When
Harold Jacobs, a Tlingit, saw a Native headband made of braided
hair in a Philadelphia museum this month, he knew whose hair it
was. He sang its song.
Jacobs'
great-great-great-great-great grandmother of Angoon had cut her
hair, made it into a headband and given it to her husband to be
remembered by, said Leonard John, executive director of the Kootznoowoo
Cultural and Educational Foundation.
The
woman's father wrote a song about the headband to mark her marriage,
Jacobs said.
"We still do that song today. She made that hairpiece for her
husband using her own hair," Jacobs said.
John
organized a visit of clan leaders with ties to Angoon to the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Feb. 1-7.
The Natives consulted with museum officials about the possible return
of tribal objects to clans under the Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act.
When
Jacobs sang, it was "wonderful," said Lucy Fowler Williams,
the museum's keeper of American collections.
Louis
Shotridge, the Tlingit from Klukwan who bought Alaska Native objects
in the early 20th century as a staff member for the museum, had
written down the headpiece's story.
"But
to actually have Harold here and have that special connection going
back five great-grandmothers was exciting," Williams said.
The
1990 repatriation law requires museums that receive federal funds
to list their objects and human remains of Native American origin,
and to return them to tribes if asked and if the museum can't show
ownership.
The
remains of nearly 28,000 people as well as 640,000 objects, mostly
funereal, have been repatriated so far, said the National Park Service,
which administers the law.
Kootznoowoo
Inc., the for-profit village corporation for Angoon, has been active
in seeking repatriation of objects of cultural patrimony through
its non-profit wing, the Kootznoowoo Cultural and Educational Foundation.
Angoon, a Tlingit community of about 500 people, is 55 miles southwest
of Juneau, on Admiralty Island.
Since
fiscal year 1998, Kootznoowoo has received four hard-to-get federal
grants totaling about $236,000 to help it recover objects from museums.
That speaks to the tribe's activity, said Paula Molloy, a spokeswoman
for the Park Service's NAGPRA program.
John
said Kootznoowoo has helped repatriate to clan leaders about 20
objects so far, and has many claims pending. The clan leaders often
ask Southeast museums to hold the pieces to preserve them.
"The
significance of bringing these artifacts back home is very powerful,"
John said. "There's healing that flows. It's very exciting."
"Those
artifacts are like chapters out of the Tlingit history book,"
said Steve Henrikson, curator of collections at the Alaska State
Museum in Juneau, who traveled with the clan leaders to Philadelphia.
"If you have some of the chapters missing, it's very difficult
to teach the history from one generation to the next."
Kootznoowoo
has used its grants to fund visits to museums with Tlingit holdings,
such as the Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City.
Clan
leaders identify what objects they want repatriated, sometimes even
finding things they didn't expect see, such as the beaver-figure
prow from a war canoe that Jacobs uncovered in storage in the New
York museum in 1998. It may be the only war canoe that survived
the U.S. Navy's bombardment of Angoon in 1882, John said.
"When
they brought it out, everybody just started crying," he said.
"People were weeping. They were shaking."
Among
the objects of interest to the clan leaders during the Philadelphia
visit were a house screen; a caribou-hide robe that may date from
the early 1700s; a raven rattle with a protective cover of bark
and goat wool; a Chilkat blanket; and a cape from Tahiti, made of
coconut fiber and sharks' teeth, that somehow found its way to Southeast.
Some
of the objects appear to date from before the 1882 bombardment,
Henrikson said.
That
incident stemmed from a whaling ship's accidental killing of a Native
crew member who was a shaman. The trading company sought protection
from the Navy.
"So
much of their artifacts were destroyed in that incident, so anything
that survived is considered to be exceptionally valuable,"
Henrikson said.
The
next steps in the process are for the clans to submit their claims
and for the museum to review them. The process can take months,
and the museum's say on the return of cultural objects is up to
the university's board of trustees, which meets only twice a year.
Decisions can be appealed to a national review committee.
The
museum's repatriation committee will decide whether the clans have
cultural ties to the objects, whether the objects meet the law's
definition of cultural importance, and whether the museum owns the
pieces.
Ownership
is based on the standards of property rights that were in place
in the Native communities when the objects were removed. But a museum
might return an artifact even if it owns it, if the object is of
great importance to a tribe.
In
this case, the museum has good records showing that Shotridge bought
the objects. Removing objects from tribes is known as alienation.
"That
issue of alienation is important," Williams of the museum staff
said, "and I think the tribe is going to have to address it
in their claims."
The
Tlingit claimants likely will argue that the people who sold the
objects didn't have the right to do so. The clans owned the objects,
John said.
"If
you don't own it, you can't sell it," he said.
John
has a simple test for museums' lawyers when they dispute ownership:
If the object is yours, sing its song.
Shotridge
helped the museum collect artifacts partly because he believed,
as many people did at the time, that Native culture was dying out
from assimilation. Museums, he thought, would be able to preserve
Native artifacts and show that they belonged side by side with other
great cultures such as the Egyptians and the Greeks. But his letters
show that he was torn about removing objects.
Repatriation
is part of the museum's broader approach to issues of Native concern
and education about Natives in a university context, said Bob Preucel,
associate curator of North America at the University of Pennsylvania
Museum.
Museums
have seemed to present Native culture as being from the past. But
the University of Pennsylvania Museum collects contemporary Native
arts and crafts, and is inviting Natives to write essays about its
objects. The university wants to establish a Native studies program,
he said.
The
repatriation act helps museums build relationships with Natives,
Williams said. She'd like to work with Tlingits to make future exhibits
more relevant to today's issues, she said.
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