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By Root 1001 0

tribal objects to their tribes of origin. (The bill applies only to federal lands, not private property.) For centuries, Indian burial sites have been systematically looted of skeletons and burial objects. While many states have enacted similar legislation, removing bodies or objects from Indian graves is not a crime in many states. NAGPRA was invoked in the case of Kennewick man, the oldest known skeletal remains in North America, but in 2004, a federal court ruled that these remans were not covered, since Kennewick man was apparently unrelated to any tribe.

But there the situation stands. Religion and myths are still in the eyes of the beholder, as historian Jake Page convincingly demonstrates in his book In the Hands of the Great Spirit:

Most non-Indians do not look out upon the landscape and see spirits out there, spirits of such things as trees and rocks and lightning and wind. Indeed, such beliefs are considered by most Christians, at least, to be pagan and improper, even childish, and many conservative Christians today find such beliefs the work of the devil, just as the Puritans and the Spanish Franciscans and French Jesuits did five hundred years ago, in what one would like to think were less enlightened times. On the other hand, many traditional Indians find it peculiar, to say the least, that Christians and others can build a house for God, go there once or maybe twice a week, and whenever it seems like a good idea, proceed to tear God’s house down and build another one, with say a bigger parking lot, on the other side of town. If the gods reside in a mountain, it is not so easy to relocate them. For Indians, a sacred site remains sacred under most circumstances.

THE MYTHS OF THE PACIFIC

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were few places on earth unseen or unspoiled by Europeans and the rest of the “civilized” world. Most of these “last places” were islands in the vast Pacific Ocean, which occupies fully one-third of the earth’s surface area. These islands would soon experience a replay of the same ruthless colonial story that had become the sad biography of Africa and the Americas.

There are literally tens of thousands of islands arranged in a rough triangle in the Pacific Ocean, with Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the south, and Easter Island (so named by a Dutch explorer who found it on Easter Sunday in 1722) in the east. Inhabited by people who had moved out of southwestern Asia tens of thousands of years ago, the people of the Pacific islands and Australia may have island-hopped on foot when ocean levels were 400 to 600 feet lower, perhaps also using boats to settle these islands. Many of these early ocean voyagers developed separate mythologies often traceable to the Polynesians. Polynesia, which means “many islands,” occupies the largest area in the South Pacific, stretching from Midway Island in the north to New Zealand, 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) to the south. While not part of Polynesia, Hawaii in the northern Pacific was first settled by Polynesians 2,000 years ago, and the island’s myths reflect that tradition.

MYTHIC MILESTONES

Australia and the Pacific Islands

Before the Common Era

c. 8000–6000 Land bridge connecting Australia and Tasmania disappears; rising sea also covers New Guinea land bridge.

c. 6000 Migrations from southeastern Asia to Pacific islands.

c. 4000 Austronesians reach southwestern Pacific islands.

c. 2500 The dingo introduced to Australia from southeastern Asia.

c. 1500 Earliest evidence of colonization of Fiji.

c. 1000 Polynesian culture emerges on Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.

Common Era

c. 300 Easter Island is settled.

c. 850 Polynesian ancestors of Maori settle New Zealand.

1000 First carvings and stone statues on Easter Island.

1606 Portuguese explorer Luis Váez de Torres sails around New Guinea and discovers Australia.

1642 Dutch explorer Abel Tasman finds Tasmania and New Zealand; over the next several years he will find and map Tonga, Fiji, New Guinea, and coasts of Australia.

1768 British