On Mon, 22 Aug 1994 Linda Young writes:
 
>Wendy Botting asks the really pertinent question in this debate:  Why
>aren't the remains of an ancient Egyptian treated in the same manner as the
>remains of a Native American by all professionals in our field?
>
>It seems to me we are looking at different historical/political relations
>with ancient Egyptians and with ancient Aboriginal people.  We have a
>methodology in Australian heritage management of assessing the significance
>of things or places as historic or social  (plus a few more criteria), and
>the difference is that 'social' significance applies to contemporary
>perception; 'historic' significance to perception in or of the past.  These
>categories define the difference between long-dead Egyptians and
>Aborigines.  The former are of historic interest or significance in our
>western culture (though it might just be different in Egypt - are they at
>all sensitive about mummies there?).  The latter are of significance right
>now, for political reasons of ethnic identity and legal recognition, to a
>certain community, viz their descendents.
>
>In short, the larger moral issue of how we treat the bodies of the dead, in
>whatever culture including our own, is essentially determined by the pulls
>and pushes of power, ie politics.
 
My host/server went down over the weekend. Sorry for starting a thread I
then seemed to abandon. Ms. Botting, et al. ask a very revealing question
indeed. What is it about racism and colonialism that makes one inhumanity
acceptable and another not? When people have been driven to such poverty
that they sell their dead does that give the colonialists the legitmate
claim to do the same? Why does an expression of concern for the dignity of
humanity and a call for legitimate scientific inquiry, versus P.T. Barnums
sideshows, become labeled as bigoted? Can a clouded interpretation of what
an undocumented people did in their deepest abstracted approaches to the
purposes of their society be used by modern institutionalists with
credibility as a justification for their actions? I never said every
curator agreed with me, or that all scientific inquiry should stop. I
merely said there was no need to exhibit corpses to children and others at
museums. If this is hiding the truth, then autopsies and possibly medical
examinations should be put on display as well?
 
Paul Apodaca
Curator Native American Art
Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, CA