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African Scientific
Research Institute

“ASRI” PRESERVATION PROGRAM:

“Africans in America’s “circa 1628 to 1888-95” Graves Protection and Repatriation Preservation Program©” (AAGPRPP) "Improving preservation, conservation and management of natural resource/ history collections to ensure “BURIAL GROUNDS” and AFRICAN HUMAN REMAINS AND CULTURAL ITEMS to be guaranteed continuance valuable to world’s societies."

“Africans in America Graves Protection and Repatriation Preservation Program”

Over the last 500 years, African cultures have experienced massive destruction via the trade in slaves by Asians and Europeans, the colonization of Africa, and the enslavement of Africans in the Western Hemisphere. This destruction is well represented in the “New World.” One internationally know expert on migration statistics estimated that a minimum of 15 million Africans landed alive in the Americas. However, the conditions and the brutal treatment of Africans people during the Atlantic crossings depleted the African continent several times more. Carter G. Woodson in Negro in Our History estimated the total at 50 million and W.E.B. Du Bois in The Negro put the figure at 60 million.

This attack on the black race and black cultures was met with great resistance. As soon as the slave ships touched the shores of the New World, many Africans continued their resistance by uprisings, running away, jumping overboard, and disappearing into the bush or taking flight high into the mountains or other remote areas. Still others eventually, over time, simply ran away from their slave masters and reordered their lives and themselves into new African families, forming hundreds of free African as communities. These resistance movements took on many names: in Jamaica, the Maroons; in Columbia, the Palenques; in Venezuela, the Cumbes; in Haiti, the Maroons, in Brazil, the Quilombos, and so on.

These Africans and others, as well as their descendants lay buried in the lands of their slave masters in gravesites, known and unknown, many lost and most forgotten. A number of groups, organizations, academicians, and scientists have begun to address this problem in an effort to participate in contemporary efforts to write an authentic history of Africans in the Western Hemisphere, to restore African culture, and to rebuild self-esteem among peoples of African descendant.

The African Scientific Research Institute (ASRI) is one such organization. ASRI was formed in 1999 and is now in the process of being recognized as a non-profit organization [501 (c) (3)] in the United States and is seeking recognition as a charitable organization [149.1 (1)(b)] in Canada. It is self-governed and run by a core of dedicated volunteers. Essentially, ASRI is a multidisciplinary organization composed of scientists and specialists who are interested in the compilation and preservation of natural and historical artifacts related to the several generations Africans in the Americas (circa 1628 to 1888) through a project called the African Graves Protection and Repatriation Preservation Program (AGPRPP).

A primary function of the AGPRPP is the collection of natural artifacts that include human specimens and remains with supporting documentation such as audio-visual materials, labels, library materials, and archeological field study. Another function of the organization is the protection of African-American gravesites to ensure that these sites are not violated. In addition, an objective of AGPRPP is to remove these remains, in certain situations, to more appropriate homes, that is, repatriation. Another aspect of AGPRPP, preservation,refers to any direct or indirect activity providing continued and improved care of these collections using the most cutting-edge form of stabilization. One such method is plastination, a process capable of preserving virtually every kind of material including human remains.

Goals and Activities of AGPRPP in conjunction with the newly formed Counsel (AGPRPC):

To provide a platform for maintaining a national and international association of scientists and specialists who will study and care for the natural history of the ancestors of Africans from circa 1628 to 1888 the Counsel also provides a bridge between African natural history collections, museums managers and relevant stabilizer sciences technical for preservation of natural historical and cultural artifacts, cultivating affiliate with professional both governmental and non-governmental organizations.

AGPRPC recognizes and awards contributions to the understanding of natural history collections, management, preservation, and osteological analysis of cranial/skull data collection for the identification and facial reconstruction from scientific indexing. To encourage research beyond the essential requirements for preserving, storing, studying, and displaying natural history collections contemporaneous to today’s standard.

To publish a professional journal and encourage the dissemination of information about natural history collections circa 1628 to 1888, AGPRPC will publish information about natural history collection related to preservation, technical materials, including a bi-monthly newsletter, technical leaflets, best-practice guides, and monographs.

To hold annual meetings, sponsor scientific symposia, public awareness workshops to foster the exchange of ideas and information. In connection with the interests of AGPRPC and AGPRPP, African Scientific Research Institute is currently pursuing the enactment of federal legislation to protect the gravesites of Africans in the United States circa 1628 to 1895. The exact wording of this legislation is yet to be worked out. However, the intent of the legislation is to cover the following considerations:

Any Africans or African-American human remains circa 1628 to 1895, or funerary objects, sacred ceremonious objects, and objects of inalienable communal property that are found on federal, private, or tribal Native American lands after the date of enactment would be considered owned or controlled by Africa descendants.

Anyone who discovers any of the items covered by the provisions of the proposed bill accidentally or through activities such as mining, logging, or construction would have to cease the activity and notify the appropriate federal authorities for determination of descendants. Anyone who profited in violation of the provisions of the bill would be fined in accordance with Illegal Trafficking Chapter 53 of Title 18, ‘Sec. 1170, United States Code,

Pursuant: to Illegal Trafficking in Native American Human Remains and Cultural Items.

All Federal agencies, museums, private and public medical schools that have control over any Africans born in the United States between circa 1628 and 1895, any ceremonious funerary or sacred objects, or items covered in the bill would within five years be inventory and identify as communal property items. Dutiful Notify the affected African ethnic group, and make arrangements to return such items if the appropriate ethnic group requests such.

In reference to the proposal bill, a proper precedent exists that is “H. R. 5237, which proved for the protection of inalienable communal property defined to include items “having historical traditional value, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or culture. Addition precedent is the Preservation Act of “1989, H.R. 1646 enacted by 101 st Congress, the “Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act.”

With the enactment of such legislation, the work of ASRI and other interested scientists, forensic specialists, historians, and so on will be facilitated. This will assist in arresting a number of problems: by providing the resources for the establishment of memorial parks for the purpose of repatriation and protection. The halt of burial grounds being lost due to natural weathering, vandalism, neglect, abandonment, and agricultural practices;

2) Loss due to industrial pollution: 3) restoration of the preservation and conservation principles consistent with African belief systems, and 4) determination of ownership of human remains found in African burial grounds and elsewhere.

Testimony was given at the first annual African Burial Grounds Symposium held from October 17 th to the 19 th 2002 at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois that supports the need for legislation to address the problems associated with the burial sites of early Africans in the U.S. It was noted that non-African remains that are unearthed are generally treated much differently from those of Africans and Native Americans remains. The non-African remains tend to be quickly studied and then reburied; African and Native American remains are frequently sent to museums and curated. Moreover, testimony over the years from the scientific community has stressed the importance of human remains to scientific study and the need to learn for the past to create a better future. ASRI concurs with this premise. To that end, AGPRPC advocates the need to study early African burial grounds and the enactment of legislation to complement this worthy goal.

African Graves Protection and Repatriation Preservation Counsel ( AGPRPC) pro-actively Advocating PUBLIC LAW as an Act to provide for the protection of America’s Natural Resource/History “first, several generations enslaved Africans Burial Sites. Laws to be enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assemble.

Jihad Muhammad, President/CEO
African Scientific Research Institute.

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