Cultural preservation practices are evolving, according to a Colorado panel

Cultural preservation practices are evolving, according to a Colorado panel
By Carol Berry, Today correspondent

Story Published: Mar 9, 2009

Story Updated: Mar 9, 2009

DENVER – Southwestern Colorado is a treasure trove of ancient artifacts that recall a vast, complex Native civilization; “anyplace you go is potentially archaeologically significant,” said Ernest House Jr., executive secretary of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs.

But stringent rules apply to items of cultural or sacred significance and if graves or funerary objects are involved those rules include provisions of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or a similar state mandate.

Historical preservation was addressed by House, Bridget Ambler, curator of material culture with the Colorado Historical Society and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, curator of anthropology with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and NAGPRA officer, at a conference Feb. 5.

The need to respect traditional practices underscored their talk, which dealt not only with NAGPRA, but also with the evolving role of museums as a conduit for repatriation and with the place of aesthetics and the sacred in dealing with objects or places of historical interest.

Ambler said the role of museums has evolved, along with the increased sophistication of tribal attitudes, so while museums were the “sole proprietors” of cultural information, with the implementation of NAGPRA in 1990, “they have had to give up sole proprietorship.”

Nevertheless, to date, tribes have not sought to have cultural or sacred items physically returned to them from the Colorado Historical Society because “tribes have elected for us to hold them in safekeeping,” she said, a practice expected to change as tribes are able to house them.

“Tribes have come to share information about collections,” she said. For example, Burton Pretty On Top, of the Crow Tribe (Apsaalooke Nation), was able to identify a recent item as a contemporary medicine shield rather than as a tourist item. The eagle staff of Colorado’s annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run was loaned to the historical society, where we are “just the keepers,” Ambler said.




Photo courtesy Colorado Historical Society

A seed jar from the 1920s by Maria Martinez, Pueblo of San Ildefonso, one of the cultural items in safekeeping at the Colorado Historical Society.


Tribal consultation can create other relationships, she said, citing a Tribal Paths program at the historical society that includes photographs of contemporary Colorado Native residents and a visit with LaForce Lone Bear, a Northern Cheyenne traditional healer, who took her to significant sites near Lame Deer, Mont.

Chanthaphonh, describing the interface of spirituality with objects, talked about a visit with four Hopi cultural advisers to a river in northwestern New Mexico, where the water rose, rumbling and then subsided and the Hopi said of ancestral spirits, “as we are acknowledging them, they are acknowledging us.”

While scholars and archaeologists focus on traditional cultural properties as sites, Natives perceive them as “vital life sources,” he said.

The Hopi have a “living landscape” in which animals, plants and all life are considered sacred, so outsiders may not understand how taking one or two would make any difference. But if that act is considered the equivalent of throwing a stone through just one of many stained glass windows on a church, it may be more readily understood as sacrilege by the majority society.

He said the National Environmental Policy Act’s assessment of environmental impacts on aesthetic values probably comes closest to including a Native perspective, as does the potential impact on a “feeling” aspect of projects or issues under the National Historic Preservation Act.

Dealing more specifically with funerary issues, House said 39 tribes endorsed a state NAGPRA program developed through consultation with about 50 tribes that have called and may continue to call Colorado home. The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes are the only tribal nations federally recognized as currently residing within the state’s boundaries.

The state/tribal planning effort developed the federally approved program to rebury culturally unidentifiable Native remains discovered on non-federal public and private lands in Colorado.

“The hope is to expedite getting remains in the ground in a respectful and culturally appropriate way,” said House, who is Ute Mountain Ute and whose tribe believes “the spirit is not at peace until it is back in the ground where they belong in a timely manner.”

He said the tribes’ preference is for non-disturbance, including that which could occur in the testing of remains, and for reburial as soon as possible near the discovery site.

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/living/tourism/40961307.html