“I almost cried when I saw the Rainey Mountain drawing,” said Tahnee Ahtone, director of the Kiowa Tribal Museum. “Here is where our life changed.” Ahtone, who is of Kiowa and Mvskoke descent, had come to Bonhams Auction House in Los Angeles to look at a series of four drawing books featured in an upcoming auction of Native American art and artifacts. “From the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande: the Collection of Roy H. Robinson” features hundreds of items — textiles, tomahawks, cradles, beaded bags, and pottery — collected from communities across North America. But the so-called “ledger books,” created by Cheyenne and Kiowa artists once imprisoned by the US, are perhaps the most unique, and their inclusion in the sale the most contentious.
On Monday, Chairman of the Kiowa Tribe Lawrence SpottedBird sent Bonhams a letter requesting that the books be pulled from the auction, set to take place Wednesday, October 26 and Thursday, October 27. “The Tribe is especially concerned about the lack of information about the provenance of the ledger books created by Kiowa prisoners of the United States government, and the chain of custody of the objects including how the books were originally transferred from the prisoner(s) to another person,” the letter reads. “The Kiowa items that Bonhams has scheduled for auction represent objects of significant cultural patrimony related to the Tribe’s history and culture — items which we believe may have been wrongfully acquired.”
Association on American Indian Affairs, told Hyperallergic. “That leaves the tribes a huge burden to have to prove that these are sensitive items that have been stolen.”
Plains Indian Ledger Art project, making it accessible online.
“What’s always lost when we talk about Fort Marion is that these are incarcerated people. The method of incarceration was extralegal,” Frank said. “These people did not go through a court, they were accused of war crimes, but they were not tried. They were summarily appointed to stand in as hostages to people at the losing end of the Red River War.”
Frank has been granted permission by Bonhams to provide high-level scans of these four books on his site, but he describes this as “the last resort.” “You want to make sure whatever happens to them, there is a record of them in their entirety,” Frank added. He noted that he is not aware of any historical ledger art books owned by a Native institution.
The main federal law that allows for repatriation of certain Native American objects, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), only applies to federal agencies or museums that receive federal funds, so the Bonhams auction items fall outside of its jurisdiction. The STOP (Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony) Act, which passed the House last December, would broaden the scope of protected items, especially overseas. Federal laws notwithstanding, Frank notes that “there is a moral and historical reason for people to think about these transactions in a more encompassing manner than market capitalism generally affords.”
Focus on experimentation at SAIC.
