The massacre at Wounded Knee is one of the most shameful episodes in United States history, a war crime perpetrated by U.S. soldiers on U.S. soil against Native Americans. At least 250 Lakota men, women and children were gunned down by the U.S. cavalry on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890. The Lakota dead were not treated with dignity. Looters took everything of value or interest from the corpses of the men, women and children.
Now, a number of those personal possessions stolen from the victims of Wounded Knee have ended up in the collection of the Barre Museum here in Massachusetts. A group of descendants of Wounded Knee survivors known as HAWK 1890 is fighting to get those personal items back. Renee Iron Hawk, the secretary of HAWK 1890, and her husband, Manny, who is himself a descendant of Wounded Knee survivors, joined host Arun Rath on GBH’s All Things Considered to discuss those efforts. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
Arun Rath: First, I want to start, Manny, with you because you are a descendant of Wounded Knee survivors. So I imagine that this is history that you grew up knowing about. But when did you find out about these artifacts, these looted items?
Manny Iron Hawk: It was back in 2019. And we actually made a visit there. And we talked to the museum board and they said they were going to return them. But then they had a change of mind after that. And then a week ago, there was a photographer that took pictures of all the personal Wounded Knee items there.
Rath: And tell us about the group, Heartbeat at Wounded Knee [HAWK] 1890. You're the secretary of the group. Did it come together specifically to get the return of these items?
Renee Iron Hawk: HAWK 1890, the survivor descendants society, has been in existence since the early 1990s. They were together before, then they got together again. And they worked together, descendants from Pine Ridge and descendants from Cheyenne River, Sioux — they worked together and when they heard about the personal items at the Barre Museum, they knew that we had to go over and view them and to make sure that we could identify our relatives' personal items. So that's what we did on April 6th of this year. And it was a concerted effort between our descendants here on Cheyenne River and the descendants that reside on Pine Ridge.
We continue to expect Barre Museum to keep their assurance or their motion to return the items. We fully expect them to do that, and we hope they're expedient about it. But they have been delaying, saying they need to hire curators, they need to hire a photographer to take pictures of items. And so because of those things that they want done, it's becoming more and more like us not being certain when we will eventually have our relatives' items returned.
Rath: Can you talk a bit more about that visit in April when you were able to see some of these items? I want to be sensitive because these are items that were taken off of humans who had been massacred. But as much as you're comfortable, if you could talk about what they were, what you saw.
Renee Iron Hawk: The items that were most emotional for me to see [were] the little salamanders and the little turtles. They're like little amulets. They're made out of leather and beadwork and they have little trinket bells on them. But what is very special about those are that a child's [umbilical cord] is kept inside the amulet. And there's a reason why they're kept in those amulets, the turtle specifically and the salamander specifically for our cultural reasons, that is, they're really personal and because they have human remains within them. That's what really touched me when I was going through with Manny and we were viewing the items there inside that small room and those glass cabinets.
I just felt like that was no place for them, that they did not belong there and they needed to come back to us, their relatives so that we could take care of them. So that's what was impactful to me. But there were items like chanupa bags, pipe bags, pipes themselves, moccasins. There were items that we know belong to us, cradle boards, because of their design. We don't need an expert to tell us if they belong to us or not. We're the experts when it comes to our own relatives' personal items.
"Those items need to be returned as soon as possible so our relatives may rest."-Manny Iron Hawk
Rath: Manny, my head's just kind of spinning, even contemplating this. I can't even imagine what was going through your head when you're seeing these deeply personal items in this collection.
Manny Iron Hawk: Yes, all these items that belonged to my relatives, were spotted out with the leader there. And all the relatives' items were all taken. Some of it ended up in the Barre Museum. But these items are to me – they're not to be touched because they carry a little of the owner's essence. We can say that, from way back, and we respect that.
When we get these items back, of course, we're going to have a ceremony and we will decide what to do with them, if we're going to keep them or if we're going to end up burying them or if we're going to put them in a fire and burn them up that way just to keep the ceremony and our traditions, the way that it has been done before. But it's been documented and pictures have been taken now. So, we will await those pictures. So, those items need to be returned as soon as possible so our relatives may rest.
Rath: Renee, you talked about this process the museum says that it's now in place to verify authenticity and these other processes that it wants to go through. Do you have any sense from them how long this is going to take? Do you have any sense of there being an end in sight to get the return of these items?
Renee Iron Hawk: Well, from the last I heard in a recent interview, the story of Jeff Not Help Him and Leola One Feather that traveled from Pine Ridge over to Barre Museum last week, along with a photographer named John Willis. And from my understanding in that article, the museum board is saying that they need to file with NAGPRA, Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. They're going by that, and they need to follow that protocol. And so as far as I understand, the photos that were taken, they're going to use those to file with NAGPRA. And so that's what we're all waiting on, are those photos of all the items that Mr. John Willis took pictures of.
As far as a timeframe, they did not say anything about when they were going to file. You know, we have people that can and know how to do ceremony in the best possible way to handle these items in order to get them back to who they belong with, which is us descendants. And we know what to do. But the museum seems to continue to think that these professional experts in this line of work as far as artifacts, that they're the ones that can determine what's the best way to do it.
Rath: Renee, Manny it's been very good speaking with you. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us about all of this.
Manny Iron Hawk: Thank you.
