All of us have a deeply emotional as well as "scientific" ( or shall I
say professional) response to this issue.  Yes, some of the Museums of
Natural History will be slightly emptied.  Yes, there will be materials
and images and musics and ideas to which we (nonNative people) will no
longer have access.  Yes that's unfortunate but the response is clear:
we are going to have to deal with it.

I could tell you about major museums, and major collections still exhibiting
artifacts removed from gravesites (surface, not underground - NAGPRA doesn't
affect Canadian collections); about opened ceremonial bundles, with their
contents so contaminated with 'preservative chemicals',  they are forever
untouchable; about museum response to me as a white researcher working with
Native materials that was subtlely or blatantly different/better than the
treatment accorded First Nations colleagues  - this is nothing new.

There are also many positve stories, in Canada AND the US, and the potential
for achieving some level of rapport. I celebrate and completely respect the
effort of so many professionals who engage in this challenge.

From my perspective as an ethnologist, as a museum professional, as a
colleague, it comes down to this - the First Nations are putting into effect
their agendas, their priorities, their institutions.  Maybe we will be able
to work together, maybe some of us are already doing so.  But the decisions
surrounding Native burial and ceremonial materials are no longer (and
never were) ours to make.  Either we respect this, or we do not.

I read over this letter, and the words look harsh.  Perhaps they are.
But now we have the opportunity to change - not just to follow "the law",
but to put into effect the spirit of that law.


M.Sam Cronk
University of Michigan