The Delayed Return of Native Remains

the research ahead of publication, suggested George Perry, a professor at Penn State and co-author of the paper.

Peter Whiteley, a cultural anthropologist at the AMNH, firmly opposed the idea, saying in an email to Perry and other researchers that involving tribes would result in surrendering scientific “decision-making” to them. The team should publish first and contact the tribes later, he said.

Whiteley knew the region, having spent much of his career researching and writing books about the Hopi tribe. Since the 1980s he had done this work in collaboration with tribal members or with tribal authorities’ consent, he wrote in an email to ProPublica sent via an AMNH spokesperson.

The team studying the ancestors of Pueblo Bonito’s Room 33 had asked Whiteley to contribute expertise on matrilineal cultures among the Pueblo tribes but did so only after the research had been completed. Whiteley called the proposal to engage with tribes pre-publication “naive.”

“If they had wanted Pueblo and Hopi involvement, the time to seek it was at the beginning of the research, not its conclusion,” Whiteley told ProPublica.

Despite opposition from others on the research team, Perry sent letters to Pueblo and Hopi tribal officers before the paper was published. The possibility that tribes might disapprove of the research was all the more reason to engage, he said.

In retrospect, Plog said, he understands arguments against doing the type of research on Native American human remains that he and the others pursued. But he said he participated in the belief that his findings had the potential to advance public perceptions of Native Americans by showing the culture at Chaco Canyon had rivaled other great ancient civilizations.

Koyiyumptewa, the Hopi cultural preservation office director, said he felt upset upon learning the research had been done without the tribe’s input.

“You know, why didn’t you ask us?” Koyiyumptewa said in an interview.

News headlines seized on the finding that the Ancestral Puebloans shared a matrilineal line. One read, “Girl Power,” another “Moms Rule!” But that was hardly revelatory to people like Pasqual, who trace their roots through Chaco Canyon and sustain cultures that center matrilineal ties.

“We could have told you that,” she said of the Pueblo of Acoma.

She and others say tribes have their own ways of understanding and appreciating their past.

In her youth, her father used to take her to Chaco Canyon and teach her about the people who built the great houses and how their practices extend to her and others in the present. She has since driven countless times from Acoma Pueblo to the canyon, 100 miles to the north, where she observes traces of Pueblo ancestors, their footholds embedded in the canyon walls.

“If the Pueblo people identify themselves as descendants, that should be enough,” Pasqual said.

This story was originally published by ProPublica as part of The Repatriation Project. Read more at: propublica.org/series/ the-repatriation-project

Kwascinating

Sometimes you’ll be out there on the internet just scrolling around looking at art when something makes you pause and think, “Oh, dang, where’s this been all my life?” Just such a thing happened over here at SFR HQ when we stumbled upon painter/illustrator Susan Estelle Kwas. According to Kwas’ bio, the years she spent as an illustrator still inform the watercolor painting she’s working on today, and with a hybrid style that marries elements we might associate with folks such as Maurice Sendak and a contempo cartoony style that would be at home in fine art galleries, lowbrow spaces and countless points between, the work is just plain fun. Kwas says she likes to observe animals out in the wild and merge those meaningful interactions into a pure form of self-expression. We see a dense and riveting visual feast. Win/win. (ADV)

Susan Estelle Kwas: Some Other Day Opening: 5-7 pm Friday, Aug. 4. Free. Martinez Studio 223 1/2 Canyon Road, (920) 288-7157

PERFORMANCE FRI/4

Coming Home

Cool off in the cathedral with all 24 voices of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and narrator Ama Zathura in a stirring modern program called The American Immigrant Experience, accompanied by pianist Nathan Salazar. The program is one of three in the chorale’s Summer Festival’s final weekend, and its diverse compositions reflect generations of people whose music shaped the nation with each wave of arrival. Hear a Spanish “Luna Liberiana” highlight the group’s remarkable ensemble sound, along with a soaring and hopeful number in Haitian Creole. At the opening concert last month, Marques Jerrell Ruff brought down the house with his bass solo in a Josephine Poelinitz arrangement of “City Called Heaven.” We dare you to make it through without a few tear drops. (Julie Ann Grimm)

The American Immigrant Experience: 7:30 pm Friday, Aug. 4. $10-$100 Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. desertchorale.org

MUSIC TUE/8

Day At Night

Zella Day is one of those rare perennial talents who could just as well have successfully bloomed 50 years ago as when she did in 2015, when she released her first major label album, Kicker. Born and raised in Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona, Day’s discography encapsulates the sweeping highs and lows of the desert Southwest through vibrant guitars, reverberant bass, mesmerizing vocals and her equally ethereal backbeats. Having collaborated with Lana Del Rey (to whom Day has often been compared) as well as Weyes Blood and Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Day presides over the realm of indie desert pop as a kind of ‘60s daisies-and-headbands hippie queen— and it sounds so nice. (Noah Hale)

Zella Day: 7 pm Tuesday, Aug. 8. $20. Meow Wolf

1352 Rufina Circle, (505) 395-6369

Atomic Age

Pieces from Meridel Rubenstein’s Critical Mass provide Oppenheimer context and contrast at the CCA

Whether you choose to view select images from photographer Meridel Rubenstein’s enduring Critical Mass project before or after screening Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer at the Center for Contemporary Arts (a 35mm print, no less) is immaterial. What’s important is that you make the time to do so, should you watch the big new film about the bomb.

Though the idea kicked off in 1989, Critical Mass as a whole premiered right here in Santa Fe back in 1993, with Rubenstein and her collaborators Ellen Zweig and Steina and Woody Vasulka making use of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to explore the intersection of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project and Indigenous New Mexicans who, at times, came together at the home and tearoom of Los Alamos resident Edith Warner circa 1944. According to a statement hanging at the current abridged Critical Mass showing at the CCA, the project “examined the forces of domesticity and history that led to the bomb’s creation.”

This is achieved through numerous methods, including triptych, collage, portraiture, superimposition and, of course, Rubenstein’s unique eye. Think images of industry and aged tech juxtaposed against the land, or J. Robert Oppenheimer himself; of Danish physicist Niels Bohr and Indigenous New Mexicans who orbited the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and were still alive during the inception and execution of Critical Mass. You’ll see Coke bottles that survived the now-infamous Trinity Test and looming grids of photos shown large within massive metal frameworks. Ultimately, however, the show covers intimate portraiture and a more human aspect to a decidedly horrifying yet scientific topic.

Rubenstein herself will take part in two upcoming pay-what-you-wish events at the CCA: a guided walkthrough of Critical Mass on Sunday, Aug. 6 at 2 pm, and a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, Aug. 8 featuring speakers from nonprofit Tewa Women United, the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, gallerist Tonya Turner Carroll, writer and journalist Alicia Inez Gúzman and curator Josie Lopez of the Albuquerque Museum. (Alex De Vore)

PHOTOWORKS FROM CRITICAL MASS

Check ccasantafe.org for hours

Through Wednesday, Aug. 16. Free Center for Contemporary Arts

1050 Old Pecos Trail, (505) 982-1338