Plundered Skulls And Stolen Spirits Inside The Fight To Reclaim Native Americas Culture Reprint Edition Retail Chip Colwell by Chip Colwell 9780226684444, 022668444X instant download after payment.

Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects & allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists & whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, & ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, & a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity & morality, spirituality & politics.

Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums & tribes to acknowledge that fact—& heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.