"It's important to remember that the record of science is awful. I remember interviewing a Northern Cheyenne historian some years ago who told me about walking into a museum warehouse looking for a sacred object from his clan. He described what it was like when he realized that he was surrounded by thousands of boxes of human remains, people buried in a government warehouse. His relatives were there, too.

The repatriation of ancestoral remains is not about science versus religion to me. It's about respect for living people who have the right to determine that their relations are treated with human dignity. But respect remains an illusion when even now the government and museums warehouse tens of thousands of human remains.

How do you believe the world was created? Your answer might not matter, because in America some stories count more than others."

Get the Story:
Mark Trahant: Some stories count more than others (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 8/7)

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