Woke 1984 Plus 40
Welcome to the brave new world of 2024
How does this not violate the First Amendment?
Ringside at the Reckoning has a post about the Biden administration’s recent regulations that are shutting down museum exhibits on American Indians. The regulations require that museums obtain permission from the relevant American Indian tribe before showing their cultural artifact.
How is this not a blatant example of thought control?
Of course, if Trump, for example, required museums to obtain my prior consent for exhibits on the Irish famine, museums would rear up on their tiny hind legs and the media would howl “censorship” and “banning.”
Which it would be.
And is.
William Otis at Ringside at the Reckoning observes:
Just five minutes ago, I saw this article in the NYT: “Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules.” The subhead is, “The American Museum of Natural History is closing two major halls as museums around the nation respond to updated policies from the Biden administration.” It starts like this:
The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.
Are museum exhibits on the Civil War required to obtain consent from descendants of those who fought? Are museum exhibits about discovery of America required to obtain consent from Columbus’s great, great, great, etc. grandchildren? Are exhibits about astronomy required to obtain consent from Andromeda?
The regulations have been promulgated under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which gives Indian tribes a claim on bodies, grave goods, and items of “cultural patrimony” (whatever that means.) NAGPRA was famously used to suspend research on a 9,000-year-old skeleton, aka the Kennewick Man, and thereby prevent scientists from determining whether some early Indians might have migrated from Europe. Researchers were required to surrender the skeleton to a local tribe based on an oral tradition.
The tribe's claim was a total fabrication. There is no way of proving that 9,000-year-old remains belonged to an existing tribe; no more than demonstrating that Ötzi the Iceman was Italian. As a matter of history, it is not the case that tribes have occupied the land that white men found them on from time immemorial. Indian occupation of land in some cases preceded the white man’s arrival by decades as Indian tribes exterminated or displaced prior occupants.
In fact, this is the state of the law in California where myths trump science:
Nonetheless, Berkeley’s repatriation is ramping up because of a 2020 amendment to California’s version of NAGPRA. The state law, unlike its federal counterpart, places indigenous knowledge above scientific knowledge. If scientific studies (using techniques such as DNA analysis and craniometrics) conclude that the remains cannot be affiliated with a modern tribe, but indigenous knowledge (including creation myths) asserts an affiliation, the religious narrative must be accepted under California law.
And how is this constitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause?
As a Catholic, I wait for the day when the federal government recognizes transubstantiation and the Trinity.
Thanks to misplaced priority being given to myths and legends, we have this:
And this:
As an American, you cannot be trusted to know the truth.
How exactly did we become a country under occupation?
Update:
Colby Hess points to the legal challenge by the Navaho Nation to depositing human remains on the Moon, which is based on the Navaho belief in the sacredness of the Moon.
If a Christian sect was getting these privileges, we would see it as a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Mix in a little DEI, though, and anything goes.
