But what is very special about those are that a child's is kept inside the amulet. They're made out of leather and beadwork and they have little trinket bells on them. Renee Iron Hawk: The items that were most emotional for me to see the little salamanders and the little turtles. But as much as you're comfortable, if you could talk about what they were, what you saw. 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. 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. But they have been delaying, saying they need to hire curators, they need to hire a photographer to take pictures of items. We fully expect them to do that, and we hope they're expedient about it.
We continue to expect Barre Museum to keep their assurance or their motion to return the items. And it was a concerted effort between our descendants here on Cheyenne River and the descendants that reside on Pine Ridge. So that's what we did on April 6th of this year. 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. They were together before, then they got together again. Renee Iron Hawk: HAWK 1890, the survivor descendants society, has been in existence since the early 1990s. Why statues 'come alive' in times of political strife Native American leaders call for Harvard to return human remains Nipmuc people gather for first pow wow since start of the pandemic
Did it come together specifically to get the return of these items? Rath: And tell us about the group, Heartbeat at Wounded Knee 1890. And then a week ago, there was a photographer that took pictures of all the personal Wounded Knee items there. But then they had a change of mind after that. And we talked to the museum board and they said they were going to return them. But when did you find out about these artifacts, these looted items? So I imagine that this is history that you grew up knowing about. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.Īrun Rath: First, I want to start, Manny, with you because you are a descendant of Wounded Knee survivors. 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. A group of descendants of Wounded Knee survivors known as HAWK 1890 is fighting to get those personal items back. 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. Looters took everything of value or interest from the corpses of the men, women and children. The Lakota dead were not treated with dignity. cavalry on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890. At least 250 Lakota men, women and children were gunned down by the U.S. The massacre at Wounded Knee is one of the most shameful episodes in United States history, a war crime perpetrated by U.S.