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San Diego Native American thoughts this All Saints Day 2012

Edited by Roy Cook, Opata-Oodham, Mazopiye Wishasha: Writer, Singer, Speaker

This All Saints' Day consider the respectful tradition of Native American culture and people and the shameful treatment by the University of California San Diego administration. UCSD is one of our Nation‘s highly regarded fonts of knowledge. But, they are not too bright or respectful of Kumeyaay Tribal Culture.

Maybe they are stuck in the time warp of the Wild West lawless mentality. However, this week there is a bright light of justice in the dark cave of ignorance. The San Diego Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC) Kumeyaay have been working within the Western judicial system and their goals are now within reach.

Excerpt from court ruling:

KCRC’s motion seeks to dismiss the UCSD Plaintiffs’ action against KCRC pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction over KCRC on grounds that KCRC is an arm of the tribal governments that they represent and as such have tribal sovereign immunity and cannot be sued without its consent. This motion is based on this Notice, the accompanying Memorandum of Points and Authorities; declaration of Steven Banegas and tribal resolutions attached thereto.

Especially, we must recognize the basic respect for the values and perspectives that define a culture and the Native American people, the respect for our ancestors. As the USA, an American Nation, we carried over much of the basic principles of England: their language, their common law principals and many of their military tactics. Some of their advancements such as the abolition of slavery were a bit slower in taking root in this country. Now we have yet another example of what is the right thing to do regarding Native American remains.

In a recent, May 20, 2012 LA Times, front page article:

English, Birmingham University has returned various skulls & bone fragments to the Salinan tribe in San Luis, Obispo County, California, where they have been re-buried.

Returns of artifacts involving human remains from institutions in the UK have now become commonplace (although there are still many more cases awaiting consideration). Pressure from the British Museum has made sure that these are differentiated from those that don‘t involve human remains. So, whereas once, they said nothing could be returned, when faced with political pressure, they categorized their collection, to allow some of it to be returned, but make no difference to the case for retaining the rest of it.

The bitter question demand is why UCSD was keeping Native American remains in some dusty drawer. Why was it so close minded to not return the well documented Kumeyaay remains to the local responsible tribal body, Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC), to put these remains to rest in a respectful traditional manner?

The Kumeyaay had been identified as the "most likely descendants" — MLDs, many times for similar finds in the region. KCRC‘s official statement claimed that they had provided a mountain of evidence from linguistic, anthropological, archaeological and historical scholars to support their claim that these individuals [the University House skeletons] were indeed culturally affiliated with today‘s Kumeyaay/Diegueño people.…

UCSD let our relatives find their rest. All this does is drive a wedge between the scientific community and Native communities, while ignoring the suffering of California Indians as a result of colonization, and the massive loss of land and culture brought on by the U.S.‘s notorious mishandling of California Indian affairs. This is the least we can expect this respectful All Saints Day.

Mehan, thank you.

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