June 6Laying Unidentified Remains to Rest Thinc Design with Local Projects A rendering of the September 11 Museum's memorial exhibition, which will include information about, and pictures of, everyone killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. Determining a Final Resting Place for Unidentified Remains There have been anguished complaints by several families over the decision to eventually place the unidentified remains of people killed at the World Trade Center in an area, closed off to the public, in the National September 11 Memorial Museum complex. Seventeen family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 have sued the city as part of an effort to drive to revisit the decision. They argue that putting the remains in the underground museum is a disgrace; they prefer that the remains be placed in a spot outside the museum, in a manner similar to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Museum officials as well as the families of other victims counter that putting the unidentified remains at bedrock at the site fulfills an earlier promise made to organizations representing a majority of families. They also note that the repository will be controlled by the city's medical examiner and not the museum, and that only the families will have access to it. How should the decision about the final resting place be made, given deeply held but conflicting viewpoints? Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and an expert on the repatriation of Native American skeletal remains, has consulted with some of the 9/11 families who oppose the museum's plan. He started off a discussion conducted by e-mail. Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: The decision should be made through consultation with all of the 2,753 families whose loved ones perished on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. The tragic dilemmas raised by the 9/11 terrorist attack parallel the museum world's struggle to decide the fate of Native American skeletal remains. Different cultures and religions around the world have long maintained that the tangible vestiges of a human life have a distinctive power. For centuries, Western common law has affirmed that human skeletons are not "property" that can be taken without consent. In 1990, that principle was enshrined in the Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Over the last two decades, we have learned that with human remains, the most important stakeholders are the descendants and the best way to resolve conflict is through open and respectful dialogue. These lessons would recommend that the 9/11 museum start consultation by writing a letter to all of the victims" families on this issue, holding a series of forums exclusively for them and inviting them to take a principal role in the decision. This work will be hard but imperative. Ideally, a consensus among the families can be reached. In its absence, the 9/11 museum could either devise a means to determine the majority of families" viewpoint (majority rules) or offer a new solution that strives to address the widest array of concerns (multiplicity rules). But more than offering a quick fix, the mere process of dialogue will demonstrate respect and an acknowledgment that curators do not have exclusive power over the dead. The families should be given the chance to give consent - to exercise their rights as kin. Thomas Lynch, a funeral director in Milford, Mich., and the author of several essay and poetry collections, including "The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade," underscored the difference between the sacred space of a cemetery and a museum: Mr. Lynch: Ours is the species that deals with death by dealing with our dead. The obligation to consign them to a final resting place of our choosing - the grave, the tomb, the fire, air or sea - is a signature of our humanity. And among the ongoing grievances the families of the unidentified dead of 9/11 share is that they never got to enact these deeply human duties for their deceased family members. The impulse to regard the victims of 9/11 as somehow belonging to all of us is an honorable and natural one. They were our own. But the dead of that horrific crime belong first to their families, who have, after all, been brutalized not only by the murder of their family member but by the act that commingled their death with the disappearance of their physical being. The remains of the dead, however indistinguishable from fellow victims, nonetheless occupy sacred space in the minds and hearts and memories of their people, who want and need some sacred space in which to place whatever remains. While a museum is an important civic space, it is not a cemetery. It is not sacred, set apart. It may be educational and instructive, illuminating and entertaining - all worthy and beneficial outcomes. It may, as its etymology suggests, become a place of meditation and reflection. But it is not a cemetery, nor does declaring it a "memorial museum" make it so. Once, on the upper floor of the British Museum, I came upon the exhibition of Egyptian antiquities which included several mummies of various ages. At some level I felt complicit, by my interest, in a desecration: that these were fellows of my own species being disallowed, for the sake of worthwhile archiving of human history, the sacred rest to which the living endeavor to consign their dead. Placing the dead in a museum may well be such a well-intentioned but ultimately mistaken decision - the right thing done in the wrong place. Whether the space "adjacent to and accessible through" the 9/11 museum does not constitute a space that is "part of" or "in" the museum is a matter on which some families understandably disagree. While I agree entirely with the decision to include family members of all the 9/11 victims in a dialogue about the proper disposition of their dead - those that have been recovered and identified and those that will never be - where the dead cannot be specifically identified, the will of the majority of families should prevail. Charles G. Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the World Trade Center, was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's Families Advisory Council and participated in the conversation series sponsored by the Sept. 11 museum during the planning stages. He argues that the kind of full-fledged discussion that Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Mr. Lynch propose has already occurred. Mr. Wolf: In making a decision about the unidentified remains from the World Trade Center wreckage, the first thing one must do is acknowledge the very definition of what we're dealing with: unidentified remains. No one but the Creator knows whose remains are among these remains and whose is not. Therefore, no one family or group of families can lay claim to saying, "my son," "my daughter," "my husband," etc., is among the remains, and no one can have exclusive say of what should happen with them. This is why these remains are still in the custody of New York City's chief medical examiner. Since no one can say their loved one is or is not among the remains, one of two ways to decide disposition of the remains can happen. It becomes either an official decision of the chief medical examiner, or the World Trade Center 9/11 families as a group decide. This same issue for the Pentagon families (who lost 125 people) and for the Flight 93 families (who lost 40) is an easier process, in relative terms, compared to the 2,753 people (excluding hijackers) killed in the World Trade Center and the two planes that crashed into the towers. How do you work with all those people? Do you do it in a democratic fashion? If so, whom do you talk with, only the next of kin? To a married person, next of kin is their spouse, but what about the blood relatives? Marriage is a legal relationship. How can you not include blood relations like the parents, grandparents or siblings in the conversation? This becomes a gargantuan task, if you even can get people to deal with such a touchy subject as this. An alternative way to do this is in a republican manner, where a much smaller number of representatives of the W.T.C. families can discuss this and decide what to do - just like Congress, our state legislatures and city councils do. By the way, this has already happened. In the first weeks and months after Sept, 11, several 9/11 family members started advocacy groups. Eventually, the leaders of these groups, and other 9/11 family activists, were invited to be part of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's (L.M.D.C.) Families Advisory Council (F.A.C.). L.M.D.C. was created after Sept. 11, 2001, by then-Governor Pataki and then-Mayor Giuliani to help plan and coordinate the rebuilding and revitalization of Lower Manhattan. The F.A.C. provided a legitimate and formal way for 9/11 family members" wishes, viewpoints and suggestions about 9/11 matters that pertained to them to be provided to city and state officials. There were many meetings with lengthy discussions and formal votes. Minutes of the proceedings were recorded. Members of the F.A.C. included heads of all the family groups. It was through the Families Advisory Council that the decision regarding the placement of the unidentified remains at bedrock came about. Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh remained unconvinced that all the families were give sufficient opportunity to express their views. Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: Mr. Wolf is skeptical of consulting so closely with all of the families in New York, and instead suggests that a "republican" approach of representative government is the best solution. The major problem with Mr. Wolf's proposal is that it simply has not happened. Again, the museum world's work with Native American communities may be instructive. Many Native American remains in museums have large numbers of potential descendants. Consequently, we consult not only with kin but also tribal governments who represent their citizenry. These tribal governments have constitutions and constituents; elected tribal officials have the authority of their people and are accountable to them. There is no equivalent political body for the 9/11 families of New York. Instead, there is only an eclectic assortment of small groups that have been selectively involved in discussions. The concerned families may not disagree with Mr. Wolf's republican proposal: rather, they insist that they have not been represented in these decisions. Without fair representation, they sensibly want every next of kin to be included. In fact, when asked directly, many families seem to reject the current plans. Several family advocacy groups have explicitly called for new and inclusive consultations, which the 9/11 museum has rejected. But until the 9/11 museum solicits feedback from all the families, this is the best information we have, which shows a wide range of viewpoints. Either the 9/11 museum must devise a true democratic representative method or it must invite all of the next of kin to participate in the decision-making process about the unidentified remains. Those are the museum's choices, but it has refused to do either. Mr. Wolf offered a detailed reconstruction of how the decision to place the unidentified remains at bedrock was reached. Mr. Wolf: The September 11 Memorial Museum had nothing to do with the decision. The proposal was made by the Families Advisory Council and it preceded the existence of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, which began fund-raising in the spring of 2005. Here is how it happened. Somewhere around late 2002, before we knew what the memorial would be, or that there would even be a museum, the members of the Families Advisory Council began discussing the unidentified remains. These remains were (and still are today) residing in a makeshift temporary setup in back of the medical examiner's office near the East River. The overwhelming feeling among the council members was that these remains should be "repatriated" back at bedrock at ground zero from whence they came. Bedrock was "sacred ground" to the 9/11 families, and the F.A.C. strongly felt this was the right place for the unidentified remains. For the purposes of lobbying on very important matters, several family groups joined together under the banner of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, including those groups headed by Jennie Farrell, Mary Fetchet, Marian Fontana, Anthony Gardner, Monica Iken, and Sally Regenhard. The coalition, as they were called, supplemented the F.A.C. process and took the issue of the placement of the unidentified remains directly to the 9/11 families themselves. They mailed thousands of cards to family members, asking their feeling about placing the remains back at bedrock. The coalition reported that the families were overwhelmingly in favor of this. The coalition then proceeded to send a letter to Governor Pataki, with the power of their survey behind it, formally requesting his support for the remains be returned to bedrock. Every coalition member signed this letter, including the one coalition and F.A.C. member who now leads the fight against the remains being placed at bedrock. Meanwhile, the Families Advisory Council asked the chief medical examiner if he would allow the return of the unidentified remains to ground zero. He said, yes, but only if his staff could continue to have access to the remains, so when new technology was available, they could go back and attempt to identify more remains. With the blessings of Governor Pataki and the chief medical examiner, the placement of the remains at bedrock at ground zero became part of the formal planning document that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation drew up and handed to the foundation for implementation and that subsequently was formally adopted by them. That direction was an inviolable part of the planning of the memorial and museum. Even during the redesign process headed by developer and construction expert Frank Sciame in the spring of 2006, the F.A.C. strongly and unanimously stated that whatever else he did, the space for the unidentified remains, midway between the footprints of the twin towers, had to remain as part of the plan. Sciame honored this request, and the designers found a way to place the repository adjacent to and accessible through the 9/11 Museum, but not in the museum. Of all the topics the F.A.C. dealt with, this was one of, if not the most important topic. With the wishes of the 9/11 families known through the coalition's survey, the F.A.C. knew it had made the right decision on behalf of all the families. Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: As Mr. Wolf points out, these decisions unfolded before a museum was even planned for the World Trade Center site. Not until October 2006 did the 9/11 museum - then under the banner of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation - release its request for qualifications for exhibit designs that explicitly included the human remains repository as a "programmatic element" for the visitor experience. The families I have spoken with who knew about these early discussions have reasonably explained that in the early 2000s they assumed ground zero would become a civic monument, like a "tomb of the unknown." Things change. Fair enough. But there is a stark difference between placing unclaimed human remains in a public memorial versus a private museum. Given that the site's plans have been evolving, the dialogue about the human remains should also be ongoing. In the museum world, one of the principles of consultation is that it must be continuing, because consultations are about positive long-term relationships. With such a goal, one would think the 9/11 museum would welcome the opportunity to speak directly with all the families - one of the key stakeholders in its institutional mandate - particularly when they have such a direct stake on this issue. More than 40 percent of the families did not receive any fragment of their lost loved ones who died at the World Trade Center. This decision about the human remains is thus radically different from the museum's judgments about the size of exhibit photos or whether to mention the Patriot Act. For more than 1,000 New York families, the 9/11 museum may be the only cemetery they will have. I have heard different versions of the events that Mr. Wolf describes, but I wonder whether it really matters since the decisions made by those without authentic authority should not be binding. What democratic process elected these leaders? What recourse was there for those next of kin who disagreed? Did all 2,753 families even consent to a "republican" process? Many seemingly did not. As one New York family member recently told me: "When it comes to my brother's remains, I wish to have a voice equal to that of all the other people involved. No one can, or should, represent my wishes for something so personal. I hope that we do not lose sight of the rights of these individuals as we seek solace for our collective grief. Patrick White, president of Families of Flight 93, wrote about how the families of the 40 passengers on the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pa. on Sept. 11 handled the unidentified human remains retrieved from the site. Mr. White, whose cousin Louis J. Nacke II died on board that day, noted that the Flight 93 families confronted a different situation from those whose relatives died at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, notably that at least some remains were recovered and matched for every one of the passengers as well as the four terrorists. The relatively small size of the group also meant that all the families could be directly involved in meetings. The crash site is now a cemetery, and off limits to everyone except family members. Mr. White: Recognizing that the circumstances surrounding the World Trade Center's and Pentagon's respective crashes were distinctly different in many regards, the experience of the Families of Flight 93 may not serve as the "best" or "right" way to reach the decision about a final resting place for unidentified remains elsewhere. Similarly, at the beginning of the discussion about final disposition of the Flight 93 remains, the respective family members, including the next of kin, certainly had a wide variety of differing views. However, we quickly recognized that because the remains were "unidentified," no one voice of a particular family member, or even next of kin for that matter, was more meaningful or to be given greater weight than that of any other in the decision-making process. And because no one could claim that their loved ones remains either were or were not part of those still"unidentified (including those of the terrorists) remains, there was an inherent equality of views between the participants that arose early on that forged a collegial and respectful dialogue. That in turn allowed these most sensitive and challenging issues to be productively discussed. Although many issues arose during the dialogue of "where, by whom, when and how" the unidentified remains would be finally be treated, by including all family members who desired to participate, while focusing on and being more deferential to the concerns and opinions of identified next of kin, the group meetings and teleconferences proceeded in a respectful and effective process leading to a consensus of next of kin for the final disposition of remains. The Flight 93 National Memorial has also benefited from the group's positive and productive partnership with the National Park Service, its federal advisory commission, former task force, the National Park Foundation and, most recently, the Friends of the Flight 93 National Memorial, all of whom have deferred to the Families" position on questions such as this. Most significantly, close coordination and involvement with the county coroner assured that all issues of chain of custody and respectful care of the unidentified remains were properly addressed. In the case of the Flight 93 passengers and crew members, their next of kin and other interested relatives participated in a ceremony where on Sept. 12, 2011, three caskets of unidentified remains were reinterred in close proximity to the primary crash impact site. Responsibility for perpetually preserving the integrity of those remains is now in the hands of the National Park Service as part of the Flight 93 National Memorial's Sacred Ground. Although an arduous process, requiring great sensitivity and respect, all of those who had a potential interest were contacted and solicited to participate, and they did so according to their individual desires. Deeply held viewpoints and differing voices were allowed and encouraged to be heard such that when they finally melded, their decision lead to an outcome and ceremony acceptable to all that honored those we seek to remember as our heroes for their selfless sacrifice and courage. In how we acted, I believe we've further legitimized their legacy of hope.