A Scientist Said Her Research Could Help With Repatriation. Instead, It Destroyed Native Remains.

Two decades ago, an anthropology professor at the University of Utah asked the National Science Foundation to fund research on Native American ancestors to determine when the cultivations of crops like corn first became prevalent in their cultures.

The studies, according to the research proposals, would involve analyzing Ancestral Pueblo remains that museums had excavated around 1900 from some of the Southwest’s most sacred sites: a deep rift that winds through Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, an ancient village near cliff dwellings in Colorado and the remnants of a...