Up until a year ago, Cal Poly had the remains of 10 Indigenous people in their “collection,” Native Americans who had been dug up from their graves and taken for “study.” Cal Poly finally returned the remains to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians after a toothless 1990 law demanding repatriation was given teeth in 2023, imposing stricter penalties for lack of compliance. Better late than never, Poly!
According to a 2023 ProPublica analysis, Cal Poly’s 10 remains were among 110,000 individuals in institutional collections for more than 30 years since the law required their return. One of the largest unreturned collections is 4,700 individuals held by Berkeley. Berkeley! I thought you were über liberal.
Kathy Marshall, vice chair of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Elders Council, has seen some of the collections kept out of public view.
“When [I] visit schools and universities, [I’m] just like, I bet none of these kids know that they are walking by, you know, 300 of our ancestors sitting in a room downstairs,” she said. “These were mothers. These were fathers. These were grandparents. These were babies. You know, I mean, there were so many babies in collections. It’s just horrifying.”
It speaks to how dehumanizing our treatment of Native Americans has been, and it’s troubling to think that tRump and his minions are working to gut public education and whitewash our history under the guise that teaching children about our genocidal policies toward Native Americans is teaching critical race theory to children. It’s simply our history, dumbasses, and yes, it’s ugly, but if we want to reach equality—and I know many MAGAts do not—we must be willing to openly and honestly confront our past.
The fact that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed in 1990 was a good first step, but that it took 2023’s Assembly Bill 389 to amend the law 33 years later for it to have any effect is ridiculous. The naked truth is we’re graverobbers. We stole people and artifacts buried with them because we considered them less than human. Let’s teach our children the truth.
According to Mona Tucker, tribal chair for the yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County, “When we say ‘human remains,’ sometimes I think people’s mind goes to the abstract. These are human beings. They’re not just the remains. They are people who walked here in their homelands in California. They had families. You know, they had loved ones, and they were buried with dignity, respect, and ceremony.”
Graves desecrated. People dug up, taken away, packed into boxes, and stored on shelves like inventory. Ghastly.
“One of their goals was to examine Native people, to try to prove that there was a gap between the ‘species’ of Native people and Europeans,” Tucker said. “That was a hideous endeavor.”
Both she and Marshall credit new federal rules and a shift in attitudes as driving the push for repatriation, which makes me wonder how long before tRump notices and puts an end to it. After all, repatriation is ethical and spends money doing good—two things anathema to the orange shit stain.
The California State University system, which includes Cal Poly, allocated $3.7 million during the 2025-26 fiscal year to pay for repatriation coordinators, tribal travel reimbursements, reburial costs, and other expenses. Maybe if the $3.7 million was spent on a gold statue of tRump he’d be OK with it.
Please recall that a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike was pulled down and lit on fire in Washington, D.C., in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. Good riddance, but not so fast. Under the tRump administration, it’s been renovated and reinstalled in Judiciary Square.
Self-named Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth stripped the name of a U.S. Navy veteran and gay activist Harvey Milk from a ship and returned the names of Confederate generals to Army bases where they’d been removed. Shameless.
When will it be our turn to topple a gold tRump statue and remove his name and goldleaf from all the stuff he ruined? A Texas wax museum removed tRump’s figure because visitors kept punching it. Make American Kind Again, please!
Let’s hope every stolen person finds their way home before tRump and his goons discover we’re doing the right thing and put an end to it.
Speaking of déjà vu, Malibu voters’ rights lawyer Kevin Shenkman has filed a legal complaint with the SLO Superior Court alleging that Atascadero’s school district is violating the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) of 2001 because its voting system disenfranchises Latino voters. In 2023, Shenkman lodged a similar complaint with the city of San Luis Obispo threatening a lawsuit if it didn’t change its at-large election model, which he said violates the CVRA because it dilutes Latino voter influence.
Shenkman’s letter worked, sort of. That’s why SLObispians now only vote for one City Council person instead of two—it was a compromise with Southwest Voter Registration Education Project to avoid a lawsuit, which Shenkman makes a lot of money winning all over California. Maybe, considering the conservative courts recently gutted the 1965 Voters Rights Act, having a blunt instrument like the CVRA is a good thing if it aids in Latino representation.
So, whatcha gonna do, A-Town? ∆
The Shredder is well-oiled and will never die. Grind its gears at shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 21-28, 2026.