After decades apart, ancestral remains and sacred objects belonging to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians were returned home late last month.
Those artifacts — dating back thousands of years — were long confined to wood trays and boxes at Yale and Harvard’s Peabody museums, Chumash representatives described. They called this treatment of their ancestors “cruel and inhumane.”
“Our ancestors and their belongings were stolen from their resting place, a place where their families and communities prayed and grieved, leaving them to rest,” said Kathleen Marshall, Museum Board Chairwoman and Lead Language Teacher for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians…