Post by Okwes on Dec 14, 2005 15:39:46 GMT -5
Band of Ojibwe brings its 'prisoners' home
Nine sacred artifacts are back in Minnesota after 102 years in a New York
museum. To the Ojibwe, the homecoming has freed the spirits of the items.
Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune
Last update: December 11, 2005 at 8:40 AM
NEW YORK - To Phyllis Boshey, it's as if ancient Ojibwe spirits have been
released from a century of captivity in a fortress-like museum.
That's how it looks to the tribal elder from the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa
in Nett Lake, where three birch bark rolls and six other sacred artifacts
were returned Wednesday after a thousand-mile journey from the American Museum
of Natural History.
"They should be looked at like they were prisoners in those buildings," said
Boshey, 68, a former tribal council member and follower of Midewiwin, a
secret Ojibwe medicine society.
Elders from the tribe reclaimed the objects in New York on Wednesday amid
chants and a pipe ceremony similar to homecomings taking place in hundreds of
Native American communities across the country. Their trip came as the federal
government is stepping up a program to "repatriate" newly claimed cultural
items collected by museums over the years.
By last count, more than 31,000 human remains and 724,000 artifacts, most of
them funerary objects, have been returned to Indian tribes by 1,156 U.S.
institutions, including the Minnesota Historical Society, the Science Museum in
St. Paul and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
"It's the right thing to do," said Joseph Horse Capture, a curator at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
But it isn't always an easy thing to do. Bands like the Bois Forte in
northern Minnesota have been waiting for this for years. Part of the hang-up has
been too much bureaucracy and too little money. But part of it has to do with
religious and cultural sensitivities that make it hard for tribal members to
even mention their sacred customs, much less lay them out for federal
regulators and museum curators. There is also uncertainty about what is to become of
artifacts that have been in the care of professional anthropologists for
decades.
What is clear is that among the forests and wild rice beds of the Bois
Forte, the artifacts gathered in New York are considered animate objects. They're
of particular significance to the practice of Midewiwin, a religion that was
once practiced widely in Minnesota.
"We've lost a lot of our culture. A lot was taken from us," said Boshey, who
learned Midewiwin from her parents. "These objects are like spirits. They
should not be locked up."
Whether taken through war, theft or legitimate scientific study, the
nation's Indian patrimony is being returned in accordance with a federal law known
as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Passed by Congress in 1990, it was regarded at first as an ineffectual
mandate with little money to back it up. Under new leadership within the National
Park Service, the program is being revamped.
Pressure has grown from tribes eager to reclaim some of the 200,000 human
remains estimated to be kept by U.S. museums and federal agencies.
"People started realizing that people's ancestors were being kept in boxes
in museums all over the country," said Vicky Raske, the museum project
coordinator for northern Minnesota's Grand Portage Band of Chippewa Indians. Her
tribe has reclaimed nearly a dozen artifacts from the Minnesota Historical
Society.
At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Horse Capture returned a ceramic
vessel containing cremated human remains last year to an Indian tribe in Arizona.
The vessel had been excavated sometime before 1942 and donated to the Walker
Art Gallery, which later donated it to the Arts Institute.
"Some of these objects, not all, were taken in less than honorable ways,"
Horse Capture said. "I'm sure some were taken in honorable ways, but at a time
when Indians didn't think these things were going to survive, and they wanted
them to be somewhere. Now they're in a position to reclaim these objects and
revive their traditions. This is how Indian people are going to survive."
'Someone you loved'
The repatriation of the Bois Forte artifacts has been in the offing for at
least two years, though it was jump-started with a federal grant this year.
Consisting of three inscribed birch bark rolls, two rattles, a beaded
ceremonial bag, a fawn skin bag, food fungus and black dye, the items are among
2,183 sacred objects in the process of being repatriated by Indian tribes this
year. That's almost two-thirds of the total of 3,335 since the law went into
effect.
The speed-up has been aided by $2.4 million in grants to help tribes cover
transportation and expenses. The Bois Forte Band got $9,105 to pay for trips
to New York to document their claim.
In general, the law requires museums to inventory their collections and
identify items of significance. It is up to the descendants or affiliated tribes
to claim them.
Among the first to see the Ojibwe artifacts was Rose Berens, director of the
Bois Forte Heritage Center. Along with the tribe's curator, Bill Latady, and
several tribal spiritual leaders, she identified the artifacts in New York
two years ago. The objects were brought into a conference room on trays.
"When they bring something into a room that's been gone for 100 years, it's
a feeling that's almost indescribable," Berens said. "It's like finding a
long lost relative, someone you loved very much."
The process culminated Wednesday when Myra Thompson, a tribal elder, and
Vernon Adams, a spiritual adviser, returned to New York with Latady to perform a
pipe ceremony at the museum, acknowledging the mystical power they believe
dwells in all things, animate and inanimate.
"It's like they were sleeping for a long time," Adams said. "The ceremony
was to wake them up and let them know they're going home."
Having freed the spirits, they headed to Kennedy Airport in a hired van,
starting the last leg of a journey that began in 1903.
The artifacts were originally acquired in a museum expedition led by William
Jones, a noted anthropologist who studied Ojibwe language and culture.
Jones, part Fox Indian, broke racial barriers in his time, graduating from Harvard
College and Columbia University.
The birch bark rolls, rattles and ceremonial items are of special
significance to the Midewiwin. Only certain members of the secret society can interpret
the birch bark inscriptions, which are considered sacred and never exposed
to public view.
The American Museum of Natural History, which funded Jones' expedition, kept
them mainly for research purposes, said spokesman Steve Reichl.
"To my knowledge, they were never on display," he said.
Sensitive subject
Religious sensitivities surrounding the birch bark rolls and other sacred
items are such that museum officials and others involved in the Bois Forte
repatriation have been reluctant to speak about it publicly.
Among the Ojibwe, people are even reluctant to discuss the Midewiwin.
"People I've talked to say that their knowledge should not be general," Latady
said.
The law makes allowances for those sensitivities by limiting what tribes
have to disclose about their sacred practices or intentions. In some cases,
reclaimed items have been burned, destroyed or re-interred, said Marcia Anderson,
chief curator for the Minnesota Historical Society.
"A lot of tribes don't have any kind of process for dealing with these
materials," Anderson said. "They don't have a cultural tradition that helps them
decide the right way to take care of them. In some cases, their culture says
they can't handle human remains once they have gone in the ground. They have
all kinds of issues with sacred materials."
But museums and Indian tribes alike seem to agree that, in most instances,
the value of the artifacts in maintaining cultural traditions outweighs their
value as objects of fascination to society at large.
To the Ojibwe, the artifacts that have been kept in the American Museum of
Natural History for 102 years are still living things, which is why a
delegation was sent out to return them in person.
"We don't want them traveling by themselves," Berens said. "It's like old
people traveling. You have to help them find their way."
Kevin Diaz is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.
Nine sacred artifacts are back in Minnesota after 102 years in a New York
museum. To the Ojibwe, the homecoming has freed the spirits of the items.
Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune
Last update: December 11, 2005 at 8:40 AM
NEW YORK - To Phyllis Boshey, it's as if ancient Ojibwe spirits have been
released from a century of captivity in a fortress-like museum.
That's how it looks to the tribal elder from the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa
in Nett Lake, where three birch bark rolls and six other sacred artifacts
were returned Wednesday after a thousand-mile journey from the American Museum
of Natural History.
"They should be looked at like they were prisoners in those buildings," said
Boshey, 68, a former tribal council member and follower of Midewiwin, a
secret Ojibwe medicine society.
Elders from the tribe reclaimed the objects in New York on Wednesday amid
chants and a pipe ceremony similar to homecomings taking place in hundreds of
Native American communities across the country. Their trip came as the federal
government is stepping up a program to "repatriate" newly claimed cultural
items collected by museums over the years.
By last count, more than 31,000 human remains and 724,000 artifacts, most of
them funerary objects, have been returned to Indian tribes by 1,156 U.S.
institutions, including the Minnesota Historical Society, the Science Museum in
St. Paul and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
"It's the right thing to do," said Joseph Horse Capture, a curator at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
But it isn't always an easy thing to do. Bands like the Bois Forte in
northern Minnesota have been waiting for this for years. Part of the hang-up has
been too much bureaucracy and too little money. But part of it has to do with
religious and cultural sensitivities that make it hard for tribal members to
even mention their sacred customs, much less lay them out for federal
regulators and museum curators. There is also uncertainty about what is to become of
artifacts that have been in the care of professional anthropologists for
decades.
What is clear is that among the forests and wild rice beds of the Bois
Forte, the artifacts gathered in New York are considered animate objects. They're
of particular significance to the practice of Midewiwin, a religion that was
once practiced widely in Minnesota.
"We've lost a lot of our culture. A lot was taken from us," said Boshey, who
learned Midewiwin from her parents. "These objects are like spirits. They
should not be locked up."
Whether taken through war, theft or legitimate scientific study, the
nation's Indian patrimony is being returned in accordance with a federal law known
as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Passed by Congress in 1990, it was regarded at first as an ineffectual
mandate with little money to back it up. Under new leadership within the National
Park Service, the program is being revamped.
Pressure has grown from tribes eager to reclaim some of the 200,000 human
remains estimated to be kept by U.S. museums and federal agencies.
"People started realizing that people's ancestors were being kept in boxes
in museums all over the country," said Vicky Raske, the museum project
coordinator for northern Minnesota's Grand Portage Band of Chippewa Indians. Her
tribe has reclaimed nearly a dozen artifacts from the Minnesota Historical
Society.
At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Horse Capture returned a ceramic
vessel containing cremated human remains last year to an Indian tribe in Arizona.
The vessel had been excavated sometime before 1942 and donated to the Walker
Art Gallery, which later donated it to the Arts Institute.
"Some of these objects, not all, were taken in less than honorable ways,"
Horse Capture said. "I'm sure some were taken in honorable ways, but at a time
when Indians didn't think these things were going to survive, and they wanted
them to be somewhere. Now they're in a position to reclaim these objects and
revive their traditions. This is how Indian people are going to survive."
'Someone you loved'
The repatriation of the Bois Forte artifacts has been in the offing for at
least two years, though it was jump-started with a federal grant this year.
Consisting of three inscribed birch bark rolls, two rattles, a beaded
ceremonial bag, a fawn skin bag, food fungus and black dye, the items are among
2,183 sacred objects in the process of being repatriated by Indian tribes this
year. That's almost two-thirds of the total of 3,335 since the law went into
effect.
The speed-up has been aided by $2.4 million in grants to help tribes cover
transportation and expenses. The Bois Forte Band got $9,105 to pay for trips
to New York to document their claim.
In general, the law requires museums to inventory their collections and
identify items of significance. It is up to the descendants or affiliated tribes
to claim them.
Among the first to see the Ojibwe artifacts was Rose Berens, director of the
Bois Forte Heritage Center. Along with the tribe's curator, Bill Latady, and
several tribal spiritual leaders, she identified the artifacts in New York
two years ago. The objects were brought into a conference room on trays.
"When they bring something into a room that's been gone for 100 years, it's
a feeling that's almost indescribable," Berens said. "It's like finding a
long lost relative, someone you loved very much."
The process culminated Wednesday when Myra Thompson, a tribal elder, and
Vernon Adams, a spiritual adviser, returned to New York with Latady to perform a
pipe ceremony at the museum, acknowledging the mystical power they believe
dwells in all things, animate and inanimate.
"It's like they were sleeping for a long time," Adams said. "The ceremony
was to wake them up and let them know they're going home."
Having freed the spirits, they headed to Kennedy Airport in a hired van,
starting the last leg of a journey that began in 1903.
The artifacts were originally acquired in a museum expedition led by William
Jones, a noted anthropologist who studied Ojibwe language and culture.
Jones, part Fox Indian, broke racial barriers in his time, graduating from Harvard
College and Columbia University.
The birch bark rolls, rattles and ceremonial items are of special
significance to the Midewiwin. Only certain members of the secret society can interpret
the birch bark inscriptions, which are considered sacred and never exposed
to public view.
The American Museum of Natural History, which funded Jones' expedition, kept
them mainly for research purposes, said spokesman Steve Reichl.
"To my knowledge, they were never on display," he said.
Sensitive subject
Religious sensitivities surrounding the birch bark rolls and other sacred
items are such that museum officials and others involved in the Bois Forte
repatriation have been reluctant to speak about it publicly.
Among the Ojibwe, people are even reluctant to discuss the Midewiwin.
"People I've talked to say that their knowledge should not be general," Latady
said.
The law makes allowances for those sensitivities by limiting what tribes
have to disclose about their sacred practices or intentions. In some cases,
reclaimed items have been burned, destroyed or re-interred, said Marcia Anderson,
chief curator for the Minnesota Historical Society.
"A lot of tribes don't have any kind of process for dealing with these
materials," Anderson said. "They don't have a cultural tradition that helps them
decide the right way to take care of them. In some cases, their culture says
they can't handle human remains once they have gone in the ground. They have
all kinds of issues with sacred materials."
But museums and Indian tribes alike seem to agree that, in most instances,
the value of the artifacts in maintaining cultural traditions outweighs their
value as objects of fascination to society at large.
To the Ojibwe, the artifacts that have been kept in the American Museum of
Natural History for 102 years are still living things, which is why a
delegation was sent out to return them in person.
"We don't want them traveling by themselves," Berens said. "It's like old
people traveling. You have to help them find their way."
Kevin Diaz is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.