OPINION: Another perspective on Smithsonian repatriations

Recently this newspaper published a story from the Washington Post critical of the repatriation practices within the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as those practices relate to the return of human remains to Native American tribes.

To me, the article implied the museum continues to give up its human remains begrudgingly. I am motivated to comment here because this was not my experience.

Several years ago, I was privileged to work with the village of Igiugig at the outlet of Lake Iliamna in Bristol Bay to shepherd its request to have the remains of 24 people repatriated. The remains were unearthed by Aleš Hrdlička, once the head of the Smithsonian’s Department of Physical Anthropology. Hrdlička traveled extensively throughout Alaska in the 1930s and disinterred hundreds of people in a quest to support his theory that people originally came to North America from Asia over a Bering land bridge, or, as some suggest, to confirm his Eurocentric notions of a hierarchy of racial intelligence. Regardless of his motives, his quest was a gruesome one and was undertaken apparently with little or no respect for the dead he unearthed or regard for the living who buried them.

In the autumn of 2017, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History sent the 24 “Ancestors,” as the village described them, back to Igiugig. The village made caskets and three Orthodox crosses for their remains. After a ceremony and blessing by the local Russian Orthodox priest, nearly the entire village loaded the caskets and themselves into skiffs and traveled a mile down the Kvichak River to one of the old village sites, where a place of burial had been prepared. Among the people in those skiffs was Kirk Johnson, the director of the museum.

It took about two years for the Ancestors to arrive back in the village, and during that time I encountered no resistance to the request. The Smithsonian’s repatriation staff went through a careful due diligence process to verify the bones unearthed by Hrdlička and attributed by him to abandoned villages along the Kvichak River that were culturally affiliated with the people of Igiugig. Museum staff examined the remains as well as original documents, primarily Hrdlička’s hand-drawn maps and diaries. Critical to the process was a paper written by village resident AlexAnna Salmon for her college thesis, in which she recounted local oral history that her ancestors had abandoned village locations along the river generations ago and moved to the current site of Igiugig. Villages along the Kvichak River were decimated by the influenza pandemic of 1919.

As the village gathered around the newly prepared gravesite, the caskets were lowered, the priest prayed and sprinkled soil into the grave with a long-handled shovel, and then he handed the shovel to Johnson. The symbolism was not lost on anybody. With a shovel-load of dirt, Johnson atoned for this generation at the Smithsonian the transgression of his predecessor Aleš Hrdlička.

After the Ancestors were laid to rest, the villagers gathered around, and with dance fans held high, voices raised and drums beating loudly, performed a traditional Yup’ik dance facing east, toward the direction of new life.

Tim Troll is executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust.

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