A Coming Home Celebration
The celebration represents a moment of reconciliation, healing, and shared community, as the sacred artifacts returned home. The event honored elders who have played an essential role in preserving the history and culture of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Arapaho Honor/Color Guard, drummers, singers, and traditional prayer were also a part of the ceremony, adding layers of tradition to this deeply spiritual gathering. The formal signing ceremony legally conveyed ownership of the artifacts from The Church to the Northern Arapaho Tribe. The Episcopal Church of Wyoming (The Church) returned a collection of approximately 200 Northern Arapaho artifacts to the Arapaho people.
Crystal C'bearing, director of the Northern Arapaho Historic Preservation Office, says these artifacts are part of a living history. She explains, “We still have these items and we still use them. They’re alive, we still use them in our daily lives. It’s not from the past, they’re still here.”
If you are interested in learning more about the complicated issue of ownership of tribal cultural artifacts, I highly recommend the documentary “What Was Ours,” which features Jordan Dresser, a Northern Arapaho man who discovered, when hired to establish the Cultural Room at the Wind River Casino, that the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal members no longer possessed many sacred objects from their pasts. The documentary follows his journey to discover these sacred objects.
A Coming Home
On October 14, the Northern Arapaho Tribe and The Episcopal Church in Wyoming hosted a Coming Home Celebration - Noe’heeckoohut Hiisi’ - at St. Michael's Circle in Ethete, Wyoming.
