Writing Escapades

I know I've got a lot of folks from around the world who follow me, so for those who aren't from the US we have something called the "Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act", also known as NAGPRA. It was created to protect and return human remains of indigenous tribes from museums to their local tribes within the US.

It's an incredibly flawed system with a lot of wiggle room, but most reputable museums follow it.

When a museum finds out that it is in possession of human remains, burial goods, or spiritually significant artifacts it is required by law to contact the tribe it belongs to and negotiate how to move forward.

Speaking from personal experience, I worked/volunteered at a museum where I found a list of items donated in the '60s. And it included a part of an Indigenous woman's body. I reported the list to the museum director and she confirmed it was part of a repatriation case that had happened before she was hired. But the original list had been missing so it was lucky I found it while researching.

But for many years this museum and many others had human remains that had been dug up and stolen from their resting place, used as trophies, or just used for entertainment or decoration.

We see this in LADS with Rafayel and the Lemurians, but as someone who was trained in archaeology and museum work? I immediately made the connection to the United States and how it treats our Indigenous groups.

And if we look internationally, the British Museum is equally awful. We think as mummies as monsters or villains in Scooby Doo, but they were the mummified remains of human beings. The main reason why they're treated like art or decoration is because they were denied their humanity and personhood.

Regarding Rafayel, a Lemurian isn't a human, but we do see this "dehumanization" Lemurians face as they are stripped of their personhood entirely.

Just a few months ago a museum in Beijing, called 798 Cube Art Museum was closed and literally taken down by bulldozers after horrific rumours started spreading about real human remains being displayed there. The exhibit itself had an eerie aesthetic and gained a lot of negative attention after famous actor's Yu Menglong's passing (please look it up if interested, it's a tragic case and way too long and complicated to explain the connection). Anyway. People started to connect the dots and actually found out that the museum was probably displaying real bodies and personal belongings of trafficked, missing or simply murdered victims (who were said to be dead because of tragic accidents).

Within a few days after the rumours started to spread, the museum was shut down permanently and pictures of the exhibits being destroyed leaked. Were they destroying evidence? Most likely...