The Return of Wampum Belts: Ethical Issues and the Repatriation of Native American Archival Materials

In May 1988 a ceremony was held to celebrate the return of eleven wampum belts to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy in Grand River, Canada. Another commemoration took place in October 1989 when twelve wampum belts were returned to the Onondaga Nation in New York. Hundreds of people attended these formal ceremonies; tribal chiefs and clan mothers wore ceremonial dress and traditional food was prepared. These ceremonies are but two of many commemorating the repatriation of Native American cultural items to their original creators or owners. They are the results of a long process of Native American activism that emerged in the 1960s and culminated in the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990. Numerous cultural and religious artifacts, works of art and human remains have been returned to their original owners over the past three decades as these communities have moved toward self-governance, and the world at large has come to recognize greater Native American sovereignty. However, the repatriation movement has not been without conflict. Questions about ownership, chain of custody, theft, responsibility, access, and economy have been raised and remain unresolved.These same types of questions apply to the repatriation of Native American materials in archives. The archival community must address problems such as the following: Who owns and cares for the archival materials concerning Native Americans that are now scattered across institutions in this country? Under what circumstances were they collected? Who now determines access policies to these sensitive materials? The Protocols for Native American Archival Materials from 2007 present guidelines regarding some of these issues. Using the return of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and the Onondaga Nation wampum belts as case studies, this paper will examine some of the ethical issues involved in the repatriation of archival materials and how these issues are treated in the Protocols.Wampum Belts as DocumentsIn everyday language the word wampum means "money," and wampum has indeed served as a historical medium of trade and exchange throughout eastern North America, especially after the arrival of Dutch traders (Richter, 1992). Strictly speaking, wampum refers to beads made from the white and purple parts of shells native to the New England Coast. However, for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Nations) wampum has far greater cultural significance than mere currency. According to the Onondaga Nation Web site wampum has many uses, including conveying social status. Each clan mother and tribal leader has a wampum string, which is passed from one tribal leader to the next with the office or title. At gatherings, the person holding the wampum string is given special attention; whoever is holding the wampum string is said to be speaking the truth. Wampum strings are also used to document agreements. The Onondaga Web site states, "The speaker puts the words of the agreement into the wampum. Each speaker thereafter uses the wampum to remember the initial agreement and the history that has happened to date." Wampum can also have spiritual significance. For example, according to the Encyclopedia of North American Indians (1996), the Huron who adopted Christianity used wampum beads in their rosaries and even made belts with Latin inscriptions dedicated to various saints.Some wampum belts were specifically constructed to commemorate and document important events and treaties. They range in length from two to six feet and have patterns created by the interweaving of white and purple beads made from shells. Important agreements were generally represented by larger belts, and important agreements with a large amount of information were collectively stored and maintained by and in the tribal body (Rasmussen, 2007). The belts are entrusted to a hereditary keeper and brought out for ceremonial occasions when the wampum keeper reads the belt. …