About 150 items considered sacred by the Sioux, including some believed to be linked to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, are being returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation after more than a century in a small Massachusetts museum.
Officials with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Founders Museum in Barre, about 70-miles west of Boston, made their announcement on Monday, which was Indigenous Peoples Day.
The items – which include weapons, pipes, moccasins and clothing – are due to be formally handed over to the tribe in a ceremony November 5th.
Founders Museum Board President Ann Meilus said of the artifacts “This is not our history of Barre. This is the Lakota Sioux’s history, and we should honor the Lakota Sioux and what they desire,”
Oglala Sioux President Kevin Killer said the return of the items is a chance to begin the process of healing.
The museum acquired its Indigenous collection from Frank Root, a 19th century native of the town. He was a traveling shoe salesman who collected the items on his journeys, and once had a road show that rivaled P.T. Barnum’s extravaganzas.
Wendell Yellow Bull, a descendant of Wounded Knee victim Joseph Horn Cloud, says the items will be stored at Oglala Lakota College until tribal leaders decide what to do with them.
The decision-making process will include a mass meeting and a very meticulous discussion on how and what is going to be done with the items – especially those from the Wounded Knee site.
Yellow Bull says that means “a lot of preparations and ceremonies must take place in order for us to proceed forward.”
The items being returned are just a tiny fraction of an estimated 870,000 Native American artifacts, including nearly 110,000 human remains, in the possession of the federal government and the nation’s most prestigious colleges and museums.
All were supposed to be returned to the tribes decades ago under the federal 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act