And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:42:51 EDT Subject: Indian Skeletons Returned to Tribe Indian Skeletons Returned to Tribe .c The Associated Press By LESLIE MILLER CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- The bones of nearly 2,000 American Indians were handed over to a New Mexico tribe Tuesday by Harvard University for proper burial, decades after they were brought here for study. It was the largest and perhaps the most scientifically significant transfer under a 1990 law federal that requires the return of Indian artifacts, the university said. ``It is a great joy,'' Ruben Sando, a lieutenant governor of Jemez Pueblo, said during a ceremony for the return of the remains. ``I am very, very grateful.'' The bones -- as well as burial objects that will be returned from Phillips Academy in Andover next week -- were excavated between 1915 and 1929 from the site of an abandoned Pueblo Indian community in the upper Pecos Valley of New Mexico. For 70 years, scientists at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology pored over the bones in one of the first systematic studies of a population ever conducted. The bones were important for research into nutrition, trauma and disease, particularly osteoporosis. The bones and the burial objects -- which included clothes, pottery, toys and porcelain -- helped form the foundation of scientific knowledge about the early cultures of the American Southwest, according to James Bradley, director of the museum at Andover. ``Our ancestors have contributed significantly to science and the archaeological world,'' said Raymond Gachupin, governor of the Pueblo of Jemez. ``We also feel good about that.'' The Pueblo Indian community had been a thriving trading center a century before archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder began digging. It was eventually decimated by disease and warfare. Kidder uncovered artifacts and bones dating from the late-12th to the mid-19th century. After the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act took effect in 1990, Bradley moved to return the remains. ``We sent them a letter and said, `We have a lot of your stuff,''' Bradley said. ``They said, `We know. Let's talk.''' Years of negotiations and preparation followed, culminating in Tuesday's ceremony with representatives of the Pueblo of Jemez tribe and the commissioner for New Mexico Indian Affairs. Reburial will take place privately Saturday in the Pecos Monument National Park. Last year, the University of Nebraska returned 1,700 sets of remains to various tribes, a move criticized by some scholars as harmful to further research. AP-NY-05-18-99 2041EDT Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press. Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
