Monday, Jan. 13, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.
A 1990 federal law is mandating that a University of Nevada, Las Vegas museum return its collection of Indian ceremonial masks to the Hopi Indian tribe that made them.
The Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV must give four kachina masks to the Hopi Tribe under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The act requires any museum receiving federal funding to return "sacred objects" that were used for tribal religious or burial ceremonies.
The four religious artifacts being returned by UNLV is small in comparison to what other museums must give back. Since the passage of the act, museums nationwide have been forced to return thousands of funerary objects, human remains and religious objects to their tribe of origin. Museum curators and collectors say the repatriation of such artifacts represents a scientific and cultural loss. Tribal leaders describe it a return to their ancestral past.
"Museums all over the country are getting hit with this and they are giving up hundreds and hundreds of items in their collections," said Donald Baepler, director of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History. "It is just fortunate that we do not have many of the kinds of masks associated with the Indian burials that they want repatriated."
The kachina masks in UNLV's collection were used for religious rituals. The Hopi, who live in northwest Arizona, believe that the wearer of the mask inherits the spirit of the kachina, or mythological being. A mask can represent the power to bring rain, plentiful crops or prosperity to the village, the Hopi believe.
UNLV officials say the masks have not been appraised, so the value is unknown. It is known that they were made sometime during the 1930s.
Such items were commonly traded for food by the Hopi Indians during the Dust Bowl era. One particular collector came to the Hopi reservation in Arizona during that time carrying sugar, flour and food, and left with seven wagon loads of items, said Dan Wayne, a research assistant at the Hopi Cultural Preservation office in Kykotsmovi, Ariz.
"If (as a Hopi) you wanted to feed your children, you traded these items for food," Wayne said.
Wayne, who is coordinating the repatriation of Hopi artifacts, said he is currently working with 500 museums throughout the country.
"So far, we've received about 200 items," Wayne said. "That's only just a little piece of what we have because the Hopi has the single largest collection of any tribe."
Wayne said the masks will be reintroduced to the next generation of Hopi, but that museums must first find a way to remove pesticides such as arsenic used by curators to preserve the masks.
Museum officials say they have not found a way to remove pesticide residue but are trying to answer the question of how harmful they would be to anyone using the item.
Until the pesticide issue is worked out, UNLV as well as other museums have been asked to take the items off display. No photos of the masks are allowed because Hopi do not want to have private ceremonial items made public.
The absence of so many Native American artifacts from museum collections represents a cultural loss to generations of museum-goers and researchers, collectors and curators say.
The two museums under the Smithsonian Institute are experiencing the largest loss in the country. Between the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American Indians, 3,300 human remains have been marked for return as well as 87,000 archeological objects, said William Billeck, an archeologist working in the National Museum of Natural History's repatriation office.
"Academically, the people in museums recognize this is a loss of scientific value and the loss of a cultural heritage for both Americans as a whole as well as Native Americans," Billeck said. "There's even some debate within some tribes as to whether some of these objects should be returned or reburied."
Billeck said that some tribes are deciding to bury very elaborate beaded gowns and other items while others are either putting some items back into use or preserving the artifacts in their own museums.
The process of returning sacred objects has been a lengthy one. According to the NAGPRA office, museums must first publish a list of items that would be considered sacred in the federal registry. Various tribes then contact the museum and decide how and when they will be returned. A final notice is then sent out showing the intent to repatriate the items, said Paula Molloy, program officer for NAGPRA.
The office has now registered 27,200 human remains, 535,000 funerary objects and 1,085 sacred objects for return. NAGPRA does not keep track of how many of those have returned to their tribe of origin but leaves the negotiations up the the museums and tribes.
Molloy said that while the return of sacred objects seems like a loss, many of the museum officials are reporting that the mandate has spawned more collaboration between the tribes and the museums.
"On its most basic level, this is a return of one's cultural heritage," Molloy said. "But, for the first time museums and agencies are bearing witness to the circumstances under which their own collections were acquired and that's a powerful thing."
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