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www.SDNEWS.com Volume 15, Number 23
Creeping in on big cat feet
Jangu (left) dances and plays the drum during the Feb. 13 Korean Cultural Day and New Year’s Celebration at the North University Community Library, 8820 Judicial Drive. Samui Nori instrumental music (above) was also part of the festivities, which included food, martial arts PAUL HANSEN | VILLAGE NEWS demonstrations and dancing to welcome the Year of the Tiger.
Kumeyaay, UCSD debate bones BY ADRIANE TILLMAN | VILLAGE NEWS With a bullhorn in hand, Aries River Yumul marched with 40 students and one professor to demand the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) return Native American bones unearthed during an archeological dig in 1976 to the Kumeyaay people to rebury them. The group headed to the chancellor’s office on Feb. 5 with a petition chanting “No debate, repatriate!” Vice-chancellor Gary Matthews met the students in the courtyard to assure them the administration is working through the process and that he is “optimistic the remains will be repatriated.” The university’s desire to return the remains to the tribes is not as easy as handing over a few boxes, however. The university had formed a working group of scholars to determine whether the bones are culturally affiliated with a tribe, as mandated under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Two anthropologists, an ethnic
“Ancestral and burial reverence is taken very seriously ... and setting foot on this campus is very shameful.” ARIES RIVER YUMUL UCSD Student studies professor and a retired professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography sat on the working group. The working group has since determined the skeletons are “culturally unidentifiable,” while the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC) believes the remains belong to them. “Although there is evidence from material culture that people have lived in the San Diego region since the late Pleistocene or early Holocene, the linguistic analyses and archaeological evidence indicate that the Kumeyaay moved into the region within the last few thousand years,” stated the UCSD working group report. “The mtDNA profiles of the skeletons under discussion are not
known; and there is scant genetic data available for the Kumeyaay.” The report goes on to say that there could be some genetic continuity between the skeletons and the Kumeyaay if the latter intermixed and then replaced earlier populations linguistically and culturally. The KCRC, on the other hand, claims that the Viejas Band has inhabited the region for more than 10,000 years, and Sycuan ancestors have lived in the area for 12,000 years. Last spring, UCSD wrote a letter to the Secretary of Interior to begin the repatriation process, but KCRC asked the university to withdraw the letter. KCRC does not want to go through the repatriation process if the record signifies the remains are not “culturally affiliated” to the Kumeyaay people, said Steve Banegas, spokesman for KCRC. KCRC plans to dispute the UCSD scholars’ assertion before the NAGPRA Review Committee in November. Ross Frank, a UCSD professor of SEE BONES, Page 3
New Generation brings new genre for Spike & Mike This fly on lightbulb is part of the animated film short “Dog With Electric Collar” from Australia, part of “A New Generation of Spike and Mike Animation” at MCASD, 700 Prospect St.
BY ANTHONY GENTILE | VILLAGE NEWS Spike and Mike Animation is giving its fans a different taste of animated shorts. Its newest festival, “A New Generation of Spike and Mike Animation,” will play at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) La Jolla multiple times during February and March. “It’s a great 80-minute escape,” Craig “Spike” Decker said. “Nothing is better to escape and have a good time than animation, and this is a very unique show.” What makes this film different from previous Spike and Mike productions — most notably “Spike and Mike’s Sick &
Twisted” — is that it is of a completely different genre. This genre is not so much sick or twisted. “It’s very artistic, sophisticated and international,” Decker said, “but at the same time very humorous with great entertainment value.” Decker created the festival in three years, and said it is one of the top two shows he has produced in terms of quality, humor, diversity and styles of animation. He said he chose to branch off for this project because he had simply received too many films to be ignored that didn’t fit the traditional Spike and Mike mold. SEE SPIKE & MIKE, Page 6