Remains of at least 10 and an 1895 mortuary pole can return to Sitka Tribe after Oct. 16

The remains of at least 10 Native American individuals and nine associated funerary objects held by the Tongass National Forest may be returned to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska on or after Oct. 16, under a Federal Register notice published Wednesday. Publication starts a mandatory 30-day waiting period before repatriation can proceed.

The objects are a mortuary pole, a carved pole raised as part of a death rite, along with bentwood box fragments, blanket fragments, beads, metal, abalone shell, bird down, cordage and cedar bark. The pole was collected around 1895 from John Brady's homestead in Sitka and placed in the Sheldon Jackson Museum. The notice says all of it likely originated from the village site of Krugloi Point, on the southern tip of Halleck Island, and that the remains may or may not be original to the pole.

The Tongass National Forest determined, after consultation, a cultural affiliation between the remains and objects and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, identified, the notice says, by geographical location or acquisition history.

Any lineal descendant, tribe or Native Hawaiian organization not named in the notice may also request the remains by showing cultural affiliation by a preponderance of the evidence. If competing requests arrive, the Forest Service decides which is most appropriate before anything is repatriated.

A standing report from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development's Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums to the Alaska State Board of Education in March said the pole, cataloged as SJ-I-A-248, "has been covered and accompanied by a new label that speaks to the status of this sacred item." The report said the pole entered the collection in 1895 and was removed from it and transferred to the U.S. Forest Service in 2019, leaving the federal agency with legal control while the pole remains physically at the Sitka museum.

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Tlingit clans, including the Kaagwaantaan and Kiks.ádi, have long sought the return of ancestral remains and at.óow, the sacred objects a clan owns in common, from museums and federal collections. The tribe has received ancestral remains before, including from the Smithsonian in 2007 and the Penn Museum in 2019. It had posted no statement on the notice as of Wednesday.

Written repatriation requests go to Janelle Crocker, acting forest supervisor for the Tongass National Forest, at the supervisor's office in Ketchikan.