way, a

relationship of my own by tribal designation. An

uncle watched the horses and not one was stolen. A

small Pendleton blanket scrap was laid over the top

of the box. This place will not be revealed. The

place, I assure you, will not be disturbed again.

People prayed from as far away as Florida, and as

close as next door. The family who kept the skull

respectfully suffered loss, too. They suffered and

were forgiven. The remains reburied, like our other

relatives who returned a year before, almost to the

same day, from the Smithsonian, by the U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers, the modern day owners of the bones.

These people were laid to rest, again, in concrete.

It is a shame we have to bury our people in concrete.

Photograph (Sculpture 'Gathering Energy From Milky Way')

Copyright University of Nebraska Press 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved