The Lakota Ghost Dance shirt, which was repatriated from Glasgow city council in 1999 to the Wounded Knee Survivors Association, now hangs in a glass case in a museum in the US state of South Dakota.
Ten years on, it is still recognised as a good model of repatriation and Glasgow Museums has organised a series of talks this month to celebrate the event. But what difference did it make to the receiving community and Glasgow's future indigenous relations?
Museums had sent back material to indigenous communities before 1999, but it was the Glasgow return that captured people's imagination and pushed a very live museum issue into the public realm.
Many were surprised that it provoked a strong nationalist response, with the Scottish people identifying with the imperial oppression suffered by the Native Americans. The shirt is believed to have been taken from a fallen warrior at the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota and was acquired by Glasgow in 1892 from a member of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.
"People were on their [Native Americans] side. There was a sense of injustice," says Mark O'Neill, the head of arts and museums at Culture and Sport Glasgow. "[The story of] Wounded Knee is incredibly evocative. People were right to be angry about it."
That anger was captured in local discussions inside and outside the museum, including letters written to the Scottish press.
Local context
Dan Brosz is the curator of collections at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre, which houses the Ghost Dance shirt. It is displayed in its own case with sage grass, which is used in the sacred ceremonies of the Lakota people.
Labels discuss the history of the shirt including its repatriation. But Brosz says the shirt is only being cared for by the historical society until the Wounded Knee Survivors Association builds its own museum to house it, although a lack of money has prevented this from happening so far.
The historical society's museum is in central South Dakota, while the majority of the Lakota reservations are in the west of the state, which is almost as big as the UK. Because of the size of South Dakota and problems with transportation, the people to whom the Ghost Dance shirt belongs find it difficult to visit, although Lakota children are able to learn about it through school trips.
Brosz, who has been at the museum for two and a half years, says there is little contact with any representatives of the Wounded Knee Survivors Association or Glasgow.
Pat Allan, the curator of world cultures at Glasgow Museums, says one of the chief lessons learned was not to have too many expectations. "We expected more [of an ongoing relationship] than we got back. But we cannot expect we will have better relations with the community afterwards."
A Lakota choir was going to visit Glasgow a couple of years after the repatriation, but then 9/11 happened, and the trip was never rescheduled. But Allan is clear that Glasgow Museums should have put the work in to sustain contact.
Worries of an increase in repatriation requests following the Glasgow example were unfounded. In 1999 the Museums Association, the Museums and Galleries Commission (now the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) and the National Museum Directors' Conference set up a joint standing advisory committee on repatriation and restitution.
But by 2001 there were so few new cases to consider that meetings were suspended.
Human remains
In the past decade, the majority of returns have been of human remains, a process that accelerated after 2005 when it became legal for public museums to deaccession human tissue from their holdings.
Tasmania has been one of the biggest recipients. The Royal College of Surgeons of England returned the skull, hair, skin and jawbones of eight Tasmanian ancestors in 2002; the British Museum, gave back two ash bundles in 2006; the Natural History Museum (NHM) repatriated the remains of 17 people between 2007 and 2008; and National Museums Scotland gave back one skull in 2008.
Simon Chaplin, the director of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, emphasises that the remains were returned "unconditionally, so there were no constraints imposed by us on what should happen to remains after they were transferred". And that's the way the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC), the official recipient of all Tasmanian remains, prefers it.
"The whole purpose of repatriating remains is to remove them completely from the sphere of any influence from or contact with institutions such as museums, or any parties who are not Aboriginal people," according to Michael Mansell, who is the legal director of the TAC. "The community's experience of repatriation is an entirely internal and private matter."
The TAC's experience with the NHM was very different and difficult. After a High Court battle collapsed, the two sides - scientific value versus Aboriginal spiritual and traditional rights - went through mediation and came out the other end with the repatriation agreed, but not without conditions.
DNA samples, which the museum was supposed to hold on to for an agreed three months, were actually returned 16 months later. The NHM says no further scientific work was done during these months. Both parties have joint control over the samples, which are now with a government agency in Tasmania, but access guidelines have yet to be agreed.
Tristram Besterman, an independent adviser on museums and cultural issues, helps to facilitate the process of repatriation. He says that it can be embarrassing when a museum wants to know what is going to happen to remains after they go back, and he then finds himself having to apologise to indigenous communities about the museum's request for information.
Respect and research
The problem stems in part from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (2005), which suggests museums ask what will happen to the remains after they return.
Besterman says this needs revising, arguing that once the case for repatriation has been established, what happens to the remains when they go back to the source community is no business of the museum.
"The DCMS criteria spring from a western museum mindset that only rubs salt into the wound of the original act of dispossession, in a process that should provide a salve," according to Besterman.
Richard Lane, the director of science at the NHM, says the museum understood from the start the position of the Aboriginal communities.
"For them it was that somebody else had complete control of their ancestors." But Lane says it was when the Tasmanians went to talk to the NHM scientists that they realised what could be learned from the remains. Lane says relations with the TAC are now "amicable, business-like and professional".
Martin Smith, publicity secretary at the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, says there are instances when repatriation is the right thing to do, but he prefers a "slower approach" to ensure mutual trust and common ground has been reached.
"Respect and research are not mutually incompatible," he says. He believes relationships and ideas of control can alter if claimant groups spend time working with people such as archaeologists.
In 2005 the Australian government and the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand submitted blanket requests to UK museums for the return of human remains from collections. The majority that have been returned are now held within national museums in the country they have been returned to.
But the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal human remains sent back to Australia from National Museums Liverpool (NML), Oxford University's Museum of Natural History, and Brighton Museum in May this year were received by representatives of the Ngarrindjeri on a visit to the UK.
The remains will be held by the community until reburial is possible. The Ngarrindjeri has said that the return of the human remains is like putting a wandering spirit to rest.
Repatriations are often organised between museum representatives, meaning that contact with the indigenous community is left until the returning ceremony. Lynne Stumpe, curator of Oceanic collections at NML, says this makes it less likely for lasting relationships with the community to develop.
New ways of working
Perhaps an initiative the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the University of Aberdeen are launching this month could be a new way
of working. It relates to the Blackfoot people, who live on three reserves in southern Alberta, Canada, and one in the US.
Five Blackfoot shirts that have been in the Pitt Rivers' collection since 1893 are to visit two Canadian museums, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Galt Museum in Alberta, which are both located in traditional Blackfoot territory.
The project will involve the public display of the shirts in 2010 and there will also be handling and study sessions with Blackfoot communities. The two-year research initiative has received £183,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The shirts, which are worn for ceremonies as well as warfare, are rare in Canada, leaving the Blackfoot unaware of manufacturing techniques and their spiritual meanings. The project comes as a response to requests from Blackfoot elders to make museum artefacts available to communities. A Blackfoot adviser to the project says: "These shirts are our curriculum - that's how we know who we are."
Frank Weasel Head is from the Kainai Nation in Alberta, Canada. He says: "This project is about bringing our history back to our people. Seeing these shirts will give our young people a sense of pride."
After the Blackfoot programme ends, these sacred shirts could represent a new way for museums to operate, one that is sustainable and respectful.
Ten years on, it is still recognised as a good model of repatriation and Glasgow Museums has organised a series of talks this month to celebrate the event. But what difference did it make to the receiving community and Glasgow's future indigenous relations?
Museums had sent back material to indigenous communities before 1999, but it was the Glasgow return that captured people's imagination and pushed a very live museum issue into the public realm.
Many were surprised that it provoked a strong nationalist response, with the Scottish people identifying with the imperial oppression suffered by the Native Americans. The shirt is believed to have been taken from a fallen warrior at the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota and was acquired by Glasgow in 1892 from a member of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.
"People were on their [Native Americans] side. There was a sense of injustice," says Mark O'Neill, the head of arts and museums at Culture and Sport Glasgow. "[The story of] Wounded Knee is incredibly evocative. People were right to be angry about it."
That anger was captured in local discussions inside and outside the museum, including letters written to the Scottish press.
Local context
Dan Brosz is the curator of collections at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre, which houses the Ghost Dance shirt. It is displayed in its own case with sage grass, which is used in the sacred ceremonies of the Lakota people.
Labels discuss the history of the shirt including its repatriation. But Brosz says the shirt is only being cared for by the historical society until the Wounded Knee Survivors Association builds its own museum to house it, although a lack of money has prevented this from happening so far.
The historical society's museum is in central South Dakota, while the majority of the Lakota reservations are in the west of the state, which is almost as big as the UK. Because of the size of South Dakota and problems with transportation, the people to whom the Ghost Dance shirt belongs find it difficult to visit, although Lakota children are able to learn about it through school trips.
Brosz, who has been at the museum for two and a half years, says there is little contact with any representatives of the Wounded Knee Survivors Association or Glasgow.
Pat Allan, the curator of world cultures at Glasgow Museums, says one of the chief lessons learned was not to have too many expectations. "We expected more [of an ongoing relationship] than we got back. But we cannot expect we will have better relations with the community afterwards."
A Lakota choir was going to visit Glasgow a couple of years after the repatriation, but then 9/11 happened, and the trip was never rescheduled. But Allan is clear that Glasgow Museums should have put the work in to sustain contact.
Worries of an increase in repatriation requests following the Glasgow example were unfounded. In 1999 the Museums Association, the Museums and Galleries Commission (now the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) and the National Museum Directors' Conference set up a joint standing advisory committee on repatriation and restitution.
But by 2001 there were so few new cases to consider that meetings were suspended.
Human remains
In the past decade, the majority of returns have been of human remains, a process that accelerated after 2005 when it became legal for public museums to deaccession human tissue from their holdings.
Tasmania has been one of the biggest recipients. The Royal College of Surgeons of England returned the skull, hair, skin and jawbones of eight Tasmanian ancestors in 2002; the British Museum, gave back two ash bundles in 2006; the Natural History Museum (NHM) repatriated the remains of 17 people between 2007 and 2008; and National Museums Scotland gave back one skull in 2008.
Simon Chaplin, the director of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, emphasises that the remains were returned "unconditionally, so there were no constraints imposed by us on what should happen to remains after they were transferred". And that's the way the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC), the official recipient of all Tasmanian remains, prefers it.
"The whole purpose of repatriating remains is to remove them completely from the sphere of any influence from or contact with institutions such as museums, or any parties who are not Aboriginal people," according to Michael Mansell, who is the legal director of the TAC. "The community's experience of repatriation is an entirely internal and private matter."
The TAC's experience with the NHM was very different and difficult. After a High Court battle collapsed, the two sides - scientific value versus Aboriginal spiritual and traditional rights - went through mediation and came out the other end with the repatriation agreed, but not without conditions.
DNA samples, which the museum was supposed to hold on to for an agreed three months, were actually returned 16 months later. The NHM says no further scientific work was done during these months. Both parties have joint control over the samples, which are now with a government agency in Tasmania, but access guidelines have yet to be agreed.
Tristram Besterman, an independent adviser on museums and cultural issues, helps to facilitate the process of repatriation. He says that it can be embarrassing when a museum wants to know what is going to happen to remains after they go back, and he then finds himself having to apologise to indigenous communities about the museum's request for information.
Respect and research
The problem stems in part from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (2005), which suggests museums ask what will happen to the remains after they return.
Besterman says this needs revising, arguing that once the case for repatriation has been established, what happens to the remains when they go back to the source community is no business of the museum.
"The DCMS criteria spring from a western museum mindset that only rubs salt into the wound of the original act of dispossession, in a process that should provide a salve," according to Besterman.
Richard Lane, the director of science at the NHM, says the museum understood from the start the position of the Aboriginal communities.
"For them it was that somebody else had complete control of their ancestors." But Lane says it was when the Tasmanians went to talk to the NHM scientists that they realised what could be learned from the remains. Lane says relations with the TAC are now "amicable, business-like and professional".
Martin Smith, publicity secretary at the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, says there are instances when repatriation is the right thing to do, but he prefers a "slower approach" to ensure mutual trust and common ground has been reached.
"Respect and research are not mutually incompatible," he says. He believes relationships and ideas of control can alter if claimant groups spend time working with people such as archaeologists.
In 2005 the Australian government and the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand submitted blanket requests to UK museums for the return of human remains from collections. The majority that have been returned are now held within national museums in the country they have been returned to.
But the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal human remains sent back to Australia from National Museums Liverpool (NML), Oxford University's Museum of Natural History, and Brighton Museum in May this year were received by representatives of the Ngarrindjeri on a visit to the UK.
The remains will be held by the community until reburial is possible. The Ngarrindjeri has said that the return of the human remains is like putting a wandering spirit to rest.
Repatriations are often organised between museum representatives, meaning that contact with the indigenous community is left until the returning ceremony. Lynne Stumpe, curator of Oceanic collections at NML, says this makes it less likely for lasting relationships with the community to develop.
New ways of working
Perhaps an initiative the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the University of Aberdeen are launching this month could be a new way
of working. It relates to the Blackfoot people, who live on three reserves in southern Alberta, Canada, and one in the US.
Five Blackfoot shirts that have been in the Pitt Rivers' collection since 1893 are to visit two Canadian museums, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Galt Museum in Alberta, which are both located in traditional Blackfoot territory.
The project will involve the public display of the shirts in 2010 and there will also be handling and study sessions with Blackfoot communities. The two-year research initiative has received £183,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The shirts, which are worn for ceremonies as well as warfare, are rare in Canada, leaving the Blackfoot unaware of manufacturing techniques and their spiritual meanings. The project comes as a response to requests from Blackfoot elders to make museum artefacts available to communities. A Blackfoot adviser to the project says: "These shirts are our curriculum - that's how we know who we are."
Frank Weasel Head is from the Kainai Nation in Alberta, Canada. He says: "This project is about bringing our history back to our people. Seeing these shirts will give our young people a sense of pride."
After the Blackfoot programme ends, these sacred shirts could represent a new way for museums to operate, one that is sustainable and respectful.
A story of mutual respect
In 1934, an Aberdeen resident gifted a headdress made of eagle feathers and buffalo horns to the University of Aberdeen. In 2002, representatives from the Kainai Nation in Canada requested its return as a sacred bundle.
The headdress was returned in the following year, and Neil Curtis, senior curator of Aberdeen's Marischal Museum, says it is now treated as a sacred item, not as a museum object.
In 2004 the Kainai invited Curtis to participate in the annual Sundance and so better understand what the repatriation had meant to them.
"What we got out of it is intangible but powerful and long-lasting," says Curtis.
In 1934, an Aberdeen resident gifted a headdress made of eagle feathers and buffalo horns to the University of Aberdeen. In 2002, representatives from the Kainai Nation in Canada requested its return as a sacred bundle.
The headdress was returned in the following year, and Neil Curtis, senior curator of Aberdeen's Marischal Museum, says it is now treated as a sacred item, not as a museum object.
In 2004 the Kainai invited Curtis to participate in the annual Sundance and so better understand what the repatriation had meant to them.
"What we got out of it is intangible but powerful and long-lasting," says Curtis.
