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(meteorobs) Indians are demanding the return of "their" meteorite

With the opening of the new Rose Center for Earth and Space/Hayden 
Planetarium scheduled for Saturday, a controversy has arisen.  See details in 
the story 
below.  -- joe rao

Tribe Demands Return of Meteorite

By JOHN JURGENSEN
.c The Associated Press

  
NEW YORK (AP) - A group of American Indians says a 16-ton meteorite that will 
be the main attraction at the Museum of Natural History's new planetarium is 
a holy tribal object and should be returned to Oregon. 

The meteorite - about the size of a small car - will be displayed in the 
planetarium's main hall when it opens Saturday. 

The meteorite hit Earth more than 10,000 years ago and was moved by glacial 
ice to a hillside in West Linn, Ore. The Clackamas tribe adopted it as a 
sacred object, and the rain water that collected in its deep craters was 
prized for its holiness. 

``Songs given to us by the meteorite are still sung today,'' said Ryan Heavy 
Head, a consultant to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which 
includes the Clackamas. 

He said the meteorite called ``Tomanoas'' by the Indians embodies three 
heavenly realms - sky, earth and water. Clackamas youths were sent on vigils 
to the meteorite to await messages from the spirit world and other tribes 
also made pilgrimages, said Heavy Head, a Blackfoot. 

The Grand Ronde submitted a claim for the meteorite to the museum last 
September, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. 
The federal law gives the museum until Feb. 29 to respond. 

Ann Canty, a museum spokeswoman, would not comment on the claim. But she and 
an architect of the new building made clear that it would not be easy to move 
the meteorite from the planetarium, officially the Rose Center for Earth and 
Space. 

``Because the meteorite is so massive, parts of the facility had to 
essentially be built around it,'' Canty said. 

The meteorite had sat in the old planetarium since 1935 and was moved with a 
large crane when that building was dismantled in 1997. Two years before the 
new center was finished, contractors installed three structural piles - 
60-foot tubes driven into the ground - just to support it. 

When tribal representatives visited in September, they ``had quite a problem 
getting in to see the meteorite,'' Heavy Head said in a telephone interview 
from his home in Salem, Ore. 

Over six days, he and his wife Adrienne took thousands of pictures 
documenting objects in the museum for possible repatriation. He said the 
museum staff was ``civil but not necessarily cooperative'' when he asked to 
see the meteorite. 

``We had to remind them that we had a federal grant behind us,'' he said. 
``Eventually they gave us hard hats and let us in, but when we started taking 
pictures, they freaked.'' 

The meteorite changed hands several times before the museum acquired it in 
1906. A part-time miner named Ellis G. Hughes discovered it in 1902 on land 
belonging to an iron company, moved it into his barn and began charging a 
quarter for admission. 

In 1905, a state Supreme Court returned the meteorite to the iron company; it 
was then bought for $20,600 by a New York woman, Mrs. William Dodge, who 
donated it to the museum. 

Tim McKeown, who oversees Indian claims for the National Park Service, said 
proof of ownership could decide the case of the meteorite or the two parties 
could reach agreement. 

But McKeown said if the case goes to a federal review committee or to court, 
it may take time. 

Heavy Head said he does not expect a harmonious exchange given the effort and 
expense devoted to building the meteorite into the Rose Center. 

``It was a good thing that it traveled to the museum,'' he said. ``Their 
ownership was essential to its safety. But now it needs to come home.'' 

AP-NY-02-18-00 1705EST



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