Today's Reading

The kid stands up taller, but his fists go back to his hips. "I have experience with Indian remains."

That's unlikely, since I'd know about it, given any remains on tribal land in this region of the country get called in to me and Ellis. "What experience?"

"My university has Indian hair and skeletons. We've studied them in class."

"At least use the term 'indigenous,' kid, since you're not Native yourself," I snap.

The kid smirks as if I'm the dumbest person in the world. My guess is an older sibling passed that down.

Ellis makes eye contact and shakes his head to keep me from continuing the lecture. Many colleges are disrespectful to Native graves and artifacts, going so far as to get a law passed to keep what they stole. Hiding behind the robes of judges to justify human remains and sacred objects being stolen and abandoned to shelves. Many universities paint a tidy and offensively inaccurate history of all indigenous people: discovery by colonists, removal from land, forced dispersal onto reservations and so-called Indian Territory, and now merely history to be studied.

As if we aren't still here. As if by being here, we are evidence of their crimes.

I take a deep breath to calm down because I know I can't blame all that on the kid. "Fine. You can look at my notes," I murmur.

"Nice!" He does a fist pump and shuffles over to my write-in-rain notepad and sketches. With an extra-loud sigh, he drops onto the ground and starts to read.

I return to the remains with my toothbrush and camera to take more photos now that we're getting some sunlight. Ellis still needs his flashlight as he inspects the broken neck bones. He starts to make his own sketch, which will be shared with tribal leaders.

"Wait a second." The kid looks up from the notes in a huff. "'You' found this skeleton?"

I finish taking photos around the skull before answering. "Yeah."

"I thought it was an Indian ceremony. Or 'indigenous' ceremony." He flips a few pages, then tosses my notebook onto the ground. "Like a burial thing."

"Why would a coroner be involved in a Native burial ceremony?" Ellis asks, kinder than he should.

"Well . . . I don't know," the kid stammers. "I need, like . . . facts and stuff for my thesis. So, what happened?"

I don't answer and instead do one more brush of the left eye socket.

"I'm Jeremiah, by the way." He plops down next to me in a gangly heap. "Is that a toothbrush?"

"Mmm-hmm," I say. "Simple tools are best."

He snorts toward Ellis, who doesn't respond. "How'd you find it?"

I stare at the kid—Jeremiah—who looks genuinely curious and maybe a little nervous. I should be kind. I was an intern, too, once, for the BIA, though not willfully ignorant like this unega, as my dad would utter about ignorant white people under his breath.

"At the BIA, I perform resource surveys," I begin. "In this case, there are internet cables being run through three miles of Narragansett land. Before that work can begin, we make sure there aren't any artifacts or unknown grave sites that need to be reburied and protected."

"You're an archeologist," he says, as if I don't know. "Aren't you supposed to be digging up stuff for museums or whatever?"

"No."

"Really?" He glances at Ellis. "That sound right to you?"

"Would you want your grandmother's bones displayed at your college?" Ellis asks. "How about her favorite pots or plates for students to joke about or study how crude they were? Would you like your classmates to say things like, 'That's decent for a poor white lady in the 1950s who didn't know better'?"

"My grandma wasn't poor," Jeremiah says.

Ellis grins. "Then I bet she really wouldn't have liked to be treated that way."

We sit in blessed silence for a few minutes, and I think of a buckskin shirt I saw in the Smithsonian Museum.


This excerpt is from the ebook edition.

Monday we begin the book NO WAY OUT by Cara Hunter.

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