[MSN] Artifacts pit American Indians against museums

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Artifacts pit American Indians against museums
But a new rule might help tribes recover their culturally significant 
objects.

Kevin Livelli | Columbia News Service
Posted May 10, 2007

It was a hot and arid day in Pecos, N.M., when the elders and leaders of 
the Jemez Pueblo tribe welcomed an outsider into the fold: archaeologist 
William Whatley.

Wearing colorful headbands, the old men sat down on the ground with 
Whatley. Then they began drawing images in the dust -- images of bones, 
masks and pottery that were missing or had been looted from the tribe. 
The elders implored Whatley to use his scientific knowledge to find the 
objects and help return them to the tribe. Not an easy task.

That was about 20 years ago. Now, for other tribes searching for lost or 
stolen items, the process may grow a lot easier.

In mid-March, the Department of the Interior's National NAGPRA program, 
which helps carry out the Native American Graves Protection and 
Repatriation Act, announced a regulation requiring museums, universities 
and federal agencies in possession of American Indian art and artifacts 
to provide new lists of their inventories and to share them with all 
federally recognized tribes within six months.

The rule, which took effect last month, marks the first time in a dozen 
years that museums and federal agencies have had to share with tribes 
what's in their collections. This process may uncover many items missing 
for years, and it may encourage tribes to start making repatriation 
claims to recover their artifacts.

Repatriation is frequently fraught with tension between museums and 
tribes. Curators and scholars have an interest in preserving items for 
their educational and research value. For the tribes, reclaiming their 
objects can have a spiritual and cultural significance. But for some, it 
can lead to big business. A reclaimed object can establish a tribe's 
right to land, which it might want to develop.

"This promises to have a big impact for many tribes, especially those 
recently recognized by the federal government," says Dr. Rayna Green, a 
Cherokee and the curator and director of the American Indian program at 
the Smithsonian Institution. "And it's not just about cultural heritage. 
It's about money and land and property. This is America, after all."

Yet even if the new rule helps tribes find many sacred objects, it won't 
necessarily help them overcome the many obstacles inherent in the 
repatriation process.

"Tribes and museums approach decisions about sacred objects carefully," 
says Dr. Timothy McKeown, the senior program coordinator at the NAGPRA 
office and the man responsible for overseeing the entire repatriation 
process. "Repatriation is not just something you can do overnight."

To begin with, tribes can struggle with issues of confidentiality when 
filing a claim. Many tribes, especially the Pueblo groups in the 
Southwest, have strict customs and rules about sharing tribal 
information with outsiders. Yet the law requires a tribe to reasonably 
establish its historical connection to a particular object.

The Pueblo Indians of San Eldefanso made a claim in the mid-1990s but 
backed away when a dispute over the claim led to litigation in federal 
court. They didn't want to have to testify and reveal tribal secrets.

Even putting together the claim can be a challenge. In many instances, a 
tribe's spoken language -- like that of the Jemez Pueblo -- isn't 
written down and can't be easily transferred into the legalese necessary 
to file a claim. And hiring lawyers costs money, something many smaller 
tribes lack.

When claims are readied for filing, McKeown says tribes sometimes argue 
among themselves and with neighboring tribes over who has the right to 
proceed with that claim, who should act as spokesman and who will be 
responsible for the objects once they return.

One such case now under review by McKeown's office involves funerary 
objects and human remains that were recently found in Chaco Canyon 
National Park in New Mexico. Representatives from Pueblo, Navajo and 
Hopi tribes have all made competing claims for the same objects.

The tribes' competing claims can stir feuds that go back hundreds of 
years. "It has to do with very old notions of clan and kinship and 
philosophical and religious ideas about death and the afterlife," Green 
says.

"The issue is important because what you and I call artifacts are in 
their worlds living tribal members with the same rights as people," 
Whatley says.

Once objects are returned to tribes, one serious issue frequently 
remains. Many items belonging to tribes in the Iroquois Six Nations and 
the Hopi Nation are perishable -- cornhusk masks or headdresses with 
feathers. When these items come into a museum's collection, they are 
often sprayed with arsenic or another pesticide for preservation.

But upon return, the masks and headdresses are often worn in ceremonies, 
endangering the lives of tribal members and leaving the museum 
potentially liable for any resulting injury or illness.

"That's something we in the museum world are trying to remedy," Green 
said. "We're looking now into alternative means of preservation, like 
flash freezing objects."

Though the path to repatriation may take many years, Whatley says the 
end result will be worth the trouble for tribes. During nine years, he 
has helped return thousands of objects to the Jemez Pueblo from museums 
around the country.

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