Lake County Discovery Museum officials have been working for more than 15 years to reunite Native American skeletal remains and associated objects in their collection with their rightful owners.
Now, this fall, the remains of 34 Native Americans who once lived in what is now Lake County will be returned to the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi for a proper burial.
Once the forest preserve board approves the transfer Sept. 13, Marcus Winchester, the director of language and culture for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and its tribal historic preservation officer would come to Wauconda to receive the remains of his ancestors, said Diana Dretske, the museum’s collections manager.
“They will bury the remains, because that is where they belong — in the earth,” she said.
“I’m very happy about this. This is the right thing to do. They should have never been in our collection.” she said.
The remains of an additional 11 Native American individuals in the museum’s collection are expected to be accepted by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan, pending the completion of final paperwork and federal approval, Dretske said.
The return of the remains is mandated by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (known as NAGPRA) of 1990.
The skeletal remains and funerary objects such as beads and a bird skeleton in the museum’s collection likely were buried in Lake County during the 1600s or 1700s, Dretske said.
They were excavated sometime in the 1950s or 1960s by the privately owned Lake County Museum of History, which the county later acquired. The remains were transferred to the Lake County Forest Preserves in 1989, according to county records.
The remains and funerary objects have been stored in a separate room in airtight boxes in a climate-controlled environment, Dretske said.
The Potawatomi relocated from Wisconsin to what is now Lake County in the late 1600s and traded with French Canadian explorers, she said.
“They definitely were hunters. There was a lot of deer here, and fish. They also had gardens. They did do farming,” she said.
They lived in wigwams made from the bark of trees, including hickory, she said.
The Potawatomi and other tribes left the area upon the signing of the Chicago Treaty in 1835, which removed them and other tribes and took away their last remaining land, perhaps 5 million acres, Dretske said.
The treaty said the tribes needed to resettle west of the Mississippi River, she said, but the Potawatomi instead went north back into Wisconsin. “They returned seasonally,” to the Lake County area, “to hunt and pay respect to their ancestors who were buried there,” she said.
Following the passage of NAGPRA, museum officials tried to reunite the remains with Native American tribes, and eventually hired consultant Beth Nawara, who works at the Elgin History Museum.
According to the law, “museums needed to notify any and all Native American groups that are recognized by the federal government that they might have human remains, sacred objects, ceremonial objects in their possessions, that might have belonged to a Native American group,” said Nawara.
The museum did that in the 1990s and again in 2011 and 2013, but nothing came of it, Nawara said.
Nawara spent months researching Native American tribes that lived in Lake County. The tribes’ descendants and NAGPRA representatives helped her find the Pokagon Band of the Potowatami, she said.
“I strongly believe that human remains need to go back to Native American groups, where they can be appropriately honored and respected,” Nawara said. “The museum has done a great job of taking care of the human remains, but now they need to go home.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
