Speed Art Museum Returns 24 Native Artifacts to Oklahoma Tribes
The culturally significant objects include a turtle amulet, a Cheyenne cradle board, and a slate of beaded bags.
Two dozen cultural treasures will head home to Native American communities tonight, August 19, following a ceremony at the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky, where they are currently housed. The Louisville museum’s first repatriation under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) includes artifacts that belong to the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, such as beaded bags, a turtle amulet, and a cradle board.
In 2023, Speed curators connected with tribal representatives to determine which items in the museum’s collection were due for repatriation under NAGPRA. The act stipulates that items associated with a "particular Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization" must be repatriated upon the request of a representative or descendant of that group. During a site visit the following year, the team found that 24 out of nearly 100 possible objects were eligible for return, as first reported by Louisville’s Courier Journal.
"Family members can now come back and say, 'wow, my great grandpa made this,'" Fred Mosqueda, a representative of the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, told Hyperallergic. "These items are sacred."
One such item in the collection is a sundance rattle, a Native ceremonial instrument used in rituals across North America. Traditionally made of animal leather, bird feathers, and claws, the rattle mimics the plodding of a herd of buffalo. Another artifact set for repatriation is a Cheyenne cradle board, an object traditionally made by a community of women and used in perpetuity for the tribe’s next expecting mother.
