Anthropology.net

President Bush’s history with the Skull and Bones secret society is not so much a secret anymore, especially since the following public domain photo that shows him with is club mates is on Wikipedia and making the rounds on Digg. The Skull and Bones club obviously has a selective membership to remain a secret society, and other than it keeping Masonic-inspired rituals for 175 years, not much is known about it.

But what still kinda remains a secret about the Skull and Bones is that they are believed have Geronimo, a iconic Native American’s remains. He was a leader of the Chiricahua Apache and spent 25 years of his life rebelling and resisting the encroachment of the United States on his tribal lands and people.

Even though I blogged about how the Skull and Bones have Geronimo’s skull and femur over a year ago — it didn’t make too many waves in the public relations, repatriation, and ethics department in the US. I haven’t heard about what’s going on with this issue until just now, when I was also catching up on Digg headlines. See, Geronimo’s relatives have gotten word that the Skull and Bones have Geronimo’s remains. That coupled with the fact that Bush is a Bonesman, motivated them to appeal to Bush to help return Geronimo’s remains.

Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said in a letter to Bush,

“I am requesting his help in getting the remains – the skull and the femur – returned, if they were taken. According to our traditions the remains of this sort, especially in this state when the grave was desecrated … need to be reburied with the proper rituals. To return the dignity and let his spirits rest in peace … is important in our tradition.”

Unfortunately the White House has not yet returned with a comment nor decision. And Yale can’t even help because the Skull and Bones club is a separate entity from the university. But I urge people to voice their opinion and raise some awareness about this issue. Archaeologists in the US have to abide by federal NAGPRA laws when they conduct excavations on Indian and Native American sites, whether they like too or not, and I do not think the Skull and Bones club are an exception to this law, no matter how secret they are and how much political clout they have with Bush as a member.

I really hope Bush steps up to the plate and personally resolves this issue with Geronimo’s relatives. Descendants of the Apache are deserving of at least this level of response, especially considering their families were obliterated and their graves disgraced and robbed.

Peter Andrews, a research scientist at the Natural History Museum in London and a professor in the department of anthropology at University College London, has reviewed the book, “A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia,” by Mike Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee.

Mike Morwood, if you don’t know or remember, is one of the original members of the team that found the Homo floresiensis specimens in Liang Bua back in 2003. Andrews’ writes how the book is a,

“…fascinating account of how the large-scale, multidisciplinary excavation was set up and run shows just how such an investigation should be conducted. They cover everything: the preliminary groundwork to find out who has to be approached to get permissions, with all the politics and administrative matters that are an unavoidable adjunct to such forms of scientific inquiry; the actual business of excavation and the dating of the deposit; and finally, the process of publishing a description of the fossils and their context. Anyone thinking of undertaking such a project would do well to consult this book.”

Pretty strong endorsement if you ask me.

Andrews goes on to document the significance of the Homo floresiensis remains, which if you are a follower of paleoanthropology and human evolutionary studies… you should be well aware of its importance. He then turns to gingerly document the controversies that happened between the team that excavated the fossils and

“Teuku Jacob, an Indonesian anthropologist who was not a member of the team, precipitously removed the skull, lower jaw and femur of the Flores woman, along with another lower jaw found at Liang Bua, from the lab where they were being kept. He then restricted access to the specimens and dismissed them as the remains of modern humans with the pathological condition known as microcephaly… Jacob essentially hijacked the remains, claiming falsely that Morwood had agreed to their transfer. The authors also complain that when Jacob finally returned the fossils, the bones had been mishandled and irreparably damaged.”

If Jacob really do this, then I don’t understand why he did. It seems so unethical and immature to jeopardize a critical hominin fossil. As Andrews explains, Morwood and team went thru all the proper channels and got permits to do the excavation. It’s not like they were digging illegally.

What has happened, the bickering between these two camps, has not only seriously damaged the fossils but also the reputation of paleoanthropology. As an someone with an outsider’s perspective on this whole situation, I see how the academic rigor and standards of the discipline are not shared in all places and cultures. People really do have egos larger than the problems and questions about human evolution they are trying to answer. While Andrews claims this book is a,

“well-written, entertaining book is both scholarly and accessible to the general public. Morwood and Oosterzee make the case that the Flores hominins occupy a unique position in human evolution,”

I see this book as another jab at Jacob. Jacob deserves to be reprimanded but there also needs to be some professionalism here. I hope that followers of this blog and future students in paleoanthropology can agree that this type of back and forth finger pointing does not help out our discipline. I really don’t know how Jacob and others who do this to the field should be dealt with but I don’t think it should be taken to this level. So I ask you, should we really be taking the time to write in our books and papers about how some colleagues did us wrong? Feel free to chime in what you think about all this and how to avoid this in the future.