University of Michigan return human remains and sacred burial artifacts

WE THE UNDERSIGNED urgently demand that the University of Michigan return Native American human remains and sacred burial artifacts that are being wrongly withheld from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan and numerous other tribes. These tribes are still here today and thriving. They are not relegated to museums of natural history or the pages of history books. The Native American culture is still alive today.



Remains of about 1,400 indigenous people, as well as thousands of funerary objects were collected in Saginaw , Macomb and Lapeer counties of Michigan during excavations from the 1930s to the 1960s. The remains and artifacts are housed in the University Of Michigan Museum Of Anthropology . A 1990 federal law, The Native Americans Graves Protections and Repatriations Act, requires museums that receive federal money to return indigenous human remains and sacred objects to the descendents or culturally affiliated Tribes.



The university so far has declined to return the remains and sacred burial objects arguing that they are culturally unaffiliated with present day Tribes.



How can that be true when, the funerary objects found are the same objects that are buried with native people to this day. The burden should be on the institutions to catalogue and provide any information they have about the remains and the University has had decades with the remains and sacred burial objects in which to complete this process. The University should also have consulted with the tribes about the Native American objects. The University has never consulted with any of the 12 Tribes of Michigan about the objects to culturally affiliate them.



These ancestors bodies and funerary objects have been written on with markers and pens, handled, and looked at over and over again by professors, researchers and students for long enough! Their bodies, laid out in cardboard boxes on metal shelves, are a shameful reminder of the University of Michigan s disrespect for human dignity. Would you want your grandmothers and grandfathers to be treated this way?



We ask that our grandmothers and grandfathers be return to the native people so they can receive proper burial rites.