Conference supports reclamation of sacred Indian items, bundles

A band of Cheyenne women, children and elderly camped for the night in Sand Creek on the plains of Colorado, expecting no trouble. On the morning of Nov. 29, 1864, U.S. Calvary attacked the village, disregarding a white flag flying in the Indian camp.

The Calvary killed 98 women and children and 25 men, many of who were elderly. Later they rode into Denver with 100 dripping scalps that they displayed in a local theater.

Montana’s Northern Cheyenne reservation reclaimed body parts of ancestors killed at the massacre from the Smithsonian Institute just a few years ago, said Tony Prairiebear, tribal health planner for the tribe, at a University of Montana conference on Wednesday.

Prairiebear, along with about 150 others, mostly Indians, from across the state and Canada, attended the first half of the two-day event to address the issue of reclaiming stolen Indian property from museums and collectors. These items are usually body parts, sacred items and bundles, which are ceremonial packs consisting of animal hides, feathers and beads used in ceremonies for generations.

The conference, called Intersecting Interests: Tribal Knowledge & Research Communities, also focuses on the issue of outside researchers exploiting natives or coming to reservations and studying Indians without permission. It is being sponsored by UM’s Division of Educational Research and Service, the School of Education and eight other groups in an effort to organize a dialogue between researchers and Indian communities, said Patty LaPlant, coordinator of the conference.

This conference is the first of its kind at UM and in the state, LaPlant said.

Prairiebear said the conference is a vital step in this process of reclaiming not only property but also identity. The Northern Cheyenne buried the bodies, taken from the Smithsonian, at their reservation 100 miles east of Billings, he said.

Helping others understand why burial issues are so important to Indians is the point of the conference, Prairiebear said.

Two teachers at Red Crow Community College in southern Alberta, Canada, were keynote speakers for the conference. Narcisse Blood and Ryan Heavy Head have worked to reclaim Indian property held in museums across the country.

Blood said they have salvaged sacred items, such as a century-old beaver bundle, from the Denver Art Museum, Harvard’s Peabody Museum, New York Smithsonian and other collections. Once reclaimed, the items are used as they were in prayers and ceremonies a hundred years ago, he said.

Blood said ceremonies need certain objects, songs and people to have power.

When elders see these sacred items and hold them in wrinkled fingers, they lose their poise and cry, Blood said.

“It’s hard to see an elder break down when they see these bundles and the state they’re in,” he said.

Blood says these sacred items and body remains were taken at the beginning of the century in an effort to assimilate American Indians and destroy their religion. 

The legal issue of reclaiming property long held by museums is thorny, but it’s easier in the United States where a federal law is in place, he said.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 states that museums and federal agencies have to return certain American Indian items — human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony — that were taken without permission. But the law only applies to public museums and not to private collectors.

“Some (private collectors) are cooperative,” Blood said. “Some don’t want to let go.”

And it’s the same story with sacred land, Blood said. American Indians in Montana and Alberta only hold onto about a quarter of what they deem as sacred sites, he said. These places are their churches, but archaeologists and scientists sometimes restrict access.

“These places have a living presence,” Blood said, “but archaeologists study them like it’s ‘C.S.I.’”

The problem isn’t just with studying ancient items but aspects of the present, as well.

Researchers come to reservations and study social ills like drug use, alcohol abuse, violence and unwanted pregnancies but offer no solutions, Prairiebear said. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation has many of these problems, but the research doesn’t help, he said. Researchers, he said, just “give stats and say, ‘this is a terrible problem’ and move on.”

Prairiebear and others suggest an institutional review board on every reservation to ensure researchers’ studies are beneficial to the people living there. At this point, there is just talk about it at the conference, but conference organizer LaPlant said she hopes this will spur conversation and future conferences.