Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits by Chip Colwell

It is important to see museum collections within all of this context. Tribal culture has been mined for its economic, artistic, religious, and cultural capital, practices that continue to this day. Many collections were made prior to the extension of US citizenship to American Indian tribal members in 1924. Colwell examines the conditions under which collections were made, and shows that collectors who believed that they were preserving Native culture did not understand that by removing items from the communities, they were contributing to attempts to diffuse Native identity. Additionally, the formal, somewhat detached term 'human remains' can obscure its meaning: the bodies of people who were thoughtfully buried by their relatives according to custom. For example, as he shows, tribally sacred objects are often inexplicable within Western religious understandings. It is equally true that there is no single museum approach to repatriation, but by giving readers a look at his work at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Colwell shows one very good way of working through this important process.Ĭolwell divides his discussion into four case studies, according to the categories listed in the federal laws: sacred objects, human remains, cultural patrimony, and culturally unaffiliated human remains. There is no single Indigenous approach to repatriation. Discussion of repatriation often focuses on the entities involved-museums, tribes, and archaeologists-but as Colwell shows, none of these groups are monolithic. Chip Colwell's work, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, contributes to the extensive literature on repatriation, providing an insider's review of how the process actually works. Repatriation of Native American human remains and sacred objects has been a legal requirement for museums and institutions that receive federal funding since the passage of the National Museum of the American Indian Act in 1989 and the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act in 1990.

Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits by Chip Colwell