Reburying the past
Flowers, sage and an abalone shell were placed on a mound of earth and bark shavings Thursday, officially marking the final resting place of remains and artifacts belonging to the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian tribe. The reburial spot is located on the southwest corner of the campus.
The morning ceremony was highlighted by indigenous songs, chants and speeches as the remains from roughly 100 Indian ancestors, along with artifacts, were celebrated on the sacred grounds. President Jane Close Conoley, Chancellor Timothy P. White, faculty members, representatives from local tribes and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act experts were in attendance.
“These ancestors have waited a long time to be returned to the earth,” said Louie Robles, chair of the Committee on Native American Burial Remains and NAGPRA member.
The excavation of remains and artifacts, and the forensic research of uncovered items has been an ongoing process, spanning nearly four decades. Cal State Long Beach administrators, faculty members and students have worked in recent years with local tribe and NAGPRA experts to develop a reburial process. Those tribes included members from Gabrielino/Tongva, Juaneño/Acjachemen and Chumash.
That process evolved into a curriculum of 11 CSULB courses in American Indian Studies, Anthropology, Design and Environmental Science, culminating with the reburial.
Craig Stone, chair of the American Indian Studies department, said this was an example of two worlds – the mainstream and Indian – coming together.
“It’s been a long road,” he said.
President Conoley said the partnership between the school, community and tribes served as a model of how the sides could “work together to solve tense, cultural wrongs that were done in an era when people maybe didn’t know better.”
She added that the collaboration between the school and the tribes provided a unique experience for those students in archaeology and anthropology who helped reassemble the bones and work closely with coroners.
“They got experiences,” President Conoley said, “… that are unique, a singular thing at Long Beach that no one else has done.”
President Conoley, who has been at CSULB for two years, gave much of the credit to the faculty and previous administrators who developed the project, but said it was important to her to see the project through.
“The justice of it called me,” she said. “The person who took the bones originally probably didn’t mean to do it and it was in a different era, but it was the wrong thing to do from the sensibility we have now. So I wanted to make it right.”
More than a dozen archaeological sites spread over roughly 500 acres near the campus have been identified as Indian village sites, most of which have been eradicated by development. Since the 1950s, local tribes have sought to preserve the site from development.
“[The area] has been neglected until recently,” said Cindy Alvitre, a CSULB lecturer and member of the NAGPRA.
