American Notes ACADEME

The gesture seemed nice: Stanford University would return some 550 ancient remains to the Ohlone Indians. "Indian beliefs hold ancestral remains to be sacred," wrote Stanford provost James Rosse. The result, though, was one nasty academic fight. Bert Gerow, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Stanford and curator of the remains for about 40 years, immediately announced he was the owner of most of them. Thereupon the chairman of Stanford's anthropology department, James Lowell Gibbs Jr., had the locks changed on the collection. The wrangle grew wider as scientists contemplated the loss of the bones, some up to 3,000 years old, which have long been available for study. Clement Meighan, head of the American Committee for the Preservation of Archaeological Collections, weighed in: "We are not talking about somebody's uncle. Some of these people were buried in the time of the Greeks and the Romans. Destruction of their remains is really unconscionable." Will the Indians ever bury those bones? Will academe ever bury the hatchet? Stay tuned.