Hopewell Culture Administrative History

CHAPTER SIX
Exhibiting the Hopewell Culture (continued)

Native Americans and the Human Remains Issue

The tumultuous 1960s and early 1970s saw a fundamental shift in American social and cultural institutions to reflect changing public attitudes concerning class, race, and gender. One aspect of this period of social upheaval, initiated by the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans, concerned native Americans and the formation of various American Indian rights groups. As Indians asserted their constitutional rights and discussed past injustices, all aspects of white-red relations were reexamined. During the 1978 "Longest Walk" across the United States, Indian rights activitists called attention to museums along the route that displayed Indian bones and grave goods, denouncing the practices, and calling for repatriation and reburials. It brought the Indians' conflict with the professional anthropology and archeology community into the public arena for bitter debate.

Changing federal perceptions yielded congressional action. In 1978, the Native American Religious Freedom Act (Public Law 95-341) brought an operational and administrative review throughout the national park system for potential conflicts with the new law's intent. The Mound City Group review identified the two exhibits of authentic cremated remains as well as the partial human remains represented in the park's collections. Fred J. Fagergren noted that because no native group claimed ties with any of the Eastern Woodland Moundbuilders, including the Hopewell, there existed the "possibility that Native American groups in general might object to these procedures as being offensive to their religious practices." [67]

Nonetheless, the ongoing debate prompted a change in the monument's interpretive program. In June 1978, the park accepted a local donation of an assortment of human bones of no known association for use in interpretive programs. The remains were not accessioned into the permanent collection. After using the bones in several programs, park interpreters concluded their use was inappropriate, and decided to rebury them. Encompassed in a polyethelene bag and sealed in a plastic bucket with a galvanized dated metal tag, the interpreters buried the package in Mound 13 on December 4, 1979. Adajacent to the mica grave exhibit, the burial is marked on the exhibit's blueprint. [68]

In 1979, the Archeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA, Public Law 96-95) stated that archeological resources found on public and Indian lands were part of America's heritage and were therefore protected from unauthorized taking. Archeological resources of more than one hundred years of age could also include graves and skeletal remains. ARPA guidelines were first promulgated in 1984, developed by an interagency task force and subject to public review and comment. American Indians led the call for new regulations to separate human remains from generic archeological resources covered by ARPA, to promote repatriation and reburial.

The debate raged on in the middle and late 1980s. Mound City Group managers pointed out that most of the human remains at the monument were in the form of cremated ashes. Press accounts noted that the museum's cremation display was designed by an American Indian who intentionally placed the ashes at ground level in order that visitors who viewed them would respectfully have to bow their heads while standing in front of the exhibit. An alert in late 1986 to the monument warned of a potential visit by a registered lobbyist for the National Congress of American Indians gathering data for congressional hearings on proposed repatriation legislation. [69]

A management review of Mound City Group practices evaluated the issue of displaying cremated remains of five individuals, one in the museum and four at the mica grave exhibit. While recognizing the sensitivity of the issue, the monument had not received any protest from individuals or groups. Ken Apschnikat speculated that the reason stemmed from "the cremations themselves not resembling human remains and because no known contemporary tribe can trace their ancestral line to the Hopewell." Apschnikat acknowledged the potential for future complaints, noted the existence of human remains in the stored museum collection, and pledged to "continue to treat these human remains and objects with reverence and dignity." [70]

Chief of Interpretation and Resource Management H. Reed Johnson conducted an indepth analysis in 1989. Noting the extinction of the Hopewell culture and no proven ancestral link to historic American Indian cultures, Johnson asserted that artifacts and remains were displayed in a "respectful manner." Johnson noted that "While the exhibits contain partially cremated remains consisting of bone fragments, they are displayed 'in context,' that is, they are depictions of the actual cremations and burials as they were performed by the Hopewell." He recommended that removal or modifications to these exhibits could be done as part of the next programmed rehabilitation of museum exhibits, which should also include consultation with Indian groups during planning and design. Unidentified bones in the collection required study to determine human or animal origins. Future excavations uncovering human remains would involve reinterment as soon as possible following exhumation. [71]

Park plans to alter the exhibits ceased in early 1990 following a review by Associate Director for Cultural Resources Jerry L. Rogers. Rogers' review came in anticipation of passage of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990. The last skeletal remains on display in the national park system were removed from Mesa Verde National Park in 1987 following a request by American Indian groups. Rogers, concerned that human remains were still on display at Mound City Group National Monument three years after this incident, called for their immediate removal. Superintendent Bill Gibson ordered his staff in February 1990 to comply, requesting clean sand appear in the cremation pit bottoms. [72]

A concurrent review of the collection for human remains yielded inhumation of forty-two individuals and cremations of thirty-seven individuals, totalling seventy-nine representatives associated with the Hopewell culture. Unidentified remains of questionnable origins included ten inhumations and five cremations believed to be associated with either the Hopewell or possibly the later Intrusive Mound Culture. Asked to identify Indian groups for regulatory consultation purposes, H. Reed Johnson identified the Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma as the "closest officially recognized leaders" of the southern Ohio region. Their geographical dislocation made consultation "somewhat difficult." [73]

Completing the NAGPRA-mandated inventory of human remains and associated funerary objects in park collections, Dr. Paul S. Sciulli of Ohio State University performed the work via a cooperative agreement between the Midwest Archeological Center and the Ohio State University Research Foundation. The effort provided information on the age, sex, and cultural affiliation of human remains and related burial items, and park curators updated in excess of five hundred records for more than 18,000 items. About three thousand documents were also catalogued. [74]

Consultations with American Indian groups required under NAGPRA began in July 1994, when representatives of the Joint Shawnee Council on Repatriation visited Mound City Group. Council members are volunteers from three federally recognized tribes comprising the Shawnee Nation. Subsequent consultations took place in March 1995, when Council representatives again came to the park, and in April 1995, when NPS officials traveled to Oklahoma. The joint effort laid the groundwork for a July 5, 1996 memorandum of agreement for treatment and disposition of past or future American Indian remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony found within park lands. The successful federal-tribal consultations prompted Hopewell Culture staff to host an April 1995 NAGPRA workshop attended by NPS employees, the Joint Shawnee Council, and members of the Ohio Museums Association. [75]

Thanks to NAGPRA's establishing a federal commitment to consult American Indians, in 1996, NPS responded to expressed concerns over its interpretation of Hopewell burial practices, and removed the mica grave exhibit. Through consultation, agreement was reached that more appropriate ways of conveying mica grave information using different media could be accomplished. Such native input also helped enrich an interpretive prospectus revision, thereby for the first time reflecting American Indian perspectives in Hopewell Culture interpretation. [76]

Lack of sustained funding and making do with substandard facilities have hampered NPS efforts in Chillicothe to present the Hopewell culture on the same scale and quality as Southwestern prehistoric cultures are presented in collective NPS units of the American Southwest. With its transformation into a national historical park in the early 1990s, expanded staff and facility needs will likely continue to be key issues through the initial decades of the twenty-first century.

<<< CHAPTER 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 7 >>>