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University returning 1,500 artifacts to Oneida Indian Nation

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  1stwarrior  •  2 years ago  •  6 comments

University returning 1,500 artifacts to Oneida Indian Nation
Colgate University is returning to the Oneida Indian Nation more than 1,500 items buried with ancestral remains

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



Colgate University is returning to the Oneida Indian Nation more than 1,500 items once buried with ancestral remains — a collection of culturally significant items that includes pendants, pots, bells and turtle shell rattles, some dating back 400 years.

The “funerary objects” were purchased in 1959 from the family of an amateur archaeologist who collected them from sites in upstate New York and have been housed at the university's Longyear Museum of Anthropology. Their repatriation ceremony will be held Wednesday at Colgate, which is located on the Oneida’s ancestral territory.

“It's making things right again. It's correcting a wrong,” Oneida Indian Nation Representative Ray Halbritter said in an interview. “The acquisition of these items, it’s quite an indefensible practice. They’ve been absent. They’re not where they should be ... on the land back with our people."

Halbritter said this is one of the largest single repatriations in the state and praised the cooperation from Colgate, which began a series of transfers in 1995 with the return of seven sets of remains and funerary objects.

The 1,520 returned items are called funerary objects because it's reasonably believed they were placed with individual human remains either at the time of death or later.

The items being returned to the Oneidas also include glass beads, ceramic pottery, knives, harpoons and a stone pipe. They were collected by Herbert Bigford Sr. during excavations of eight sites between 1924 and 1957, according to repatriation records Colgate filed with the federal government.

A man by that name was the treasurer in 1952 for the local Chenango Archeology Society, whose members went on “digging tours” each summer and met in each other’s homes for programs on Native American archaeology, according to a story in the Sunday Press of Binghamton on the society’s plans for school presentations.

Some of the repatriated items date as far back as 1600. And more than 900 of the items came from a single excavation site in Stockbridge, south of the Oneida's current reservation in central New York. That includes 286 Wampum, 106 shell beads, 179 glass beads and 68 wolf teeth, according to records.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions, such as universities, to return remains and cultural items.

Nationwide, some 870,000 Native American artifacts — including nearly 110,000 human remains — that should be returned to tribes under federal law are still in the possession of colleges, museums and other institutions,   according to a recent Associated Press review   of data maintained by the National Park Service.

Colgate officials said the ongoing repatriations involving the university are a step toward repairing relationships with Native American communities.

“This is important work, and it will continue until we are confident that all sacred items that can be traced back to their rightful owners are returned,” Colgate President Brian W. Casey said in a statement.

Some of the items being returned by Colgate had been on display or used for teaching in the past, though the university placed restrictions on their use for those purposes starting in 1994.

Representative of the Oneidas, Colgate and the museum will attend the repatriation ceremony Wednesday at the university.

The items will be safely stored while the Oneidas decide what to do them, whether it's returning them to the earth or some other option, Halbritter said.

“Our ceremonies to repatriate these items will help ensure that our story is going to be told in our own voices,” Halbritter said, “and for generations to come.”


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1stwarrior
Professor Participates
1  seeder  1stwarrior    2 years ago

Nationwide, some 870,000 Native American artifacts — including nearly 110,000 human remains — that should be returned to tribes under federal law are still in the possession of colleges, museums and other institutions,    according to a recent Associated Press review    of data maintained by the National Park Service.

Colgate officials said the ongoing repatriations involving the university are a step toward repairing relationships with Native American communities.

“This is important work, and it will continue until we are confident that all sacred items that can be traced back to their rightful owners are returned,” Colgate President Brian W. Casey said in a statement.

Absolutely the right thing to do.

Imagine if you will - 110,000 "human remains" that still have not been returned to the Nations/Tribes - even as legally required.

Why not???

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
2  Kavika     2 years ago

The University of ND just ''found'' some remains and promised to return them. We'll see how that goes.

Then there is that bastion of higher learning, Harvard that has thousands that have not been returned.

Harvard has remains of 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved people, leaked report says

There are the items stripped from the bodies of NAs slaughtered at Wounded Knee that are at a museum in PA.

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
2.1  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Kavika @2    2 years ago

It really makes me sick.

 
 
 
shona1
PhD Quiet
3  shona1    2 years ago

Arvo...good to see..

Over the years Koori remains and artefacts have been brought home from England...as they should be..

No longer housed in overseas museums etc far from home and their land..

Returned to rest under the Southern Cross stars where they always belonged.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
4  Kavika     2 years ago
Returned to rest under the Southern Cross stars where they always belonged.

Absolutely.

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
5  Perrie Halpern R.A.    2 years ago

Good to see that some level of justice is happening... but there is a long way to go.

 
 

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