Native Americans’ remains returned to families from Detroit Institute of Arts
Ancestors of Native Americans have gone home to their Michigan families. Their remains had been in the possession of the Detroit Institute of Arts for many years.
Their long journey back to their community was facilitated by a willing collaboration largely between DIA curator Dr. Denene De Quintal and Euphemia “Sue” Franklin, the executive director of South Eastern Michigan Indians, Inc. in Center Line, and her late husband Chris.
In 2019, De Quintal was named DIA Assistant Curator of Native American Art in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and Indigenous Americas.
“Chris and I had worked on a specific project with the DIA regarding an art acquisition that was done by boarding school survivors,” Franklin said. “What they were looking for was a perspective from the Native American community and not so much from the mainstream community because it’s often misinterpreted.
“During that time there was discussion about the American Indian remains that were there in the DIA and Chris and I asked that those be returned. They were returned in November. There was a repatriation ceremony. An elder from Sault Ste. Marie came down to conduct the ceremony and took them home,” she said.
“The ancestors were identified probably mostly from their clothing style. The DIA didn’t just meet some guy at the back door and pay them money to get those; they have always carefully documented where everything comes from so it was from records like that (that they were identified.) Certainly the community knew where graves had been disturbed and the remains removed.
“There are true grave robbers out there but I can’t put all the blame on them because there were people who were paying money to have those remains and wanted to have them in their possession, so if you create a market you’re going to have someone go ahead and fill that requirement. I couldn’t tell you who these people were, but obviously there was a market at one time and it’s how it was done,” she said.
Franklin said there is still a desire in Europe to possess Native American ancestors and artifacts.
“Europeans just love the idea of having our ancestors’ remains in their possession and they are largely sold on the Internet. If people have them in private collections and they can sell it, people will buy it. There are laws now to prohibit it but that’s what went on in the past. We don’t have any control over what another continent does, but it is illegal here in the United States. Even the museums in other countries will purchase those if they can get their hands on them,” Franklin said.
The repatriation ceremony in November was a private sacred ceremony. Franklin used the word “fragile” to describe it.
“It was handled very carefully. It’s not a ceremony that is written down,” she said. Franklin could not say how many ancestors were repatriated back to their community, but said there were “several.”
“I haven’t been told a number. The less speculation about it, the better,” she said.
A public ceremony of thanks-giving took place in February.
“At this ceremony, we presented the DIA and its CEO Salvador Salort-Pons with a plaque. We are establishing a relationship with the DIA. There is still work to do. We are in conversations about how things are carried out in the future and there is a lot of learning on both sides,” she said. “Our cultures are very different on how they view things and how we view things and it
has been the crux of the issue from the time that Europeans took to the shores here. But he (Salort-Pons) and I have talked about a lot of things, how this has impacted our community all these years that the remains have been there.
“There is a lot of healing going on in this community and it has been primarily from Salvador and Denene. They have been so gracious and understanding. They understand how painful this is. It would be like if another group of people’s — say French — ancestors were dug up and sold, and in spite of families and communities asking for them back, they were ignored. That’s what’s gone on here for over a hundred years,” Franklin said.
The public ceremony included the presentation of a Pendleton blanket to De Quintal called The Healing Blanket, which was designed to bring awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Movement.
Pendleton specializes in items with Southwest designs honoring parks, trails, mountains, monuments and tribes. The Chief Joseph blanket, first woven in the 1920s, honors Chief Joseph who led the Nez Perce tribe native to northeastern Oregon in the late 1800s. He was known for being brave and honest.
De Quintal’s assistants received gifts of sage, and others were gifted with tobacco ties.
“When we pass blankets like that, it’s to honor somebody,” Franklin said. “It’s a gesture of holding somebody in very high honor for what they’ve done; for going above and beyond. It’s for being sensitive to the presence of the Natives who live in the area, and things we are grappling with from the community. There is still discrimination, a lack of access to healthcare, all the usual things that happen when there is poverty. We struggle with those and compete for funding. Sometimes it makes it difficult for a community to thrive under those conditions.”
Franklin said the ceremony of thankfulness was coordinated by the South Eastern Michigan Indians, Inc., American Indian Health and Family Services Inc., and the Northern American Indian Association of Detroit. All three were named on the plaque presented to Salort-Pons.
“It brought us all together,” she said. “I don’t think there’s another document with all three of us as one. The ceremony is really about gratitude, about thanking the DIA, because their return of the ancestors came from a place of ‘it’s the right thing to do’ and they felt they should do it. They may not have understood at the beginning but they followed through.
“The Native community knows what our community needed, what has been lacking for a long time. A lot of the spiritual issues that we have are because of those ancestors and who hostaged them. That’s not how they look at it, but it’s how we look at it. So their graciousness and cooperation in getting this taken care of is something that we have deep gratitude for. The people
down there have gone above and beyond what we would have expected,” she said.
The DIA offered to pay the Franklins for their expertise on the earlier art project and the Franklins declined. That collaboration led to the conversation about the ancestors’ remains.
“They did find where the ancestors were being stored and Denene gave me her word they would be returned,” she said.
There was no videotaping of either ceremony allowed. Still photography of the plaque presentation was done by Beverley Sault, a member of the Mohawk Tribe. The thanks-giving ceremony began with the presentation of Three Eagle Staffs that were carried in by Native American veterans.
Mike Bugaj posted the Native American Veterans Association South East Michigan Indians Inc. (NAVASEMII) Eagle Staff. The American Indian Veterans of Michigan (AIVOMI) Eagle Staff was posted by Eric Cox. Judy Peters posted the Eagle Staff representing Walpole Island First Nations. Native Americans place great respect on military service and veterans. There were Honor Songs and a hand drum for the Eagle Staffs, the ancestors, and the honorees.
“This (presence of the Eagle Staffs) is an indication of a really high honor. This wasn’t a powwow. It was bringing great respect for the ancestors,” Franklin said.
Such returns are being made all around the world, including the U.S., Mexico, and to the First Nations of Canada. A rule by the U.S. Department of the Interior, that went into effect in December, updated guidelines for the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. NAGPRA is a federal law that requires Indigenous remains to be identified and repatriated.
Known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Systematic Processes for Disposition, it is also called the Repatriation of Native American Human Remains, Funerary Objects, Sacred Objects, and Objects of Cultural Patrimony. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold a U.S. cabinet position, announced the newest regulations last month. She described the changes as “an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people.”
Museums and federal agencies now need to consult with and obtain informed consent from descendants, tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations before displaying or researching human remains or cultural items. They also are required to return Native American remains and funerary objects to tribes as soon as possible. That information is contained in a database at The National Park Service. The NPS allocated $3.4 million to 16 American Indian tribes and 28 museums toward the return of ancestral remains — that
could possibly be more than 11,000 — and thousands of sacred and cultural artifacts.
An article by Emily Burack published in December in “Town and Country” listed many of the artifacts from around the world that have, in the past few years, been returned to their places of origin. They include: The remains of 19 ancestors of the Oneida Indian Nation from the Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester, N.Y.; a totem pole returned by the National Museum of Scotland to Canada’s Nisga’a Nation; and the University of California, Berkeley that repatriated about half of the 9,000 Native American remains from its anthropology museum.
The National Museum of the American Indian locations are in Washington, D.C., Suitland, Md., and New York City. It is a component of the Smithsonian Institution.