The Barre, Massachusetts, Museum Association repatriated two 19th century headdresses to the Oglala Sioux, a tribe in South Dakota, on Monday. It was the second repatriation from the museum to the tribe in two years.
One of the bonnets is topped with a feather, painted red — probably earned by a warrior wounded in battle, according to Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Justin Pourier, who drove from South Dakota to pick up the items. He viewed them for the first time this week.
Pourier pointed out eagle talons and porcupine quills, along with porcupine, white-tailed deer and horse hair on the intricately designed warrior's headdress.
The second bonnet, with a train of about 30 eagle feathers, most likely belonged to a chief, Pourier said. He said each feather would have been earned by a chief for performing great deeds to protect family and community.
Pourier said repatriating the headdresses to the Pine Ridge Reservation will have a positive impact on young people.
"It's returning the energy and a prayer back to our kids to ... restore some hope in them. Because the reservation life it's really ... a hard way of living," he said.
According to the U.S. Census, more than half the people on the reservation live below the poverty line.
Pourier sang a chief's song and prayed over the items as they were boxed up at the museum. He said he was very grateful to the people at the museum.
"It really means a lot, from my heart to everybody here, for doing what you guys do," Pourier said.
He gave a brief language lesson in Lakota as he explained he really wanted to show his gratitude.
"'Pilamaya' is 'thank you.' 'Wopila' is a bigger thank-you. If you really want to put an exclamation point on that, you say, 'Wopila tanka.' That's like a real big thank-you," he said.
The museum acquired the headdresses from Frank Root, a traveling showman, in the late 1800s, according to Aaron Miller, a repatriation expert who has consulted with the museum.
Root also gave the museum items that are believed to have been stolen off the bodies of Native people killed by the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890. The museum repatriated 130 items from Wounded Knee to the tribe two years ago.
Pourier said when the items from the massacre were shown during two ceremonies to tribal members in South Dakota, it helped people.
"Seeing the grandmas and the kids, the ones that are crying, shows me that the impact is helping them maybe start to process that historical trauma, that intergenerational trauma, that we carry," he said.
All of the items from the Barre Museum are kept at the Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota.
Elizabeth Martin, the clerk of the Barre Museum Association, explained what returning the items this week meant to her.
"It's a tiny reparation for a great harm — the great harm that's been done to Indigenous people all around the world by what we call civilization," she said.
Pourier said he'd like to have a building on the reservation where young people can come and view the bonnets.
"For our young ones, boys and girls, that are learning to do beadwork and quillwork, that they can look at the designs that our tribes had, our families had, our wives had back then," he said.
After visiting the Barre museum, Pourier planned to visit Harvard University, where he was consulting about the return of human remains of Native people and the hair clippings of Native children who were at boarding schools. He said medicine men from the tribe would join him.
Pourier said he expected to bring back from Harvard a hammer and also a human skull, which would be buried.
