Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook461 pages6 hours
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture
By Chip Colwell
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Who owns the past and the objects that physically connect us to history? And who has the right to decide this ownership, particularly when the objects are sacred or, in the case of skeletal remains, human? Is it the museums that care for the objects or the communities whose ancestors made them? These questions are at the heart of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, an unflinching insider account by a leading curator who has spent years learning how to balance these controversial considerations.
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.
Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to acknowledge that fact—and heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.
Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to acknowledge that fact—and heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.
Unavailable
Read more from Chip Colwell
So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrossroads of Culture: Anthropology Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Objects of Survivance: A Material History of the American Indian School Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits
Related ebooks
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Europe's Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp's Golden Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Archaeology of the Night: Life After Dark in the Ancient World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage: Construction, Transformation and Destruction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuantifying Archaeology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Indian New England Before the Mayflower Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Real, Recent, or Replica: Precolumbian Caribbean Heritage as Art, Commodity, and Inspiration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cahokia Mounds: America's First City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMortal Wounds: The Human Skeleton as Evidence for Conflict in the Past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHelp Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuilding the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Archaeology For You
The Epic of Gilgamesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fifty Things You Need to Know About World History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sex and Erotism in Ancient Egypt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mystery of the Olmecs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Atlantis Pyramids Floods: Why Europeans are White Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mound Builders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Memory Code Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anunnaki Chronicles: A Zecharia Sitchin Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Survive in Ancient Egypt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lehi and Sariah in Arabia: The Old World Setting of the Book of Mormon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Incas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Excavations at Ur Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underwater Ghost Towns of North Georgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOmm Sety's Egypt: A Story of Ancient Mysteries, Secret Lives, and the Lost History of the Pharaohs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage: Construction, Transformation and Destruction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb (Illustrated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Tudors: The Untold Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Past Crimes: Archaeological & Historical Evidence for Ancient Misdeeds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Earth Chronicles Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Seven Books of The Earth Chronicles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Disinformation Guide to Ancient Aliens, Lost Civilizations, Astonishing Archaeology & Hidden History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Talking Taino: Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us about Our Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing book. Discusses the NAGPRA law and the fall out while respecting Indigenous rights.