2004 Media Files Page

Articles reprinted in 2004 from contributors, newspapers and magazines in the ATADA Newsletter

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Media Files - antique and tribal art issues as seen from the point of view of the outside world reprinted from The ATADA Newsletter.

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Winter_2004

Current Crafts: American Indian Baskets and Blankets Ask a Question, 'What Is Art?

From The September 11, 2003 New York Times, news of three new shows of American Indian art. The Times' headline: "Current Crafts: American Indian Baskets and Blankets Ask a Question, 'What Is Art?' "

Craig Kellogg's brief story begins, "Three exhibitions explore the enduring appeal of American Indian blankets, baskets and decorative art. 'Navajo Blankets of the 19th Century' will be at the Textile Museum in Washington until March 14 (www.textilemuseum.org), and 'The Language of Native American Baskets' will be at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York from Sept. 20 to Jan. 9, 2005 (www.americanindian.si.edu). Bruce Bernstein, who curated the basket exhibition, said his goal is to have people see baskets as art. The works he selected for the exhibition include a deer antler sheathed in woven cedar strips and a basket that incorporates Victorian embroidery patterns. In connection with the exhibition, basket weavers, including Terrol Johnson and Lisa Telford will hold demonstrations at Culture Fest 2003 in Battery Park pieces will sell for $50 to $500.

"For some collectors, the allure of Indian artifacts lies in the way they blur the line between art and décor. 'The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (through Dec. 14 www.metmuseum.org), includes a deerskin shirt, trimmed with human hair, part of a 200-piece collection that Mr. Coe keeps in his Santa Fe, N. M., farmhouse. A former museum director, Mr. Coe said he started collecting in 1956, 'when I couldn't buy Monets and Renoirs.' "

Of All the Clubs in the World, One From Kansas

The headline for Michael Wilson's September 17, 2003, story in The New York Times read, "Of All the Clubs in the World, One From Kansas," but by the time the story was posted on the newspaper's Website, the headline read "That Club on eBay. The Farmer Knew It Well."

On both the Website and in the paper, however, the story of the stolen Plains war club was the same.

"The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club was cold, see," the story began. "Colder than the dark end of the Kansas museum storeroom where someone snatched it nine long years ago.

"'I'd chased all my leads,' said Ray Classen, 52, of the Police Department in North Newton, Kan., who is not only the chief but also half the full-time force. There were 34 items discovered missing from the Kauffman Museum's storeroom in May 1994, and the war club was the prize of them all.

"A local farmer, Keven Hiebert, knew the club well, having photographed the piece and many others for the museum. He was shocked, then, shopping around on eBay on Thursday night, to see the club - the very picture he had taken. He called the museum curator, who called the chief, who made a few calls and learned the club was in a place he had never been before. Never had much use for the place, actually. "New York City.

"The New York City police found the piece in a SoHo art gallery on Monday. The gallery's owner, Martin Lane, bought it several years ago and had no idea it had been stolen, he said yesterday. The police said Mr. Lane was not a suspect in the theft.

"The club itself is not really much of a club at all. It is lighter than a weapon, designed for show. 'That particular piece was done more as a dance weapon than a battle weapon,' said Mr. Hiebert, who collects and studies Native American art in his downtime as a wheat farmer and cattleman. It bore the images of eight Native American warriors, four on each side, and is thought to date to 1870. 'Either Sioux or Arapaho,' Mr. Hiebert said.

"'It's a really typical Plains piece, which would have put it in the Dakotas or Montana somewhere,' he added. There are three knife blades jutting from one edge of the club. 'That was probably one of my favorite pieces in there,' Mr. Hiebert said. The museum acquired the club from a Wisconsin dealer in the 1930s. The theft, or thefts, vexed Chief Classen, who became chief of the small police force at 32. There are 1,600 people who call North Newton home.

"No one could be sure exactly when the items were taken from the museum, or whether they were stolen all at once. 'It's possible they went out a few pieces at a time,' the chief said. A few times since then, the club seemed close to being found, but the items turned out to be merely similar.

"'It's an extremely valuable piece because of the rarity,' Mr. Hiebert said. 'With the Indian art collectibles, there's a really high variation in market value from the art quality of the piece. This is what I would consider a high-end piece.'

"So it just about jumped off his computer screen and hit him Thursday night. He saw right away that the seller did not seem to realize its worth. The club was appraised at $9,000 in 1994, and the seller wanted less than half that.

"The chief called New York and got the Major Cases Squad and its new 'art cop,' Detective Mark Fishstein, who, with Detective Chris Secrest, paid a visit to Mr. Lane's West Houston Street art gallery.

"Mr. Lane told the police that he bought the piece in 1994 or 1995 at an Orlando antique show for $3,500. 'He advised us he had it in his private collection for many years, and it was time to sell,' Detective Fishstein said. Mr. Lane spoke briefly yesterday before begging off to call his lawyer. He said he had given the piece to the police without hesitation.

"'I have a reputation to protect,' he said. 'I've been very cooperative. These sorts of things happen quite often with antiques.'

"The investigation is continuing. Back in Kansas, everyone is happy.

"Well, almost everyone. It seems the New York police will not ship such a valuable piece. Someone in Kansas has to come and pick it up, and that someone is shaping up to be the police chief.

"'I honestly don't want to come I'm a country boy,' he said. There is no airport in North Newton - he has to drive 30 miles south to Wichita just to catch a flight. He has no idea when he will come or how long he will stay. He just wants a lift into the city.

"'There's no way I'm going to drive in that town,' he said. 'And I'm not getting in any cab.' "

Some Twists in the Old-New Basketmaker's Art

"Some Twists in the Old-New Basketmaker's Art" was the headline for Grace Glueck's September 26 New York Times article on the Indian basket exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Glueck wrote: "For countless generations of Native Americans, there was nothing quite so useful as a basket. Woven by hand, of course, from carefully cultivated roots and plants, a basket could be a baby carrier, a saddlebag, a purse, a bowl for cooking or serving, a tray, a jar, a water bottle, a fish trap, a trunk, a seed scoop, a hat and even a coffin.

"But even though baskets are now passé for most of these functions, it won't do to use the past tense, because their production still flourishes. Baskets today are made for religious occasions, for storage, for sale and as a demonstration of pride in heritage. In fact, most basketmakers insist that not only is their work of today contemporary, but that baskets are always contemporary, regardless of their age, since they are attuned to a timeless tradition.

"'Baskets are our art, culture and history,' said Pat Courtney Gold, a Native American of Wasco and Tlingit ancestry and one of a growing number of basket weavers across the country who carry on the tradition, most grouped in tribal or regional weaving associations.

"With four other contemporary basketmakers, Ms. Gold is represented in 'The Language of Native American Baskets,' a show of more than 200 examples in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian that goes back to the early 19th century.

"The five basketmakers, along with a Native-American basketry scholar, Sherrie Smith-Ferri (Pomo and Miwok), director of the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, Calif., worked with Bruce Bernstein, assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, to help shape the show. They each picked four baskets from the museum's collection and paired them with examples of her own or recent work by other Native American Native-American basketmakers.

"If you have no idea of the vivacity of the basketmaker's art, this show will come as a fine surprise. If you do, the examples here will heighten your pleasure. Along the way, you can learn a lot about this complicated pursuit.

"Ms. Gold's hip contribution is a smallish black-and-white bag of cylindrical shape, called 'Sally Bag' and made of acrylic yarn over Hungarian hemp in a traditional twining technique, the most commonly used of the basic basket modes in Western North America. Its title, 'Yuppie Couple,' comes from the image of a digital-looking man and woman that appears on the basket's side, representing, Ms. Gold said, 'the new urban Native.'

"The other contemporary basketmakers are Lisa Telford (Haida), whose elegant black-banded cylindrical basket is made of natural and dyed spruce root Julia Parker (Pomo/Miwok), maker of a tiny round container festooned with glass beads Terrol Johnson (Tohono/O'odham), represented by a stylish gourd cast in bronze with necklaces of bear grass bridging its wide side openings and Theresa Hoffman (Penobscot) who, pointing up that not everything here is a basket per se, contributes a lovely stylized ear of corn using black ash splints and a curly weave.

"In addition to the offerings of current basketmakers and their choices, the show includes a large and varied arrangement of burden baskets, which made easier the hauling required of people whose transportation was mainly by foot or horse. Burden baskets were made in open or closed weaves, depending on their functions. (Holding fresh-caught clams, an open weave basket would allow them to drain a tight-woven container might carry tiny items like seeds.)

"The burden baskets could be small, for harvesting berries, or large, say, for transporting firewood. A robust bucket shape from Arizona (circa 1900) is of dyed willow and is horizontally banded in red and black, with long leather fringes dangling from the rim. More accommodating to the shape of the back is a large conical basket from California made of willow shoots (Yokuts, circa 1900). On the smaller side is a berrying basket of coiled cedar root whose rough surface bears triangular designs of dyed and natural bear grass (Klikitat, circa 1920).

"The category of burden baskets includes hats, too, often used to ease the strain of carrying straps worn across the forehead. Some of the hats also came in handy as personal food dishes. One neat number is a woman's headgear in the shape of an upside-down round bowl woven with a design of stepped triangles (Hupa, circa 1925). Right side up, it's perfect for eating from.

"Speaking of hats, among the show's more spectacular items is a magnificent wide-brimmed sun protector, made of twined spruce root and painted a glorious purplish blue it is adorned with glass beads, shells and red wool cloth, and its crown is decorated with a linear design. A rakish touch is provided by long strands of stiff walrus whiskers that project out over the brim. Made by an Alutiiq weaver from Kodiak Island, Alaska, around 1910, it suggests in its flashy appeal the wide-brimmed, multicolor hat worn by the subject of Vermeer's 'Young Girl With a Flute.'

"It's not hard to find other treasures. Even relatively unadorned objects can have masterly shapes, like the classic configuration of a big, deep Navajo bowl (circa 1910). Made of coiled sumac shoots in a natural color, with a simple decoration of small brown-dyed triangles arranged in widely separated vertical lines, this elegant bowl with its braided rim has a less-is-more presence that is utterly serene.

"Oddball objects have their charm, too, like the Russian sailor's hat (circa 1820), made by a Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. Woven of close-twined spruce root, embroidered with natural and dyed bear grass and sporting a sort of classical Greek key decoration on the crown, the hat may have been inspired by a visit from the Russian fleet. You might want to overlook, however, the fancy dish with handles and a red velveteen lining (Abenaki, 1910) that seems to reflect not Native American but the worst of Victorian taste.

"Two floridly decorated items that work, though, are a pair of businesslike portfolios made of birch bark (Micmac, circa 1920), embroidered all over in dyed and natural porcupine quills with intricate multicolor geometric designs. (Perhaps they were made, like the fancy dish with handles, for the tourist trade.)

"A singularly precious item in the museum's collection is a round Chumash tray decorated with a Spanish coin motif, commissioned in 1825 by Spanish administrators in Monterey, Calif., as a gift for a visiting dignitary.

"Not bulking large, but hardly to be missed, is the group of wee canoe-shaped baskets, some less than an inch long, made by a weaver of the Pomo nation - among the best basket makers known - around 1900. Miniatures like these, made of coiled willow with sedge and bulrush stitches, were fashioned to show the maker's skill and often given as very special gifts.

"And on and on - but enough. Except to reiterate that besides its aesthetic pleasures, this show provides abundant proof that the Native-American basketmaking tradition continues alive and well."

Stolen Artifacts Returned to Navajo, Hopi Tribes

Mark Shaffer's story in the September 25 Arizona Republic had the headline "Stolen Artifacts returned to Navajo, Hopi tribes."

"In an emotional ceremony in Albuquerque," the story began, "historic preservation officials from the Navajo and Hopi tribes on Wednesday picked up boxes of religious and ceremonial artifacts taken illegally from the reservations and sold to an undercover federal agent.

Santa Fe art dealers Joshua Baer and Thomas Cavaliere were sentenced to probation earlier this year after being nabbed in the 1999 sting.

"During the investigation, a Norwegian police officer played the part of a wealthy European art collector in search of Native American artifacts. He was accompanied by an FBI agent posing as the collector's art broker.

"In addition to the Navajos and Hopis, six New Mexico tribes also received hundreds of items recovered by federal agents.

"Baer and Cavaliere both pleaded guilty to violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

"Lucinda Schroeder, special agent for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Baer and Cavaliere told the Norwegian police officer false stories about the backgrounds of the artifacts.

"She said they 'attributed ceremonial significance to the artifacts which were untrue. Then, they would charge an astronomical amount.'

"Among the items returned to the Navajos were 16 prayer sticks with feathers from golden eagles, bluebirds and red-tailed hawks carvings of two dreaming twins three brushes adorned with bald eagle and golden eagle feathers and three hair ties adorned with eagle feathers.

"Vanessa Charles, a spokeswoman for the Hopi Tribe, said she had not been able to determine which artifacts had been returned to the northern Arizona tribe.

"Dale Hall, southwest director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said it was the agency's largest case involving the return of religious objects to tribes and 'we're thrilled with seeing them going back.' "

The Bishop Museum's request to enter burial caves on the Big Island and reclaim dozens of rare Hawaiian artifacts that it loaned to a Native Hawaiian group was denied Tuesday by the Hawaiian Homes Commission

Datelined Wailuku, Hawaii, the story began, "The Bishop Museum's request to enter burial caves on the Big Island and reclaim dozens of rare Hawaiian artifacts that it loaned to a Native Hawaiian group was denied Tuesday by the Hawaiian Homes Commission.

"The commission's 8-1 vote orders the 83 artifacts to remain in the Kawaihae caves where they were placed by Native Hawaiian organization Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei.

"The relics were reportedly removed from burial caves from about 1905 until 1980 and remained in the Bishop Museum's collection until 1998, when they were loaned to Hui Malama. Instead of returning the items to the museum, the Native Hawaiian group said it put the objects back in the caves.

"'The spirit of the iwi said, "Take us back to our home,"' Hawaiian Homes Commissioner Henry Cho said, using a Hawaiian word for the dead. 'They came home, and they did the right thing.'

"The items - including a wooden carving of a female figure - fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which calls for the return of human remains and other cultural items to indigenous groups, including Native Hawaiians. They are said to be priceless examples of Hawaiian culture before contact with Western civilization.

"Bishop Museum's loan to Hui Malama drew objections from other Hawaiians who made claims on the objects, including the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, which requested a federal review of the case. When the review was completed, the committee called the Bishop Museum's decision 'flawed,' and called for the items to be made available to all 13 recognized Hawaiian groups claiming a connection to the artifacts.

"Hui Malama has argued that placing the objects back in the caves was in line with the wishes of their Hawaiian ancestors, who put the items there in the first place. But Bishop Museum President William Brown said 'neither the museum nor the claimants can be certain that all of the objects were in fact placed in the Kawaihae Caves, nor can we be assured that persons unknown have not removed them.'

"Laakea Suganuma of the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts said the issue will likely end up in court."

The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club Part II: A Cop Who's Not in Kansas Anymore

On October 8, Michael Wilson followed up on his September 17 New York Times story, with a new story headlined "The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club Part II: A Cop Who's Not in Kansas Anymore."

"It was a beautiful morning in Times Square, the sun hanging around Broadway as if waiting to read its reviews. But the man in the olive suit bounced impatiently from one flat-footed cap-toe shoe to another, in no mood for sightseeing. He spotted a couple of New York police officers standing at their sidewalk post and ambled over.

"'Ray Classen,' he said with an accent one might mistake for Southern. He stuck out a broad hand. "Chief of police. North Newton, Kansas."

"The two young uniformed men smiled. 'You visiting us?' one asked.

"'Nope. Business.'

"The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club was finally wrapping up. It had been nine years since the club, an American Indian artifact, was stolen from a storage room in North Newton's only museum.

"It had been a month since Chief Classen, 52, one of two full-time lawmen in a city of 1,600, had spoken to a local farmer who had spotted the piece for sale on eBay.

"Working long-distance with the New York police, the chief tracked the club to a SoHo gallery, then found himself juggling reporters' calls from a city he had never visited, nor desired to.

"So yesterday, here he was, in New York for the first time, to retrieve the club and have a look for himself at this art gallery.

"But he was stuck in Times Square for now, waiting for detectives to pick him up and take him downtown. He declared weeks ago that he would not get into a cab.

"'You guys basically got a beat that you walk?' he asked the uniforms. 'I don't envy you one bit. I started out as a street cop, too, but I wouldn't want to do it here.'

"Never mind Kansas. The chief was not even in his idea of a normal world anymore. 'I was raised on a farm - this isn't for me,' he said. He walked along 43rd Street and, as if on cue, a squat woman in bright red pants paused in smoking her cigarette, leaned over and vomited into a sidewalk grate.

"The chief rolled his eyes and said, 'I don't think she had something that agreed with her.'

"The missing club was one of his department's biggest cases. North Newton averages a handful of thefts a year, mostly Bethel College students stealing from one another. In his 20 years on the force, the chief recalls exactly one residential burglary. The homicide count for the entire history of the town stands at zero.

"At the time of its theft in 1994, the club was appraised at $9,000, the most valuable of the 34 pieces discovered missing from the Kauffman Museum's storeroom that day. It was designed not for battle, but for show, a ceremonial club with etchings of Sioux or Arapaho warriors on its side and three triangular blades inlaid along its edge.

"Its value is thought to have quadrupled since the theft because of the notoriety it gained, the chief said.

"Martin Lane, a collector, said he bought the piece in Florida at an antiques show in 1994 or 1995 for $3,500, according to the police, who said he was not a suspect. He posted the piece on eBay last month and stored it in his gallery on West Houston Street. Last month, he handed it over to detectives, who took it to a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. 'She said it was the finest one she ever saw, better than the ones in their collection,' Detective Mark Fishstein said.

"The New York police would not ship something so valuable. Someone had to come and get it, so Chief Classen loaded a bunch of North Newton Police Department pins and baseball caps into a suitcase and flew to town on Monday.

"Reporters from Wichita interviewed him at the airport before his departure, and will meet him at the museum on Thursday for a news conference.

"He wore a tiepin from his city, given to him 10 years ago as a show of thanks for his first decade as chief. In his pocket, he carried the badge that he designed himself, a fringe benefit of being the city's first full-time police chief.

"'I've got to take care of business,' he said. 'Then I can play.'

"It did not work out quite as planned. He hoped to interview the gallery owner himself, but Mr. Lane was nowhere to be found yesterday morning. Chief Classen killed time with detectives, who, in their unmarked car, gave him the nickel tour of the city on their way to an errand at a parole office in Brooklyn.

"'You stopped in the peep shows, didn't you?' one kidded him.

"'Nope,' the chief said.

"'What do you feel like eating, Ray?' Detective Chris Secrest asked from the front seat. 'Chinese food?'

"The chief said he did not care. 'I'm not here to enjoy all the cuisine,' he said. 'Here to do my job.'

"He followed detectives down to the property room at 1 Police Plaza, and when an officer handed him the club, packed in a long cardboard box, he looked relieved. The club was sure to turn a few heads at airport security, but it was too soon to worry about that.

"He met other detectives at the Major Case Squad. 'My 12-year-old son's teacher needs to know which tribe it's from,' one said. Several detectives had their pictures taken beside the chief as he held the club, and gave him N.Y.P.D. caps for his fellow lawman and four part-time officers.

"The chief came to the city with his wife, Janice, who spent much of the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ('We might as well fill out a Missing Persons on you now,' he told her as she entered a No. 6 train station.) She wanted to see a show later, and he bought tickets to '42nd Street,' for seats in the third row, orchestra.

"'I doubt I'll ever be back in New York City again,' he said in the police car as he and detectives headed downtown alongside the Hudson River.

"In the front seat, Detective Secrest replied, 'But you're welcome to.'

"He took his first cab ride, too. It was a smooth enough hop across Midtown, a $5 fare, and he tipped the driver $2."

'Gift' had Petroglyphs

"'Gift' had petroglyphs" read the headline for Sarah Anchors' story in the Arizona Republic on October 22.

"Federal agents are continuing their investigation into a large boulder on a Phoenix man's front yard," Anchors wrote, "saying the rock is an artifact stolen from the Lake Pleasant area.

"Six weeks ago, agents took the rock, which has drawings by ancient people. Tuesday, federal law enforcement officers returned to search the house near Northern Avenue and Seventh Street.

"The rock owner, Eric Zoller, 46, said someone gave him the rock.

"The agents did not arrest Zoller, but Bob Ruiz, special agent for the Bureau of Land Management, said the agency is investigating a violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.

"Federal law bars people from removing or damaging archaeological resources on public or Indian lands.

"The maximum penalty for a first violation is two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

"In the last year, the U. S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix investigated four or five violations of the archaeological protection act, said Kimberly Hare, an assistant U. S. Attorney.

"Cases range from corporations working on federal land and harming archaeological sites to hobbyists taking pottery from Native American burial sites, Hare said.

"Keith Kintigh, an anthropology professor at Arizona State University, said the loss of artifacts is a problem. There are sites where everything has been destroyed, Kintigh said.

"'It's not just the artifacts,' Kintigh said. 'It's our ability . . . to really get to learn about a really interesting culture.'

"Even in places where there are many artifacts, it's not OK for people to just take a piece.

"'Sites are not interchangeable,' Kintigh said. 'What we can learn from one is not the same as what we can learn from another.'

"The problem of theft may be worse in Arizona because land is open and not covered by grass and trees, said Arleyn Simon, curator at the Archaeological Research Institute at ASU.

"'The problem will probably increase with population growth, as the cities grow out to public lands and people are going out to those areas for recreation,' Simon said.

"Zoller, who moved into the white brick home three months ago, claims he never took the boulder from any land.

"He says that shortly after he moved into his home, he helped a person who was broken down on the road. In thanks, the person gave him the brown rock. Zoller said he wouldn't name the person who gave him the boulder.

"'I helped him out. He said, "Here, take this,"' Zoller said. 'I didn't know it was illegal to have a rock,' he said.

"The rock is huge, Zoller said, holding his arms out to his sides. BLM agent Ruiz said it weighed about 6,000 pounds.

Ancient Maya Altar Retaken From Looters in Guatemala

"Ancient Maya Altar Retaken From Looters in Guatemala," was the headline for John Noble Wilford's October 30 story in The New York Times.

"The latest story coming out of the jungle of Guatemala," Wilford writes, "of plunder and violence in the illicit traffic of Maya antiquities, has an all too familiar plot line, except for the ending.

"Two years ago a gang of looters fell on the palace ruins of the ancient city of Cancuén and made off with an elaborately carved stone altar, complete with writing and the image of a powerful king of the late eighth century A. D.

"The thieves tried to sell the relic to drug traffickers, the only people in the region with the kind of money they were asking.

"When the gang had a falling-out, first one band and then another seized the altar, at least once in a blaze of gunfire. An effort was made to get it across the Belize border and into the lucrative international market in antiquities, ill gotten or otherwise.

"Early this year, men wearing ski masks and brandishing submachine guns raided a village near the archaeological site, firing shots in the night and brutalizing a woman in an effort to capture the contested artifact.

"Then the story took an unfamiliar turn, when archaeologists switched from scientific to criminal sleuthing and joined in a six-month pursuit of the looters with local villagers and Guatemalan undercover agents. This led last month to the recovery of the 600-pound Cancuén altar, Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the National Geographic Society announced Wednesday.

"In a teleconference with reporters, Dr. Arthur A. Demarest of Vanderbilt, a leader of excavations at Cancuén who took part in the recovery, called the limestone altar 'a masterpiece of Maya art.'

"Its inscribed text, he added, will be 'of great importance in understanding the final days of the kingdom at Cancuén and its greatest king,' who has been identified as Taj Chan Ahk Ah Kalomte.

"According to the society's statement, Guatemalan officials said this might be the first time an entire network of looters and dealers of Maya treasures had been exposed. Four suspects have been arrested and are to stand trial in January.

"Claudia Gonzáles Herrera, an assistant attorney general in charge of the case, said the arrests show that Guatemala 'takes the defense of its ancient Maya heritage seriously.'

"Archaeologists said that in the past, stolen Maya artifacts had usually been considered gone beyond recovery for scholarly research. They were successful this time, they said, because of a rare collaboration with elders of the village near the excavation site, the national police and the Ministry of Culture. Together they tracked down the suspected culprits and seized the altar in a nighttime raid on the gang hideout.

"At first Dr. Demarest's team had no idea that anything was missing from the palace ruins, which spread over land the size of several football fields. In their excavations in the last four years, they were unaware of the altar's existence. It was the looters who discovered it, after a rainstorm washed away dirt covering the site.

"Dr. Demarest said he first learned of the altar's existence more than six months ago when four village elders showed up at his tent at the excavation site.

"They told him that men in ski masks had beaten an innocent woman for information about a great altar that had been stolen from the palace. The elders feared for their lives and well-being, which had become tied in with the archaeological site.

"A program supported by Vanderbilt, National Geographic and the United States Agency for International Development began two years ago to train residents of nearby villages to take part in the archaeological project and the tourism it is expected to promote.

"As they have learned to be tour guides, park rangers and operators of tourist enterprises, Dr. Demarest said, the villagers have developed a protective attitude toward the project and are on the lookout for vandals.

"As archaeologists have now learned, the altar was placed at one end of the royal ball court near the palace in the year 796. The carvings on the altar represent the Cancuén ruler and another king in splendid regalia engaged in the ritual of a royal ball game, which customarily concluded a state visit or the forging of a new alliance.

"Dr. David Freidel, a Maya specialist at Southern Methodist University who has studied the altar texts but is not involved in the project, praised the discovery as 'an exceptionally fine work of art' and a source of new insights into the ruler of Cancuén.

"The text, he said, indicates that the ruler is literally and diplomatically 'playing ball' with the other king in the image, who is from an area northeast of Cancuén where the river routes were vital to the city's prosperity.

"Dr. Federico Fahsen, a Guatemalan specialist in Mayan glyphs who is deciphering the altar text, said the writing 'gives a glimpse of the last years of the Cancuén kingdom.'

"In the announcement, Dr. Fahsen was quoted as saying, 'Taj Chan Ahk was the greatest in Cancuén's long dynasty of rulers, and his titles on the altar show his aspirations to take control of the whole region during these final decades of Classic Maya civilization.'

"The Maya were dominant in Central America and southern Mexico in the first millennium A. D., the decline of their culture in mysterious circumstances beginning around 900. But the collapse apparently came earlier in the region of Cancuén, deep in the western jungle at the head of navigation on the Pasión River.

"Somehow Taj Chan Ahk held and expanded power when many other Maya kingdoms in the west were collapsing, Dr. Fahsen said. He was able to build one of the grandest palaces in the Maya culture, though he never finished it. The altar, archaeologists said, may well lead to finding the great king's tomb as excavations resume next year.

"Dr. Demarest said the discovery, along with other research at the palace site, indicated that in its decline, Cancuén, once wealthy from the jade trade, was virtually abandoned and that its rulers and people moved north, where they took over another city. But their time had passed.

"Archaeologists said the altar was well preserved and perhaps more splendid as an art object and more detailed as a source of information than a similar one found in 1915 and now on display at the National Museum of Archaeology in Guatemala City."

Experts Reveal Riches of Machu Picchu's Neglected Neighbor

"Experts Reveal Riches of Machu Picchu's Neglected Neighbor," read the headline for John Noble Wilford's November 18 New York Times story.

"Some forgotten cities in the mountains of Peru," the story began, "abandoned to overgrown ruin, remained 'lost' only because their possible significance was not fully appreciated by earlier explorers. That happened to a place known as Llactapata.

"In 1912, the American explorer Hiram Bingham came upon what he called the remains of some Inca chieftain's castle and a few other buildings. This was part of Llactapata, meaning 'high town.' But Bingham gave it only a passing glance. He was in a hurry to get to the site, only two miles away, where he would make his name in archaeology: Machu Picchu.

"Two weeks ago, a team of British and American explorers and archaeologists reported that they had rediscovered Llactapata using infrared aerial photography to penetrate the jungle growth. The explorers hacked their way to the mountainous site, where they uncovered remains of broad plazas, temples, an astronomical observatory, a granary and other stone buildings over at least a square mile of rugged terrain.

"In an announcement in London, the leaders of the expedition, the British explorer and writer Hugh Thomson and the American archaeologist Gary Ziegler, said the site was much more extensive and imposing than Bingham had suspected. Preliminary examination of the ruins suggested that this was a large religious center used for elaborate ceremonies and observations of solar equinoxes and solstices.

"The expedition leaders described finding a two-story temple that faced the rising sun and a plaza with ceremonial doorways aligned to Machu Picchu, which can be seen in the distance across the Aobamba River. They concluded that Llactapata was part of a much larger complex related to Machu Picchu, all built by the Incan emperor Pachacuti in the 15th century.

"In their field report, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Ziegler said the rediscovered site 'adds significantly to our knowledge and understanding of Machu Picchu as the hub of a complex neighborhood of carefully placed interrelated administrative and ceremonial sites reaching outward' toward the Incan capital at Cuzco, 50 miles away, and other Andean cities.

"Some excavations, the expedition leaders said, indicated that Llactapata might also have served as a supply depot and residential area for its more famous neighbor.

"Machu Picchu, Peru's most popular tourist attraction, is seen as a country retreat and ceremonial center for Incan royalty and aristocracy. Its stone walls and palaces stand grandly on an 8,000-foot ridge. Llactapata's elevation is about 1,000 feet higher.

"The expedition, conducted in July and August, was supported by the Royal Geographical Society in London and the Explorers Club in New York. Mr. Thomson is the author of 'The White Rock,' a book of Andean explorations published by Overlook Press.

"Other archaeologists said they were concerned that the new site lay outside the protection of the national park for Machu Picchu and thus could be vulnerable to looting. They recommended an expansion of the park to include the ruins of Llactapata."

10,000 Stolen Relics Recovered Artifacts from across West Constitute Major Theft Case

"10,000 stolen relics recovered Artifacts from across West constitute major theft case," read the headline for an Associated Press story that ran in the Arizona Republic on December 12.

Datelined Las Vegas, the story began "More than 10,000 artifacts taken from historic sites throughout the West have been recovered as part of one of the largest archaeological cases ever investigated, authorities said.

"The two-year investigation, dubbed Operation Indian Rocks, has led to a ring of relic hunters who were stealing remnants of the past, including arrowheads, ancient corncobs, hammer stones and clay figurine fragments, the Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday.

"The last major defendant in the case, Nevada resident Bobbie Wilkie, has pleaded guilty to two counts of excavation and removal of archaeological resources and aiding and abetting. His sentencing was scheduled for Monday in U. S. District Court in Las Vegas.

"His wife, Deanne, has pleaded guilty to similar charges and will be sentenced Jan. 12, federal officials said.

"A third defendant, Frank Embrey, already has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $86,196 in restitution.

"Court documents show the couple and Embrey conspired to 'unlawfully excavate, remove, damage and otherwise alter and deface archaeological resources located on designated, federal public lands' from December 1997 to December 2001.

"The group used probes, trowels, buckets, sifting screens, shovels and other tools to search for items on public lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and Nellis Air Force Base. A total of 13 sites were damaged, including some in Death Valley National Recreation Area, near Winnemucca Lake and a desert lake area in southern Nevada controlled by the Air Force.

"The defendants displayed the items at their homes and sold some of them, according to the federal indictment. Authorities estimate the items taken had a commercial value of $21,600 and that restoration and repair of damaged sites would cost more than $100,000.

"Historic sites on public lands are protected by the 1906 Antiquities Act and the 1979 Archaeological Resource Protection Act, which makes it illegal to destroy or excavate these areas.

"Once an artifact has been removed or damaged much of its historical value is lost, said Peter Ossorio, an assistant U. S. attorney in New Mexico who has prosecuted relic cases.

"'It's like somebody robbing a victim after the victim has already been mugged,' Ossorio said. 'Once these items are removed from the site you don't really ever get them back. Even if every single piece is returned much of the historical value is gone.' "

Tribe Receives Ancestors' Remains From Museum

"Tribe Receives Ancestors' Remains From Museum" was the headline of an Associated Press story datelined Chicago that ran in the October 18 Santa Fe New Mexican.

"A century ago," the story began, "anthropologists with Chicago's Field Museum traveled to islands off the coast of British Columbia to dig up the remains of an Indian culture they thought was on the brink of extinction.

"Though their dances and songs were celebratory, many tribe members expressed sadness at having to wait so long to take 160 of their ancestors back home. And they promised they would continue to petition museums around the world - including the Field - to return not only human remains, but artifacts such as masks and totem poles.

"'We have our ancestors. We will be back for the rest of our stuff very soon,' said Colin Richardson, a council member for Skidegate, one of two Haida villages on British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. The other village is Old Massett.

"By the turn of the century, smallpox had nearly eliminated the Haida people. Once about 10,000 strong, only about 500 Haida remained.

"Anthropologists and collectors came to the islands and took artifacts and bones that ended up in museums around the world.

"The Haida Nation of Canada set up a repatriation committee about eight years ago to track down and retrieve the human remains.

"Lucille Bell, heritage officer of the Haida Repatriation Committee, said the committee wrote 200 letters to museums to find out whether they were holding any remains. Negotiations with the Field Museum began a few years ago.

"'Our journey's not over,' said Bell, who named the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and British museums as next on her list.

"The Field Museum, which is not bound by the federal law that requires federally funded institutions to return the remains of U. S. tribes, decided to give back the Haida remains voluntarily. They had been kept in a storage room off-limits to the public.

"'In the late 19th century, when these remains were taken, it was an awful thing,' said Jonathan Haas, MacArthur curator of the Americas for the Field Museum.

"Haas said he believed the people who took the remains were not awful, though, but simply thought they were preserving a culture that would soon be lost.

"While returning remains and sacred objects is part of the museum's philosophy, requests for the return of other artifacts are trickier, Haas said. Two giant Haida totem poles have long greeted visitors as they enter the Field Museum.

"Haas said he hoped he could work with the Haida Nation on loans or exchanges of the artifacts kept in Chicago.

"A delegation of about 40 Haida members spent a week preparing the remains for their journey home. They will fly out of Chicago today, then take another week to ready the remains for reburial.

"Tribe members have been painting wood boxes and making traditional button blankets for use in reburial ceremonies set for Oct. 25 and Oct. 26 in the two communities.

"'I really thank the Field Museum for taking the high road,' said Chief Cheexial from Skidegate, Roy Jones Jr. 'It's been an incredible, sad experience and a celebration of our history.' "

Studies Show Chaco Canyon Ancients Traveled 50 Miles for Food, Timber

"Studies Show Chaco Canyon Ancients Traveled 50 Miles for Food, Timber," was the headline for Paul Recer's Associated Press story that ran in the October 14 Santa Fe New Mexican.

Datelined Washington, the story began, "Ancient Americans building elaborate structures in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon depended on corn carried by hand from fields up to 50 miles away, according to a study that analyzed the chemical content of ancient corn cobs.

"Researchers compared the chemical isotopic ratios of ancient corn cobs recovered from Chaco Canyon with the soils in distant areas and found the people living in the canyon between the ninth and 12th centuries had to hand-carry their food from faraway fields.

"Since this was before the voyages of Columbus and the return of the horse to North America, the ancestral Pueblo people living in Chaco Canyon had to carry the food on foot, said Larry Benson, a U. S. Geological Survey researcher and first author of a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"'They had to haul it in on their backs,' Benson said.

"To bring the heavy loads of corn to the desolate Chaco Canyon in Northern New Mexico, Benson said the people followed a network of roads and trails that have been detected by aerial surveys. Some of the paths were lined with marker rocks, and some forced heavily laden travelers to scale steep bluffs, he said.

"Linda S. Cordell, director of the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder and a study co-author, said the central buildings and villages of Chaco Canyon housed 6,000 to 10,000 people during some periods during the ninth through 12th centuries. During those times, there were bursts of activity with the construction of buildings reaching four stories and containing about 800 rooms. In addition to these so-called great houses, villages were built nearby.

"Some food was doubtless produced in the canyon, said Cordell, although the sparse rainfall and short growing season would make agriculture difficult.

"'We suspect that during major construction food had to be imported in order to support the laborers,' said Cordell.

"Benson said his analysis of the corn cobs recovered at Chaco Canyon confirmed that the food was imported.

"He tested the ratios of the strontium isotopes in the corn cobs and found they precisely matched the soils of fields at the foot of the Chuska Mountains 50 miles to the west and the San Juan River flood plain 56 miles to the north.

"Benson said more than likely much of the food carried to Chaco Canyon was ground as corn meal, which would be much lighter than carrying the whole cob.

"Corn grown by the ancestral Pueblo people was highly nutritious, but it had ears much smaller than modern corn. The cobs, said Benson, were only 3 inches to 5 inches long and about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

"It wasn't just food that the ancient people had to import to build their complex in Chaco Canyon, Cordell said.

"'We know they were importing many of the timbers used in the construction of the great houses from high elevations outside. Chaco,' she said. 'Also, a great deal of the pottery was imported.' Chaco had a scarcity of wood needed to fire-harden pottery, she said.

"To build the buildings in Chaco, the ancestral Pueblo people carried timbers 10 to 20 feet long from the Chuska Mountains 50 miles to the west, Benson said.

"'They were carrying trees all that way,' he said.

"Cordell said it is not clear why the early Americans chose Chaco as a place for such elaborate construction. She said there is evidence that people lived in the canyon as early as the fifth century and that, over time, the site became important to the culture of the ancestral Pueblo people. There are indications that buildings in Chaco were used for rituals and ceremonies, but details have been lost to time, she said.

"'It looks like that in whatever organization existed then, the place had some kind of power,' said Cordell. 'It became an important place and subsequently an important ritual area' to the diverse ancient people who lived in what is now the San Juan River basin of New Mexico."

Handling Artifacts Not Built to Last

"Handling Artifacts Not Built to Last" was the headline for Rita Reif's January 5, 2004 story in The New York Times.

The subheadline was "Holocaust and American Indian Museums Use New Techniques and Adjust Their Objectives." This excerpt dealt with Indian artifacts.

"Conservators at historical museums face a painful dilemma," the story began.

"They must try to achieve a reasonable reality in the preservation of artifacts that were not built to last. Too much, and there is fakery. Too little, and objects fall apart.

"Many conservators no longer restore objects to approximate their original condition as fine arts museums do, preferring instead to maintain the way they looked when acquired. The aim is to extend their life while retaining the evidence of what made them important, even if it means presenting tattered artifacts with blood stains, bullet holes and burnt edges. Now new techniques and a new emphasis on less varnished truth in history museums are transforming the staid exhibitions of the past.

"At the Museum of the American Indian here, Susan Heald, the chief conservator, said she and her colleagues used mostly plastics and other synthetics to stabilize objects in new subtle ways so that a repair can be seen on close examination. They fix breaks in wicker baskets and quill work with Tyvek, a paperlike substance used in envelopes that does not tear, and they patch moccasins with Polar Fleece, the synthetic popularized in ski wear."

Return of Indian Remains Delayed

"Return of Indian remains delayed" was the headline for Dennis O'Brien's January 4 story in the Baltimore Sun.

Dateline: Washington. The story: "In cavernous storage rooms closed to tourists at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History lie the bones of about 14,700 Native Americans.

"Despite hopes that they would be quickly returned to tribal lands, most are likely to stay where they are for a long time.

"Laws passed in 1989 and 1990 require the Smithsonian and other museums to inventory their collections of Native American remains and return them when possible.

"Less than 20 percent of the Smithsonian's original collection of 18,000 remains has been returned an additional 90,000 sets of remains in the nation's other museums lack sufficient documentation to ensure their return anytime soon.

"The problem is that repatriating remains can take years because of scientific uncertainty about their origins, the work involved in identifying them and traditions observed by many of the 770 federally recognized tribes.

"'When these laws were passed, people pushing them thought it was going to take five years to return what was collected, but they had no idea what they were asking. It's an incredibly complex task,' said Thomas Killion, an anthropology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who formerly headed the Smithsonian's repatriation office.

"The Smithsonian, which has the largest single collection of bones by far, spends $1 million a year and has 15 anthropologists and researchers poring over the bones in an effort to return them to their descendants.

"But it isn't enough to ensure quick returns.

"'I think the process is going to take a very long time,' said William Billeck, head of the Smithsonian's repatriation office.

"The bones at the Smithsonian and other museums were unearthed over the years by archaeologists, private collectors, government expeditions, construction workers and farmers. During the 1800s, for example, Army physicians were under orders to ship east for study any Native American skulls they found.

"Many tribal officials say they understand why repatriation takes so long. But they're still angry that the bones were dug up and stored in the first place.

"'They should have just been left where they were. It's very dehumanizing,' said Francis Morris, the Pawnee tribe's repatriation coordinator.

"The 380 museums, historical societies and federal agencies covered by the repatriation law have 27,312 sets of remains available for repatriation. But an additional 90,833 remain unidentified because of poor documentation about where and when they were found, and they may never be returned.

"Confirming the tribal affiliation of a set of bones is a painstaking process. First, researchers must check any written records accompanying the remains, often notes from archeologists or Army officers, Billeck said. If they're too vague, scientists turn to ancient maps, letters and colonial records that describe fluid tribal boundaries. "'The remains can be straightforward or next to impossible to identify,' he said.

"For example, Billeck's recent search for Kiowa remains began with an examination of a set of bones from South Dakota that Army officers originally sent to the Army Medical Museum in 1860. The remains were labeled Kiowa, but based on where they were found, the shape of the skull and other historical data, they turned out to be Sioux.

"'There's no way of knowing what you have until you get into working with it,' he said.

The Smithsonian gets two to three formal requests from tribes each year, and each takes two to three years to complete, Billeck said.

"But the Smithsonian can move quickly on high-profile cases. Consider the case of Ishi, a California native known as the last "wild Indian" who died in 1916. When Ishi's brain was discovered at the Smithsonian in 1999, the story attracted national press, and politicians demanded its return to California soil.

"'We were getting letters from politicians, people like (California Lt. Gov.) Cruz Bustamante and Senator (Dianne) Feinstein. It was given a top priority,' said Killion, who worked on the Ishi repatriation. It took only a month for the Smithsonian to recommend that Ishi's brain be returned, Killion said.

"Experts say the slow pace is not the Smithsonian's fault. Many Native groups don't want the remains, while others need time to plan for repatriation ceremonies and burials.

"The deeply spiritual Navajo, the largest tribe in the United States, traditionally avoid contact with human remains and don't want theirs back. Nor do the Zuni, also of the Southwest, who believe remains are desecrated once dug up.

"For others, repatriation requires unaccustomed preparation. The fate of Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old skeleton scattered in pieces along the Columbia River in Washington, has been tied up in the courts since it was found in 1996. Native tribes want the skeleton reburied, while scientists want to keep it for research.

"'Kennewick is one of 15 or so sets of remains that date back 8,000 years or so and hopefully can tell us something about the earliest Americans,' said Jantz, one of eight scientists suing for access to the skeleton.

"Some researchers argue that wholesale repatriation is a mistake. 'The risk is that a source of scientific inquiry is going to be lost,' said Christopher Ruff, an anatomy professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School."

Heard at the Super Bowl of Antiques Shows

From Roberta Smith's January 16 New York Times write-up of the Winter Antiques Show in New York (which was described by the Times the day before as "the Super Bowl of Antiques Shows") :

"I could spend most of the fair studying. the pre-Columbian material at Throckmorton."

Fall_2004

Some Reflections on NAGPRA

ATADA Member Ron McCoy's view of a controversial and troublesome topic

Back in 1990, the U. S. Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Now, fourteen years later, it's possible to look back and reflect on the law, some of its effects and implications. As the "Legal Briefs" columnist for American Indian Art Magazine for the past thirteen years, I've had an opportunity to become acquainted with NAGPRA. (I need to make it clear at the outset that I'm not an attorney, and anyone in need of legal or financial advice should consult a professional.)

NAGPRA frequently finds a place in the "Legal Briefs" columns because of the many ways it affects the American Indian art world's collectors, curators, and dealers. After observing NAGPRA's implementation and enforcement for some time now I can report that while some of its provisions come across to me personally as long overdue, other features strike me as maddeningly confusing and bewildering illogical.

The basic thrust of NAGPRA concerns the repatriation to lineal descendants and "culturally affiliated" tribes (and Native Hawaiian organizations) of certain American Indian (and Hawaiian) objects held by museums or federal agencies. To qualify for return to the tribal milieu, the item(s) in question must fall into one or more of the categories embraced by the general heading of "cultural items." These categories are: "human remains," "associated funerary objects," "unassociated funerary objects," "sacred objects," and "objects of cultural patrimony."

The NAGPRA repatriation process is outlined on the Internet at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM. When repatriation is slated to take place, a notice of intent to repatriate is published in the Federal Register (accessible from 1994 to the present at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html). The notice identifies the object or objects, specifies the applicable NAGPRA category or categories, indicates the intended recipient or recipients, and invites anyone with a competing claim to come forward.

Between March 15, 1993 and September 14, 2004, no fewer than 295 notices of intent to repatriate appeared in the Federal Register. Nearly all-with the exception of some minor corrections and a few Hawaiian claims-pertained to American Indian objects.

The National NAGPRA program of U. S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service maintains an extremely informative website on the Internet which can be accessed at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/INDEX.HTM. Twice a year, the National NAGPRA program assembles statistics relating to the law's application as represented by the human remains and objects detailed in the repatriation notices that appear in the Federal Register. The numbers, updated on April 1, 2004:

I think the repatriation of human remains to the tribes to which the individuals belonged is a good thing. Nor do I see any problem inherent in the return of associated and unassociated funerary objects (the large number of items in these categories in the list above includes such relics as fragments of pottery and thousands of individual beads). But problems do arise, at least in my mind, when the focus shifts to pieces that fall into two NAGPRA categories: "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony."

I am not opposed to the repatriation of many of the pieces included in the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" categories. In fact, I believe strong and persuasive cases can (and have) been made that many of the items described in the notices as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" were correctly categorized. After all, some NAGPRA claims involve materials of American Indian origin which museums routinely categorize as "specimens," collectors typically view as "art," and tribal people see as a living part of their heritage. As a result, the possibilities for unrelieved rancor seem endless, with repatriation claims ranging from fairly straightforward, open-and-shut affairs to wildly complicated, hotly disputed, and occasionally rancorous controversies. (As ATADA members know, there is information floating around that some repatriated objects have reappeared in the Indian art marketplace until people come forward and set out the specifics, that information must remain anecdotal.) I believe, for example, a compelling argument can be made for the return of such objects as Zuni Ahayu:da, or War God carvings.

But the arguments for repatriation in some instances do not strike me as particularly compelling.

A May 24, 1996 NAGPRA notice dealt with "one hide pollen bag, three stone fetishes, one velvet fetish cover, two projectile points, one crystal, a fossilized shell, a pipe, two prayer stones, two polish stones, a pair of prayer sticks, two stone figures bundled with yarn and feathers attached, and a coiled basket." These were used during a Navajo Nightway chant conducted in 1925 for Ramon Hubbell, son of pioneering trader Don Lorenzo Hubbell who set himself up at his now famous Ganado, Arizona trading post in 1878. One is probably on safe ground in assuming that the Navajo singer, or medicine man, who conducted the ritual gave these objects to Ramon Hubbell. Four decades later, Hubbell's estate donated these objects to the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site which the National Park Service manages at Ganado. Another three decades went by, and then Sherwin Curley, Ramon Hubbell's grandson, "identified the items as necessary for the continued practice of traditional Navajo religion by present-day adherents"- close to three-quarters of a century after Hubbell's Nightway ceremony. The Park Service agreed that the Hubbell donation qualified for inclusion in NAGPRA's "sacred objects" category and announced its intention to turn them over to Sherwin Curley.

A March 4, 1997 notice pertained to material housed at Harvard University's Fruitlands Museums. Arvol Looking Horse of Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota, identified eleven pipes, nine wooden stems, six buckskin pipe bags, a pair of wooden pipe tampers, four rawhide rattles, two eagle bone whistles, and a shield (decorated with rawhide webbing, golden eagle feathers, locks of horsehair and gray fur) as "needed by traditional Lakota religious leaders for the practice of traditional Lakota religion by present-day adherents." Looking Horse is described on the website of the Wolakota Foundation (http://www.wolakota.org/menu.html), for which he is a board member, as "the 19th Generation Keeper of the Tradition of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe" and "Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe for the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nations." According to the repatriation notice, tribal representatives from Cheyenne River took the historically dubious position that all of the objects "were not and are not considered 'personal property' but belong to the Lakota People as a whole." Then, too, Arvol Looking Horse explained that the objects "spoke to him and asked to be brought back to the Lakota Nation." The museum believed "many of these items could have been made for sale." However, "the spirit of [NAGPRA] takes precedence over concerns for title" and it was agreed that the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" should be repatriated.

Earlier that year (January 16, 1997) another NAGPRA repatriation notice mentioned Arvol Looking Horse. This one pertained to a buffalo scrotum rattle with a wooden handle donated to the South Dakota State Historical Society in 1906 by Mary C. Collins, a Christian missionary who left Illinois in 1875 and began working at South Dakota's Oahe Mission near Cheyenne River Reservation ten years later, she moved to Standing Rock Reservation, where she remained for a quarter-century. At some point, according to the notice, Collins "identified the rattle as having belonged to 'Elk Head, 9th keeper of the sacred pipe.'" Nearly a century after Collins' donation, Arvol Looking Horse, Elk Head's great-great-great grandson, "identified this rattle as a specific ceremonial object needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religion by present-day adherents and has requested the rattle be returned to him as lineal descendent." On March 6, 1997, according to information at a website maintained by the South Dakota State Historical Society (http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/mus_nagp.htm), the institution "carried out its first repatriation, returning a medicine man's rattle to Arvol Looking Horse of Green Grass, South Dakota. Looking Horse believes that the rattle came from Elk Head's personal medicine bundle" (emphasis added).

In a NAGPRA repatriation notice that appeared in the Federal Register on January 12, 1998, the Oklahoma Historical Society agreed that a pipe should be turned over to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana because it qualified as "sacred object" and "object of cultural patrimony." The notice described the pipe as consisting of an "unworked tubular L-shaped catlinite bowl and wooden stem. The stem is carved in alternating spiral and disc shapes, and the spiral sections have yellow, blue, and red paints applied." The pipe, donated to the historical society in either 1914 or 1928, enjoys (as is so often the case) a murky provenance, although it was apparently obtained from the Southern Cheyenne chief Burnt-All-Over (1837-1917) in 1911. Cheyenne claimants maintained the pipe was removed from the tribe's Sacred Buffalo Hat bundle around 1870. "No information is known by the Oklahoma Historical Society or has been presented by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana regarding the pipe's possession by Burnt-All-Over," the notice reported. Instead, the repatriation was evidently based solely on oral tradition.

This is interesting, especially in light of the decision recently rendered in the Kennewick Man case.

"Kennewick Man" is the name bestowed upon the 9300 year-old skeleton of an adult male retrieved from the Columbia River at Kennewick, Washington in 1996. (Readers may immerse themselves in Kennewick Man matters at the excellent website maintained by the Tri-City Herald, a newspaper that has covered the subject since the initial discovery, at http://www.kennewick-man.com/.) Found on land under the control of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man quickly emerged as bones of contention between scientists who wanted to study the remains and local Indian tribes that wanted the skeleton of the individual they called "Ancient One" repatriated under NAGPRA and reburied. In the ensuing litigation, the scientists became plaintiffs, while the tribes and federal government took on the role of defendants.

For nearly eight years, the case known as Bonnichsen v. United States worked it way through the federal court system. Then, on February 4, 2004, the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in favor of the scientists which the tribes and federal government declined to pursue farther up the line to the U. S. Supreme Court. (The Court's decision can be found at http://www.tri-cityherald.com/images/kennman/0235994.pdf or http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/.)

The Kennewick Man case is unusual on a number of counts, one of the most important being the age of the bones and the Court of Appeals' skepticism about linking four-hundred-year-old remains to a present-day Indian tribe. What is of interest within the context of the present essay is the Court's evaluation of the evidentiary value of oral tradition (the basis for many NAGPRA claims based on items' status as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony"). The Court did not dismiss tribal oral traditions out of hand. It did, however, caution that they are linked to some inherent limitations. Among these is their potential to "change relatively quickly."

Along this line, consider a significant shift in oral tradition transmitted by Oglala Lakota visionary Black Elk (1860-1950), whose words are preserved in John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (first published 1932 and currently available from the University of Nebraska Press and at http://faculty.smu.edu/twalker/blckelk4) and The Sacred Pipe (1953) edited by Joseph E. Brown.

In December 1944, Black Elk spoke to Neihardt about the Lakota practice of victorious warriors painting their faces black. The transcript of an interview he gave in December 1944 reads: "I [would] like to know why they [warriors returning victorious] paint their faces black when they bring a scalp or stole some horses. The relatives at home would paint their faces black and then dance. When we whip Germany, we will all paint our faces." (Source: The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt [University of Nebraska Press, 1984], edited by Raymond J. DeMallie, page 317.) Yet he would later tell Joseph E. Brown that Lakota warriors painted their faces black on coming home from war because "by going on the warpath, we know that we have done something bad, and we wish to hide our faces from Wakan Tanka [the Great Spirit]." (Source: The Sacred Pipe, page 92, note 4.)

I am not sure NAGPRA was intended to introduce an uncritical reliance on oral tradition into the repatriation process. Nor am I persuaded that spiritual forces emanating from objects, communicating only to a claimant, are the stuff of adequate proof of ownership. (Indeed, I'm not sure spectral evidence obtained from visions and dreams has been a feature of legal processes in this country since the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.)

I believe dealers, collectors, and curators ought to steer clear of messing about with sacred material. American Indian religions are alive and well, not artifacts of a forgotten past, and should be accorded the same degree of respect that should ideally be extended to all faiths. That said, I also do not believe that every object ever obtained from the nation's tribal milieux is inherently a "sacred object" or "object of cultural patrimony."

Unfortunately, I can offer no solution to remedy the situation. Although I suggest these positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that many of us-dealers, collectors, curators, historians, anthropologists, and the members of tribes-could do worse than attempt to wrap our minds around these concepts and engage in constructive dialogue.

Ron McCoy is a professor of history at Emporia State University in Kansas. He does not offer legal advice, and anyone in need of such advice should consult a professional.

NAGPRA: The Real Problem

A letter to the editor of Tribal Art magazine published in the Summer, 2004 issue from ATADA board member Bob Gallegos entitled "NAGPRA: the Real Problem"

Most collectors and dealers of my acquaintance believe that the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) by the United States government was long overdue. It corrected a racist policy against Native Americans by protecting their burials, returning respect to their communities, and creating awareness of the ongoing importance of sacred and cultural objects. The legislation allows Native Americans to repatriate from federally funded agencies and museums objects that meet the definitions of the statute. While some have argued that it goes too far (and others not far enough), the intent of NAGPRA is to reverse, to some degree, the acculturation policies of the US government spanning nearly two centuries, which allowed tens of thousands of vital cultural objects to leave Native communities, which themselves were encouraged and sometimes forced to abandon their customs and religion. In its original language, the legislation only applies to the private sector if an object is "found or discovered" on federal or tribal land after the date of enactment on November 16, 1990.

A problem is created when attempts are made to restrict trade in objects acquired privately before 1990. Legal precedent is being set in which plea bargains are bringing NAGPRA into cases unrelated to the principles of the legislation. The recent convictions of Joshua Baer (see TRIBALarts, Spring 2003) and Tommy Cavaliere, both of Santa Fe, New Mexico, are examples of NAGPRA convictions that are being obtained in return for lesser punishments on Migratory Bird Treaty Act violations. This is a very dangerous precedent, since it potentially sets the stage for all similar items to be restricted and subject to seizure, even if they had been purchased legally before 1990 and are no longer in use by any practitioner. The scope of this problem is global. Clearly the primary impact of such misguided prosecution is within the United States, but it stands to restrict the world market if Native American material becomes more difficult to source.

Such abuse of the intent of the legislation is doubly disturbing given the specificity of its application in true NAGPRA cases. The notable "Kennewick Man" decision is a good example of this. These 9,300-year-old skeletal remains were found in 1996 under Lake Wallula, a section of Columbia River held behind McNary Dam in Kennewick, southeastern Washington. This was a grave find that was also on federal land, and claims were filed by Indian leaders concerned about the violation and disinterment, and by members of the scientific community, who saw a unique opportunity to study the earliest known inhabitant of the region. Interestingly, the Asutru Folk Assembly, a traditional European religious group, also weighed in. After a heated legal battle, in February 2004, a three-judge panel on the Ninth US District Court of Appeals found in agreement with lower courts that no clear tie could be made to an existing Native American group, and therefore NAGPRA restrictions did not apply.

As a representative of the Antique Tribal Arts Dealers Association (ATADA), I was invited to testify before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Senate about the definitions and wording of NAGPRA. I feel strongly that future NAGPRA convictions must satisfy the courts that the objects in question were obtained after the date of enactment, that they were found on tribal or federal land, and that they were being used in ongoing ceremonies by current tribal religious elders or were associated with burials related to an identifiable group. Such objects of cultural patrimony must have ongoing cultural importance to the tribe, rather than being simply property owned by a tribal member. Similar objects legally acquired before enactment are not and should not be subject to NAGPRA, especially by precedent set by plea bargaining. To do so denigrates the intent of what we had hoped would be a beneficial and fair law.

In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait

In a front page story in The New York Times on July 1, the headline for Kirk Johnson's story read "In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait."

Datelined Horse Canyon, Utah, the story began," Archaeologists pulled aside a curtain on Wednesday to reveal what can only be called a secret garden: the pristinely preserved ruins of an ancient civilization that was long ago lost to the mists of time in the remote cliffs of eastern Utah, then resolutely protected over the last 50 years by a stubborn local rancher who kept mum about what he knew.

"The ruins, called Range Creek, are spread over thousands of acres, much of it in inaccessible back country and reachable only through a single-track dirt road once owned by the rancher and recently bought by the State of Utah. Preliminary research dates the settlement from about A. D.. 900 to 1100, during the period of the Fremont Indian culture.

"Researchers say the site's singularity is not its monumental architecture. The people who lived here were more apt to build humble single-family stone-walled pit houses, of which there are believed to be hundreds - no one even knows yet - rather than high-rise cliffside apartment complexes like Mesa Verde in Colorado.

"What mostly distinguishes Range Creek is that through quirk of fate and human will, it escaped both the ravages of looters and, until recently, the spades of archaeologists. Cliffside grain-storage vaults have been found here with their lids still intact, the corn and rye still inside. And while many sites in the West can still produce an old stone arrowhead or two, researchers found whole arrows here just a few weeks ago, apparently lying in the dust just where they were dropped 10 centuries ago at the time of William the Conqueror.

"'There are places with concentrations of this magnitude,' said Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist, who led a group of journalists to the site on Wednesday. 'The difference is that this place hasn't been wrecked.'

"Dr. Jones said that, so far, 225 sites at Range Creek have been documented, some as small as a single wall of pictographs, others as large as a village cluster of a half-dozen dugout pit houses. Twenty of the sites were documented in the 1930s -- the only other scientific work here that anyone knows about -- by a team from Harvard University. After the initial examination, no further research was done at the site as far anyone knows, Dr. Jones said.

"'The other 200 sites have never been seen by anybody,' Dr. Jones said, adding that there are unquestionably thousands of sites, and that every time a team goes out, still more are found. The Fremont culture existed from about A. D.. 500 to 1300.

"Two reasons account for Range Creek's existence and preservation, he and other researchers say. The first is geography. The land chosen by the ancient people who lived here is reachable only through a steep narrow walled canyon that could be easily defended from intruders. The Fremont people then built many of their homes and their granaries in the most remote parts of the remote canyon, on the summits of ridge lines and high on the sheer faces of cliffs, where they were not likely to be disturbed.

"The second and far more serendipitous reason for the site's preservation is that in 1951 a man named Waldo Wilcox bought the 4,200-acre ranch at the end of that canyon and prohibited anyone from entering.

"'I tried to keep people from knowing about it,' Mr. Wilcox, 74, said.

"Mr. Wilcox said he knew that the historical treasures that were underfoot and on the cliff walls above where his cattle grazed were important. Over the years, he became the valley's foremost expert.

"About 15 years ago, for example, he was chasing a mountain lion that had been bothering his cattle. The lion went up the mountainside and up went Mr. Wilcox in hot pursuit. Once at the top -- a spot he could not have seen from the valley floor -- he stumbled on one of the most perfectly preserved sites of all, a tiny cliff-top village that he has since pointed out to the researchers. He said he has no desire to climb to it again.

"'These places were secure because nobody in his right mind would go up there,' he said.

"The great debate about Range Creek is not the record of the past, however, but the great risk of the future, and what the breaking of the long secret will mean for the valley's preservation.

"Mr. Wilcox sold the ranch to the Trust for Public Land in 2001 for $2.5 million, but officials at the trust kept quiet. The Federal Bureau of Land Management then acquired the land from the trust and kept quiet. The State of Utah obtained title earlier this year and had been delaying an announcement until a management plan was in place to protect the grounds from looters. That strategy was shattered last week when a local paper in southern Utah broke the story, which was then picked up by The Associated Press. That led to the invitation to the news media from around the country for the valley's unveiling.

"'We're rolling with it,' Dr. Jones said.

"He said that the state wanted people to be able to experience Range Creek, but that he also had an obligation to protect it. Among the options under consideration, he said, include opening the site on only certain days of the year, or through prior permits, or only with a guide.

"Environmentalists are also looking closely at what might happen next to the lands around Range Creek, which include areas under consideration for federal wilderness designation.

"'It raises a complicated management issue, especially when you have a place like this that is so special, so unique and so vulnerable,' said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit conservation group in Salt Lake City. 'The best way to preserve these places is to preserve their remoteness.'

"Some people working at the site, however, are deeply pessimistic that it can be protected in the same way that nature and Mr. Wilcox preserved it.

"Hikers have been seen in the canyon in the last few days -- an extremely rare site out here -- and some artifacts that were on the ground, ready for cataloging, were later found missing. Looting and vandalism are common in many of the cliff dwellings on public lands east of here.

"'I'm unbelievably worried,' said Joel Boomgarden, a graduate student in archaeology at the University of Utah who began working at the site last year. 'I just feel it's going to happen here, too. It's inevitable.' "

Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins

In a follow-up to the July 1 story, Mindy Sink's New York Times story on July 4 was headlined, "Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins."

"As archaeologists study a long-secret site of ancient ruins in eastern Utah," the story began, "some tribal leaders are asking why they were not notified sooner and if their cultural and religious beliefs will be respected as the site is excavated and human remains are found.

"The Range Creek area was kept private and secret until recently, when a rancher sold his land to the State of Utah and a local newspaper ran an article about the ranch and its trove of artifacts, believed to have been left by the Fremont people hundreds to thousands of years ago.

"Included in news of the various arrows, pottery shards, cliff dwellings and pictographs discovered there were revelations about human remains - some slightly exposed by erosion. For some American Indians, an excavation of these remains can be considered a desecration of the graves of their ancestors.

"'Out of respect for our ancestors, I think the tribes should be given a chance to go in and pray,' said Patty Timbimboo-Madsen, cultural resources manager for the Northwest Shoshone Tribe of Utah and chairwoman of the state's Native American Remains Review Committee.

"Lora E. Tom, a chairwoman of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah in Cedar City, said any skeletons and sacred or funerary objects found with them should be 'put back in the earth' or remain buried and untouched.

"Although Ms. Timbimboo-Madsen and other tribal officials said they only learned of the Range Creek area through the news media two weeks ago, an assistant state archaeologist, Ron Rood, said he was under the impression that his boss, Kevin Jones, the state archaeologist, had informed the Utah Division of Indian Affairs about the site 'over a year ago.' Dr. Jones could not be reached on Friday, nor could Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

"Duncan Metcalfe, the curator of archaeology at the Utah Museum of Natural History who is also working at the research site, also said it was his understanding that the information was presented to the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. 'I'm sure Native Americans will be involved in the management plan of the area,' Mr. Metcalfe said. 'We don't even know what we have here yet.'

"The ranch was first sold for $2.5 million in 2001 to the Trust for Public Land before being acquired by the Bureau of Land Management. The title for the land was transferred to the State of Utah this year, and work has been going on for months at Range Creek.

"Under state and federal laws, when human remains are disturbed or are being excavated, and if a tribe can prove an affiliation with the remains, it can decide if they should be studied or reburied.

"Mr. Rood said it was preferable to identify remains and leave them alone. 'Our preference is not to excavate human remains,' he said. 'I don't like the idea of having to disturb somebody's final resting place.'

"It is not known how many remains exist at Range Creek. It also is not clear if any link between the Fremont people and any modern tribes could be made with such old remains.

"'I think it's a matter of control over the remains as much as a control over religion,' said Keith Kintigh, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University. 'I think Indians have felt, and rightly so, that control over their ancestors and the places their ancestors lived were taken away from them.'

"Ms. Tom said it would have been better for the tribes to be involved at the site since its discovery, but now a ceremony was important. 'We want to pray for the area since they are disturbing it,' she said, 'and pray for who is there.' "

What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany

"What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany" was the headline of Tom l. Freundenheim's story in The Wall Street Journal on July 8.

Datelined Berlin, the story began: "It's difficult not to catch the excitement surrounding September's opening of the Smithsonian's national Museum of the American Indian. For one thing, the imposing building occupies the so-called "last spot on the Mall" - facing the Capitol and across from I. M. Pei's National Gallery East Building - in a way that is both felicitous (melding elegant sculptural forms that echo nearby buildings) and jarring (its warm, beige-colored stone contrasts with an excess of official cold, white marble elsewhere). The new museum will be a monument for far more than its structural qualities, however, since it will house the world's largest collection of Native American artifacts, a collection that will essentially be interpreted by Native Americans themselves.

"At the same time, it's sobering to be reminded that some of the greatest holdings of Native American artifacts dwell, much admire, in European museums, especially those of Vienna and Berlin, and have for some time. Vienna Museum of Ethnography (Museum fur Volkerkunde) collections, which range from the Northwest Coast and South America to Hawaii, trace their origins to 1806. Some of the material was collected during Captain Cook's search for the Northwest Passage in 1778-79, and subsequently purchased at the London auction of Parkinson's Museum, thanks to the impetus of Emperor Franz I. The expanding European fascination with ethnology reflected the waning Age of Enlightenment and its interest in the exotic peoples of far away lands (often colonies). American Indian culture and its artifacts made a perfect fit. But the Vienna museum recently closed for renovations, and will not open until 2006, at which time we can anticipate impressive new installations.

"Those of Berlin's museums in suburban Dahlem have recently been reorganized - in line with the general reorganization of the reunited city over the past decade. Reflecting recent intellectual shifts from exoticism to multiculturalism, Berlin's North American Indian exhibition may seem almost too politically correct yet it provides an excellent and concise review of topics that are likely to be handled in greater depth in Washington.

"Entitled 'From Myth to Modernity,' the exhibition at Berlin's Museum of Ethnology is not especially large (500 to 600 objects) and yet covers an enormous amount of important ground. The display highlights some breathtaking objects, of which my favorite is a seductive buffalo-skin robe from about 1830 painted with hunting scenes that was brought back (with much else) by Prince Maximilian zu Wied from his 1832-34 research trip in northern Missouri territory, with the painter Karl Bodmer. Many of these artifacts were subsequently acquired by the Prussian royal collections in 1844. Here are splendid older Northwest Coast masks, as well as a majestic recent (1985) adaptation of a traditional Kwakiutl mask by Calvin Hunt. The exhibition's thematic program also thoughtfully handles potentially awkward issues such as 'the Indian stereotype' and 'the White Man in Indian humor.' The wall texts are fairly matter-of-fact (some, but not all, with English translations), reflecting the positive side of what can sometimes be overly detached dry German scholarship and avoiding much of the political rhetoric that often now infuses such texts in renovated American exhibitions. And perhaps most impressively, the exhibition ends with a stunning display of contemporary Native American art, such as notable artist Allan Houser's poignant 'Medicine Man." Lawrence Paul fuses the forms and colors of his Northwest Coast tradition to create an abstract painting that plays at the edges of Kandinsky's lyrical works of 1912-14. Moreover, these many works have been acquired by the museum they are not some sort of symbolic loan collection.

"In this reinstallation of the Native American collection, there is a sense of commitment to address the objects for their beauty, for the stories they tell, and for their complex cultural readings from which our own museums could learn a bit. That should come as no surprise to those who remember that the German writer Karl May (1942-1912) and his 60 Western novels have sold in the multiple millions over the years and prior to the advent of the Western in film had a significant influence on how all Europeans perceived and mythologized the American West. Not surprisingly, May's depiction of the West wasn't all that different from the imaginary Cowboys-and-Indians world of Americans. This, too, is intelligently reprised in the Berlin museum, along with wall texts giving historical overview of the collections.

"The North American Indian collection in Berlin was begun in 1819, and by 1940 numbered over 30,000 objects. Before September, when we commence a season of self-congratulation on how we've finally gotten it right insofar as American Indians and their art are concerned, a visit to Berlin might make us feel less smug."

A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them

In an August 19 story, Elizabeth Olsen also wrote about the new museum in a New York Times story headlined "A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them."

Datelined Washington, the story began, "A century ago George Gustav Heye, a New Yorker, traveled across the United States, gathering up Indian objects by the boxcar. All told, he amassed 800,000 examples of Indian art and life, which will have a new home at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which opens here on Sept. 21.

"Unlike the impoverished Indians who happily sold Heye, a wealthy oil heir, their tribal treasures and sometimes their dregs, today's Indians see these same objects as an opportunity to tell their story - their way.

"Long before construction began on the museum's curvy, buff-colored limestone-clad building on the National Mall, W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who has steered the museum's plans since 1990, began asking native tribes what they wanted in a museum in the nation's capital.

"What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture that was represented in Heye's collection. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible.

"'This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture,' said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, 'not something in museums or in history books.'

"So the new museum will mark its presence not only with a bumpy-looking facade at odds with those of its stately white marble neighbors, but also with a distinctly different operating philosophy that allows tribes continuing access to both the objects on display and those in storage at a suburban Maryland preservation center.

"'Every piece is considered a living being,' explained Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural resources. 'These pieces are not seen just as specimens or artifacts.'

"So when the Mechoopda, of central California, discovered that the museum's collection had a shirt used in a tribal dance that had not been performed since 1906,l they asked to borrow it. Mr. Bernstein then carried the buckskin shirt, with a fringe of acorns, pine nut beads and feathers, across the country for tribal members to use as a model to make new shirts for a revival of the dance.

"As part of its commitment to Indian tribes (dozens collaborated extensively on its exhibits), the museum is allowing them to commune with their objects. Mr. Bernstein said much of the access would be after hours, but he added that spontaneous ceremonies or offerings to sacred objects would also be welcome and that the staff had been trained to deal with them.

"The tribes' spiritual needs, including the blessings of objects in the museum and traditional offerings of braids of sweet grass, feathers or sage brush, would be accommodated both at the building's inaugural and afterward, museum officials said. Tribes like the Santa Clara of New Mexico would also be able, for example, to sprinkle cornmeal around their objects to maintain their tribal custom of " feeding and nourishing" them, Mr. Bernstein said.

"A century after Heye's forays, American Indians have the resources to ensure their vision of a national museum serving the estimated 30 million to 40 million native peoples in the Western Hemisphere. American tribes gave more than one-third of the $100 million in private funds that Congress, which authorized the museum in 1989, required to be raised. Federal money paid for the rest of the $219 million project.

"Three tribes that operate casinos donated $10 million each: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which operates the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut the Mohegan Tribe, which operates another Connecticut gaming operation and the Oneida in New York. Over all, nearly two dozen tribes and tribal corporations formed by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act contributed.(Four other tribes are now operating the only tribally owned enterprise in Washington: a Residence Inn, intended to cater to American Indian visitors, that they built a few blocks from the museum, also using gambling proceeds.)

"Financing the museum is seen 'as a huge accomplishment,' said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest group representing the nearly 600 state and federally recognized tribes. 'Because a lot of tribes felt they were contributing for all of Indian country.'

"The money also helps offset complaints about Indian casinos. Questions about tribal gaming now 'overshadow almost everything else about us,' acknowledged Ms. Mankiller, who also served on the museum's advisory fund-raising committee.

"American Indians have a chance to move beyond such stereotypes, she said, because the museum 'is about our culture and art, and where our future is.'

"To keep Indian traditions and culture more visible, the museum, with its smaller sister institution, the National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in lower Manhattan, plans traveling exhibitions that will circulate Indian art and cultural objects around the country. It is also training smaller museums' staff to mount shows of Indian art and culture. The museum plans to have performances by Indian boat builders from Hawaii and Alaska as well as artisans, dancers and storytellers to help museumgoers (officials expect nearly four million annually) to understand contemporary Indian life.

"The efforts to accommodate tribal sensibilities are visible even before entering the museum, located on a four-acre tract next to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. With 150 species of American trees and shrubs, the museum's grounds include a wetlands area, a planting of native crops (with corn and tobacco) and huge boulders from Canada.

"Its entrance faces east, in deference to native tradition (it is desirable to face the rising sun) and is opposite the Capitol building. The five-story-high entrance has an electronic welcome board in hundreds of native languages, and a circular maple wood floor for dancing and other celebrations. A woven copper screen designed in a basket pattern rims the area, and sun symbols are etched on the doors. American woods, Canadian granite and Minnesota limestone are used both inside and outside.

"More than 12,000 Indians from tribes across the hemisphere are expected to attend the opening, which will be followed by a weeklong First Americans Festival to celebrate what Mr. West called "the most remarkable assemblage of cultural patrimony of the first citizens of the Americas."

"That patrimony will be displayed in three permanent exhibitions: 'Our Universes,' which examines how Indians thought and lived in the past, as well as now 'Our Peoples,' which features native histories and 'Our Lives,' which looks at tribal identities.

"Among the 7,000 objects in the museum, which has about 10 times the space of the Manhattan location, are beaded moccasins, feathered headdresses, pre-Columbian gold figures, pottery, woven baskets and even a miniature buffalo made 94 years ago for a Lakota child in South Dakota.

"But not only the sunny side of Indian history will be on display. Some of the knottiest topics will be addressed, Mr. West said. The museum, for instance, will include documents that show the habitual breaking of treaties with the Indians - "not one treaty was ever completely honored by the federal government," he said - as well as the efforts to eliminate Indians from this country.

"A major tribal complaint - that collected religious and sacred objects are often used improperly - was addressed by repatriating some 2,000 disputed pieces, Mr. West said. (Heye collected in an era when human remains and funereal objects were often taken along with other artifacts.)

"Heye began what many have described as his collecting mania at the turn of the 20th century, when Theodore Roosevelt was popularizing the American West. While Heye was working as an engineer in Arizona, he came across a Navajo woman chewing the seams of her husband's deerskin shirt to kill the lice. He promptly bought it, then a rattle, moccasins and other Navajo items and started reading about Indians - "rather intensely," as he wrote about it later.

"Heye accumulated his collection over 54 years, acquiring about two-thirds of it in North America. He traveled in Central and South America as well, to include tribes from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. He also crossed the Atlantic many times, returning with crates of American Indian materials that had been exported by European collectors.

"Mr. West said he hoped the museum would achieve 'cultural understanding and reconciliation that has eluded American history from its beginning.' Ms. Johnson, a Tlingit from Alaska, said she agreed. 'But does it resolve our political issues?' she asked. 'Of course not.' "

500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope

"500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope" was the headline for Catherine Elton's August 23 story in The New York Times.

Reporting from Guatemala City, Elton wrote, "Guatemala is known by most of the world for the soaring pyramids of the ancient Maya and the colorful weavings of their contemporary descendants. Folkloric images of the Maya Indians have been used to help attract tourism to a nation that was until eight years ago ravaged by a three-decade civil war. But within Guatemala, the Maya are often treated with no such respect.

"Many Mayan leaders say they are disappointed with the scarce improvements in opportunities for the Maya, who make up roughly half of Guatemala's population and who most keenly suffered the war's wrath.

"But now a traveling exhibition titled 'Why Are We the Way We Are?,' which opened in Guatemala's capital last week and will continue until June of next year, is trying to prompt a long-overdue national dialogue between the country's dominant non-indigenous population and the Maya. Created by the Guatemala-based Center for Mesoamerican Research with the collaboration of some top American museologists, the show has rallied support from business groups, media and government itself, elevating it to nothing less than a national event. At the exhibition's inauguration, Vice President Eduardo Stein of Guatemala hailed it as a 'watershed in history.'

"'The significance of most shows comes from superlatives: the most beautiful Fabergé eggs, the only intact tyrannosaurus rex, the most Monets in one place at a time,' said Jim Volkert, the associate director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, who was a consultant on the exhibition. 'This show isn't that at all. Its significance is that it has the ability to affect the culture of a country, and that is rare in a museum context,' he said.

"Some indigenous activists say the Maya are the victims of a de facto apartheid instigated by Guatemala's non-Maya, while other Guatemalans deny that racism exists. What is certain, however, is that Guatemala is the country with the second-greatest income disparity between rich and poor in Latin America, behind only Brazil, according to the World Bank. And on which side of the divide citizens here find themselves depends largely on whether they are Indian.

"United Nations statistics reveal that for every 10 Guatemalans who live in extreme poverty, seven are indigenous. Guatemala's version of a truth commission, the Historical Clarification Commission, concluded that during the country's armed conflict the vast majority of those who were killed, raped or tortured or who disappeared were Maya Indians. Some 200,000 were killed in the 36-year conflict. The commission also concluded that the military's scorched earth campaign amounted to genocide against the Mayas.

"The show material is based on scholarly research on inter-ethnic relations and feedback from focus groups, and it forms part of a larger educational campaign here devoted to diversity. But for Tani Adams, the show's executive director, an exhibition format was the most logical way to promote a profound reckoning with a social ill that 500 years of history has rendered acceptable and even invisible to much of the population, indigenous and non-indigenous alike.

"'Thousands of thousands of books have been written about this and are clearly not making a difference,' said Ms. Adams, who is also the director of the Center for Mesoamerican Research, which created the show. 'It's not like you read a book and say "I'm never going to be racist again." And I think a lot of training to deal with racism or ethnocentrism basically tells people, "It's bad that you are racist, do something different." But if you don't understand how you inherited these ideas you can't let them go. You need to go through a personal, transformative experience, a disorganizing experience, something that makes you question ideas you have always held unconsciously.'

"Claudio Tam Muro, an Argentine artist and designer, assumed the challenge of producing that experience in a 500-square-foot show that could be packed up on the back of a flatbed and taken to some of the most far-flung parts of the country after its six weeks in the capital. As a result, the show is almost devoid of the objects or artifacts that are the backbone of most museum shows. Rather, it relies on life-size photography (providing some visitors with their first experience of looking eye to eye with an indigenous person), graphics, video, audio, short texts and interactive tools.

"Mr. Muro set out to use different sensory media to communicate the show's message. The result is a roughly hour long zigzagging circuit divided into two sections. The bulk of the first section addresses the historical construction of discrimination. It is careful not to omit mentions of the discrimination that existed in pre-Colombian societies, before moving on to the violence of the Spanish conquest, the segregated society of the colonial years, and the crusade for assimilation during the Republican era. This section is filled with tightly spaced areas whose walls are painted in rich, dark colors. It culminates in a small black space with a low ceiling that produces for the visitor the claustrophobia that Mr. Muro says is 'what discrimination feels like.'

"Afterward the visitor emerges into the second section, which addresses modern-day Guatemalan race relations. It explores stereotypes and their effects the staggering statistics of how the two Guatemalans live and it features testimonies about how many Guatemalans see their identity. In this section the spaces get progressively larger and the colors brighter, while the content becomes a more upbeat message about diversity.

"'The easiest thing to create is a polemic or an exhibit of anger, but that will only work for the committed,' said Elaine Heumann Gurian, former deputy director of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, who was a consultant on the show. 'This exhibit points no fingers,'' she said. 'It says we are all in this together and have to solve it together.'

"The text in the show is spare, understated, almost simple. But the creators hope that conversations and debates will emerge from it. For instance, Juan Luis Hernandez left the exhibition recently with ideas he said he hadn't ever considered. The Maya Indians who crouch over the earth on his father's plantation and the servant who cleans his room are the only indigenous people this 17-year-old has ever talked to. And he admits, he's never even talked much to any of them.

"He said that what struck him most was a video in which an Indian woman 'says that indigenous people do want to be included in society and progress, but don't feel they are allowed to.'

"'I had always thought Indians were poor because they didn't want to get ahead in life,' Mr. Hernandez said, 'but the truth is, I've never asked them what they wanted.' "

Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to Hawaiian group were offered to collectors

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 11: "Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to Hawaiian group were offered to collectors"

Sally Apgar's story began, "Federal agents are investigating the alleged black market trafficking of valuable Hawaiian artifacts that Bishop Museum had turned over to a native Hawaiian group, according to several sources close to the ongoing probe.

"Federal investigators said the artifacts, which include several water gourds, at least one priceless hand-carved bowl and pieces of burial kapa from the well-known J.S. Emerson collection, were secretly offered for sale within the past few weeks to private collectors and at least one antique dealer on the Big Island.

"Federal agents with the U. S. Department of the Interior declined to identify suspects to the Star-Bulletin.

"Over the past seven years, the allegedly stolen artifacts had been repatriated, or legally transferred, to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei. Hui Malama is a native Hawaiian organization founded in 1989 for the purpose of repatriating human remains and other artifacts and reburying them in burial caves in accordance with ancient ancestors.

"The objects from the Bishop Museum had been sold to the museum in the late 1880s by Emerson and repatriated to Hui Malama in 1997. The investigation also includes possible items linked to the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass., that were sold by Emerson in 1907, and repatriated to Hui Malama, with the help of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, in 2003.

"Edward Halealoha Ayau, spokesman for Hui Malama, did not return telephone calls yesterday for comment. In the past, Ayau has said that items repatriated from the museum were sealed and hidden in burial caves.

"The sale of such artifacts is illegal under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which was established so that native Americans and Hawaiians could have a procedure for recovering human remains and sacred objects on display in museums.

"'We are conducting an investigation into the trafficking of Hawaiian artifacts,' confirmed Michael Kingsley, an assistant special agent in charge of the regional office in Sacramento, Calif., for the Interior Department, the federal agency that oversees NAGPRA.

"Kingsley would not name suspects or describe the extent of the black market trafficking.

"'We are conducting an investigation, and we're going to the end of where this investigation takes us,' he said.

"Bishop Museum Director Bill Brown said yesterday, 'This is a critical moment to remember the great significance of Ha