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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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There was a recent change to the "Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act" which has led to several of the best natural history museum museums simply shutting down their Native American exhibits last week, rather than (what I would naively expect, based on the title) removing human remains from display or something. For instance, The Field Museum papered and curtained over their displays. The American Museum of Natural History is closing two exhibit halls.

This seems like the sort of rule that looks like it might make sense initially, of not grave digging and talking to descendants, until everyone is suddenly reminded that archeology largely is grave digging, and finding descendants is often fraught, with plenty of Tribal Council politics even if a museum can figure out the right authorities to talk to.

I can't tell if this was the intention of the President's Office when they passed the rule, and how much will be left after everything settles (or if it won't settle, and everything will just sit in storage awaiting a change of zeitgeist).

Admittedly, I already mostly go to the local natural history museum for the animatronic dinosaur, and my state has lots of Pueblo Ruins museums, but they're not very good, and run in partnership with the Native American communities. It isn't clear how this will affect locally interesting museums about communities not continuously inhabited since the most archeologically interesting period, such as the Dickson Mounds museum (I recommend stopping by if you're in the area!). Their most interesting parts for non-archeologists are landscape, reproductions and dioramas anyway, so perhaps not much. The Milwaukee Natural History Museum has an unusually enjoyable Native American section (very good in general, go if you're in the area!), but iirc it was also mostly reproductions and dioramas as well.

Ultimately, I suppose it will probably not deteriorate the experience all that much for non-archeologists once the dust settles, but will be one more step of history museums in general toward irrelevance.

I can't tell if this was the intention of the President's Office when they passed the rule, and how much will be left after everything settles (or if it won't settle, and everything will just sit in storage awaiting a change of zeitgeist).

I think anybody can tell that it was the intent, at least according to the link you provided regarding the NAGPRA Act itself:

These regulations provide systematic processes for returning Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian Organizations (NHOs). The revised regulations streamline requirements for museums and federal agencies to inventory and identify Native American human remains and cultural items in their collections.

Between funerary object, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony, I think anything goes since cultural patrimony is synonymous with cultural property. And I would emphasize the word cultural is by now long hijacked by the Left: as in cultural studies or cultural sensitivity or cultural racism or LGBT culture and others. The word cultural in this context is one of the archetypal examples of "we share your language but not your dictionary", similar to words like inclusion or diversity. So if you hear something like culturally relevant teaching you cant translate it as woke, probably explicitly as a vehicle to pose as a protector of oppressed native peoples to gain power.

So yeah, I guess the exhibition curators and museum directors are now scared shitless as they probably know what is coming their direction - if they do not immediately overdo at least by factor of 10 of any measure they think is reasonable.

My take on this is that it has less to do about museums, and more a general decline in the US-American cultural/social reelvance of the Native American groups.

From an admittedly distant view, even as the sort of progressive/SJW criticisms of problematic Native American cultural references and caricatures increased in the 2000s/2010s, my sense is that rather than replace these with 'better' alternative symbols, there's been a broader trend of simply stripping Native American references entirely, with no indian cultural identifier left. Whether it's a butter company removing an iconic native american from branding, or the (American) football team Washington Redskins changing to the Washington Commanders following years of activist pressure, 'you can't have bad things- change it' isn't the same as 'do better things.'

I don't know about that. I feel like Native American culture is having a little bit of a moment, popular shows like Reservation Dogs, there's the new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, I've heard the phrase "Land Back" a lot more in recent times. Things like land acknowledgments are a thing, at least in certain liberal cities.

I think the difference then vs. now is that Native American culture feels more straightforwardly oppositional, whereas back in the rose-tintedly colorblind 90's and 2000's, it felt more...cooperative? Integrative? Like they were just other people alongside all of us. Of course, there is too much trauma in history for that view to have survived, but I think it definitely used to be more an added flavor sort-of thing rather than a separate culture. (Again, though, reality suggests that it has always been the latter.)

That has been my sense as an outsider from New Zealand comparing our own indigenous politics to American. It seems that the well meaning attempts have done more to 'erase' the culture than to protect it. Overall the welfare of indigenous Americans seems to have been pretty well ignored by the mainstream liberal/progressive left whilst at the same time they have spent the majority of their attention on the plight of African Americans.

I think there's something to this, and that it's unfortunate. American Indian culture is often quite interesting.

I do like what the Ojibwe adjacent areas have been doing in Minnesota, with "Indian Education" teachers in the schools, both academically supporting native youth, but also making popped wild rice and leading field trips to the art and culture exhibits, leading plant walks, and inviting drum circles to assemblies. It adds regional flavor, which seems good. Not that (clearly!) Minnesota doesn't have their own problems, but Ojibwe teachers and artists are, on he whole, doing good work.

Reminds me about that law banning leaving trace amounts of sesame (?), even with warning on packaging. Intended to be help for people deathly allergic to it. Deliberate inclusion of sesame remained legal.

Resulting in producers starting to add sesame deliberately. Impacting people with allergy but capable of eating products that had just traces of it.

Resulting in producers starting to add sesame deliberately. Impacting people with allergy but capable of eating products that had just traces of it.

I'm dumb. Why would this rule change cause them to start adding sesame deliberately?

Edited my comment a bit to clarify that deliberate addition remained legal.

  1. building separate sesame-free factory was infeasible
  2. they were not allowed to list sesame as in product without adding it
  3. they were banned from listing product as maybe containing some traces of sesame
  4. stopping using any sesame in all products would hurt them more (and they would need to do extreme cleaning of factory)

What else they could do?

How much do you think it costs to prevent trace contamination from a fairly common ingredient in other products? Your options are effectively 1) extremely thorough cleaning, 2) completely separate production facilities, or 3) stop making either the products with sesame or those without. Option 3 is by far the cheapest and there's apparently more demand for products with sesame than without.

  1. requires also stopping any use of sesame in all products made in that factory

Ah, that's what I was missing. I thought they could simply say "made on equipment that may have traces of sesame".

And exactly that practice was banned causing the mess.

That's the warning they were effectively campaigning against

Presumably there is an exception to sesame products, i.e. if your product does not have sesame listed as an ingredient, you need to make absolutely sure there is zero sesame in it.

Exactly this one.

I think this is a case of good intentions going horribly wrong because the people making the rules don’t understand the process and decided based on what sounds good rather than what work. A rule requiring getting permission when the owners of the material are clear, obvious and still around to ask is fair enough. But when coupled with the difficulty of finding the actual tribes (which may not exist anymore) and the definition of relics being fairly wide means that you essentially cannot dig or use any artifacts because you can’t get permission. This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.

This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.

No, the point is to let the Native Americans be the sole interpreters of that history and culture. We don't need pesky archeologists and geneticists telling us about how their tribe only moved into that area a few hundred years ago. We need to rely on indigenous ways of knowing that are much more valid than the colonialist violence of western science.

This was my cynical conspiracy take. Need to hide the genetics from the graves of the tribes they committed genocide against.

This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.

You know, I've had the same thought about things like renaming sports teams. Not that the previous name of the Washington Commanders wasn't offensive, but that we've established a de facto rule that mentions of Native American culture or history are offensive, but also that nobody got fired for just completely ignoring the topic. It already feels like public awareness of real native traditions and people has dropped tangibly in the culture over the last few decades of my life because attempts to bring it up are soured by (IMO bad-faith, shallow) criticism that it's "problematic" or doesn't cast enough native actors. Not that there's nothing at all to those claims, but I think they end up being overall counterproductive, and in practice are just erasing it from the culture completely.

I think there's something to this.

There's some enthusiasm from my parents' generation for Tony Hillerman's novels, set in the Navajo Nation, especially because he was a careful observer and puts in a lot of interesting local details. There's a TV adaptation from a couple of years ago that, in general, looks rather good (I haven't watched it because cop shows aren't my thing), so the top hits on Google are things like this:

WINDOW ROCK-Despite fine acting, suspense and entertainment featured in the first episodes of the AMC mystery series “Dark Winds,” overall the show misses the mark when it comes to accurately portraying Navajo language and culture, say some Diné experts.

Navajo is one of the most difficult languages in the world for outsiders to learn. That's why it was used instead of code during WWII. Also, speakers like to teach it wrong so they can laugh about it (source: my mom was living on the Reservation for a while. She is not bitter about it, and figured they're entitled to their fun) The Navajo youth most interested in careers like acting are least likely to learn it, because that would require growing up with their grandparents, herding sheep or something. There is not a large pool of Navajo speakers who are also attractive actors. And yet:

One thing learned in the first episode is that if a non-Diné actor wants to depict a Navajo character, they need to have Navajo language lines down and support to do that. “C’mon Hollywood, do better,” said Clarissa Yazzie, who is also a popular social media influencer. In a TikTok critique, Yazzie spelled out how some of the actors’ mispronunciation of words changed their meaning to the point of distraction and shock.

Lol, "social media influencer" as representative of traditional culture. The lesson is mostly just not to try.

There's some enthusiasm from my parents' generation for Tony Hillerman's novels, set in the Navajo Nation

Ouch. :( Yeah, I was a huge Tony Hillerman fan, read all of his Leaphorn/Chee mysteries. (His daughter has continued the series, but unsurprisingly, it's a weaksauce imitation that spends lots of time on Chee's wife and her struggles being a woman and a Navajo cop.)

There's a TV adaptation from a couple of years ago that, in general, looks rather good (I haven't watched it because cop shows aren't my thing), so the top hits on Google are things like this:

There have been several film adaptations of Hillerman's novels. The Dark Wind starred Lou Diamond Phillips (who is Filipino), and the others were PBS Mystery specials. All of them were mediocre.

In another, similar vein, look at the show Kim's Convenience. I recall reading that the reason the show shut down was because they had someone on the crew (a camera guy, I believe) quit, and they couldn't find an Asian person to replace him. So rather than have non-Asians on the crew, they shut it down. But as a consequence there's one less depiction of Asians and their culture in the broader culture. The perfect was allowed to be the enemy of the good.

Also, real talk - the name Washington Redskins wasn't offensive, and they should've just kept it. People would've moved on to complaining about something else eventually.

The Redskins name got changed because the owner got caught pimping out the cheerleaders amd not sharing revenue with other NFL entities and he wanted a positive news cycle.

...but that we've established a de facto rule that mentions of Native American culture or history are offensive, but also that nobody got fired for just completely ignoring the topic.

This reminds me of when Land O Lakes kept the land, but removed the Indian.

I can certainly understand why people would object to insulting portrayals of their heritage, but I am genuinely baffled by people that are upset by positive portrayals that are merely inaccurate in the specifics. If someone takes a cool part of your culture, dresses it up to look even cooler in an inaccurate way, and then celebrates that aesthetic, this does not harm you! There were probably not a lot of Danes that strongly resembled the Minnesota Viking, and I would strongly wager that the Skol chant is not all that similar to real Viking traditions a thousand years ago, but it's all pretty fun and gives a generally positive impression of those Northmen.

but I am genuinely baffled by people that are upset by positive portrayals that are merely inaccurate in the specifics.

I can definitely understand why someone would dislike inaccurate portrayals of their culture. It doesn't seem like a big enough deal to pitch a fit about, and especially when that culture either A) hasn't existed for a thousand years or B) doesn't have a one to one correspondence with the real world, it seems kind of silly. But the concept of it being bothersome to see highly inaccurate portrayals of yourself and people like you in mass media is intuitively obvious.

will be one more step of history museums in general toward irrelevance.

What are other such steps?

That might have been too salty, it's a mixed bag.

The Santa Fe Museum Hill Indian Arts & Culture museum is quite good, especially when they have a traveling exhibit up. There was an excellent glass art exhibit a couple of years ago, and the current Dine (Navajo) weaving display is also quite good. https://www.indianartsandculture.org/current?&eventID=5406 They are, especially, very good at things like lighting an integrating a bit of technology in a way that improves the experience, rather than having a bunch of broken tablets embedded in signs, as I've sometimes seen. They have a couple of other spaces with also excellent lighting and use of color to improve the experience.

I've mostly just been feeling like the older museums have a lot of interesting reproductions and scenes, and the newer ones tend to have a lot of flat panels with words and images that might as well have been a website (would be better as a website!), but it could just be based on where I personally have visited.

They can't compete with shiny and ultra-palatable pop culture?

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