BARRE — Having reached an agreement with the Oglala Lakota Nation in April to return artifacts that had been taken from the site of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, the Barre Museum Association announced this week that the more than 150 artifacts in its possession will be handed over on Nov. 5.
Association President Ann Meilus made the announcement during an event at Woods Memorial Library on Monday, which marked Indigenous Peoples Day.
“We’ve had intensive contact and consultation with the Lakota Sioux tribe,” she said. “Representatives came from Pine Ridge (Reservation) to help us understand the items in our collection. We hired a consultant with experience in that (field) and who guided us through that process.
“Our work with the Lakota people has helped us learn more about the Lakota Sioux tribe and its culture, and more fully appreciate the value of these items to the tribe. We held an informational meeting for our membership during the consultation process and ultimately, on Sept. 29, the membership of the Barre Museum Association unanimously voted to return many items that are culturally significant to the Lakota Sioux tribe, as verified by the tribe.”
When the agreement was announced in April, Lakota Chief Henry Red Cloud, who was in Barre for the signing, said, “I’m really happy today. My spirit is happy. My most inner spirit, which we all carry, each of us — that spirit is very happy within me.”
Meilus said consultations continue. Once they have been completed, she said, the museum will be reorganized and once again open to the public.
In response to a question from someone in the virtual audience for Monday’s event, Meilus said most of the artifacts in the museum’s possession came from a single collector, Frank Root.
“He was a traveling shoe salesman who traveled across the United States during the summer and collected the items,” she said, “and when he returned in the fall, he then went up and down the eastern seaboard with the items. He had a traveling road show which, at that time, was in competition with P.T. Barnum.
“They were on display here in the summer,” Meilus continued. “They eventually wound up as a permanent part of the collection. I don’t believe it’s been determined exactly just how they became a permanent part of the collection.”
When asked what museums across the country should do with Native American artifacts they may have in their collections, Meilus said, “We believe that they need to do the right thing and be sensitive to the Indigenous people and examine how they came into their collection and determine the specific tribes (represented). We have items from over 60 different tribes, I believe.
“The Lakota Sioux have respectfully been requesting the return of these items for a while,” she continued. “The discussions actually started in earnest about a decade ago. However, there have been a number of obstacles or impediments that have arisen over that time that have now finally cleared themselves so that we can make this announcement today.”
“We had interference from third parties that created an atmosphere of distrust,” Barre Museum Association member Maureen Marshall said. “We are a volunteer organization. A number of our volunteers got older and passed away, and it was hard for a lot of the older members to see that they needed to do the right thing. That is not our history of Barre; this is the Lakota Sioux’s history, and we should honor the Lakota Sioux and what they desire.”
Details of the Nov. 5 handover event are still being finalized, but it’s expected part of the day will be open to the public and may include traditional dances and ceremonies. Depending on the weather, some activities are scheduled to take place outside.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.