"At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"?" Well, we could maybe start thinking that way if it were

"At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"?" Well, we could maybe start thinking that way if it were true. The US government is still actively in violation of treaties, stealing land and resources on behalf of oil companies and other business interests. Indigenous people in the US face more discrimination, both systemic and cultural, than nearly anyone. The notion that settler mistreatment of indigenous peoples is a distant memory, hundreds of years in the past, is just plain wrong. Racism won't ever cease to be a problem if we continue to say "your ancestors did this, so you can't do that" rather than just treating people as people. Stolen artifacts are sometimes returned to their country of origin. Is that wrong, just because a theft happened a long time ago? Archaeologists and anthropologists today will work with the governments and communities their work is about to ensure it is a respectful dialog rather than a theft of cultural resources. Are you saying that's not a good thing? It is an incredible feat of mental acrobatics to call it "racism" to extend the same courtesy to indigenous peoples that is extended by anthropologists and archaeologists working anywhere else in the world to the peoples they study.