Miakan-Garza Band seeks help to secure ancestral remains from UT Austin

The Miakan-Garza Band of the Coahuiltecan people are seeking to secure the remains of three ancestors unearthed in Hays County which are currently a part of the University of Texas at Austin’s collection of more than 2,400 native remains. 

In a letter signed by Brian Roberts, director of the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, the Miakan-Garza’s request was denied because UT was unable to identify a shared group identity between the remains and any group, according to the Miakan-Garza Band.  

“We asked for our ancestors more than four years ago,” said Dr. Mario Garza, cultural preservation officer for the Miakan-Garza Band. “After years of letters, emails, and meetings, we finally got a letter of denial on July 7th of this year.”

According to the Miakan-Garza Band, documentation of shared group identity is considered during the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Process, which requires institutions to convey remains back to tribes for reburial. “These remains are classified as ‘culturally unidentifiable’ which means that they are too old to associate with any known, federally recognized tribes in existence today,” Mario Garza said. “We submitted documentation that our Coahuiltecan people are original Texas Natives who have lived here continuously for the past 14,000 years — these ancient remains belong to us.”

The Miakan-Garza Band submitted a similar request to Texas State University for one set of remains unearthed in San Marcos by providing documentation shared group identification with the “culturally unidentifiable” remains in 2014. The documentation was accepted and the tribe was given possession of their ancestors through the NAGPRA process. 

“We gave UT the same documentation that was accepted by Texas State University, the NAGPRA Review Committee, and the Secretary of the Interior, when those entities gave us one of our ‘culturally unidentifiable’ ancestors to rebury,” Mario Garza said. “Why won’t UT accept the same documentation and let us rebury our relations?”

The Miakan-Garza Band has been involved in repatriation for more than 30 years. Members of the tribe also participated in the establishment of the Comanche Cemetery repatriation burial grounds at Fort Hood in 1998 and the reparation of almost 200 remains of Mission San Juan in San Antonio in 1999. 

The Miakan-Garza Band recently collaborated in 2016 with the City of San Marcos to establish the first city repatriation site in Texas and has reinterred seven remains there over the last three years. 

The Miakan-Garza Band is asking for any help to rebury their ancestors. 

“We believe that when a person is buried, they depart on their spiritual journey. When they are unearthed, their spiritual journey is interrupted and they are suspended in agony,” Mario Garza said. “It is our obligation as indigenous people to return our ancestors to Mother Earth so they can proceed to the Great Mystery of the Cosmos.”