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Fight to bring
ancestors home
builds native spirit

By Jean Christensen
Associated Press

As a Colorado law student in the 1980s, Edward Ayau hoped to use what he learned about American Indian tribal governments to improve the lives of fellow native Hawaiians in his home islands.

He didn't know his legal career would focus more on the dead than the living.

For the past decade, Ayau has been a key figure in a campaign that has returned 5,000 sets of ancestral Hawaiian remains from some of the nation's most prestigious museums and schools, including the Smithsonian Institution, New York's American Museum of Natural History, Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and several Ivy League schools.

"It is our 'kuleana,' our responsibility as living descendants," he said. "We don't have to know these people. What we have to know is that they are Hawaiians and they have been disturbed, and it's our duty to take care of them.

"That's the nature of aloha."

Now, other Pacific islanders, including the Chamorros of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, are launching similar efforts.

The vehicle is the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The law allows American Indians, Alaska natives and native Hawaiians to repossess human remains and cultural property from U.S. museums and the federal government.

Five Pacific Northwest Indian tribes are using the law to claim the remains of the 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man, found by the Columbia River in 1996.

The law has fueled the native Hawaiian sovereignty movement, the 36-year-old Ayau said.

Removing bones from burial sites "robs the living of the 'mana' of their ancestors -- the spiritual essence of their people which goes to the very heart of their identity," he said. "How can you expect people to stand tall when their foundation has been eroded?"

Repatriation efforts began after the 1988 unearthing of more than 1,000 native Hawaiian remains by developers of a luxury resort in Kapalua, Maui, about 80 miles east of Honolulu.

Archaeologists said the remains appeared to have been buried over the course of 1,000 years, ending about the time of Capt. James Cook's 1778 arrival.

To Ayau, there was no more powerful symbol for the displacement Hawaiians felt. "Imagine if 1,000 remains got dug out of Punchbowl," he said. "Whoever did it would go to prison."

After protests, the state paid Kapalua Land Co. $6 million to restore the burial ground and move the resort inland.

That situation drew attention to the thousands of native Hawaiian remains in museum collections worldwide.

Ayau believes racism fueled the scholarly pursuits that amassed such huge collections of remains. Scientists used the data to support flawed assumptions that whites were intellectually superior, he said.

But University of Tennessee anthropology professor Richard Jantz, one of the scientists suing for the right to study Kennewick Man, said today's researchers have more noble motives.

Ancient remains can shed light on evolutionary divergences, health status and activity patterns, and can provide evidence of violence and warfare, he said.

Jantz supports repatriation but said, "It seems that for any remains that are old -- say, 1,000 years or more -- there's an extremely tenuous connection between these old remains and the living people."

The law, cosponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, recognized Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei -- which means "Group Caring for the Ancestors of Hawaii" -- as an organization representing native Hawaiian repatriation interests.

Ayau is a member of Hui Malama and project director of Ola Na Iwi -- "The Bones Live" -- which is reburying 1,100 ancient remains repatriated from Honolulu's Bishop Museum.

Separate efforts are under way for more than 1,500 remains uncovered at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe over the last 80 years and sent to the museum.

Ola Na Iwi's reburial ceremonies are conducted by trained volunteers at secret locations. The remains are wrapped in tapa cloth and laid in lauhala baskets, and are reburied as near to their original graves as possible.