BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff

In July 1950, a UCLA graduate student in archaeology found a bonanza in Dry Lake Cave at the southernmost end of Owens Valley. Uncovering bits of hollowed-out bone, beads and pieces of shell, she recorded her findings in a notebook.

More than a half century later in a storage room in Hershey Hall, her aging notebook lay open, along with a cardboard box of those artifacts. Only this time, three tribal elders of the Timbisha Shoshone of Death Valley, whose ancestral homeland encompasses Dry Lake Cave, were carefully inspecting each object, looking for pieces of their heritage they feel should be returned to them.

“It’s our responsibility as Indian people to protect the land and its resources,” said tribal Elder Pauline Esteves, who was invited to come to UCLA recently by the Fowler Museum of Cultural History. “This is part of our resources. We feel they shouldn’t be held by a museum or collector. They belong to the land.”

But the clarity of her mission is complicated by the complex procedures and rules of repatriation outlined in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the 1990 federal law that requires lines of evidence such as oral tradition, ethnography, linguistics and archaeology as proof before materials — human remains and memorial offerings — can be returned.

NAGPRA has spawned dozens of controversies. Foremost among them is a debate about whether any tribe can rightfully claim such ancient remains as the 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man. In a six-year court battle between Native Americans and scientists who want to study the well-preserved bones, a U.S. district court judge in Oregon earlier this month gave scientists custody for now.

At the Fowler Museum, the task of inventorying its extensive collections and contacting tribes about possible claims has taken six years and involved three curators and an ethnographer.

“We have the second- or third-largest collection in the UC system,” said Wendy Teeter, the Fowler’s curator of archaeology. Because the law provides no funding, she said, “it’s a financial hardship both on the tribes and the university.”

Among the more than 50,000 objects inventoried, about 2,000 items have been identified as human remains. “We’re trying to become partners with the tribes in this process of repatriation,” said UCLA NAGPRA coordinator Diana Wilson. “UCLA — specifically Vice Chancellor for Research Roberto Peccei, the Fowler, the American Indian Studies Center and the UCLA Repatriation Committee — views NAGPRA as an opportunity, not an obligation.”

Repatriation can take years as each case goes before the UCLA committee to be evaluated before being reviewed by a systemwide advisory committee making the final decision. So far, only one set of human remains has been repatriated at UCLA — by native Hawaiians. Another claim, by the Pechanga tribe, has just been approved by the UC committee.

Ownership of 17 sacred objects has been transferred to the Hopi Tribe, now waiting for tests to determine whether the items were ever treated with pesticides. It was customary decades ago to spray objects with DDT and other chemicals now deemed dangerous.
Esteves has no illusions about the hard work ahead. She invites younger tribal members to participate in the process.

“We elders heard about all these things from our elders,” said Esteves. “Young people need to know this, too. Otherwise, all this will be lost to us.”

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