Chicago Museum Returns Indian Remains

After spending decades in storage drawers at Chicago’s Field Museum, the remains of 160 members of the Haida Indian tribe will return to Canada under an agreement the tribe and museum officials signed Friday.

Members of the tribe, who number 6,000 in Canada and the United States, held a ceremony at the museum Friday to reclaim the ancestors who were taken from their graves by anthropologists who believed the Haida would soon vanish.

Though their dances and songs were celebratory, many tribe members expressed sadness at having to wait so long to retrieve their ancestors. 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 one of two Haida villages on British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands.

Anthropologists and collectors, including those from the Field Museum, traveled to the islands more than 100 years ago to dig up remains and artifacts because they thought the Haida were on the brink of extinction.

The last expedition was in 1903. By the turn of the century, smallpox had nearly eliminated the tribe. Once about 10,000 strong, only about 500 Haida remained.

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 learn 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, not bound by federal laws that apply to returning the remains of U.S. tribes, decided to return the 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 believed 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 leave Chicago on Saturday, then will 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.

“I really thank the Field Museum for taking the high road,” said Chief Cheexial, who also goes by the name Roy Jones Jr. “It’s been an incredible, sad experience and a celebration of our history.”