Native American artifacts will be returned to tribes

By By Catherine Odson

Monday, January 30, 2006

The University of Kansas has hired an expert to oversee the return of Native American artifacts to their tribes.

The artifacts were formerly part of a Museum of Anthropology, now known as the Anthropological Research and Cultural Collections and have been stored in Spooner Hall since the museum closed in 2002 because of budget cuts.

Johna Van Noy, New Braunfels, Texas, graduate student, was one student who raised concerns last spring about the well-being of the collection.

“We wanted the University to realize the resources they had in the collection,” she said, citing poor storage and lack of funding as detrimental to the artifacts. “Students taking an interest in taking care of these collections really turned heads at the administrative level.”

The University hired Thomas Foor, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Montana, earlier this month to sort the artifacts.

Foor will assess the University’s holdings of ethnographic goods, cultural and sacred goods not associated with burial rights.

Von Noy said with this step, the University is on the way to doing what is right.

The national Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, commonly referred to as NAGPRA, passed in 1990 requires full inventories of all Native American human remains and burial goods held by federally-funded museums.

The University met statutory deadlines in 1993 and 1995, Mary Adair, interim director of the Anthropological Research and Cultural Collections said

Under NAGPRA, over 750,000 Native American artifacts have been surveyed in efforts to reunite federally recognized tribes with remnants of their histories that had been held by museums.

Bobbi Rahder, lecturer in Indigenous Nation Studies, said hiring a NAGPRA coordinator would help the University better understand what artifacts the collection holds.

“It’s a really positive step to providing better care of the collections,” she said.

The University’s collection is pretty typical of all museums — lots of donations with little documentation, Rahder said.

Foor’s strategy for cataloging the items involves reviewing any paperwork accompanying the artifacts, including the original paperwork from the former owner.

Foor is working to overturn false, stereotyped classifications by looking for distinct design differences.

“The information available to us is always changing, so it’s important to re-examine materials in light of what we know today,” he said.

Rahder’s students will meet with Foor and then possibly have the opportunity to work with him to identify various artifacts and match them with their specific tribes.

After completing the inventory, the University will provide tribal governments with a summary of items that could be culturally significant.

Individual tribes will send representatives to determine which items should be returned to them.

Getting a maximum number of tribes involved would help give the artifacts the constant care and attention they require, said Michael Yellow Bird, director of the Indigenous Nations Studies program.

The immense sacred value of some items requires them to receive attention and ceremonies that were ignored while they sit in the museum, he said.

There is “no way to ever store those collections that could ever be respectful,” he said.

Edited by Lindsey Gold

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