And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Peter H. King: 'Science can go to
h*ll:' Smithsonian ought to give
Ishi's brain to Indians
http://www.fresnobee.com/localnews/story/0%2C1225%2C74479%2C00.html
Column by Peter H. King
The Fresno Bee
(Published April 7, 1999)
The Butte County Native American Cultural
Committee, on behalf of all California Native
Americans, does hereby present this claim for the
repatriation of the brain of Ishi.
- Formal petition hand-delivered Monday to a
representative of the Smithsonian Institution
SACRAMENTO - Poor Ishi. So much about the life,
death - and, now even, the afterlife - of California's
iconic American Indian seems strange, unsettling,
complicated, provocative and, ultimately, sad. Born
about a decade after the Gold Rush, Ishi was believed
to belong to the Yahi tribe, a tiny band of Northern
California Indians that in his time would be made extinct
by massacre and disease.
In 1911, with the last of his kin dead, a nearly starved
Ishi wandered into Oroville and at once became a
national sensation: "The last wild Indian of North
America." Ensconced in a San Francisco museum, Ishi
for the next four years would serve as a sort of living
exhibit and study tool, enthralling thousands with his
demonstrations of native routines and allowing himself
to be regularly examined and debriefed by the
University of California anthropologists who watched
over him.
The scientists came to consider Ishi a friend, and after
he contracted tuberculosis, they began to make plans
for his funeral. They knew Ishi would not want an
autopsy, nor would he want his remains to be preserved
for scientific purposes; cremation was the Yahi way. As
one of them, Alfred Kroeber, wrote to a colleague: "If
there is any talk about the interests of science, say for
me that science can go to hell."
Unfortunately, these would not be the anthropologist's
last words on the matter. � � �
How Kroeber and his associates came to understand
Ishi's beliefs about the dead is described by Theodora
Kroeber, the scientist's widow, in a 1961 biography
titled, "Ishi in Two Worlds." Ishi, she writes, wandered
one day into the "dissection room" of a hospital: "There
were several cadavers laid out on the marble slabs,
partly uncovered and in various stages of classroom
dissection. This was a revolting and terrifying
experience to Ishi.
"To the Yahi especially, as to all Indians practicing
cremation, the extended handling of the body and its
continued presence among the living is perilous both to
the living and to the dead. The flames of the funeral
pyre, which accomplish cleanly and at once the
reduction to inert matter of the corruptible body, are
also the beneficent flames that release the incorrupt and
indestructible soul for its journey to the Land of the
Dead."
Ishi died on March 25, 1916. His body was cremated
along with one of his bows, a pouch of tobacco and
other trinkets, the ashes taken to a Colma cemetery,
where they remain today. However, as the
then-traveling Kroeber was informed by letter, an
autopsy had been performed and the brain preserved - a
compromise "between science and sentiment." While
this letter would become a well-known part of the Ishi
record, the location of the brain itself was lost to
history.
Here, the narrative leaps forward about 80 years. It was
two years ago that Art Angle, as chairman of the Butte
County Native American Cultural Commission, began a
campaign to return Ishi's remains to the Yahi homeland,
under Mount Lassen. This led to a Los Angeles Times
article, which led to a University of California inquiry
into the brain, which led to the Smithsonian. "Old
folklore," a museum official responded. "Doesn't exist."
� � �
Late last year, however, an Ishi researcher revisited the
archives and turned up a previously overlooked Kroeber
letter. In it, the anthropologist describes how Ishi's
brain
had been "sent to the Smithsonian as a gift with the
compliments of the University of California." Well, yes,
it's here, Smithsonian officials subsequently conceded.
There must have been a misunderstanding, they said, a
records snafu. The brain has been with us all along,
stored in a glass jar over in Maryland, in the Third Pod
of the Support Center.
Mystery now over, the bureaucratic wrangling has
begun. At a legislative hearing here Monday, a
Smithsonian official maintained that Ishi's brain could
not be returned to just anybody. There was a process to
follow. Federal law requires the repatriation of Indian
remains and artifacts - but only to tribes with
demonstrable blood links or cultural affiliations to the
remains. This is a problem in Ishi's case since, as one
lobbyist has noted, "the reason you can't find cultural
affiliation is because we have rubbed them all out."
Several tribal representatives, in turn, argued powerfully
that Ishi belonged, in a sense, to all California Indians.
Ishi's history was their history: "When he was no longer
useful," Angle said, "he was discarded." Return of Ishi's
remains, more than one testified, would be a powerful
gesture, a catalyst for healing. If their appeals were
more sentimental than scientific, well, to borrow from
the anthropologist Ishi helped make famous: If there is
any talk about the interests of science, say for me that
science can go to hell. Send back the brain.
Peter H. King's column appears regularly in The Bee.
Write him in care of The Fresno Bee, 1626 E St.,
Fresno 93786; call him at 441-6353; or e-mail him at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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