disturbing sacred sites, I agree with what you wrote. So does the US NAGPRA law. People can no longer dig up Native graves or take non human artifacts without consent from the Native people of the area. Before that law, people who called themselves researchers used to dig up Native burial sites and use pseudo science, like skull measurements, to claim inferiority of Native people. They used to keep Native items found at other digs that were not burial sites.
I am aware of the destruction of Native sites. As recently as 1962, when I was 12 years old, the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a dam in PA near the NY border that flooded several acres of Seneca territory, including a Seneca village that had historical and sacred significance to the Seneca Nation. The flooded land included a burial site that contained the remains of a past Seneca leader whose band had established the village. The graves were dug up and the remains removed to another site before the dam's construction.
The purpose of that dam was to protect non Native villages and towns downstream on the Allegheny River and its tributaries from seasonal flooding. The Seneca Nation fought the dam's construction in court and hired experts who identified other sites for the dam which were more suited to the purpose. The courts ruled against them.
That historical Seneca leader was an ancestral relative of my grandmother.
Regarding your comment on the absolutism of science, science is not an absolute subject and does not claim to be. It is the nature of science that knowledge changes as scientists discover more information. In fact, that is part of the definition of science. Some branches of science have learned much from the knowledge and practices of Native people, especially in the field of medicine.
There is a cultural museum in Rochester, NY that was founded by a Seneca man, Ely Parker, and his European-American friend, Lewis Henry Morgan in the 1800s. Morgan and Parker collected items that were in use among the Seneca people for the museum. Ely Parker's sister, Caroline Parker MT. Pleasant donated clothing to the museum. The purpose was to preserve what remained of traditional items as they were going out of use.
Parker's grand nephew, Arthur C. Parker (a cousin to my grandmother), later became director of that museum. Arthur Parker was an archaeologist and anthropologist who did much to preserve the traditions, language, oral stories and history of the Seneca Nation and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people.
Not all Native people are opposed to those sciences. Some of them use the sciences on behalf of Native people, more accurately representing Native cultures than non Native scientists would do. As you have stated in an earlier post, there are numerous Native cultures and languages among the ones that still survive today. Not all of them share the same views about science. Not even all members within a Native nation agree with each other about it.
Most of today's archaeologists and anthropologists consult with Native people for consent and for accurate understanding instead of assuming that they have the correct understanding of Native cultures and customs. Some Native nations are willing to cooperate. Some are not. By law (NAGPRA) they do not have to cooperate or give consent to studies.
Non Native museums that hold Native artifacts are returning them to Native people. Some do it voluntarily. Others do it as a result of court cases.
I posted a thread and link in this forum on the date of the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy based on traditional stories of the sun going dark during the founding negotiations between member nations of the Confederacy. A Mohawk woman used the traditional stories to determine when a total solar eclipse occurred on the land where the negotiations were held. She found that a total solar eclipse that fit the description in traditional stories occurred in 1142 CE. That's a good example of science and tradition working together. Most non Native historians had dated the Confederacy's founding in the 16th century. Based on that Mohawk woman's research, it's the earlier 12th century origin that I believe.
= new reply since forum marked as read