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Re: Rights and AccessClaire Farrer (Claire_Farrer@MACGATE.CSUCHICO.EDU)Wed, 11 May 1994 11:19:07 -0800
Recently a policy maker (unknown to me) at The Field Museum in Chicago decided that access to its Native American, or , if you prefer, Indian, collections would be denied to all who were not members of the tribe/group in question without written permission from the appropriate tribal council. This means that, for instance, a Cherokee person cannot examine/study/see/research material from the Navajo tribe without Navajo tribal permission. Obviously, it also means that Anglos cannot examine/research any collections from any tribe without written permission as well. This strikes me as capricious, rather than a legitimate interpretation of the NAGPRA, as Museum people have maintained. It also, if followed logically, means that only the dead can write obituaries (or read them), only Danes can work with Danish material, and Alex Haley could not have written of his Roots, since the material from the Dutch, English, French, and Portugese records would have been denied to him as an African-descendant. It probably also means, if extended logically, that no American person can examine the Declaration of Independence, or any other document, without being a direct descendant of the framers and signers. Does this strike any one else as being ludicrous? Claire R. Farrer cfarrer@oavax.csuchico.edu
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