Shame!
The Royal Museum in Edinburgh should be moving as fast as they can to correct this one. Apparently, in 1827, the museum became the "resting place" of two skulls that should never have left Canadian shores. They are the skulls of Beothuk chief Nonosabasut and his wife, Demasduit, looted from their graves by William Cormack, a Newfoundland-born and Scottish-educated adventurer. It is bad enough that the skulls were taken in the first place, but what happened to them next was even worse. They were apparently kept in the mammals and birds section of the museum and trotted out for display on visitors' requests. The mammals and birds? What does that say about the humanity and sensitivity of the curators?
What I would like to know is whether or not those skulls have been returned yet to the soil in which they should rest? If they have, there should be a dignified reburial, all the details of which would be left to the First Nations people to arrange. If they haven't been returned yet, they should be sent back on the very next transport available.
The Beothuk people were hunted to extinction by the whites who colonized Newfoundland. It is time for whites to grant them the dignity they were stripped of in their last days. Yes, I know there were atrocities committed by some of the Beothuk warriors. I know that there were also kindnesses from both sides, but the kindness was not enough, and hatred and fear won out in the end. I know too about extant diaries, written by whites, with entries that detail the boredom of a Sunday afternoon being alleviated by the joy of the hunt. Their quarry? Beothuk people.
In his last encounter with whites, as described by the white witnesses, Nonosabasut approached his ten heavily armed antagonists bearing only a spruce branch, to show that he had laid aside his weapons. His wife was grabbed and his baby was tossed aside. He reacted in anger, as any husband and father throughout all of history would, and grabbed the leader of the white party by the collar. Other whites bayoneted him in the back, and shot him. His brother ran for his life and was also shot dead. The baby disappears from the records of the incident. Demasduit died in captivity, succumbing to tuberculosis less than a year later.
With the June 1829 death in captivity of Shanawdithit, a Beothuk woman captured in 1823, the Beothuk people were considered to be extinct. The skulls of Demasduit and Nonosabasut are being used now for DNA samples to investigate the ethnography of the Beothuk people. That is wrong, too. Where are their nearest-of-kin whom authorities have asked for permission? There are none to ask. Let these people lie in peace. Grant them this final dignity.
What I would like to know is whether or not those skulls have been returned yet to the soil in which they should rest? If they have, there should be a dignified reburial, all the details of which would be left to the First Nations people to arrange. If they haven't been returned yet, they should be sent back on the very next transport available.
The Beothuk people were hunted to extinction by the whites who colonized Newfoundland. It is time for whites to grant them the dignity they were stripped of in their last days. Yes, I know there were atrocities committed by some of the Beothuk warriors. I know that there were also kindnesses from both sides, but the kindness was not enough, and hatred and fear won out in the end. I know too about extant diaries, written by whites, with entries that detail the boredom of a Sunday afternoon being alleviated by the joy of the hunt. Their quarry? Beothuk people.
In his last encounter with whites, as described by the white witnesses, Nonosabasut approached his ten heavily armed antagonists bearing only a spruce branch, to show that he had laid aside his weapons. His wife was grabbed and his baby was tossed aside. He reacted in anger, as any husband and father throughout all of history would, and grabbed the leader of the white party by the collar. Other whites bayoneted him in the back, and shot him. His brother ran for his life and was also shot dead. The baby disappears from the records of the incident. Demasduit died in captivity, succumbing to tuberculosis less than a year later.
With the June 1829 death in captivity of Shanawdithit, a Beothuk woman captured in 1823, the Beothuk people were considered to be extinct. The skulls of Demasduit and Nonosabasut are being used now for DNA samples to investigate the ethnography of the Beothuk people. That is wrong, too. Where are their nearest-of-kin whom authorities have asked for permission? There are none to ask. Let these people lie in peace. Grant them this final dignity.
4 Comments:
Hello there, i've just come across your blog, through Blog Explosion, and wanted to say how interesting that was to read. Indeed, it's shameful that these remains are still being held, they really should be returned to their homeland.
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The story of the Beothuks still angers me. The Canadian government needs to do right by them, and should demand the remains returned to Canada for burial. Check out the Wikipedia reference of the Beothuk people -- it contains this link to a recording of a song in the Beothuk language, sung by Santu, a 75-year-old Micmac woman, in 1910. Her father was a Beothuk.
I will most definitely do some reading on this subject now. I have read up on other indigenous peoples in the past, but haven't really read about the Beothuks.
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