4A
Thursday, April 11, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Fill-in should have been provided for absent teacher
This semester there is a Western Civilization I class that is not receiving the proper instruction and attention it should, but it is not the instructor's fault. The instructor was unable to attend many class sessions before spring break because of a personal emergency, and the Western Civilization department did not arrange or provide for adequate substitution.
The class meets Tuesday and Thursday nights and is taught by a graduate teaching assistant. Her husband had been ill for the first half of this semester but now is recovering, so she should be at the rest of the class sessions.
The problem is that the department was aware of the situation but did not provide a substitute for any of the classes.
Students in the class claim that sometimes no one would show up to tell the students class was canceled, and other times someone from the department would meet the class to say the instructor would
THE ISSUE:
Instructor absences
not be there, but no one ever took over the class.
The students enrolled made the effort to go to class, and the department should have provided a substitute instructor. These students are paying for the class and deserve the same attention and instruction all other Western Civilization I classes receive.
Theoretically a student needs the information taught in Western Civilization I to be successful in Western Civilization II, and for the first part of this semester, some students were denied adequate instruction.
The department has failed a classroom full of students by not filling in for the instructor who had legitimate reasons for missing classes.
Essentially, the department deprived students of an instructor. Paying students do not deserve this.
TARA FITZPATRICK FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Technology fee wrong answer for lack of campus computers
A council of University of Kansas chief academic officers, which reports directly to the Board of Regents, recently has been working on implementing a technology fee for students. The money earned from this possible fee would be used to buy updated computers for the University's campus. However, such a solution is not the best one.
True, the University lags behind its peer institutions in computer accessibility. On the Lawrence campus, the computer-to-student ratio is 1 to 45. However, the computer-to-student ratio at the University of Colorado is 1 to 22.
In addition to the low ratio, computers found on the University's campus are obsolete. Neither the IBM-compatibles nor the Macintoshes at the Computer Center are fast enough to run new software.
The lack of computer accessibility is a serious problem for students, but adding a new technology fee is not the answer. A technology fee would be
THE ISSUE:
Technology fee
especially harsh on certain groups of students, such as engineering students, who already have to pay $15 per hour taken for equipment.
This means that an engineering student carrying 16 hours has to pay a $240 technology fee per semester, $480 a year, or $1,920 for four years. With these prices, it would be more advantageous for students to buy their computers.
Although adding a technology fee to pay for more computers may seem like a quick and easy way to respond to students' needs, it is not the only solution available. One way to solve the campus computer problem would be to set aside a percentage of the tuition increase for technology. With the coming of linear tuition, many students will already have to pay extra for their education next semester. There certainly is no need to charge students with more fees.
HENRI BLANC FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
BRING THE OLD ONES HOME
BY PEMINA YELLOW BIRD ILLUSTRATION BY MICAH LAAKER
Nawah.
During the last two decades, Native Nations have undertaken aggressive measures to rescue our dead ancestors' bodies and personal burial belongings from the science and museum industries. Unhampered by societal mores and ethics reserved for the dead of all other groups in this country, these industries have appropriated, collected, and studied the contents of thousands of Native burials.
These aggressive measures have resulted in the passage of dozens of state laws and two federal laws which protect the contents of existing burials for the sake of the deceased, not for the sake of science. The measures also mandate the return of human remains and burial property to tribes. Why were such aggressive measures necessary? For two reasons:
Were we consulted? No. Was our permission obtained? No. Did we have an opportunity to defend ourselves? No. Was any other group in this country subjected to the wholesale appropriation of their dead as we were? No. Was this right? Was it
1. Our living spiritual beliefs regarding the treatment of our deceased ancestry tell us these old ones suffer when their resting places are disturbed, and they have suffered for centuries in the possession of museums, universities, and federal agencies.
My people have been called ignorant. We have been called militant zealots, and we have been accused of using the need to rebury our dead as a glamour issue to get ourselves elected to our tribal governing bodies.
In the 11 years I have been working for my people in the burial struggle, I have witnessed some of these industries' workers at their worst. We have been called names and disrespected by those who could not accept a change in their status quo. These same people have been helping themselves to our cultures, histories, languages, and even burials. To this we say "No More!"
We have even been accused of wanting to steal away America's past, when in fact it is our past, our heritage, our history, our lands, and our relatives that have been stolen from us! Laws such as the 1906 Antiquities Act (I call it the Iniquities Act), written by and for archeologists, relegated the earthly remains of our ancestors to the realm of "archeological resources," making the contents of all excavated unmarked burials the legal property of the state or federal agency from whose lands, or with whose dollars, they were excavated.
2. Our biggest opponents in the burial struggle, the science and museum industries, assertively defended themselves and their activities, as Native people sought to do nothing more than retrieve and rebury their dead.
humane? Was it good? No. No. No.
OUR BELIEFS
Lest Native people again be accused of ignorance, let me tell you what we know about our ancestors, about the care and treatment of our dead. What we know may be different from what you know, but it is no less valid. We have just as much right to believe in what we know as anyone else who lives here in our homelands, even though the laws have not recognized that right. What we know stems from many millennia of living here in our homelands, in harmony with our Creator, with our Mother the Earth and all of our living relatives who share this beautiful place with us. What we know was given to us in a holy way, by holy beings, so that our people would live.
I have never met a Native person who was not taught to respect the dead. Our respect is real. We don't go around the places where they lay, except to bring them food and tobacco, to pray there and leave offerings. We are taught to remember them, to be grateful to them, for we are who we are to ady because of them.
We are taught that if you bother the dead, if you even make noise around the places where they lay, you disturb them there in the other world. It is horrifying to us that they are dug up, passed around in classrooms, sliced and diced and frozen and burned. For to us, that tells us that not only are they no longer at rest in the Spirit World, but that they are whirling above the places where their bodies are kept, trying
Because of them, we have our ceremonies, our songs, our holy things, our culture, our languages. We are here, we are alive today, because they suffered and sacrificed for us, so that their people would live. And we did live, we did survive, despite a 500-year campaign of genocide carried out against us, here in our own homeland. We are still here. And we have not forgotten them.
to get our help and attention.
They do not have a body so they cannot stay here on Earth; they do not have peace in the Spirit World either, so they wander between the two worlds, pitiful and crying and lost. That is what we know, just as surely as Christians believe that Christ rose from the dead.
On America's campuses today, you don't see Christians publicly vilified and accused of ignorance because of their beliefs, but it happens to Native people when they say that the study of their dead is wrong. This is what we were taught, by some of those very Old Ones who languish in boxes on shelves in museums, universities, federal agencies and yes, even in private collections. They are suffering, and they have suffered, more than you or I can know. Their suffering must come to an end, and their peace restored.
THE OLD ONES
On this day, I ask for your help. I ask you to examine what you know, to ask yourself if the appropriation of Native dead is right or wrong. But before you do that, before you act on that decision, I want to leave you with a true story. When our tribes in North Dakota were first beginning to work on the burial issue, an elderly man from my tribe told us what he had seen. What he told us made us cry.
He said: I have seen these Pitiful Ones, where they are at. In the Spirit World, there is a road. And this road is made of a very fine dust. There are thousands of people passing on this road at all times, leaving The Earth and going Home, and their passage kicks up the fine dust and the air is thick with it. On either side of this road, as far as you can see in any direction, these Old Ones are sitting with their heads hanging down to hide their tears, and they are covered with this dust. This is where they are at when they are not whirling above the places where their bodies are kept, when they are not looking for help from their relatives. This is where they are at.
If you have examined yourself and found that you would not like to see these Old Ones still sitting there crying when you make your journey on that fine Dust Road, please help us change this situation. Make sure your home state, your university, your museums and federal agencies stop the practice of excavating and studying our dead relatives.
Make sure that the self-evident human right to rest in peace is enjoyed by everyone here in our homelands, and make sure that right is protected by laws which apply to everyone equally. Most of all, be sure in the knowledge that we Native people are not ignorant and that more than anyone else, we know what we are talking about when we talk about ourselves. Believe me, we know. Aho. Nawah.
Pemina Yellow Bird is a citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Arlkara Nations of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She has worked for the past 12 years to bring home and rebury all Native ancestors and personal burial property excavated from their collective aboriginal homelands.
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