Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada
1989; Duke University Press; Volume: 36; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/482654
ISSN1527-5477
Autores Tópico(s)Museums and Cultural Heritage
ResumoA case study in the repatriation of a museum collection illustrates the ethnohistorical research prerequisite to a decision to return the objects to the heirs of the original owners. It also treats several of the legal and ethical issues entering the decision. The ceremony of return highlights the Iroquois sense of appropriate behavior on such an occasion and the mutual satisfaction of both parties to the transaction. The writer was both a participant and an observer. Recent demands from native groups for the repatriation of objects long held in museums evoke the need to establish when and by what means objects come to museums. Further considerations are the museum's in- vestment in preserving them and determining under what conditions a particular collection may be deaccessioned and repatriated. The eleven wampum belts that individual Iroquois sold to T. R. Roddy, a dealer, in I899, that George G. Heye purchased through another dealer in 91o0, and that the Trustees of the Museum of the American Indian returned to the Six Nations Confederacy on the Grand River in Canada in 1988 rep- resent a precedent in satisfying such a demand. As an ethnologist who has observed Iroquois ceremonies for fifty years, I describe the ceremony of repatriation. I trust that this account demonstrates how ethnology illumi- nates historical inquiry. I mention three belts and strings of wampum that tradition engraved in living memory. The tortuous history of the claim follows, then a discussion of wampum in the context of Grand River poli- tics, in circumstances that living traditionalists chose to ignore, and the wasting of belts in native care. Actual custodianship varied from native theory. When the chiefs sought to recover the belts on the death of the keeper, they encountered shifts in values from national to private property. How the belts were persuaded to leave the reserve and how museolo-
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