Massachusetts Museum Returns Wounded Knee Artifacts to Sioux Tribes
A ceremony on Saturday marked the end of a long repatriation process
A small Massachusetts museum is returning approximately 150 items, some linked to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, to the Lakota Sioux peoples. The sacred artifacts have remained in the collection of the Founders Museum in Barre, Massachusetts, for more than a century.
On November 5th, members of the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux Tribes traveled to attend a repatriation ceremony; the official handoff of the items will happen privately later.
Surrounded Bear said that since the Wounded Knee massacre took place, genocides have been instilled in their blood. Surrounded Bear, 20, traveled from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to attend the ceremony, per the Boston Globe’s John Hilliard. He continues saying that for them to bring back these artifacts, that is a step towards recovery. That is a step in the right direction.
Wounded Knee Massacre
The Wounded Knee Massacre happened in 1890 when United States Army troops slaughtered 300 Native American men, women, and children in South Dakota. Congress officially apologized for the massacre in 1990.
Likewise, in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act were passed, enforcing repatriation regulations on institutions that get federal funding. Private institutions that do not obtain federal support– like the Founders Museum– are not covered by the law, but many are still taking steps toward returning cultural artifacts.
Ann Meilus, president of the Barre Museum Association, tells the Globe that Saturday’s ceremony was a long time coming– the culmination of approximately three decades of tussling with the artifacts’ future and “attempting to reach a positive conclusion.”
Returning the Sioux Tribes history
According to Philip Marcelo of the Associated Press, the Founders Museum acquired the items from a 19th-century traveling showman. The collection includes moccasins, necklaces, garments, ceremonial pipes, tools, and other items.
“Over the last 135 years, the public’s usage and perception of museums have changed dramatically,” wrote the Barre Museum Association and the Barre Library Association, which handle the Founders Museum, in a statement previously this summer.
Repatriation processes usually move slowly. In this case, the museum stated that identifying which objects absolutely came from Wounded Knee was challenging. Each item also needed to be identified, photographed, and cataloged before its return.
” This is really personal,” Leola One Feather of the Oglala Sioux Tribe told the AP in July as she observed the cataloging process. Leola says it might be sad for the museum to lose these items, but it is even sadder for them since we have been looking for them for so long.
Read the original article on Smithsonian Magazine.
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