Cultural Re-Appropriation in Ohio

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi everyone -

I hope that my humor is not too tart for your tastes.

Many archaeologists rely on the use of the term "culture" as in "material culture", to avoid NAGPRA. This is particularly true for the Ohio Historical Society.

An answer has come to me.

Now somehow the Ojibwe became the Chippewa, the Niistapi "Blackfeet", Wyandot "Huron", and so on and so on and so on. Many other peoples lost their names - please add your own examples.

So one idea is simply to reverse the process:

The Eastern Band Shawnee renames themselves "Ohio Valley Focus Hopewell", the Absentee Ban renames themselves "Moundbuilders", and the Loyal Band renames themselves "Fort Ancient".

Problem solved.

I think that covers all the bases, but if I left anything out there's still what's left of the Kickapoo.

[E.P. Grondine]

It would all be too sad and angering, except we can still laugh.

This is the latest from James Jacobs with the Ohio Historical Society.

Would any of you take a few minutes and write a few words to James Jacobs and try to straighten out his confusion?

From: jqjacobs at yahoo.com

Long ago I decided to count my ancestors.  Anyone who has not done this ought to before being told the answer to the count.  The answer is important to the consideration of who built the earthworks and the builder's relationships to people today.

Eventually, I placed the answer and my thoughts online here:

The One Trillion Principle
http://jqjacobs.net/anthro/ancestors.html

Going back a mere 1000 years, counting 40 generations, you each have a trillion ancestors.  In other words, more ancestors than there ever have been humans in all time.  This is only possible because we all share the same few ancestors, and each person living long ago who has descendants today fills many spots in everyone's ancestor tree.

With antiquities of great age, beyond the one trillion ancestors time, we must recognize that such ancient monuments belong to the human family, to all of us and to everyone, not to a few people who live nearby today because of some coincidence of geography or accident of chance.  Ancient monuments are a global heritage and are the cultural property of humanity, and humanity is one immense family with shared ancestors.

That said, as an archaeologist, I realize that little direct evidence is published regarding the identity of the specific people who built the earthworks.  However, grand monuments like Newark with complex relationships to other major monuments of the world were not built by a few local people in isolation from the great civilizations of their time.  In due time, the evidence will be revealed.  The relationships to Andean sites noted here hint of this:

Newark Archaeogeodesy
Assessing Evidence of Geospatial Intelligence in the Americas
http://jqjacobs.net/archaeology/newark_arcs.html

The distance from Newark to Tikal not only matches the angle of axis inclination at the time of construction of these monuments, but the longitude of the Octagon is east arcsine(1/8) from Tikal, and from Monte Alban 1/8th of diameter (circumference/pi). 

If someone wants to claim the Newark Earthworks as "their" construct, these few precise relationships and other unpublished complex relationships to Mesoamerican, South American, and other civilizations of the time and previous times should be known to them.  Otherwise, they ought to be content claiming their one trillion ancestors were certainly involved, the same claim everyone shares.