Embarrassment of riches: part of a 19th-century private collection Courtesy of Native Arts Department, Denver Art Museum

IN 1971, a highway construction crew in the US state of Iowa accidentally dug up a cemetery. The remains of 26 white people were laid back to rest in another cemetery. The remains of two Native Americans were put into a box for archaeologists to study.

In Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits Chip Colwell, an anthropologist and curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in Colorado, ably and sensitively tells the often conflict-ridden story of how and why museums in the US relinquished their hold over this material. Recalling his own involvement, Colwell writes: “My job was to both protect and return the collections I oversaw.”

Consider the carved wooden figures called Ahayu:da, usually translated as “War Gods”. For the Zuni of New Mexico, these are living beings, created to watch over the tribe. To them, keeping the Ahayu:da on a museum shelf is just as inappropriate as keeping their children there.

Repatriations of these objects began in 1978: Colwell describes the Zuni leaders’ emotionally charged visits to the Ahayu:da imprisoned in his museum, and relates the history of the objects’ purchase – or theft – by white dealers and anthropologists. And he follows the Zuni in their years-long struggle to have them returned. (Even in the 2000s, a few were still turning up in dusty corners.) The Ahayu:da now reside in a secure, open-air shrine where they will eventually decay to dust. That’s not easy for a curator to accept.

Colwell uses the Ahayu:da and three other examples of repatriations from the Denver collection to explain the complex legal processes that have changed the way museums approach their collections: a Cheyenne scalp from a 19th-century massacre by the US cavalry; a ceremonial robe, the symbol of clan authority for the Tlingit of the Alaskan coast; and a large collection of human remains that cannot be definitively assigned to any particular tribe.

Behind all these stories is a tension between the rights-based argument for repatriation and the scientific impulse that wants these objects to remain in a museum. Sometimes, as with some Tlingit regalia, the objects were originally sold by clan members faced with a desperate need for cash. On other occasions they were simply appropriated by white conquerors. And sometimes, especially with human remains, the Native American tribes approach repatriation reluctantly, for fear of angering the spirits of the dead.

“The Zuni’s Ahayu:da will eventually decay to dust. That’s not easy for a curator to accept”

Colwell finds himself squarely in the middle of each quandary: a practising anthropologist who works alongside Native Americans every day and is sensitive to their cultural dynamics. Colwell’s account favours the Native American perspective – a sensible approach for a book aimed at scientifically literate readers who may lean the other way. Readers will come away with a deeper appreciation of Native American cultural imperatives and the complexity of the situation.

Still, the book might have been stronger had it looked more deeply at the scientific side of the coin. What do we gain by studying human remains, especially those that cannot be assigned to a particular Native American group? How often are museum artefacts used in research, as opposed to being merely warehoused?

Both sides have benefited from this prolonged tussle over repatriation. The tribes have regained many of their most precious objects. And the museums have gained a much deeper appreciation of Native American culture and perspective – and, in many cases, can still carry out their research, albeit only with tribal permission.

Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the fight to reclaim Native America’s culture Chip Colwell University of Chicago Press

This article appeared in print under the headline “Native justice”