[Aztlan] Geronimo Skull

[huehueteot at aol.com]

Margarita:

  I will attempt to answer your questions. See below where you asked 
them.

 Cheers,

 Hugh G. "Sam" Ball

 And remember:

 "This too Shall Pass!

 -----Original Message-----
 From: Margarita B. Marin-Dale <inka1box at yahoo.com>
 To: Bunny <bunny5 at mindspring.com>
 Cc: Aztlan2 <aztlan at lists.famsi.org>
 Sent: Thu, 18 May 2006 16:02:39 -0700 (PDT)
 Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Geronimo Skull

  Thank you for the clarification, Bunny. In one of the articles that 
Susan
  submitted, I read that Geronimo's great-grandson, Harlyn Geronimo, is 
an artist,
  a medicine man, and a member of the Mescalero Apache Tribal Council. 
Apparently
  he was also the driving force in creating a bronze statue and a 
memorial in
  honor of his grandfather in the Gila Wildnerness of New Mexico, where 
Geronimo
  was born. The article stated that he has recently been focusing his 
efforts on
  repatriating Geronimo's remains from Fort Sill, so that they may be 
transferred
 to the memorial site.

  For those listeros who are well versed in the NAGPR, I have two 
questions:

  1. What are the chances that a linear descendant, such as Harlyn 
Geronimo,
  will successfully recover the remains of his great-grandfather from 
Fort Sill?
  (Irrespective of what occurs in any future case involving Harlyn 
Geronimo and
 the Skull and Bones society at Yale.);

  They should be excellent. The problem would come with achieving 
agreement among all descendants of Geronimo that this is what should be 
done. Harlyn is not the only descendant that can claim such close 
kinship. There are folks at Fort Sill who (I read something of this 
controversy when I was still living in DC) have equal claim to the 
claim of lineal descent that don't want the remains removed to anywhere 
else. If consensus could be achieved as to who is lineally descended 
 from Geronimo and what their "interest" is that is possible but until 
that occurs that won't happen.

 and

  2. Will the remains at Fort Sill be grandfathered (exempt) under the 
Act,
  because they were seized and under government control before the 
passage of the
 Act in 1990?

  The answer to this question is No. The army qualifies as a Museum as 
it holds Native American Remains and Cultural Objects and receives 
Federal funds or is a Federal Agency. Therefore any of the objects 
defined under NAGPRA (Margarita, a small request. Could you put the 
final A on the acronym? The Act is officially designated as NAGPRA.) 
such as Human Remains are subject to claim by lineal descendants first 
and foremost.



 Saludos,
 Margarita



 Bunny <bunny5 at mindspring.com> wrote:
  While somewhat off topic, perhaps, it should be noted that one reason 
any
  request by Arizona's Western Apaches to possess Geronimo's remains has 
been
  rejected is because Geronimo was not a Western Apache, but a 
Chiricahua
  Apache whose aboriginal range included a large area in the adjoining 
states
 of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua. Chiricahua and Western
  Apaches are not only separate ethnic entities, but historically there 
was
  considerable enmity between them. Descendants of Chiricahuas have 
never
  fogotten that Western Apaches served as scouts for generals Crook and 
Miles
  and were larely responsible for the U.S. Army's success in campaigns 
that
 led utlimately to Geronimo's surrender to Miles' forces in 1886.
 I was in Bowie, Arizona in 1986 at the observance of the centennial of
  Geronimo's final surrender (he'd surrendered three time previously). 
The
  contingent of Western Apaches who had come down from Arizona's Ft. 
Apache
  Reservation was given a very cold shoulder by Chiricahua descendants 
from
  Ft. Sill and from the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico, as well as 
by
 Mescalero Apaches from New Mexico.
 Geronimo's bones, wherever they maybe, do not belong in Arizona or to
 Western Apaches.
 Bunny Fontana



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