Bones of Contention Documentary

• American archaelogy is a colonial archaelogy
• structure of the American colonies
• every ancient culture could have been Native Americans but the Native Americans themselves
• eventually it was proven that the mounds were made by Native Americans
• Native Americans were seen as a doomed people
• Smithsonian had 18,000 Native Americans
• 1995 American institutions scoured their collections
• dark age for Science and Anthropologists
• complicated migration routes of Native Americans
• artifacts are markers, if they are reburied, we will lose the past
• they make sense of their lives through oral traditions
• we are talking about living human beings who lived in the past, from this we can reconstruct their lives
• scientists are piecing together the history of diseases
• diseases that attack bones directly
• no cure for rheumatoid arthritis, little evidence before the 1800s
• premise: rheumatoid arthritis started in Tennessee
• can compare and contrast bacteria from the past and present
• diabetes change in lifestyle and diet
• activity patterns have changed dramatically
• Omaha had a diverse diet, bison and Buffalo hunting were 40-60% of diet
• bison meat is much lower fat
• in the early 1800s trade between the Europeans and Omaha
• before the epidemic struck, long lives, women had health status of men
• when women got involved in manufacturing, more stress on bones from scraping hides
• chewing hides ruined teeth, Omaha women were dying at 30, population was in a decline
• Native American children were put in boarding school
• severely punished for speaking their own language
• Dr. Rhinehart brought Omaha history to life
• Omaha were more advanced in medical practices than Europeans
• NAGPRA, https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/