A Family Connection

Marie sat on a plane. It wasn’t the first time she’d been on the long journey across the country. She traveled from Washington State to North Carolina four times a year to go to school. This time was different. She had a mission in mind. 

A friend traveling through Chicago had stopped at the art museum and taken pictures to show her. Well, to Marie’s great surprise in the historical handcrafts section of the museum, there lay a blanket that she had buried her grandmother in. Shock took her.  She didn’t want to believe it at first, but her friend had taken a picture of the placard too, thinking she’d be interested in it as it was marked as her tribe, the Chinook of Washington and Oregon. 

It merely said, “This item was recovered in an excavation project. All remains were reinterred.” So not only had they stolen from her family, they dug up her grandmother’s corpse and stripped it of anything they deemed valuable. To anyone around Marie, she looked serene at this news, but inside she was seething. This could not stand.

She had called the office of the museum after seeing the photos, thinking they would obviously do the right thing and return the blanket to her family. The museum didn’t see it that way. They made all the right noises and sounds of “oh we didn’t know” and “we value the native communities”, but at the end of the phone call, they still wanted to keep the blanket. They said it’s an important relic of Native American life and should be showcased as such.

So Marie hopped on the soonest flight from Raleigh to Chicago. Her ancestors had fought the institutions of colonization before and she would fight them again. She would make her position clear: they would return the blanket or she was going to sue them blind for stolen property and grave robbing.

She landed in Chicago and realized she needed to plan this out. Things were moving faster than she could manage. She had a sudden thought. Maybe the local tribes would understand and help her. So she pulled out her phone and searched for the local native community center. She found it downtown and called a cab to get there. As it was 3pm on a Wednesday, there were a couple people milling around the building, drinking black coffee and nibbling on a open package of almond cookies.

She approached an elderly man and asked who she could speak to about a problem with the museum. He thought it over for a minute and called over a middle aged man with two traditional braids. 

“This is Johnny. He takes care of all the official stuff like complaints.” The elderly man patted her shoulder and walked off to talk to some kids Marie’s age. They looked like students or volunteers or both. She turned to face Johnny and took a deep breath before explaining the situation.

Johnny sat and listened with a stoic face. Then he sat quietly a while more. Finally he spoke up and said what we can do is file a lawsuit and if you want, we can protest outside the museum for visibility. So they can’t just brush you off.

During her explanation, Marie had started to get teary-eyed and so she wiped her face with the sleeve of her university sweatshirt and nodded, looking fiercely at the older man.

“That’s what I want to do. They can’t get away with this.”

“Alright. Get ready for a fight.”

They sat outside the museum with signs advertising that some of the artifacts in the museum had come from unlawful sources. Since Marie had come forward, they had discovered other items that local people could clearly place as belonging to their families. Descendants of slaves, Jewish holocaust survivors, and other tribal members. 

The museum ranted in an orderly way that they couldn’t have known where all the artifacts came from. They would never want to harm families and indigenous communities by having stolen items on display. But they still refused to give the items back, claiming historical significance.

Meanwhile the lawsuit was progressing due to pressure from newspapers. There was talk circulating of a tv interview to get both sides of the story. Marie held strong to her belief that the museum would cave to their demands soon enough and then she could go home with her grandmother’s blanket and put her spirit to rest. 

She had been gone five years that spring. There was no way to tell when the museum had obtained the blanket, but in her heart, she felt her grandma wouldn’t rest easy having the hand sewn item gone from her resting place.

Marie had had conversations with her dad while she was stuck in Chicago, silences stretching over the miles. He slowly mumbled that he was proud of her and told her he would support every action she needed to take on this journey.

A few weeks passed, full of pressuring the museum and waiting for them to cave. Then, Marie got a call from her lawyer, hired specially from a firm that worked with the Native Center on issues regarding cultural sensitivity. 

“They’re willing to deal. If you’d like, I can make the arrangements.”

She agreed and two days later a bunch of people connected to the protest got phone calls telling them that cultural items related to their families would be released from the museum with heartfelt apologies and a commitment to do better towards minority groups and items of heritage.

The people protesting were ecstatic for the win and also solemn for their lost loved ones. The group celebrated by going for a round of pub food together, reserving almost an entire restaurant to themselves.

Johnny asked what her plans were.

“I'm putting Grandma to rest.”

Marie was glad to have the blanket back and felt all the fight rush out of her. It was time to go home.

She made arrangements to travel back to Seattle, the blanket in her carryon. She was almost afraid to let it out of reach for fear that it would be taken again. She made it home and found herself enveloped in a warm hug from her father. They held each other for several breaths. 

Together they made plans to honor her grandmother. They decided they would have a ceremony similar to a burial but for the blanket. The small family of Marie, her father and her aunt gathered at the small cemetery, noting what had been disturbed by the company working for the museum. They had dug a small square shaped hole a foot and half in the ground beside the old woman’s burial spot in advance. Her father burned sacred sage and hummed a song an elder had taught him as a boy and he gestured to Marie to place the blanket in the hole.

She carefully did just that and with one last soft stroke of the wool, she stepped back to her aunt’s side. As her father worked to cover the disturbed ground, the wind blew against her face and she knew she had done the right thing.