Museum gives back artifacts to Native Americans

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — In the basement and back rooms of Kingman Museum, the remains of people from long ago wait to return home.

That's the goal of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which became law in 1990. Since then, the museum has been working to return the remains of Native American people and artifacts back to the tribes from which they originated.

It can be a daunting task, correctly identifying and returning such materials for any institution; notices of the remains have to be sent to the relevant tribes and the National Park Service's NAGPRA Program, which then publishes notices for Native American tribes to review to see if there are remains to be repatriated to them.

Kingman is no exception and has been working on becoming fully compliant with NAGPRA while dealing with, they say, understaffing and limited space. That's why the museum has announced an opening for an intern to help with the task of returning a dozen or so items and remains.

"Because of snail mail it takes a little while," Collections Manager Beth Yahne said. "Between that and in 2000, with the museum kind closing down for a couple of years, we tried to pick it back up since the museum's been open. The Internet has made it a little easier."

Western Michigan University Professor of Archaeology Michael Nassaney said the remains would be given to museums with an eye toward scientific study.

"The idea was that these would have some research potential, that they would be studied and so forth, and in some instances they were," he said. "In other instances, they just lay in boxes and bags on museum shelves."

One of the items Kingman would like to return is a mummified human head originating from the Alaskan Tlingit tribe.

Yahne said it was sent to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg from a missionary named Esther Gibson about 100 years ago. The inventor of Corn Flakes and proprietor of the Battle Creek Sanitarium gave it to the museum.

Being carefully watched over in the Kingman basement, the head is in a box and covered with a protective wrap.

Nearby, in another container, sits a buckskin sack found with the head.

According to the missionary's letter to Kellogg, the box also contained the long-lost man's ashes, but she could not send them.

Taking the lid off the box recently, Yahne revealed the face of someone undoubtedly with a story to tell. The top of his head was full with long hair. His face was thin, even when accounting for the decay of time.