From the Morning Sun:
Dennis Banks, renowned co-founder of the American Indian Movement who helped create the language for the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act which became law in 1990, took part in a reburial ceremony Thursday on the Isabella Reservation.
The reburial ceremony was for 10 Native American ancestoral remains who were dug up and kept in a vault in a museum at Harvard University and were proven to be affiliated with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe.
“It’s been a long road for our ancestors,” said William Johnson, curator for the Ziibiwing Center who worked on bringing the ancestoral remains back to Michigan. “We might not be perfect, but we’re trying.
“The work that we do is for everybody.”
Johnson has been working for the Tribe with respect to NAGPRA issues for more than 12 years.
“Johnson and his team researched and assembled all of the necessary historical documents to uphold the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan’s claim for this individual,” said a press release from the Tribe. “The team uncovered substantial information related to this ancestor in the Tribal Archives; in fact some of the documentation was virtually unknown to the officials at the Peabody Museum.
“The information supplied by the Ziibiwing team strengthened the final verbiage for the Peabody’s Notice of Inventory Completion. The Federal Register notice was posted on May 21, 2010.”
The effort to bring back the remains was led by Tribal Councilwoman Charmaine Benz who led the five-member delegation to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Cambridge, Mass. on Sunday to retrieve the ancestors and sacred funerary objects that have been unearthed for 90 years, and one for 150 years.
“We have had some really great people assisting us,” said Johnson. “It’s hard.
“The one young female ancestor was in a museum for almost 150 years,” said Johnson.
In 1856, remains of one individual was removed from the western shore of Tawas Point, Iosco County, Mich. by Henry Gillman who donated his findings to the Peabody Museum in 1869.
The remaining nine females who died between the ages of one-year and 40-years were unearthed from the Keetchewaundaun-gnink Reservation near Burton who were acknowledged as Saginaw Chippewas by Johnson.
“I was very honored to be part of the reburial ceremony of Native people that were housed in the universities in the east for the last 150 years,” said Banks of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe people of northern, Minn. “It was a sad moment for me, and I was mad. Then I was also happy.
“Happy that they are finally able to rest in peace.”
Banks who was acknowledged as a warrior by Shannon Martin, director for the Ziibiwing Center, said that there are still “thousands of Native people in burial vaults across the country that need to be repatriated.”
“In 1977, we started planning for a big walk across this country, and we did it in 1978,” said Banks. “We started to work on developing language for a bill to be introduced to Congress which was then called the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.
“Asking for the bones of our people to be reinterred to be brought back. Today, I felt very happy to see the fruits of a lot of work, and I felt good about that,” he said.
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