The remains of Native Americans are going back into the ground after a stint on display at a public library. Good move. Read the story from the Foster\’s Daily Democrat.
\”The ceremony took place when members of the New Hampshire Intertribal Native American Council and representatives from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Association came to prepare the remains for burial in an undisclosed, sacred location. They performed part of the ceremony in the park behind the Gale Memorial Library.\”
The remains of Native Americans are going back into the ground after a stint on display at a public library. Good move. Read the story from the Foster\’s Daily Democrat.
\”The ceremony took place when members of the New Hampshire Intertribal Native American Council and representatives from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Association came to prepare the remains for burial in an undisclosed, sacred location. They performed part of the ceremony in the park behind the Gale Memorial Library.\”
\”Library officials, including members of the Board of Trustees, cooperated in the burial.\”
\”They have been taken care of and put back in the ground,\” said Peter Newell, head of the New Hampshire Intertribal Council, who approached the library trustees about reclaiming the remains.\”
\”Library Director Carol Sykes said that in 1993 then-State Archaeologist Gary Hume said that the remains in the museum should go back to the nearest tribe. Nobody took action at the time, and the remains were left at the library until Newell contacted them.\”
\”Newell said the trustees acted quickly and courteously to his and NAGPRA’s request. Within weeks of viewing the remains, the ceremony had taken place and the remains were returned to sacred burial site at the end of last month. He said that he was pleased that remains had been documented and kept safe so that they could be reclaimed.\”
\”However, the way the remains had been treated by previous generations was upsetting to Newell. When he first saw the skull, it was sitting in a safe in a glass case. It had been wired up and it was poised on a stick with a large screw bored through skull.\”
\”When I saw it, I just felt hollow,\” Newell said.\”
\”So part of burial ceremony performed included burning the case in which the skull was kept.\”
\”It just felt like freedom,\” Newell said. \”That spirit had freedom after it left that case, I could just feel it, it was weird.\”
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