Sacred artifacts returned to Yurok Tribe
The Yurok Tribe of Native Americans celebrated the return of more than 200 sacred artifacts, including white deerskins, condor feathers, and headdresses made of bright red woodpecker scalps from the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Museum of the American Indian.
The tribe has 5,500 members and lives on 55,000 acres along the Klamath River in Northern California, next to the Oregon border. The tribe’s leaders say that the artifacts date back hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. The arifacts will continue to be used in ceremonies that are intended to heal the world.
I wish them success.
Congress passed legislation in 1990 that requires museums that receive federal funding and federal agencies to identify certain types of Native American artifacts in their collections and to consider returning them if requested by a tribe. A year earlier, Congress passed similar legislation that governs the Smithsonian Institution. More that 1.1 million items have been identified as eligible for repatriation, including human remains. The Yurok Tribe’s request took four years to process, and their request for 100 additional items is still pending.
The artifacts were part of a welcoming ceremony on Friday and had been part of the collection of George Gustav Heye, a wealthy investment banker who started the Museum of the American Indian and his Heye Foundation in 1916. Heye had purchased the artifacts from another collector in the early 1900s.
Some of the artifacts will be displayed at a cultural center on the reservation that will be open to the public.
-Bill at
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