A Long Journey Home: The Skeletons in Our Closets

By Rev. Bud Heckman, Executive Director, RFP-USA

Throughout my childhood, my parents took me to the cemetery to honor our deceased veterans and fellow countrypersons. In the whispers and walks, I learned lessons about life, about respect and about honor. With each approaching Memorial Day and Veterans Day, we would work for weeks ahead; checking the markers on the veterans’ graves, dusting them off, and placing flowers and flags.

I vividly remember the year we combed through the two overgrown forests at either edge of town, to uncover, identify, and re-establish the gravestones of the long forgotten. Every stone was checked and every name verified.

Few things are as powerful as seeing a sobbing hulk of a man embrace a gravestone, or a cemetery plot blueprint, realizing he has found his lost comrade’s final destination. Love of country becomes entwined with love of neighbor and friend, and the connection to the departed is even stronger, the sense of honor more elevated.

The news of a concluding report on the discovery of the frozen body of airmen Leo M. Mustonen in the melting snow of the Sierra Nevada brought back memories of those graveyards in that small town in Ohio. Our military’s meticulous effort to fulfill its “most sacred of promises” catalogued in Michael Wilson’s NY Times article demonstrates society’s deep respect for honoring the dead. In fact, as recent discussion over Slobodan Milosevic’s final treatment should remind us; in life’s end, many differences are set aside for our final recognition.

Over six decades had passed since the fatal failure of Mustonen’s parachute. Yet some of the 425-member staff of the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command worked for months to resolve his case. Nearly 90,000 missing service persons remain. And we will keep searching, as we should.

However, in stark contrast to such an effort is the fact that the United States government and private organizations have possessed the human remains of over 100,000 persons for more than a century and have not - or, in some cases, will not - return them. Think of the human suffering and anguish involved. The difference is that the remains are those of the first Americans. The disparities are glaring.

In 1860, the U.S. government ordered military troops on the frontier to collect the skulls and other remains of Native Americans and ship them to Washington, D.C., for scientific study. Through time, remains of thousands found their way to displays, dusty shelves, and forgotten drawers in museums, universities, and depositories across the country.

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. All federally-funded institutions are now required to return remains as well as sacred objects to the Native American tribes and nations from which they came. Many remains have been returned, mourned, and buried with dignity. But the process is slow and under funded. Many believe that the dedicated staff at the National Parks Service is doing their best, especially given the tensions and parameters within which they must work.

Today, 118, 358 Native American remains have still not been returned. In most cases it is because they cannot be identified as belonging to a federally-recognized tribe. They are labeled “culturally unidentifiable.” Often we know the region they come from, but not whom to give the remains to. Still these once-beloved mothers, fathers, friends and children are waiting to be returned and honored. Americans of faith and goodwill must respond, if we are to succeed in righting this wrong.

The first step in the final chapter of this “long journey home” for such Native Americans took place on Saturday, April 1, 2006. Fulfilling a dream, Cheyenne Peace Chief Lawrence Hart and tribal representatives from the South Central Plains region broke ground on a regional burial site in Clinton, Oklahoma. Working in partnership with the National Congress of the American Indians, with the over 50 US religious communities of Religions for Peace-USA, and with other religious and Native American partners; the Return to the Earth project, as it has been dubbed, works to fulfill that “most sacred of promises,” even for those who cannot be brought “home.” Native Americans will receive remains of their ancestors and handle them in ways that they see as appropriate. They will be assisted by religious communities as humble accompaniers in the process of repatriation.

While needing to obviously acknowledge a history of silence and even collusion in the historic wrongs against Native Americans, religious communities can bring unique assets. For example, their scriptural understandings of forgiveness and reconciliation give strong imperative to their involvement in the process of restorative justice needed today. And they want to move beyond the handful of formal apology statements that have trickled into existence.

I still remember some of the simple lessons of childhood – “clean up after yourself,” “put things back where you found them,” and “don’t take things that aren’t yours.” Now that I am older, however, those sayings come into sharper reflection. For instance, nearly 10,000 of those 100,000 plus Native American remains came from Ohio, probably some of them from in or near my hometown. There is a further irony here. The cemeteries in which those American service men and women are respectfully resting – the ones where I shaped my first understanding of honoring the dead - are situated in what was once completely Indian territory. The lingering knowledge of this fact is seemingly only left in the name places and school mascots of the region.

America’s focus today is largely on terrorism and security. It might be a helpful and humbling reminder that we have “skeletons in our own closet,” literally. It is time to own up to our own domestic history, and make peace with ourselves, even as we seek peace in the greater world.