Repatriation

“1. Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items: Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, CO (August 29, 2008). In 1965 a pair of collectors obtained ’18 silver Seminole pendants’ from an American Indian art dealer, and three years later donated them to the museum. According to transaction records, four of the pendants ‘are from a burial over 100 years old.’ The museum agreed to return the pendants to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Dania, Big Cypress, Brighton, Hollywood and Tampa Reservations.” (American Indian Art, Vol. 35(2):78, Spring 2010).

“5. Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, San Juan Island National Historical Park, Friday Harbor, WA and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (August 29, 2008). The notice focuses on 285 unassociated funerary objects recovered during two legally authorized digs conducted on San Juan Island between 1946 and 1947, and 1970 and 1972, including:103 basalt flakes, 60 mammal (nonhuman) bone fragments, two bags of fish bones, pieces of charcoal, a sea urchin spine and the humerus of a sea lion. Using archaeological anthropological and oral history sources, the custodians of those objects agreed that for the past 2,000 years or so San Juan Island lay within the traditional homeland of the Lummi people and their ancestors. Accordingly, it was determined the material would be given to the Lummi Tribe of the Lummi Reservation on Washington.” (American Indian Art, Vol. 35(2):78, Spring 2010).

“15. Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items: San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego, CA (October 9, 2008). The notice pertains to twenty-six ‘unassociated funerary objects’-one cockle shell fragment, a stone scraper and twenty-four sherds removed in 1959 from an abandoned Tohono O’odham village in Pima County, Arizona-as well as a pair of objects of cultural patrimony. One of these consisted of a medicine bundle container dating to around 1930 and acquired in 1976 from the widow of a Tohono O’odham medicine man. The other is a mask used in the Pima Navichu healing ceremony, which was obtained from a member of the tribe who had inherited it. With the concurrence of the Gila River Indian community, it was decided that these objects should be repatriated to the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona." (American Indian Art, Vol. 35(2):79, Spring 2010).


I thought these were an interesting assortment of items, especially the pendents in #1 and the mask from #15. #5 reminds me of some of the more boring bags I've sorted through on archaeology jobs (except the bones- those can be pretty cool).