Oxnard—During his Tuesday, September 1 report to the City Council, City Manager Alex Nguyen responded to public comments about the Carnegie Art Museum and said there was a public presentation with an update several months ago.
"THAT should answer your questions about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act," he said. "In that discussion, we began that process of contacting the Chumash, and we're actually in the formal process now."
He said the Chumash set all the rules, and one challenge is that the artifacts are spread all over the place and not in the collection.
"This keeps coming up, so I don't want to reiterate this, but a professionally run museum would have dealt with this over the last 30 years," he said. "This City is more than three decades out of compliance and negligence on this issue. We have to take it seriously, and we are going to follow the rules. We're going to be by the book."
He said they're making progress, and the key issue is the ancestors.
"The human remains," he said. "That's the number one priority for the Chumash."
Nguyen said many artifacts in the collection should never have been taken in, and they have been identified as belonging…
