Faithkeeper Oren Lyons stood on the stage of the Everson Museum of Art in 1989, alongside Onondaga Chief Irving Powless Jr. and Tuscarora artist Richard Hill Sr.

They had been battling museums across New York state for decades over wampum belts —indigenous items that document historic events — on displays. And once again, they demanded that the New York State Museum return their belts. Martin Sullivan, director of the museum, at the time, agreed to return them.

Later that year, 12 wampum belts were brought back to the Onondaga Nation, an event that Powless Jr. said would live on for generations to come, according to the nation’s records.

Thirty years later, Lyons, now 89, sat on a wood-planked bench as dozens filed out of the ArtRage Gallery near downtown Syracuse. He thought back to that moment just blocks away, which helped enact a federal law protecting his people’s remains.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, commonly known as NAGPRA, was passed in 1990 and requires federally-funded institutions to disclose and in some cases return indigenous items that are proven to have cultural roots to indigenous nations. This includes wampum belts, human remains and medicine masks.

But since NAGPRA was passed in 1990, not all of these items have been returned. In a series of interviews with The Daily Orange, several Haudenosaunee leaders and legal experts said they have regained most of what they originally sought, but are still trying to identify and reclaim other items of importance.

Earlier in the evening at ArtRage, Lyons stood by a white podium and spoke to dozens of attendees who came to see a photo exhibit chronicling indigenous culture. He reflected on his childhood, growing up on the Onondaga Nation reservation: he spent much of his time hunting and fishing, and stayed outdoors “from sunup to sundown.” He described this time as the best part of his life.

As he approaches 90, Lyons still has concerns about his culture’s future. He went to ArtRage that evening to present a talk called “Disappearing Cultures,” and expressed his fear of the fragility of indigenous history. He called indigenous people “probably the most endangered species in the world today.”

“Very few people know much about it, know much about wampum,” Lyons said. “But we six (Haudenosaunee) nations know on a daily basis.”

Haudenosaunee Nations acquired wampum, a bead made of clam shell, more than 1,000 years ago from indigenous nations near the Atlantic coast, Seneca artist Peter Jemison said. These beads were sewn into belts that served as messages, treaties and historical documentation.

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The parallel lines of thousands of purple and white beads on the “two-row” wampum belt symbolize two cultures going down the river of life without ever interfering with each other.  It commemorates the first contact between Haudenosaunee Nations and the Dutch in the 17th century — a “living treaty” with political relevance, symbolizing two cultures living in harmony.

Later this month, the Onondaga Nation will receive one of the four remaining belts from the New York State Museum. But Joe Heath, the nation’s general counsel, said that items with possible cultural patrimony are still scattered across the country. In Massachusetts, hanging on display at the Peabody Essex Museum. Or sitting in collections at universities, such as Binghamton University or SUNY Oswego. They have found wampum beads on eBay and Sotheby’s, feeding a market of private collectors who are free from the constraints of NAGPRA.

The federal law only applies to items that are identified as being rooted in indigenous nations recognized by the United States government. But many items across the country have little documentation of where they came from, losing cultural identification with certain nations.

Other collectors obscure where they got indigenous items so they won’t be traced back to specific nations, Doug George-Kanentiio, a member of the Mohawk Nation and former trustee at the National Museum of the American Indian, said.

“There seems to be a general reluctance to follow (NAGPRA),” Heath said.

On one mid-February morning, Heath sat in his Jamesville Street office building and looked at the replica two-row belt framed on his conference room wall. He spent more than a decade fighting for single items, often from private collectors and museums whoresisted repatriating items. Two years ago, he facilitated the return of two belts after 15 years of negotiation.

This was nothing new for Heath.

He described his legal career as “long-term.” He doesn’t get tired because Onondaga, the main wampum keeper in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, has remained persistent with museums for the past three decades. He said he will continue his work for as long as he is able to.

“That’s what museums count on,” he said. “They count on people giving up, people not having that perseverance.”

A Haudenosaunee flag is framed on the back wall of a classroom in Eggers Hall. Gabe Stern | Asst. News Editor

Europeans acquired most of the belts in the late 19th and early 20th century. According to indigenous leaders, they took these items in various ways: some would offer poverty-stricken indigenous peoples money, others would ask to borrow them temporarily and not return them and some would take them forcibly.

Other experts said that as indigenous populations declined, some feared that their culture was disappearing, so they loaned many items to the state for safekeeping.

William Fenton, former director of the New York State Museum, contradicted many of these statements. Fenton, now deceased, wrote in a 1971 essay that the beltswere not loaned, but rather put in the state’s trust forever by a resolution of the Onondaga Council. He said it should be a source of pride that these belts are kept in the museum, and that the belts were the museum’s rightful property.

This history, he wrote, was “conveniently forgotten” by indigenous chiefs, the press and New York state’s Legislature.

“Wampum, as represented in these belts, is a post-Columbian phenomenon,” he wrote. “It is a product of the fur trade, and as such it is as American as apple pie, the log cabin, and the splint basket.”

One of the largest collectors of wampum from the early 20th century, George Gustav Heye, eventually started the American Indian Museum in New York City. It is now affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution and called the National Museum of the American Indian.For most of the following century, indigenous members fought for the repatriation of wampum belts.

Smithsonian museums follow the National Museum of the American Indian Act, which has similar requirements to NAGPRA.

Belts were kept in sterile condition and considered priceless to the museum because they could never be replicated, George-Kanentiio said. The Haudenosaunee considered them priceless for a different reason: the artwork represented their identity, he said. He saw wampum belts locked away in glass vaults and compared them to animals being stuck in cages.

“They were never meant to be caged or encased in glass or hidden. They were meant to be used by the people,” George-Kanentiio said. “When you don’t have physical access, you lose something.”

The basis for most museums to exist is to collect, preserve and display items of national interest, he said. Once NAGPRA was passed, collectors obscured how they got items through insufficient records, and George-Kanentiio said he often wondered if this was by design. Still, the National Museum of the American Indian adopted an “aggressive” return policy under the act named for the museum.

When many of the belts were returned, it brought mixed feelings, George-Kanentiio said. No one could read the specific patterns on the belt, and that part of their history was lost, he added.

“These are like long lost blood relatives,” he said.

Multiple institutions that responded to requests from The Daily Orange said they are compliant with NAGPRA and are eager to return items of cultural patrimony.

A spokesman from Binghamton confirmed the university has collections which fall under NAGPRA, and the university has been consulting with Haudenosaunee Nations to repatriate collections. The university is “committed to full and respectful compliance with NAGPRA,” the statement read, and is waiting to hear back from Haudenosaunee leaders.

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Lisa Anderson, NAGPRA coordinator at the New York State Museum, said that the evolving relationship between the museum and Haudenosaunee Nations was a “learning experience.”

A spokesperson from SUNY Oswego said the university was unable to comment on this story.

A representative from the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, which Heath said had NAGPRA-related items, said only federally-recognized tribes determine if items are subject to NAGPRA. The spokesperson did not say if any of the museum’s items had cultural patrimony to Haudenosaunee tribes.

In the past decade and a half, the Haudenosaunee Nation has recovered hundreds of belts, Heath said. But there are still tens of thousands of cultural items — human remains, belts and medicine masks — at institutions nationwide, Heath said.

“Here we are, 29 years after NAGPRA, (and) that work still needs to be done,” he said.

Published on March 7, 2019 at 12:36 am

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326