a examination of two sides of acontroversy between Museums and American Tribe Over ownership of ancient artifacts ,and human remains, Why the museum wants to display this artifacts and why the native americans want it back. and why they have a right to th

An Examination of Two Sides of a Controversy

between Museums and American Tribe

Over Ownership of Ancient Artifacts and Human Remains One that might make your hair rise , scream with all your might or run very fast is the sight of a human skull and skeleton during a full moon in an old abandoned house . This is the usual scene in a horror movie Indeed , people fear seeing human remains . But skeletal remains can also cause conflict between museum owners , scientists and tribal groups Authorities are usually torn between legal wrangling of

these groups each one claiming the remains ' ownership . Nations of the world are also locked in debates over cultural property rights and intellectual property rights . The dispute between two great nations over great artifacts also has some repercussion on the economy of these two countries

Almost all schools and universities in the world maintain a museum basically for their activities in arts and sciences . In here , actual samples or replicas of the past are stored and lessons are becoming interesting if students can readily see what they read in the books . The more interesting the contents of the museums , the more famous they become . This generates sense of pride for the institution and sometimes become a source of revenues too . This is the reason why museums are trying to acquire interesting objects and when they become part of the museum , the real owner of the object finds it difficult to claim it This becomes the source of conflict between museum administrator and Native Americans in the case of ancient artifacts . Archaeologists too are hard bent on keeping them because they are prized possessions and scientists can discover various things from studying the object and contribute to the enhancement of science

One afternoon of a windy Sunday , more than ten years ago , while seeing hydroplane race , along the shores of the Columbia River , two students found human skull that was washed into the shore . An almost complete skeleton was also found in the place . Study conducted on the remains has yielded information that the skull is already 9 ,400 years old . A conflict ensued immediately among scientists , Native Americans including local authorities (Ainsworth 2000

In Honolulu , Hawaii , artifacts were borrowed from a museum but apparently , the group who borrowed failed to return the remains and refused to reveal the whereabouts of the Native Hawaiian artifacts . This led to the filing of contempt of court by the federal judge against four heads of a Hawaiian gang . The four are members of the group called Group Caring for the Ancestors of Hawaii . Members of the group claimed that the artifacts were removed from its original place by an archaeologist and illegally offered for sale to the Museum . Group members assert that they just return the artifacts to where they rightly belong (New York Times 2005

An archaeology student recovered bones , beads and pieces of shells in Dry Lake Cave at the southern tip of Owens Valley in 1950 . She wrote her...