Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights brendanorrell@gmail.com
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Wounded Knee photographer files copyright claim against Smithsonian
Wounded Knee photographer files copyright claim against Smithsonian
The Smithsonian, with a long history of harboring Indian remains and refusing to return those to Indian Nations, is now the subject of a photograph copyright case in federal court involving the occupation of Wounded Knee.
The case is significant in another way as well. With the proliferation of the web, photos are often reposted without permission and are often incorrectly assumed to be in the public domain. --Censored News
Wounded Knee Photog Files Copyright Claims
By RYAN ABBOTT
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/07/27084.htm
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) - A photographer claims Firelight Media's documentary, "We Shall Remain: Wounded Knee," used her photos of the violent 1973 standoff without her permission and without giving her credit. Anne Pearse-Hocker, who says she took the pictures "under direct automatic weapons and rifle fire at considerable risk to her own life and safety," accuses the independent film production company of copyright infringement.
Pearse-Hocker says she spent about two weeks in Wounded Knee, South Dakota during the 1973 siege. A group of Native Americans, including members of the American Indian Movement, took armed control of the town, and during the course of the 71-day siege one U.S. marshal was shot and partially paralyzed and two Sioux were shot and killed.
Pearse-Hocker claims she and one other photojournalist were the only press allowed to remain in Wounded Knee during the standoff, during which time she snapped several hundred pictures.
In 1996, she says, she gave the pictures to the National Museum of the American Indian, but retained ownership of the copyrights.
She claims Firelight gained permission to use the pictures from the Smithsonian Institutions to make a documentary, which Firelight released in February 2008.
Pearse-Hocker says Firelight used several pictures from the museum's archives, including images of one of the Sioux immediately after he was shot, being carried from a church for medical aid.
She claims the documentary was broadcast on PBS and is available for purchase through the PBS Web site and from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Borders.
Pearse-Hocker says she also filed a copyright claim against the Smithsonian in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for handing over her copyrighted pictures to Firelight.
She wants Firelight Media to stop broadcasting her photos, to return all hard copies and delete electronic copies. She also wants compensatory damages of up to $150,000.
She is represented by Eric Heyer of Thompson Hine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smithsonian Without Ethics of Morality
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Since the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian, there has been an increased effort to conceal the true history of the Smithsonian Institution, especially in regards to harboring human remains and the racist cranium studies of American Indians. The National Museum of the American Indian is the sixteenth museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
The Smithsonian did not respond to my last request for information, regarding the number of American Indian remains, and American Indian skulls, that currently remain at the Smithsonian.
One of the most censored issues is the racist cranium studies carried about by the Smithsonian, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove white superiority based on the size of skulls. The studies included grave robbing of American Indians.
Here is one of the first articles I wrote in 2004 on the subject. Professor James Riding In, Pawnee, at Arizona State University, provided the information. Hopefully, Native Americans will write books on this subject and US school curriculums will one day change to reflect the truth of US institutions.
Without ethics or morality
American Indians robbed of equal right of burial
Pawnee professor exposes scientific racism
By Brenda Norrell (Written in 2004)
In the dark cavities of American history -- between the
pages of the creation of the Constitution and the proclamation of
America as a champion of human rights -- there is a haunting chapter
missing.
James Riding In, Pawnee historian and professor, can prove it.
The U.S. Army paid bounty for the crania of American Indians for
research designed to prove a white supremacist theory, that whites
were superior to other races based on their skull size.
Moreover, the vast majority of those crania are now housed in the
Smithsonian Institute, which has been less than forthcoming under a
new federal law -- the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act -- mandating it to notify tribes of the identity of
human remains.
The recent admission that the skull of Ishi, the last of his people,
was housed in a Smithsonian warehouse is the latest proof of silence
and complicity in a crime against Native people.
Riding In said the Smithsonian Institution curators acquired 18,500
bodies and most of the skulls were collected by the Army Medical
Museum in the 1800s.
In most instances, the crania gather dust at the Smithsonian today.
But others have been destroyed by carbon 14 dating analysis.
While white society severely punishes those that rob and loot graves
of white people, American Indians have been denied equal protection
under the law.
Riding In joined tribal leaders, scholars and attorneys at Arizona
State University’s Indian Legal Program Feb. 25-26, for the "Symposium
on Land, Culture, and Community: Contemporary Issues in Cultural
Resources Protection."
Riding In’s research reveals a missing chapter in U.S. history books.
Samuel G. Morton, in the early 1830s, worked under the new disciplines
of craniology and phrenology, to devise tests on skulls, in relation
to intelligence and crania size.
Morton poured mustard seeds into human skulls to determine size and
volume in his research. In the process, he assembled a large
collection of American Indian skulls.
"He never questioned the morality of stealing Indian crania from
graves," Riding In says in an essay now included in the university’s
law course materials.
Morton paid soldiers, settlers, and others for Indian skulls. Economic
rewards provided incentive to grave looting. Field collectors took
advantage of the recurring diseases and political forces that
depopulated and displaced Indian people, he said.
"Because of the demand created by Morton and others, gathering Indian
skulls in frontier areas grew into a cottage industry," Riding In said.
In the meantime, it became obvious that American Indians would rather
submit to extermination than "wear the yoke" of slavery.
Riding In said this attitude, combined with the belief that American
Indians were savages, shaped public opinion and the development of
federal Indian policy.
Since the early 1800s, soldiers stationed in frontier posts frequently
opened Indian burial sites and shipped the contents to Morton.
The United States Army established a program during the 1860s for
studying Indian crania. Among those massacred, beheaded and their
crania taken, were a group of friendly Cheyenne, Kiowa and Arapaho
near Sand Creek.
The Surgeon General said in 1863 that the Army Medical Museum had 143
specimens of skulls. The reason for the collection was stated as
anthropological research on Native people.
Army personnel in Indian country were encouraged to contribute skulls.
But it was not only the military seizing Indian crania.
Riding In said during the Gold Rush in California, tribal burial sites
were ravaged by exploiters searching for Indian treasure. In one
instance, three hundred skulls were taken, exhibited in San Francisco,
then sold to Harvard University’s Peabody Museum.
Across the United States, university researchers carted off thousands
of human remains in the name of science.
Riding In said Franz Boas, considered the father of cultural
anthropology, is a case in duplicity.
"While professing friendship and gathering oral traditions in British
Columbia, Canada, in 1886, Boas stole Indian bodies," Riding In said.
While promoting his career, Boaz wrote in his diary, "Yesterday I
wrote to the Museum in Washington asking whether they would consider
buying skulls this winter for $600."
Riding In said, "Archaeology, a branch of anthropology that still
attempts to sanctify this tradition of exploiting dead Indians, arose
as an honorable profession from this sacrilege."
Calling it "virulent racism," Riding In said archaeologists must be
viewed as the grave looters their history proves them to be.
American Indians painstakingly prepare their dead for burial. A
California Indian pleaded at the time of his death that he be buried
in his homeland, so his spirit would not wander homeless and
friendless in a strange country.
Many Native people feel that "disinternment stops the spiritual
journey of the dead, causing the affected spirits to wander aimlessly
in limbo."
"These affected spirits can wreak havoc among the living, bringing
sickness, emotional distress, and even death," Riding In said.
Navajo, Apache, Pawnee and other tribes believe that anyone that
disrupts a grave is an "evil, profane, and demented individual who
plans to use the dead as a means of harming the living."
Reburial within Mother Earth enables those spirits to continue their
journeys.
Thomas Jefferson, before becoming the third president, took a lead in
unearthing Indian graves in the name of science.
In his "Notes on the State of Virginia," Jefferson admits excavating
for the sake of curiosity an Indian burial site in Virginia where
about 1,000 human remains were interned.
Riding In said regardless of Jefferson’s attempt to understanding
Indian people, he remains a "racial imperialist," a person who
philosophized against slavery and owned slaves.
Further, Jefferson was architect of the Indian removal policy, a
disastrous program that uprooted and relocated tens of thousands of
eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River between the 1810s and
1850s.
With Indian people removed from their ancestral lands, grave looters
robbed tribal graves and carried away the contents.
"Jefferson’s diggings had lasting ramifications. Jefferson gave an
illusion of morality to the expropriation of contents from Indian
graves," Riding In said.
Further, generations looked upon Jefferson with admiration.
And while non-Indians are quick to bring to justice the perpetrators
of the Holocaust in Europe, they turn a blind eye to the Holocaust
carried out by their own ancestors.
The Catholic Church’s beatification of Father Junipero Serra disgusted
California Mission Indians, who knew him as an enslaver of Indians.
Serra’s missions were no more than concentration camps. Brutal slave
labor, starvation and disease killed all but a fraction of the Native
population.
California Mission Indians denied archaeologists permission to study
the remains of individuals who died while in Serra’s missions.
From these tragedies, the Indian burial rights movement was born in
the 1970s. The Native American Rights Fund emerged as a fighter for
burial rights and repatriation.
But the movement carried a stronger message: Indians are part of
humankind and deserve to be treated as such.
Walter Echo-Hawk pointed out that while religious concerns are
important, the major issue is equality under the law.
"Indians, as members of the human race and the United States, should
receive the same burial protection taken for granted by every other
racial and ethnic group," Riding In said.
State laws are often racist in nature, often charging a person looting
an Indian grave with a misdemeanor while charging those who commit the
same crime against a marked cemetery with a felony.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed by
Congress in 1990, makes it a crime to disturb graves on federal and
tribal lands and makes it a crime to sell human remains.
But, the federal law requires the victims -- Indian people -- to bear
the cost of reburying their dead, rather than those who committed the
crimes – archaeologists, museum curators, physical anthropologists and
others.
Riding In said legislation should address two issues: Should scholars
use information gained through the theft of human remains; should
universities and libraries pull from their shelves research based on
immoral acts.
Those immoral acts were committed against individuals, families and
communities.
Harry Coons, a Skidi Pawnee from Oklahoma visited a site in Nebraska
in 1896 where he had lived as a boy. Coons discovered the gravesites
of his sisters had been pillaged.
Riding In said, "Grave looting has caused Indians a great deal of
suffering, mental anguish, and distress."
Riding In, who also authored a factual biography of Geronimo, is an
assistant professor of justice studies at Arizona State University.
ASU’s Law School course materials for the symposium includes Riding
In’s essay, "Without Ethics or Morality: A Historical Overview of
Imperial Archaeology and American Indians."
The Smithsonian, with a long history of harboring Indian remains and refusing to return those to Indian Nations, is now the subject of a photograph copyright case in federal court involving the occupation of Wounded Knee.
The case is significant in another way as well. With the proliferation of the web, photos are often reposted without permission and are often incorrectly assumed to be in the public domain. --Censored News
Wounded Knee Photog Files Copyright Claims
By RYAN ABBOTT
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/07/27084.htm
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) - A photographer claims Firelight Media's documentary, "We Shall Remain: Wounded Knee," used her photos of the violent 1973 standoff without her permission and without giving her credit. Anne Pearse-Hocker, who says she took the pictures "under direct automatic weapons and rifle fire at considerable risk to her own life and safety," accuses the independent film production company of copyright infringement.
Pearse-Hocker says she spent about two weeks in Wounded Knee, South Dakota during the 1973 siege. A group of Native Americans, including members of the American Indian Movement, took armed control of the town, and during the course of the 71-day siege one U.S. marshal was shot and partially paralyzed and two Sioux were shot and killed.
Pearse-Hocker claims she and one other photojournalist were the only press allowed to remain in Wounded Knee during the standoff, during which time she snapped several hundred pictures.
In 1996, she says, she gave the pictures to the National Museum of the American Indian, but retained ownership of the copyrights.
She claims Firelight gained permission to use the pictures from the Smithsonian Institutions to make a documentary, which Firelight released in February 2008.
Pearse-Hocker says Firelight used several pictures from the museum's archives, including images of one of the Sioux immediately after he was shot, being carried from a church for medical aid.
She claims the documentary was broadcast on PBS and is available for purchase through the PBS Web site and from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Borders.
Pearse-Hocker says she also filed a copyright claim against the Smithsonian in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for handing over her copyrighted pictures to Firelight.
She wants Firelight Media to stop broadcasting her photos, to return all hard copies and delete electronic copies. She also wants compensatory damages of up to $150,000.
She is represented by Eric Heyer of Thompson Hine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smithsonian Without Ethics of Morality
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Since the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian, there has been an increased effort to conceal the true history of the Smithsonian Institution, especially in regards to harboring human remains and the racist cranium studies of American Indians. The National Museum of the American Indian is the sixteenth museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
The Smithsonian did not respond to my last request for information, regarding the number of American Indian remains, and American Indian skulls, that currently remain at the Smithsonian.
One of the most censored issues is the racist cranium studies carried about by the Smithsonian, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove white superiority based on the size of skulls. The studies included grave robbing of American Indians.
Here is one of the first articles I wrote in 2004 on the subject. Professor James Riding In, Pawnee, at Arizona State University, provided the information. Hopefully, Native Americans will write books on this subject and US school curriculums will one day change to reflect the truth of US institutions.
Without ethics or morality
American Indians robbed of equal right of burial
Pawnee professor exposes scientific racism
By Brenda Norrell (Written in 2004)
In the dark cavities of American history -- between the
pages of the creation of the Constitution and the proclamation of
America as a champion of human rights -- there is a haunting chapter
missing.
James Riding In, Pawnee historian and professor, can prove it.
The U.S. Army paid bounty for the crania of American Indians for
research designed to prove a white supremacist theory, that whites
were superior to other races based on their skull size.
Moreover, the vast majority of those crania are now housed in the
Smithsonian Institute, which has been less than forthcoming under a
new federal law -- the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act -- mandating it to notify tribes of the identity of
human remains.
The recent admission that the skull of Ishi, the last of his people,
was housed in a Smithsonian warehouse is the latest proof of silence
and complicity in a crime against Native people.
Riding In said the Smithsonian Institution curators acquired 18,500
bodies and most of the skulls were collected by the Army Medical
Museum in the 1800s.
In most instances, the crania gather dust at the Smithsonian today.
But others have been destroyed by carbon 14 dating analysis.
While white society severely punishes those that rob and loot graves
of white people, American Indians have been denied equal protection
under the law.
Riding In joined tribal leaders, scholars and attorneys at Arizona
State University’s Indian Legal Program Feb. 25-26, for the "Symposium
on Land, Culture, and Community: Contemporary Issues in Cultural
Resources Protection."
Riding In’s research reveals a missing chapter in U.S. history books.
Samuel G. Morton, in the early 1830s, worked under the new disciplines
of craniology and phrenology, to devise tests on skulls, in relation
to intelligence and crania size.
Morton poured mustard seeds into human skulls to determine size and
volume in his research. In the process, he assembled a large
collection of American Indian skulls.
"He never questioned the morality of stealing Indian crania from
graves," Riding In says in an essay now included in the university’s
law course materials.
Morton paid soldiers, settlers, and others for Indian skulls. Economic
rewards provided incentive to grave looting. Field collectors took
advantage of the recurring diseases and political forces that
depopulated and displaced Indian people, he said.
"Because of the demand created by Morton and others, gathering Indian
skulls in frontier areas grew into a cottage industry," Riding In said.
In the meantime, it became obvious that American Indians would rather
submit to extermination than "wear the yoke" of slavery.
Riding In said this attitude, combined with the belief that American
Indians were savages, shaped public opinion and the development of
federal Indian policy.
Since the early 1800s, soldiers stationed in frontier posts frequently
opened Indian burial sites and shipped the contents to Morton.
The United States Army established a program during the 1860s for
studying Indian crania. Among those massacred, beheaded and their
crania taken, were a group of friendly Cheyenne, Kiowa and Arapaho
near Sand Creek.
The Surgeon General said in 1863 that the Army Medical Museum had 143
specimens of skulls. The reason for the collection was stated as
anthropological research on Native people.
Army personnel in Indian country were encouraged to contribute skulls.
But it was not only the military seizing Indian crania.
Riding In said during the Gold Rush in California, tribal burial sites
were ravaged by exploiters searching for Indian treasure. In one
instance, three hundred skulls were taken, exhibited in San Francisco,
then sold to Harvard University’s Peabody Museum.
Across the United States, university researchers carted off thousands
of human remains in the name of science.
Riding In said Franz Boas, considered the father of cultural
anthropology, is a case in duplicity.
"While professing friendship and gathering oral traditions in British
Columbia, Canada, in 1886, Boas stole Indian bodies," Riding In said.
While promoting his career, Boaz wrote in his diary, "Yesterday I
wrote to the Museum in Washington asking whether they would consider
buying skulls this winter for $600."
Riding In said, "Archaeology, a branch of anthropology that still
attempts to sanctify this tradition of exploiting dead Indians, arose
as an honorable profession from this sacrilege."
Calling it "virulent racism," Riding In said archaeologists must be
viewed as the grave looters their history proves them to be.
American Indians painstakingly prepare their dead for burial. A
California Indian pleaded at the time of his death that he be buried
in his homeland, so his spirit would not wander homeless and
friendless in a strange country.
Many Native people feel that "disinternment stops the spiritual
journey of the dead, causing the affected spirits to wander aimlessly
in limbo."
"These affected spirits can wreak havoc among the living, bringing
sickness, emotional distress, and even death," Riding In said.
Navajo, Apache, Pawnee and other tribes believe that anyone that
disrupts a grave is an "evil, profane, and demented individual who
plans to use the dead as a means of harming the living."
Reburial within Mother Earth enables those spirits to continue their
journeys.
Thomas Jefferson, before becoming the third president, took a lead in
unearthing Indian graves in the name of science.
In his "Notes on the State of Virginia," Jefferson admits excavating
for the sake of curiosity an Indian burial site in Virginia where
about 1,000 human remains were interned.
Riding In said regardless of Jefferson’s attempt to understanding
Indian people, he remains a "racial imperialist," a person who
philosophized against slavery and owned slaves.
Further, Jefferson was architect of the Indian removal policy, a
disastrous program that uprooted and relocated tens of thousands of
eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River between the 1810s and
1850s.
With Indian people removed from their ancestral lands, grave looters
robbed tribal graves and carried away the contents.
"Jefferson’s diggings had lasting ramifications. Jefferson gave an
illusion of morality to the expropriation of contents from Indian
graves," Riding In said.
Further, generations looked upon Jefferson with admiration.
And while non-Indians are quick to bring to justice the perpetrators
of the Holocaust in Europe, they turn a blind eye to the Holocaust
carried out by their own ancestors.
The Catholic Church’s beatification of Father Junipero Serra disgusted
California Mission Indians, who knew him as an enslaver of Indians.
Serra’s missions were no more than concentration camps. Brutal slave
labor, starvation and disease killed all but a fraction of the Native
population.
California Mission Indians denied archaeologists permission to study
the remains of individuals who died while in Serra’s missions.
From these tragedies, the Indian burial rights movement was born in
the 1970s. The Native American Rights Fund emerged as a fighter for
burial rights and repatriation.
But the movement carried a stronger message: Indians are part of
humankind and deserve to be treated as such.
Walter Echo-Hawk pointed out that while religious concerns are
important, the major issue is equality under the law.
"Indians, as members of the human race and the United States, should
receive the same burial protection taken for granted by every other
racial and ethnic group," Riding In said.
State laws are often racist in nature, often charging a person looting
an Indian grave with a misdemeanor while charging those who commit the
same crime against a marked cemetery with a felony.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed by
Congress in 1990, makes it a crime to disturb graves on federal and
tribal lands and makes it a crime to sell human remains.
But, the federal law requires the victims -- Indian people -- to bear
the cost of reburying their dead, rather than those who committed the
crimes – archaeologists, museum curators, physical anthropologists and
others.
Riding In said legislation should address two issues: Should scholars
use information gained through the theft of human remains; should
universities and libraries pull from their shelves research based on
immoral acts.
Those immoral acts were committed against individuals, families and
communities.
Harry Coons, a Skidi Pawnee from Oklahoma visited a site in Nebraska
in 1896 where he had lived as a boy. Coons discovered the gravesites
of his sisters had been pillaged.
Riding In said, "Grave looting has caused Indians a great deal of
suffering, mental anguish, and distress."
Riding In, who also authored a factual biography of Geronimo, is an
assistant professor of justice studies at Arizona State University.
ASU’s Law School course materials for the symposium includes Riding
In’s essay, "Without Ethics or Morality: A Historical Overview of
Imperial Archaeology and American Indians."
Replies
Tony Castanha to papbullslist
show details 1:22 AM (3 hours ago)
Aloha no, Many of you may be familiar with the peculiar issue
of a Hawaiian church here excavating the remains of their
own iwi kupuna (ancestral bones) to make way for the building
of a $21 million multi-purpose center. 69 burials have already
been dug up and there may be hundreds more that would be dis-
turbed in the building process. Things spilled over on Sunday
with the first arrests of Kanaka Maoli defending their kupuna.
Shameful and sad, indeed. See pictures and letter below.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:34:59 -1000
From: LC <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
Subject: Kamuela Kala`i letter to OHA Trustees,
plus pics of Kawaiahao protest 3.13.11
fyi
Original Message ----- From: Andrea K
Subject: Arrested for trespassing at Kawaiahao Church, Sunday March 13
Aloha mai,
Yesterday morning, Sunday, March 13, 2011, Kaanohi Kaleikini and I were
handcuffed and arrested for trespassing at Kawaiahao Church. We were
treated like criminals, handcuffed, searched 2 times, fingerprinted multiple
times, had mug shots taken, and put in a holding cell until family members
showed up with $500.00 cash to bail us out from jail.
We were arrested for sitting on the steps of the church, for daring to walk
on to the grounds of Kawaiahao Church, right past the sign that says,
"Welcome and aloha to all", for daring to stand up for our kupuna who
have been dug up, desecrated and continue to sit on shelves in the basement
of the church for over one year. We were arrested for being vigilant and
reminding the church of their responsibility to the iwi kupuna in their back
yard. We will not be able to step on the grounds of Kawaiahao church for one
year and will be arrrested for trespassing if we do. ONE YEAR. For defending
our kupuna and holding the church accountable for their actions. ONE YEAR.
This is crazy. We did not commit any crime. We did not desecrate graves.
We did not leave our iwi kupuna in the basement of the church. We did not
lock up our iwi kupuna in a caged room behind chained doors. We did not
insist that excavations must continue. We did not call the archaologists to
continue the digging. We did not ignore the concerns and cries of the family
members to stop the digging and desecration. We did not spend over ONE
MILLION DOLLARS of beneficiary money from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs on
things we did not agree to. We did not spend $120,000 of beneficiary money
to pay Dawn Chang's PR Firm Kuiwalu to do outreach to the families. We did
not violate the terms of the contract signed with the Office of Hawaiian
Affairs. We did not sit on the Captial Campaign committee to raise money
for a church building that would ultimately desecrate and disturb 69 or our
iwi kupuna. We did not do any of these things.
Someone did but WE did not.
We have done NOTHING to deserve being arrested like common criminals
and common thieves.
What we did and continue to do is protect, defend, and educate everyone
about the plight of our iwi kupuna because Kawaiahao church officials
continue to remain silent, continue to exclude us from discussion and
decision making, continue to make plans to finish their construction
project, continue to refuse to hooponopono with the families.
We continue to hoomau and perservere with the hope that the Office of
Hawaiian Affairs trustees will step up to the plate and intervene on behalf
of their beneficiaries, especially the beneficiaries who no longer have a
voice and are in constant danger of being dug up and desecrated.
We continue to ask for help, ask for support, ask for kako'o, ask for
intervention from YOU the chosen leaders, YOU the ones who have CHOSEN to
lead, YOU the Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees, YOU who have the TRUST of
the beneficiaries you were elected to represent, help and support.
YOU the Office of Hawaiian Affairs TRUSTEES: Collette Machado, Boyd Mossman,
Oswald Stender, Rowena Akana, Donald Cataluna, Peter Apo, Haunani Apoliona,
John Waihee and Robert Lindsey - each and every one of you.
We call on you to be the LEADERS to help us protect our iwi kupuna. I call
on you to be leaders in this defining moment of history.
NOW. NOT TOMORROW. NOW.
What is it that prevents you from responding to my inquiries? What is going
on on the 12th floor of your building? Have you lost touch with the basic
human concept of resting in peace FOREVER? Aloha kekahi i kekahi. Isn't
that what we are all striving for?
Do you hear the cry of the people for help??? Do you hear my cry out for
help????
HEAR MY VOICE. I AM BEGGING FOR YOUR HELP.
WE WERE ARRESTED FOR DEFENDING OUR IWI KUPUNA.
WE WERE ARRESTED AND TREATED LIKE COMMON CRIMINALS.
WE ARE NOT THE CRIMINALS. WE ARE THE EVIDENCE.
WE ARE THE LINEAL DESCENDANTS OF THE KUPUNA WHO ARE VICTIMS OF DESECRATION
PERPETRATED BY KAWAIAHAO CHURCH.
THE OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS HELPED TO FUND THIS DESECRATION. Yes, you
helped to fund it and you are now perpetuating the hewa by your silence.
How will you be judged by those who have entrusted you with their welfare?
How will we all be judged by this moment in time? What would your kupuna say
about all of this? What will your moopuna say when everything is said and
done? Did you do your best? Did you do anything besides wait and wait and
wait some more.
WHAT DO YOU NOT GET ABOUT THIS SITUATION THAT WILL GET YOU TO TAKE ACTION?
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO GET AN ANSWER? A RESPONSE? A SIMPLE YES, WE WILL
HELP. OR NO WE WILL NOT.
Are you willing to take responsibility for further damage, hurt, arrests and
more harm to the beneficiaries when we are called out to defend and protect
our kupuna the next time this happens?
We have been to your table time and time again. We have asked. We have
pleaded. We have been patient. You have kuleana here. Take care of it.
It's not that difficult. Make a decision. Carry through.
We want PEACEFUL resolution. We want hooponopono. We want openness and
transparency. We want the church to meet us halfway. We want to be
included in all decisions and planning that concern the iwi kupuna at
Kawaiahao. We want to have a voice at the table.
Set up a meeting for all of us to meet with the Office of Hawaian Affairs to
come up with solutions. Invite the church. If they don't show up, we
proceed without them.
Just set it up. Time, date, place. Easy. DO it.
Please do not let this situation get any worse than it already has.
A response to this email will be GREATLY appreciated from each one of you.
Ke kali nei au.
Ola na iwi.
Kamuela Kala'i
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From: Lynette Cruz
You're invited to view my pictures at Shutterfly. Enjoy!
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Pictures from Lynette Cruz
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Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:13:53 -1000
From: LC <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
Subject: Fw: TUESDAY on "Indigenous Politics" Radio: Desecration at Kawaiha'o
Church
----- Original Message -----
From: indigenouspolitics@wesufm.org
To: indigenouspolitics@wesufm.org
Subject: TUESDAY on "Indigenous Politics" Radio: Desecration at Kawaiha'o
Church
Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond Radio Program
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 4-4:55pm EST/10-10:55am HST on WESU, Middletown,
CT (88.1), USA
Listen online while the show airs: www.wesufm.org
Join your host, J Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode that will focus on
Kawaiha'o Church in Honolulu, Hawai'i, and issues of burial desecration.
Guests on the program will be Ka'anohi Kaleikini and Kamuela Kala'i-both of
whom are involved in ongoing protests to stop the desecration. They were
arrested on Sunday, March 13th, when they approached members attending
services to remember and honor na 'iwi kupuna (the human remains of Native
Hawaiian ancestors). Officials at the church have already sanctioned the
digging and removal of 'iwi kupuna, which are currently stored in the church
basement. Now their plan to remove more burials to expand the church has
been sanctioned by a judge, as well as the state Department of Health.
Listen in to learn about the case, the cultural principles that guide the
women's resistance, and the role the state Department of Land and Natural
Resources has played as well as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
~~
This show airs on WESU on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Tuesday of each month, and
is syndicated on these select stations: WAZU, Peoria, IL; KUCR, Riverside,
CA; WPKN in Bridgeport, CT and Montauk, NY; WNJR, in Washington, PA,
WETX-LP, "The independent Voice of Appalachia," which broadcasts throughout
the Tri-Cities region of East Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and northwest
North Carolina; WBCR-lp in Great Barrington, MA and WORT in Madison, WI.
~~
All past episodes are archived online: www.indigenouspolitics.com.
~~
JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP: "Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and
Beyond - Radio Program"
~~~
The producer and host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, is an Associate Professor of
American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University. She is the author
of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and
Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008). Kauanui served on the founding
steering committee for the Native American and Indigenous Studies
Association and is currently serving on its inaugural council for an elected
term of three years. http://jkauanui.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
This happened to my father too, therefore, because of the devastations of the American government after WWII. my grandparents were disinterned by my father and his brothers. This is heartbreaking for my father and his family. The military also distroyed the property and too parked their trucks on the graves of my grandparents. The stories of what happened after WWII never was told publicly except for here.
Did you know Aleuts were sent to internment camps during WWII?
AUTHOR: Debra McKinny, Anchorage Daily News
A new film has Aleuts talking through the pain. Long-silent Aleuts revisit the suffering of World War II camps in a new documentary film set to air on Public Television this month.
Flore Lekanof was a teenager in June 1942 when the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor to try to divert American forces from the naval battle at Midway. He'd just come from church when the news started to spread throughout his village of St. George. Then came chaos and confusion.
He and other Aleuts in the Pribilof and Aleutian islands had little time to prepare for evacuation, to assemble one bag apiece before boarding a troop ship and sailing away from the only life they'd ever known. He didn't know how long they'd be gone or even where they were going. He certainly didn't know his sister and grandmother would die there.
Harriet Hope was 5 when Unalaska got its orders to go. She remembers being dressed in her Sunday-school coat and gloves and her mother holding her up at the rail of the ship taking them all away. She remembers watching her house get smaller and smaller and her father, a white postmaster left behind to help with the war effort, jumping up and down, waving his arms over his head to say goodbye.
It would be 3 1/2 years before she'd see home again. And it would never be the same.
HURTFUL AND HUMILIATING
Hope and Lekanof were among the 881 Aleuts sent by the federal government to internment camps during World War II. With their homes suddenly in a war zone, the evacuation was meant to get them out of harm's way. But that's not how this rescue mission unfolded. Spread out among five isolated camps in Alaska's Southeast, 1,500 miles from home, in strange rain-forest land that felt suffocating to those accustomed to treeless, windswept tundra, the Aleuts were left to languish from neglect, malnutrition and disease.Among the most deplorable conditions were at Funter Bay on Admiralty Island, where Lekanof and others from the Pribilofs ended up and many died. Those from St. George moved into a decrepit old gold mine and those from St. Paul to an equally dilapidated, abandoned cannery. With light pouring in between cracks and people falling through dry rotted floors, these places were vermin-ridden and incapable of being heated. Survivors speak of constantly being cold and hungry and sick.
An estimated one in 10 died in the camps, a death rate not far behind the percentage of American soldiers who perished in prisoner of war camps in World War II. And then those who survived returned home to find their houses and churches ransacked and plundered, not by Japanese invaders but in many cases by their own country's military forces who lived in them and helped themselves while residents were away.
For decades, what was done to the Aleuts by their government was too hurtful and humiliating to talk about. And, as Hope says, to speak up would have seemed unpatriotic.
With a new documentary, "Aleut Story," soon to be airing on public television stations across the country, many Americans will be hearing of this for the first time.
"Aleut Story" will be shown on public broadcasting stations in Alaska at 9 p.m. Nov. 22 on KAKM (Channel 7) in Anchorage, KYUK in Bethel, KUAC in Fairbanks and KTOO in Juneau.
HOW THE FILM CAME ABOUT
The Aleutian Pribilof Heritage Group commissioned Anchorage-based SprocketHeads LLC to produce this documentary, with Carolyn Robinson as executive producer and Steven Rychetnik as director of photography. Marla Williams, a former Alaska print and broadcast journalist now based in Seattle, was the writer, director and producer. Actor Martin Sheen narrated gratis.Two weeks ago, this crew learned the film had been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 30th annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. The winner was to be announced this weekend.
Although the television airing is yet to come, the big screen premiere in Alaska was Monday at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub, with two screenings sold out to a standing-room-only crowd.
Jake Lestenkof, executive director of the Aleutian Pribilof Heritage Group and former adjutant general for the Alaska National Guard, was surprised by the turnout.
"It's beyond all our expectations," he said.
Having seen the film, he introduced it at both screenings, then disappeared between. This film, five years in the making, has been close to his heart. But that didn't mean he could sit through it again.
Lestenkof was 10 when he and his family were sent to Funter Bay, where his mother died. He was among those who helped break the silence years ago. And now with the heritage group he heads having commissioned this film, the story will reach a much wider audience. Yet watching it himself is still too difficult.
"I think there was a great reluctance on the part of the people to talk about their experience in the camps," he said the afternoon of the premiere in a Midtown coffee shop. "Too painful. I think it's still painful for a lot of people. It's certainly not comfortable for me to talk about because I pretty much erased it out of my mind, you know. For years."
Others had a hard time watching too.
Jenny Alowa, an Anchorage School District social studies teacher who grew up on St. Lawrence Island, was among those at the Bear Tooth screening. The film made her cry. And she wasn't the only one.
"It's a sad story in our Alaska Native history," she said. "It's a very important story, and it's got to be told. It comes from the heart of the people. "Hopefully it will be healing."
THE BIGGER STORY
"Aleut Story" started off as something entirely different. In 1999, Lestenkof's wife, Sherry Valentine, head of the heritage group at the time, had the idea of creating a short documentary on restoration of the six Russian Orthodox churches damaged or destroyed during the war. These churches were ransacked and looted of precious icons, and St. Nicholas church in Atka was burned to the ground along with much of the village as part of a military policy of leaving nothing behind to aid the enemy.The restoration and reconstruction project was made possible as part of hard-won settlement in 1988, which created the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Restitution Trust. While rebuilding the churches was a spiritual and symbolic rebuilding of community, it was only one piece of the story. It soon became evident it was time to talk more openly about the rest of it.
PBS got involved. Then came major grants from the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Restitution Trust, the Rasmuson Foundation, the Paul Allen Family Foundation and others.
"It grew into a much larger project than originally envisioned," Lestenkof said.
The 90-minute documentary opens with archival footage and photographs of Aleut evacuees, with survivors woven in telling what happened to them and their families. Historians, academics, politicians and others on the periphery try to make sense of it. Then the film takes viewers along as a handful of elders return to Funter Bay 60 years later to tend the graves of those left behind. There on the dock they sing a Slavonic hymn of deliverance, the same one sung when the evacuees first arrived in 1942.
Even with all the stories, some of the most powerful moments in the film are the long, pensive silences as survivors remember.
"I think that's part of listening to someone," said Williams, the film's writer and director. "You aren't quite comfortable with it. That's the point. It's not comfortable to talk about this. It's not comfortable to think about this."
A tremendous amount of research went into the making of this film -- hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents coming from all kinds of sources, from major national archives to a slip of paper that tumbled out of one survivor's photo album as she told her story. From territorial records, letters, logs and Western Union telegrams to the 1995 book "When the Wind Was a River: Aleut Evacuation in World War II" by Dean Kohlhoff.
How could this have happened?
"In general there was a feeling that they simply wouldn't notice if they were living in substandard conditions," Williams concluded. "These camps, in particular Funter Bay, defied even that."
Camp bosses kept detailed logs of daily life, she said, "including logs that read like this:
Federal fish and wildlife agents were in charge of the Funter Bay camps where Lekanof, Lestenkof and others from the Pribilofs were held. That story is among this film's many layers -- how the Aleuts were used as slavelike labor for the government-run sealing operation in the Pribilofs until they began a fight for justice after the war. More than other camps, those at Funter Bay were kept under tight control, since the government didn't want to lose such a lucrative work force.
"There's always a silver lining to anything bad that happens," Lestenkof said. "Because of their exposure to the outside world they were able to organize and fight for some of their rights."
A SLOW RECOVERY
The first gathering of internment survivors didn't come until the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dutch Harbor. Among those who came to Unalaska for the event was a Jewish woman who'd survived the German concentration camps, Hope said. She'd become a grief counselor and invited internment survivors to meet with her."I thought, what a wonderful opportunity," Hope said. "This is what we need. I called all the elders and told them she was there. And I said ... 'you don't have to talk; we can just listen and see what she has to say.' Two people showed up. They weren't ready.
"Our culture has been disrupted so many times, we have this feeling we don't really want to talk to anybody from outside," she explained. "We don't feel we can trust."
But they were ready by the time Williams showed up with the camera crew. That's because, according to Hope, Williams did it right.
She spent time with people before launching into the project, attending lots of senior lunches in several Aleut communities, talking with people about everything from her hopes for the project to arthritis. She didn't come to take their stories, then go away.
"That was the magic step she took," Hope said, "coming out here, getting to know us."
Williams, Lekanof and Hope flew to Anchorage for the premiere of "Aleut Story" at the Bear Tooth and to take part in a panel discussion the following night. The three also met with members of Mediak, an Alaska Native teen media club sponsored by Cook Inlet Tribal Council and Koahnic Broadcast Corp., to encourage them to seek out and tell important stories of their own. "Our people haven't talked about this all this time, all these years and ... just give me a second," Hope said, dabbing her eyes as she spoke to the kids.
"The elders, they started talking ..."
As students looked on, Williams asked Hope why she and other survivors decided to go so public even though talking about it hurts.
"It's something we trustees felt strongly about, that we needed to get the story told to the rest of the world," Hope said.
"And we felt it needed to start with us."
"But were you prepared for what we put you through in terms of making the film?" Williams asked.
"No. But it was something we felt we had to do. And God put you there."
NEVER AGAIN
Williams stood in the back of the theater during both screenings. She said it felt like "surround sound" watching people watch her work. Not entirely comfortable.But she wanted to get some sense of whether survivors in the audience thought she got it right and if the film resonated with others more removed. She asked people in the lobby, in the women's restroom, wherever they happened to be, why they had stood in line on such an exceptionally cold night to see the film.
Some said because they were Aleut. Others had friends who were Aleut. And then there were those who came because they'd never heard of this and couldn't understand how that could be.
Allison Warden felt that way. "I had no idea," she said. "It's not something I learned in school."
"In this case, two things made it difficult to get the story out," Williams explained. "First of all, geographic isolation from most of America. And the second thing we do have to confront and admit is there's a certain amount of racism."
From all sides, that may be the hardest to face up to.
"One thing that came out of it," Hope said, "is that everybody agrees that something like this should never be allowed to happen to another group of American citizens."
"You can kind of guess there was a lot of anger. I was very young when I was taken away; my anger is for what my parents went through."
"But it's been 60 years now this anger has been there, and unfortunately what I'm seeing looking at our young kids at home is it's being passed from generation to generation. It's got to stop somewhere.
"It's helped me, and I imagine it's helped a lot of the others survivors, to tell the story and let it go."
'ALEUT STORY'
The documentary will air on public television stations thoughout the United States. In Alaska, it will be shown at 9 p.m. Nov. 22 on KAKM (Channel 7) in Anchorage, KYUK in Bethel, KUAC in Fairbanks and KTOO in Juneau. To find out when it will air in your area, go to www.PBS.org, then scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your zip code.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Reporter Debra McKinney can be reached at dmckinney@adn.com
This is an example of an affidavit: thank you for checking this out
AFFIDAVIT FOR DISINTERMENT AND REINTERMENT OF A DEAD BODY
MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
OFFICE OF THE STATE REGISTRAR AND CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS
FEE $10.00
The applicant being duly sworn deposes and says that:
1. On the _____________day of ______________20____. ____________________
____________________________was buried in______________________ cemetery
Located in the county of_________________________________________________
Grave number____,lot________,section________, other location, such as mausoleum
(specify)_____________________________________________________________
Date of death________________Place of death____________________Age_______
Cause of death_________________________________________________________
2. A permit for the disinterment and reinterment of the deceased is hereby requested
on behalf of:
Name of petitioner _______________________Relationship to decedent__________
Address______________________________________________________________
Said body is to be reinterred in:
___________________________________cemetery, located in_________________
The reason for seeking removal of said body is_______________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
3. The owner(s) of the lot or burial right where the body is currently interred is(are)
Name(s) of owner(s)____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
The owner(s) hereby consent to the disinterment of the decedent:
Signature(s) of owner(s)_________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
4. Consent of the next surviving kin as required by Rule 325.8052 is hereby granted.
Signature Date Relationship
5. The applicant further swears that to the best of his/her knowledge he/she obtained all approvals in
items 3 and 4 above as required by law and rule, and that he/she takes this oath with the full
understanding that he/she assumes responsibility for the proper disinterment and reinterment of
the decedent.
Name of Funeral Director___________________________________________________
Address_________________________________________________________________
License No.__________________________Signature____________________________
Subscribed and sworn to before me this_______day of___________20________
Signature, Notary Public____________________________
Notary Stamp or Seal _________________________________County, Michigan
My Commission expires:___________________________
Note: If not able to obtain the required consent to disinter, a person may petition the circuit court of the
county where the cemetery is located for a disinterment order.
B-27a 3/87 Completion and penalties as prescribed by Act 368, P.A. 1978 as amended.
do 09/04 disinterment and reinterment
R 325.8051 Discovery of remains; notification of police required; exception.
Rule 1.
notify the police authority of the jurisdiction where the remains are found. If preliminary inspection by the police
authority indicates that the remains are those of a prehistoric or historic native American, the state archaeologist of
the Michigan history division, department of state, shall be immediately notified of the finding. This rule does not
apply to archaeological excavations conducted by representatives of established scientific institutions or societies.
A person who inadvertently discovers a burial or parts of a human skeleton shall immediatelyR 325.8052 Disinterment permit; applications; fee.
Rule 2.
the cemetery is located, and the request shall be made on an affidavit which is signed by a licensed funeral director
and by a person or persons as follows:
a) The surviving spouse.
b) If no surviving spouse, then by all surviving children.
c) If no surviving children, then by the surviving parents.
d) If no surviving parents, then by all surviving brothers and sisters.
(2) The request shall be accompanied by a fee established by the local health department
pursuant to section 2444 of Act.
No. 368 of the Public Acts of 1978, as amended, being 333.2444 of the Michigan Compiled Laws.
(1) A request for a disinterment permit shall be made to the local health officer in whose districtR 325.8053 Affidavit content.
Rule 3.
a) The name and address of the licensed funeral director to whom the permit is to be issued.
b) The name and address of the person petitioning for the permit.
c) The name of the lot or the burial right owner.
d) The name of the deceased.
e) The present location of the grave, including the lot number, the section number, or other location, such
as a location in a mausoleum.
f) Reinterment location.
g) Relationship of petitioner to deceased.
h) Reason for disinterment.
i) Approval of all persons who may have a claim for the deceased as specified in R 325.8052.
j) Written consent of the lot or burial space owner or owners, if other than petitioner.
An affidavit shall contain all of the following information:R 325.8054 Local health officer; duties.
Rule 4.
a) Review the affidavit for disinterment-reinterment.
b) Issue the disinterment-reinterment permit if the consent required by R 325.8052(1) has been obtained,
or deny the disinterment-reinterment permit if the consent required by R 325.8052(1) has not been
obtained.
c) Provide instructions or guidance to the funeral director on the handling of the disintered body which is
necessary to protect the health of the public and those handling the disintered body.
d) Retain the affidavit for a period of not less than 5 years.
The local health officer or his or her designated representative shall do all of the following:R 325.8055 Disinterment of cremated remains; opening casket; permit not required.
Rule 5.
may be made to the cemetery by the next surviving kin, as designated in R 325.8052, on an affidavit described in R
325.8053. The affidavit shall be maintained as part of the permanent records of the cemetery from which the
cremated remains are removed.
(2) A permit is not required to open a casket to remove an article or to place an article in a casket.
(1) A permit is not required to disinter cremated remains. A request to disinter cremated remainsR 325.8056 Cemetery retention of permit.
Rule 6.
cemetery from which the deceased was removed.
A duplicate copy of the permit shall be maintained as part of the permanent records of theR 325.8057 Transportation of disintered body.
Rule 7.
has been enclosed in a container which insures against leakage, offensive odors, and other menaces to the public
health and safety. A disintered body may be transported by private vehicle, under the supervision of a licensed
funeral director, if enclosed in any suitable container which insures against leakage, offensive odors, and other
menaces to the public health and safety. The licensed funeral director in charge of disinterment shall be responsible
for the proper conduct of the disinterment and removal.
A disintered body shall not be accepted for transportation by common or contract carrier unless it