[wta-politics]First chapter of 'Who Owns Native Culture?'

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First chapter of 'Who Owns Native Culture?'
By MICHAEL F. BROWN 

Anyone who has read about the Hopi Indians, a small Arizona
tribe famous for multi-story dwellings and a resolute
commitment to traditional religious practices, is likely to
have seen photographs taken by the Reverend Heinrich
(Henry) R. Voth. The years that have passed since Voth's
death in 1931 have done little to stem the controversy
surrounding his activities as missionary and
anthropologist. Contemporary anthropologists, even those
who respect his ethnographic work, are uncomfortable with
Voth's religious zeal and with the oppressive Indian
policies in force during the years that he worked at Hopi.
Among Hopis, anger at Voth's publication of sensitive
information about their religion continues to smolder as if
his alleged misdeeds had taken place only yesterday. 

H. R. Voth was raised by German Anabaptists who emigrated
to Kansas from southern Russia in 1874. He trained as a
Mennonite missionary and took his first assignment among
the Arapaho, in what was later to become the state of
Oklahoma. In the early 1890s the Mennonite Mission Board
invited him to evaluate prospects for a mission among the
Hopi, then considered one of the most religiously
intractable tribes in North America. He and his growing
family eventually settled in Orayvi (Oraibi), the largest
Hopi village and one increasingly torn by disputes over how
the community should respond to government intrusions,
which included the forced removal of Hopi children to
boarding schools. Other tensions in the region-notably,
government efforts to limit the spread of Mormonism, then
considered a dangerous cult-had produced what amounted to a
low-intensity war of conflicting religious and cultural
ideologies, hardly what one would expect in such a remote
place. 

After two years of hard work, Voth apparently had a working
knowledge of the Hopi language. But the seeds of
Christianity fell on stony soil. The Mennonite mission at
Orayvi produced only about forty converts in its first
thirty years. Meanwhile, Voth's detailed study of Hopi
religion, initially undertaken to help him understand the
beliefs he was trying to supplant, began to absorb more of
his energy. Eventually it became his principal means of
financial support. He was hired to produce major displays,
including facsimiles of Hopi altars, for museums and
southwestern tourist sites, such as Grand Canyon National
Park. 

Biographical accounts describe Voth as steadfast in his
Mennonite faith but also fascinated by Hopi ritual.
Although committed to the young discipline of anthropology,
Voth proved unwilling to distance himself from the
Mennonite community; he refused a position at Chicago's
Field Museum of Natural History that he was offered on
several occasions. Yet his passion for the systematic study
of Hopi religion sometimes put him at odds with Mennonite
authorities. 

Voth's relations with Hopis were complex. Cathy Ann Trotta,
one of the few historians who have examined the journals of
Voth and his wife, Martha Moser Voth, concludes that over
the nine years of their ministry their day-to-day dealings
with Indians were mostly cordial. Voth also seems to have
worked closely with several Hopi priests, who gave him
access to ceremonies from which outsiders were usually
excluded. Community feelings about Voth took a strongly
negative turn after Hopis became aware that he was
publishing detailed information about their religion. Voth
captured at least 2,000 photographic images during his
years at Hopi. Most document everyday household and
agricultural activities. But he also photographed religious
rituals, images that are disproportionately reproduced in
magazines and books to the present day. So detailed are his
photographs and written descriptions of Hopi ritual
practices that they are said to be consulted occasionally
by the tribe's religious authorities. 

With the passage of time, Voth's knowledge of Hopi religion
came to be portrayed as the fruit of intimidation. Don
Talayesva, a Hopi whose autobiography, Sun Chief, was first
published in 1942, presents an unremittingly harsh view of
Voth's activities: "When he had worked here in my boyhood,
the Hopi were afraid of him and dared not lay their hands
on him or any other missionary, lest they be jailed by the
Whites. During the ceremonies this wicked man would force
his way into the kiva [an underground structure used for
ritual activities] and write down everything that he saw.
He wore shoes with solid heels, and when the Hopi tried to
put him out of the kiva he would kick them." The hostility
conspicuous in this recollection contrasts sharply with the
spirit of tolerance and good humor that characterizes the
rest of Talayesva's autobiography. 

Voth's publication of the details of important rituals
offended Hopi sensibilities about the proper circulation of
knowledge. To outsiders, contemporary Hopis seem almost
fanatically committed to secrecy. They forbid the use of
cameras, audio recorders, and sketchpads by visitors, a
policy that annoys Anglo tourists accustomed to
photographing whatever they like. Within Hopi society,
religious knowledge is rigorously compartmentalized among a
range of specialized organizations. Community values
discourage curiosity about the details of rituals in which
one is not a direct participant. Hopis understand this to
reflect their tribal history, which has been marked by the
continual incorporation of new groups into a greater social
whole. Everyone depends on the efforts of other clans and
specialized religious societies to complete the annual
cycle of rituals that keep the world functioning properly. 

In common with a growing number of Indian nations, the
Hopi Tribe now maintains a cultural protection office that
systematically monitors publicly available information
about Hopi culture and, in particular, Hopi religion. It
was in this spirit of cultural protection that in 1994
Vernon Masayesva, then tribal chairman, sent a letter to
museums and repositories whose holdings include information
about the Hopi. Among these are the Mennonite Library and
Archives at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, which
houses many of H. R. Voth's photographs. Chairman Masayesva
requested that all repositories declare a moratorium on use
of materials relating to the Hopi people and their
ancestors, including field notes, photographs, and
drawings, particularly those containing "esoteric, ritual
and privileged information on religious and ceremonial
practices and customs." The letter asserted the Hopis'
ownership interest in all materials relating to their
culture and the expectation that these materials will
eventually be returned to the Hopi Tribe as part of a
comprehensive process of repatriation. 

Hopi anxiety about use of their traditional images in the
world beyond their isolated mesas is a local expression of
global concern about the disposition of cultural heritage.
This uneasiness is by no means limited to indigenous
communities; people in the cultural majority worry about
it, too. Various emotions drive what the geographer David
Lowenthal has called the "heritage crusade": a search for
meaning amid the moral emptiness of materialism, a desire
for rootedness, and a fear of the unanticipated effects of
technological change. 

Settler societies such as the United States and Australia
have long used monuments and other material expressions of
heritage to unify their ethnically diverse populations.
Without symbols of shared heritage, it would be difficult
to mobilize citizens for national defense and other
collective tasks. In the developed world, the latter half
of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first
have seen this nationalist myth-making challenged by ethnic
minorities who demand their own monuments and historical
sites. Through such memorials they express collective pride
and celebrate their resistance to the state's efforts to
assimilate them. 

The cultural heritage and sacred places of indigenous
peoples have become the focus of special attention, and
laws designed to safeguard the cultural resources of
indigenous communities have been implemented in a number of
countries. This campaign is motivated by concern about
endangered environments in which some indigenous peoples
live, popular fascination with exotic ways of life, and
collective guilt about the acts of genocide that stain
colonial histories. Few would judge the rise of
native-heritage legislation to be anything other than a
hopeful sign. In most places where such laws have come into
effect, native peoples already enjoy basic human rights.
Secure in their relative physical safety, they are now free
to focus on defense of their language, religion, and right
of self-governance. These issues are central to a law
passed by Australia in 1984, the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, the goal of which
is the "preservation and protection from injury or
desecrations of areas and objects in Australia" when these
can be shown to be significant to the country's Aboriginal
population. In the United States, heritage protection is
effected through a network of laws, including the National
Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the American Indian
Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) of 1978, and the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of
1990. 

Paralleling national heritage-protection initiatives are
declarations issued by the United Nations and its various
arms, including UNESCO and the Working Group on Indigenous
Populations. The Draft U.N. Declaration of the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, for example, stipulates that native
peoples "have the right to practice and revitalize their
cultural traditions and customs." This mandate encompasses
"the right to maintain, protect and develop the past,
present and future manifestations of their cultures, such
as archaeological and historical sites, artifacts, designs,
ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and
literature, as well as the right to restitution of
cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property
taken without their free and informed consent or in
violation of their laws, traditions, and customs." 

When the Hopi Tribe proposes that culturally sensitive
information be "repatriated," it clearly builds on the
language and political success of NAGPRA. This law provides
a framework for the return of human remains, burial goods,
and religious objects to tribes that can substantiate
claims of descent or prior ownership. NAGPRA requires every
repository receiving federal funds to inventory its Native
American holdings and notify tribes with a potential
interest in them. Tribes can then, if they choose, request
that cultural objects falling within the law's purview be
repatriated to them. 

Many museum professionals were understandably reluctant to
embrace NAGPRA at first. They faced the prospect of
returning their priceless collections to tribes that often
lacked resources to preserve them. A few tribes, including
the Hopi, made clear their intention to put religious
objects back into use until worn out and discarded, a
disheartening prospect for curators who dedicate their
working lives to such objects' conservation. Physical
anthropologists, whose collections were significantly
affected by the law, were convinced that pure emotionalism
had drowned out serious discussion of the scientific value
of human remains that might eventually offer up genetic
information crucial to the future health of Native
Americans. 

Most of these fears proved groundless. Tribes are often
content to allow contested objects to remain in the
possession of museums until proper tribal facilities can be
constructed. In other cases, tribal officials feel that the
power of specific ritual items exceeds the ability of
today's religious experts to control them. Better, then,
that they remain in storage elsewhere. NAGPRA forced
museums and India tribes to open discussions that have led
to rewarding partnership The law does not specify what is
supposed to happen to museum artifacts; it demands only
that a serious conversation take place. Although grumbling
continues in some quarters, many curators today hail NAGPRA
as one of the best things ever to have happened to American
museums. 

The law is equally popular with the public. The press
represents NAGPRA as legislation that rights historical
wrongs typified by the removal and storage of the brain of
Ishi, the California Indian often described as "the last
Yahi," after his death in 1916. (Researchers searching for
the brain located it in the collection of the Smithsonian
Institution, which promptly repatriated it to the Pit River
tribe of Redding Rancheria, California. It was buried in a
secret location in 2000.) In other cases, sacred artifacts
looted from Indian shrines have been returned to their
proper owners. As with almost every manifestation of public
interest in Indian issues, however, impressions of NAGPRA
are colored by a diffuse sentimentality that blinds
outsiders to the laws unanticipated effects. 

The Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (HCPO), an arm of
Hopi tribal government, is located in Kykotsmovi, Arizona,
on the edge of Third Mesa. When I visited the HCPO in 1997,
two employees, Lee Wayne Lomayestewa and Clyde Qotswisiuma,
struggled to make room for me among the stacks of NAGPRA
reports that lined their cubicle. Lee, a gregarious man who
appeared to be in his twenties, wore his hair long in
traditional Hopi style. Clyde, older and with a gray
military cut and glasses, was more reserved. Conversation
eventually angled toward the tribe's policies regarding
NAGPRA. Far from praising this supposedly progressive law,
Lee and Clyde offered a withering critique. Clyde expressed
anger that NAGPRA was written to cover all Indian tribes.
The Hopi, he said, deserve a law tailored to their specific
circumstances. When pressed for details, he mentioned that
members of the Navajo Nation, which surrounds the small
Hopi reservation like a great sea embracing a tiny island,
are now producing kachinas for sale. (Kachinas, often
called "kachina dolls" by outsiders, are small carved and
painted images of Pueblo spirit-beings.) This threatens the
income of Hopi artists. Navajos, Clyde continued, are also
claiming Hopi sacred places and beliefs for themselves:
"The Navajos are taking Hopi qualities, saying that they
came into the fourth world and that they have four sacred
colors for the directions. But those ideas came from us.
Now they are involved in eagle gathering, which is a Hopi
practice. We Hopis don't talk first in public gatherings
anymore. Now we're afraid that if we say something, the
Navajos will say that it's theirs too." 

Hopi suspicion of the Navajo must be seen within the
context of a long-running, acrimonious land dispute between
the two tribes. But the issues run deeper than land and
natural resources. 

Continues... 
Excerpted from Who Owns Native Culture? by Michael F. Brown
Copyright &copy 2003 by President and Fellows of Harvard
College 
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of
this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without
permission in writing from the publisher. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/books/chapters/0914-1st-brown.html