Author: Tony Platt and Milton Reynolds in Conversation, Grave Matters

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Tony Platt, author, academic and activist and Milton Reynolds, educator, author and activist discuss California’s sorrowful legacies of genocide, land grabs and grave-robbing.

Grave Matters is the history of the treatment of Native remains in California and the story of the complicated relationship between researcher and researched. Tony Platt begins his journey with his son’s funeral at Big Lagoon, a seaside village in pastoral Humboldt County in Northern California, once O-pyúweg, a bustling center for the Yurok and the site of a plundered Native cemetery. Platt travels the globe in search of the answer to the question: How do we reconcile a place of extraordinary beauty with its horrific past? 

Grave Matters: the Controversy Over Excavating California's Buried Indigenous Past centers the Yurok people and the eventual movement to repatriate remains and reclaim ancient rights, but it is also a universal story of coming to terms with the painful legacy of a sorrowful past. This book, originally published in 2011, is updated here with a preface by the author.

Tony Platt is a long-time academic and activist, the author of thirteen books and 150 essays and articles dealing with issues of criminal justice, race, inequality and social justice in American history. He is currently a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society, University of California, Berkeley and a member of Berkeley’s Truth & Justice Project. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Berkeley, and California state universities. 

Milton Reynolds is a San Francisco Bay Area-based career educator, author, equity and inclusion consultant and activist. His activism has been devoted to disrupting systems of racial injustice with a focus on juvenile justice reform, law enforcement accountability, environmental justice, youth development, educational transformation and disability justice. His efforts are devoted to creating a more just world in which all people are valued and treated with dignity. Reynolds' publications include a chapter in Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, Handbook of Social Justice in Education and one in the recently released Leading in the Belly of the Beast.

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Tony Platt - Writing 

Milton Reynolds - Twitter