For a group of people who care so much about heritage, it’s mind-blowing that heritage arguments fall on deaf ears when it comes to Native Americans. The United States has a rich history of treating what remains of the once thriving tribes like unmitigated crap, whether it be through historical means (which require little to no explanation because it’s common knowledge) or through modern acts, like putting a price on the bodies of their ancestors or putting a price on stuff that probably doesn’t belong to the person who claims to own it, despite tribal objections.
The latter is currently going on in Dallas, Texas. Heritage Auctions intends to sell over 100 Native American items, including ceremonial pipes belonging to Oglala Lakota Chiefs Red Cloud and American Horse, over the objections of tribal leaders who have challenged the legitimacy of ownership and have called the auctioneer’s insistence that the sale is valid disrespectful. Attorneys for Heritage Auctions say the company can legally proceed with the sale.
The collection is said to belong to a Mr. Paul Rathbun, who claims his grandparents and great-grandparents gathered the items when his family lived in Pine Ridge, S.D. He further alleges that Chief Red Cloud himself offered Rathbun’s father one of the ceremonial pipes as a gift and that none of the items in his collection “were purchased at a disadvantage or taken” from tribal members.
Some of the items in the auction — weapons — were used during the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, where over 150 Lakota, including men, women, and children, were killed following an attempted disarmament of Lakota members by the United States Army. A scuffle for a gun led to a shot being fired, which led to the United States Army gunning down the Lakota. Survivors fled the area, but the soldiers caught up to and killed them, many of whom were unarmed.
It is illegal to sell Native American ceremonial artifacts, as per the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which stipulates that “cultural items” owned without the right of possession cannot be sold on the market. Trina Lone Hill, the historic preservation officer for the Oglala Sioux tribe, publicly chided of the auctioneers and their intent to go through with the auction. “These are our items, these are our laws,” she said of the items to be auctioned. As for the pipes, Ms. Lone Hill described the sale of them as “taboo,” noting that “the pipe is the most sacred item in [their] whole culture.” In speaking to the Associated Press, Ms. Lone Hill said she found it “insulting“ to auction off weapons from Wounded Knee, noting that Wounded Knee “was a massacre.”
Think of it like someone who had inherited some Nazi-confiscated artwork from their Nazi grandfather (or something like that) and decided to auction it off for profit. The sensible thing to do would be right the wrong and return the artwork to the museum from which it was stolen. Similarly, the sensible thing in this situation would be to return the ceremonial artifacts to the tribe from which they were confiscated, not put them up for auction to turn a profit.
Featured image by US Census, Ruhrfisch, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
h/t Associated Press
