Group demands bones from U.

Native Americans are asking the University to give back what they feel is rightly theirs. Representatives from the Leonard Peltier/ Big Mountain Support Group, speaking at "An evening of Native American Culture and Contemporary Thought" last night, asked the University Museum to return the bones and artifacts of their ancestors for a proper burial. Six Directions, the University's only group representing Native American students, and the support group sponsored the event. The Leonard Peltier/ Big Mountain Support Group, based in Philadelphia, holds forums to educate people about Native American culture. The organization also tries to protect Native American families in Arizona that risk relocation. Mark Tayac, a member of the Piscataway tribe, and James Edwards, a Seneca, introduced the event by singing the Native American National Anthem. Using the skin of a moose they killed, Tayac and Edwards played a steady beat on a drum as they sang. While Tayac said he wants people to understand the Native American culture, he focused on recounting American exploitation of his ancestors' ruins. When the British colonized the eastern U.S. coast, they took over the Piscataway village of Moyane in Maryland, Tayac said. Serving as the administrative center for 12,000 people, Moyane also housed a sacred burial ground. In 1939, several archaeologists and anthropologists uncovered the site, the second largest on the East coast. The team sent the remains to universities and museums across the country, including the University Museum. "This site was exposed for non-Indian people to come and see," Tayac said. "We are not recognized as living people with a living culture, tradition and society. The government is placing us in the past and desecrating the sacred remains [of] our people." The United States government established the site as a national park, forbidding future burials. This restriction proved problematic for the Piscataway people. "We believe in the return to the womb of mother earth to nourish and heal her because she gave us life," Tayac said. "We want to give thanks to our creator." After creating the American Indian Movement in 1969, the group held a rally in Washington D.C. in 1972, protesting the "theft of Indian money and the desecration of Indian sites and burial grounds." When the chief of the Piscataway people died, the tribe wanted to bury him in Moyane. But the Department of the Interior would not permit the Piscataway to perform what they considered their natural right. "Our question was, this is our land and against whose law is it to do this," Tayac said. "Our people have been doing this for generations and generations. "There are higher laws we believe in than the ones that Congress passed. We believe in God's law," he added. The Piscataway people stored the chief's body in a mausoleum for two years, until the government allowed the burial in Mayone. Tayac remembered the government's concession as a "happy day." But, Tayac says his people still do not receive the treatment they deserve. Only 97 Piscataway people still survive and Tayac says there are more Native American remains in museums than there are living tribesmen. Most of the remains from the Mayone burial site, and many others, have not been returned. Several groups are lobbying museums nationwide, including the Smithsonian, to return the bones for a proper Native American burial. Representatives from the Leonard Peltier/ Black Mountain Support Group have approached the University in the past about returning remains to the descendants. According to Janet Cavallo, a member of the group, the University has been reluctant to discuss the issue.