Excerpts of a poem by Carlos Montezuma, Yavapai, 1866 -1923
"Changing is Not Vanishing" written in 1916
Who says the Indian race is vanishing?
The Indians will not vanish.
The feathers, paint and moccasin will vanish, but the Indians, --never!
The complete poem is available on pages 287-288 in a collection of poems with the same title, Changing is Not Vanishing.
Excerpts from letter from Ted Isham, Manager of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Cultural Preservation Office and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer
"A basic universal human right is to express and carry out self-hood as deemed appropriate by the people themselves. The policy goal of NAGPRA is to treat our people as human beings with inalienable rights, rather than as archeological resources of the Federal government and private academics. In death, our ancestors were sent on a journey that has no boundaries of time and the disruption of that journey has no concept in our minds, beliefs, and culture, the same as if your relatives are buried today, the expectation is that their journey will not be interrupted
NAGPRA was intended to stop and provide a remedy for the disruption of Ancestral Remains. We find the implementation of the law has many areas of conflict with the policy goals, such as ideas of "control" and “ownership" of human remains; problems with funding to get the job accomplished; and new objectionable actions on top of the egregious actions that the law was intended to remedy.
. . . .
NAGPRA is intended to alleviate situations brought on by the European and Euro-American tradition of collecting the "other." The current reality of repatriation in America is that the Native nations carry almost the full burden of proof in making claims of repatriation with Federal agencies and with the Smithsonian Institution. This was not the intent of NAGPRA and I don’t believe that this was the intent of Congress with the Smithsonian. . . ."