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The Repatriation of a Southern Cheyenne Burial and the Contingencies of Authenticity

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA, aclouse{at}wesleyan.edu

Focusing upon an assemblage of Southern Cheyenne burial objects, the author narrates their trajectory through cultural, temporal, and geographic spaces, tracing contingencies of meaning and use. Collected by a US Army medical officer during the 1860s campaigns against the Cheyenne, this assemblage went from the Army Medical Museum to the Smithsonian Institution, and finally, in the 1990s, was successfully repatriated from the National Museum of Natural History to the Southern Cheyenne. Through the combined use of archival records, historical analysis, and consultation with the Southern Cheyenne repatriation delegate, the author analyzes the continuance and re-negotiation of colonial configurations of culture, race, and scientific authority as manifested in shifting formulations of authenticity. She contends that Southern Cheyenne re-interpretations of these objects provide productive reformulations of authenticity, which take into account cultural hybridity, change, and the politics of survival.

Key Words: authenticity • identity politics • museum anthropology • 19th-century collecting • repatriation

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 14, No. 2, 169-188 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183509103059


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