Ishi in Three Centuries (review)

Karl Kroeber & Clifton Kroeber, eds. in Three Centuries. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2003, 416 pp. This book was conceived in the aftermath of the repatriation controversy that erupted with the discovery that Ishi's brain had not been cremated with the rest of his remains but instead had been removed during autopsy and stored for over 80 years in the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. Ishi, a Yana Indian man who emerged from a life of hiding to live for a few years in the Berkeley Museum of Anthropology, and was celebrated in Theodora Kroeber's widely read book, lshi in Two Worlds (Berkeley: UC Press, 1961). In the end, after a long and often painful process, Ishi's brain was returned to Yana country for burial along with his ashes. At long last, Ishi' relatives have been able to help lshi in his final journey. But while peace and care-taking surrounded Ishi's burial, the repatriation process, especially at the University of California Berkeley campus, produced division and rancor, pitting Native American against white, faculty against administration, and colleague against colleague. One casualty includes Alfred Kroeber (1876-1960) the man who was responsible for offering Ishi's brain to the Smithsonian. Kroeber was a student of Franz Boas, the founder of the Berkeley Department of Anthropology, author of the influential Handbook of the Indians of California (Wash. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1925), and a friend of Ishi. Alfred Kroeber was also the father of the two editors of the book, Clifton Kroeber, Norman Bridge Professor of History emeritus, and Karl Kroeber, Mellon Professor in the Humanities. As the product of two sons, the book could be seen as an effort to exculpate the father. In truth, the 100 or so pages addressed to the repatriation controversy are notably balanced, with statements from a wide variety of participants and observers. A historian of the University of California Berkeley, Department of Anthropology, (Buzalkjko) offers a contextualization of Ishi's closest relationships after his arrival at the San museum. The author of the Smithsonian report (Speaker) details the various data used by the Museum in the lshi repatriation case. The public apology issued by the former chairperson of the Department of Anthropology (Brandes) on behalf of the department is followed by the dissenting opinions of two central figures in the difficult intradepartmental process that preceded the official policy: Foster offers an explanation for why he believes that no apology was warranted, and Scheper-Hughes, who advocated for a much stronger apology, gives her interpretation of the process and its implications for Native peoples and the discipline of anthropology. Karl Kroeber, son and humanistic scholar, offers a metacommentary on understanding, repatriation, and humanistic scholarship. Finally, Karen Biestman, lawyer, professor and museum director, analyzes and questions the motives and effects of the passage of the California Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 25: the Remains of Ishi. If K. Kroeber and C. Kroeber had chosen to publish only this set of essays on the repatriation drama, many readers might have been satisfied. Without question, this portion of the collection is interesting, fair, and important. The vision behind this volume, however, is more expansive. The twenty-two contributors include Native, non-Native, and cross-blood, as well as writer, artist, archaeologist, activist, lawyer, and others. Moreover, the repatriation articles make up only one part of a five part book. The first section, Ishi in San Francisco includes the aforementioned history of Ishi's personal relationships with department personnel (Buzaljko), an evocative and sweet recollection from a man who as a child knew (Zumwalt), and two analyses of Ishi's San experiences. The first analysis (Adams) locates American class antagonisms in the popular press accounts of Ishi's visit to a vaudeville show at the Orpheum Theatre, and the second (Weaver) braids Ishi's story as spectacle with the stories of an enslaved Efe man who was displayed in fairs, a museum, and a zoo, and an Inuit man whose deceased father's bones were kept in a museum. …

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