There are many thoughts and opinions on who owns land and culture, but what about who owns the past? Many people live in many places, but who owns the history of the land and culture? With such diverse continents and countries, how do we know who owns what? With technological advances increasing with each year, archaeologists and anthropologists in the United States have been able to find more human remains than ever before, but they're mostly indigenous, as they were here long before white people. Do white people then have the right to keep it, or do ethics and morality take over and they return the remains? Surely they wouldn't be found without the technology that history "says" white men invented? (If we're being completely honest, white men were not the only people who had ideas and made inventions, just the only ones history credits).
However, it must be taken into account that indigenous people mostly use stories to tell their history. It is no secret that white people killed and even wiped out indigenous people and tribes. Without white people coming in mostly during the 16th and 17th century, there wouldn't be a question as to why the remains are not in their rightful place or their whereabouts unknown. That also brings into question as to what percentage counts as being apart of a certain group of people. The right to own the past should belong to who was here first, whose DNA proves that they are at least the legal percentage and of that group, and of those, those who identify with the culture and language. Even though Europeans settled down and formed the USA, it was done through deceit, hatred towards non-Europeans, and forcing people to come here for slavery. That does not constitute owning the land and past. The United States past belongs to the indigenous people. Indigenous people have been routinely persecuted and punished for occupying the land mass that is now the contiguous United States. Even though federal laws like NAGPRA try to protect indigenous people now, most laws have loopholes and it has not always been that way. There are thousands of indigenous remains that have yet to be returned, and yet if the same were true for white people, a law would have been passed yesterday to protect the remains. Ownership of the past is not determined by how much you have contributed to society, but rather those who have been here first, and that is the indigenous people.
