Currently, a topic that we have been covering and something I also find quite interesting is the topic of repatriation of archaeological finds such as clothing, bones and cultural artifacts. We had a guest speaker last week on the topic of repatriation, specifically, repatriation of First Nations bones. The issue of returning the heritage and belongings of one culture back to the cultural birthplace is one that I feel quite strongly towards. Being a cultural anthropology student, I see much more gain in returning bones and cultural items back to the society in which they came than keeping them for future research, or the possibility of being able to learn things from them from future research techniques. I feel the society and community would benefit much more greatly from having those items returned rather than archaeologists gaining more knowledge from further examining the materials. In my mind, one greatly outweighs the other.
Back when I attended VIU, I remember watching a documentary called "Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii" in an anthropology 200 class about a group of Haida Gwaii community members travelling to Chicago to repatriate ancestral remains. The group numbered around 20 all travelling and supporting each other on the journey to bring the last of their ancestral heritage back to the cultural homeland. The amount of joy and solidarity this group had once the remains were finally on home soil again had brought the community so close together. In a celebration which included the entire community, a giant potluck and story telling was organized. Being an outsider to this community and watching the sense of belonging that emerged as the last of the ancestral remains were finally retured to the community leaders, it made me think about how much of a void that has been filled within the hearts of those members.
Again, being mainly focuses on cultural anthropology, I always will see a greater need for repatriation of ancestral remains back to the homeland community than to archaeologists wanting to learn more information by keeping remains within museums and within storage. It is definitely an hot and debatable issue regarding the proper placement of remains; back to the culture, or adding to the study and knowledge of human remains? It would be interesting to see the different opinions within my 397 classmates and to see where my opinion stands in amongst the others..
