One too many hits from the peace pipe?

For the last couple of weeks in class there has been a substantial amount of discussion about the rights of supposed descendants over their ancestors’ remains and possessions. All of this talk got me thinking, the main argument that the native Americans use in order to protect the remains of their supposed ancestors is that it is part of their religion to honour the dead the way they do. However, there are so many flaws in this argument it kind of boggles the mind, yet we respect it and honour their wishes. My first major beef with Indians is that they claim that their religion is the same as their ancestors’. While it may be possible it is highly unlikely. The native Americans do not write anything down and rely solely on oral tradition to pass down their history and their religion. Because oral history is so notoriously unreliable it is very hard to believe that what the few modern native Americans believe in is the same as what the people that lived here 2000years ago believed in. When I think of oral history I recall a video that I watched where an anthropologist went to, I think, Mongolia in search of actual bards who memorized their people’s songs and stories, much like how the ancient bards in Greece would sing homer to patrons. Anyway, the researcher had the bard memorize a story/song and when the bard said he had it memorized the researcher asked the bard to sing it back. The result was that the bard did sing most of the original lyrics back but missed sections and instead sung something that was close to the original but not quite right. My thinking is that if the record keepers of the native Americans are anything like the bard from Mongolia then there is no way everyone is going to tell their histories and their stories correctly. These bards had to train their memories to hold specific information and still got it wrong, assuming that the native Americans have people that do the same then their records and their religion is going to change over time just through miscommunication alone, never mind the changes in beliefs that naturally occur over time. What this all boils down to is that the people that lived 2000years ago may not have minded if we dug up their corpses to study them, it’s really nearly impossible to prove either way because nothing was written down.

My second problem with the native Americans’ claim over bodily remains is that they assume all ancient native Americans believed in the same thing. I maybe be viewing the situation in a more ethnocentric way than I should but I find it hard to believe that all Indians practiced religion. In my experience, not all people vest the same amount of interest in religion. Even people who grow up surrounded by religion do not always take on the beliefs of their parents and peers, this leads me to believe that the same is probably true for Indians. Just because most people in a society believe in something, does not mean everyone does. Even those that may have participated in religious rites or festivals may not have had strong religious opinions and may not have even considered themselves a believer in that specific religion. For example, just because most people in Canada celebrate Christmas it does not mean that everyone in Canada is Christian. By this I mean that by and large Christmas has become an increasingly religious neutral holiday, it has transformed from a strictly religious holiday to one that is more about Santa Claus and reindeer. Due to this shift, more and more people who are not Christian celebrate it in some form or another, like; decorating a store, wearing a festive hat, or simply exchanging gifts. More to the point, just because someone wears a Santa hat it does not make them a Christian, just like someone who is buried in an Indian funeral mound may not have been particularly religious and treating the remains as such could be a disservice to the individual. After reading this paragraph through the whole Christmas analogy does sound like a bit of an oversimplification but I think the message is correct.