Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Native Peoples and Archaeology in the Northeastern United States

5. “The 368 Years’ War”: The Conditions of Discourse in Narragansett Country

5. “The 368 Years’ War” The Conditions of Discourse in Narragansett Country ?D=C 7 7GDLC >>> 6C9 E6JA 6 GD7>CHDC It is about politics. The dispute is about control and power, not philosophy . Who gets to control ancient American history—governmental agencies, the academic community, or modern Indian people? David Hurst Thomas Introduction hen a large earth-moving machine struck an unmarked seventeenth-century Narragansett Indian cemetery in 1982, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission (rihphc) and the Narragansett Indian Tribe decided to work together to excavate, study, and plan for the reburial of the 56 individuals interred there. This cooperative project was undertaken well before passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990; moreover, there was no state legislation that required the state and tribe to work together or that provided any protection for the cemetery. The site, known in the archaeological literature by its state inventory number, ri 1000, has been the source of many scholarly publications and in large part was the beginning of the relationship between the state and the tribe in the study and protection of archaeological sites. It was one of the first Native American cemetery projects in the United States that began with the assumption that most, and perhaps all, of what was taken from the earth would be reburied. Archaeologists and tribal leaders sought a way to share control of the project, although that notion was contested, argued, and sometimes ignored by those working on the project; and while folW “The 368 Years’ War’’  lowing standard archaeological field practice, the archaeologists almost always deferred to the tribe regarding the individual treatment of burials, the removal of some artifacts, and decisions about letting the public visit the site and keeping the media informed. Overall, the relationship was appreciated by both archaeologists and tribal participants. John Brown, who represented the tribe at the site on a daily basis, commented to a newspaper reporter on the good relations with the archaeologists and noted how rare such a relationship with non-Indians was in general: “Our past experiences have shown us that there are very few people who have the sensitivity to understand the connection between the contemporary and ancient Indians and realize that we are one and the same” (Murphy 1986). Nearly 20 years later, the rihphc published a book titled Native American Archaeology in Rhode Island (Robinson et al. 2002). Written for a lay audience, the book synthesized some of the previous three decades of archaeological research in Rhode Island, nearly all of which had been done with public funds by federal and state agencies in compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act. The rihphc acknowledged the contributions of those who conducted the research and helped review the text before publication. It also acknowledged the Narragansett Indian Tribe and its Historic Preservation Office for reviewing the draft text: “In particular we thank Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas, and John Brown and Doug Harris from the Tribal Historic Preservation Office. These three offered many comments, and we recognize that we sometimes differ on our interpretations of Narragansett history offered in this book. We appreciate that the Chief Sachem agreed to our use of his photograph on the book’s cover” (Robinson et al. 2002:iii). While the book presented the findings of many archaeological projects, it included little of the long-standing and complex relationship between the state archaeologists and the Narragansett Indian Tribe and not much about the tribe’s involvement on many of the projects. A letter from the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office (nithpo) to the rihphc commented on the draft text: Aside from the numerous places in the document where Narragansett Indians and Native Americans are erroneously re- Brown and Robinson  ferred to, the discrepancies in historical content have the potential to affect the treatment of cultural properties and historic properties within the state of Rhode Island. As crafted, the content will adversely impact properties in the National Register of Historic Places, as well as properties that are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. In its current form, we oppose the publishing of this document [Brown 2001]. With this letter, Narragansett tribal officials formally objected to the state-published synthesis of the past 30 years of archaeological research in Rhode Island. After working so well together at the ri 1000 cemetery site, how had...