As we’ve seen, the word repatriation as it is used in America nowadays most often refers to NAGPRA, a piece of Federal legislation passed by Congress in the 1990s. But the origins of the idea of re-burying the Native dead in a traditional way can trace its post-war origins to a grass-roots movement in Iowa, where the first law covering American Indian remains—the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976—came into being through the persistence of a Native American woman named Maria Pearson.
Maria Pearson
In 1969, Maria Pearson was recently remarried and preoccupied with raising her six children in a new house in Marne, Iowa, near the southwest corner of the state. Her husband John, a civil engineer for the Iowa Department of Transportation, had been relocated to the area so that he could oversee the construction of a new highway. Maria was a member of the Yankton Sioux Nation, located in South Dakota, not that many miles where she now made her home. Over the years, with a growing family, she had become less active in her home community in South Dakota.
But her new house was surrounded by sturdy old cottonwood trees that reminded Maria of her grandmother, and her grandmother reminded her that she was Yankton. For the first three years in that house, Maria thought a lot about her, some afternoons imagining they were together again, putting up produce for the winter. During these visits, Maria’s grandmother would say, “Girl, some day you are going to be called upon to stand up for what you believe in. You better know what you believe.”
Those words took on a new meaning one evening when John came home for dinner and told Maria about something odd that happened at work. The highway John was working on was going to plow right through an old settlers’ cemetery and the DOT had called in the State Archaeologist to handle moving the graves to a new location. John told Maria that the archaeology team “took out the remains of twenty-six white people, put them in new caskets, and took them to the local cemetery in Glenwood where they reburied them.” Then he told her the part he knew was going to make her mad: “They also found the skeletons of an Indian girl and her baby. They put those bones in a box and took them to the Office of the State Archaeologist in Iowa City for study.”
Maria was furious, but also saddened. Standing alone in garden, later that evening, she began to pray as she did every day, but this night the wind picked up in a strange way. She would later say, “I always had a good relationship with wind.” When it stopped short of her doorstep and turned toward the cottonwoods, “their leaves began to tinkle,” and then “turned to a sound like crystal wind chimes. That was the first time I had heard my grandmother’s voice since she had made her Spirit Journey.” Her grandmother had told her, “If you ever need me, I will come to you in the wind. Listen for my voice.” Now here she was. What she said was clear and forceful, “Girl, I told you that you would have to stand up for what you believe in. You must protect the places where your ancestors lie.”
The very next day, as soon as John went to work and her kids were in school, Maria obeyed her grandmother’s command. Getting her grandmother’s trunk out from storage she retrieved moccasins and regalia that she hadn’t worn in quit a while and put them on. She braided her hair, fastening the braids with hair ties.
John Pearson and Maria Pearson, with an unidentified friend (1972)
In 2003, she narrated her next move:
“Then I made that ninety-mile trip into Des Moines to the governor’s office. And when I walked in, I was aware that people were looking at me, because in 1971 Indian women did not just walk around dressed in their regalia. When I came to the door of the governor’s office, the receptionist looked up and was startled to see me in my attire. I went up to her desk and she asked, “Can I help you?” And I said, “Yes, I have come to see the Great White Father. You tell him that Running Moccasins is here.”
Eventually, Maria Pearson and Iowa Governor Robert D. Ray worked together to establish the Iowa Burials Protection Act. It designated four burial sites along the state’s four cardinal directions where the Native peoples who have passed over might finally rest in the land of their ancestors. The law is not just a point of pride for Native Americans, but all Iowans. As Maria Pearson once said, “Here in Iowa, we no longer have any of our ancestors on shelves in cardboard boxes collecting dust. They have all been reburied and are continuing their spirit journey.”
Suggested Reading
“Still Running: A Tribute to Maria Pearson, Yankton Sioux”, a Special Commemorative Issue of the Journal of the Iowa Archaeological Society, ed. by David Mayer Gradwohl, Joe B. Thompson, and Michael J. Perry.