Original Americans May Get Museum

Congress is within arm’s length of establishing a National Museum of the American Indian in the nation’s capital, and in the process, settling some longstanding feuds.

The Senate was expected to take up a bill today to transfer a priceless collection of Indian artifacts from New York’s Museum of the American Indian to the Smithsonian Institution, which would display them in a national museum on the Mall and a satellite facility in New York City.

The House passed the measure by voice vote Monday.

The bill may at long last make peace among diverse factions, first by resolving a 10-year-old dispute in New York over how to display and preserve the Heye Foundation collection of more than 1 million Indian artifacts.

Second, it stipulates that the Smithsonian, where possible, return about 18,000 Indian remains to their original tribes for burial.

The question of the remains had been the last obstacle to crafting a passable bill, and compromise came in September when Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams reversed the museum’s long-held policy that the bones were necessary for study.

Indians nationwide, seeking to bury their ancestors, heralded his decision as a watershed that will influence other museums.

Adams called Monday’s House action “a wonderful moment.”

“It opens new horizons for the Smithsonian and the world,” he said in a statement. “We’ll be working with Native American communities in ways we’ve never done before, and it’s a model for working with other communities.”