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14 NARF Legal Rev. 1 (1988-1989)

handle is hein.journals/narf14 and id is 1 raw text is: Native American Rights Fund Tribal Efforts to Protect Against Mistreatment of Indian Dead: The Quest for Equal Protection of the Laws by Walter R. Echo-Hawk Introduction In Kansas, a farmer dug up an entire Indian cemetery located on his land and has put all 146 dead bodies on public display as a roadside tourist attraction. Despite the fact that the State Legislature has enacted over 70 statutes to comprehensively regulate and protect burial grounds of every imaginable description, the repugnant commercial exploitation of the Indian burial ground is permitted to exist by virtue of an alleged loophole in state law. In Nebraska, after the aboriginal Pawnee Nation was removed to a distant state by the federal government, private parties and state archaeologists swept into Pawnee cemeteries and removed hundreds of dead bodies and thousands of burial goods from historic graves. When asked to return these dead to the Pawnee government for a decent burial, the all-white Historical Society first claimed that the dead bodies were owned by it, citing federal regulations later admitted to be non-existent, then loudly decried what it termed an Indian raid on museum property. NARF is presently representing the Indian victims of the grave desecration in Kansas and the massive grave expropriations Ini 114uasyila LU secure rei-neUda 1r11ll 110111 legislative, administrative, and--if necessary--judicial forums. These contemporary problems in Kansas and Nebraska are clear examples of brutal ethnocentrism against Indian people which originated in the last century, and which continue to haunt Native people in 1989. The Smithsonian Institution alone, for example, warehouses over 18,500 Indian remains. The well-known racial slur that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, continues to play a stark reality in the lives of Indian people today. After death, American Indians are not secure in their person or property as non-Indians pursue them into the grave, for various motives, in quest of specimens, pathological material, or just plain booty. All tribes throughout Indian country have been victimized by the bodysnatchers, but facts that have begun to emerge in recent year's reveal that a shocking systematic expropriation of Native dead has occurred on a national scale over the years.1 Without belaboring the point, non-Indians have removed and carried away untold thousands fl Contents: Vol.14, No.1, Winter 1988' Tribal Efforts .............................. 1 NARF Resources and Publications ........................ 6 Digitized from Best Copy Available

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