Grave Matters: The Controversy over Excavating California's Buried Indigenous Past

by Tony Platt

How do we reconcile the sanctity of Indigenous burial grounds with the desire to study them?

Whether by curious Boy Scouts and "backyard archaeologists" or competitive collectors and knowledge-hungry anthropologists, the excavation of Native remains is a practice fraught with injustice and simmering resentments.

Grave Matters is the history of the treatment of Native remains in California and the story of the complicated relationship between researcher and researched. Tony Platt begins his journey with his son's funeral at Big Lagoon, a seaside village in pastoral Humboldt County in Northern California, once O-py�weg, a bustling center for the Yurok and the site of a plundered native cemetery. Platt travels the globe in search of the answer to the question: How do we reconcile a place of extraordinary beauty with its horrific past?

Grave Matters centers the Yurok people and the eventual movement to repatriate remains and reclaim ancient rights, but it is also a universal story of coming to terms with the painful legacy of a sorrowful past. This book, originally published in 2011, is updated here with a preface by the author.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Indigenous, American History

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2011

Reviews

[Randy Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an unpretentious book that looks at what happened to the Yurok, a native tribe located in the very north of California. Mr Platt traces the wholesale and mostly indiscriminate slaughter of these people, their recovery and finally how they came to honor and celebrate their own lives.

I found it at our public library and never checked it out but just read it there when I visited library for other purposes. I marked my place in the book with one of my art discs. Had someone checked the book out I probably would have purchase a copy but alas I always got lucky.

[Amy L. Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: Advanced review copy provided by Netgalley.

A rare blend of personal context of his own son's burial on historically tribal land and non-fiction regarding the long ignored burial rights of a local Native American people (the Yurok). This work covers the history of anthropological and historical work, both academic and amateur, and its effect on tribal/government/landowner/academia relationships. Platt's narrow focus on a single, and locally defined, group of people prevents this work from exploding into a dense manuscript. Instead, at roughly 200 pages, this short work refrains from reading like a laundry list of similar incidents and horrors, instead bring into focus and making personal the individual travails of the Yurok. While much of the book recounts the negative, there are brights spots of recent Native American activism, as well as hope for the future and a loose outline of what can and might be done to continue, and preferably speed up, repatriation efforts. An astounding work of sympathy, this ought to be required reading for every American who profited from the slaughter and subjugation of the Native American peoples. That means all of you.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm planning to assign this book to the graduate students in my Human Osteology class next semester. It touches on the history of physical anthropology, CRM archaeology, NAGPRA, and looting, all in the context of northern California. Highly recommended.

[Mills College Library]

979.412 P7196 2011