Native American Shield Returned to New Mexico From France
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — When a ceremonial Native American shield was returned last week to New Mexico, tribal leaders were there to greet the sacred piece that held a place in their cycle of ceremonies until it vanished from their centuries-old, mesa-top village in the 1970s.
Nearly four years ago, the shield resurfaced as an auction item in Paris, prompting the tribe’s leaders to begin making public appeals for it to be pulled from bidding and returned to them.
Their push is finally nearing an end. U.S. and Acoma Pueblo officials plan to announce Monday that an FBI agent delivered the shield from Paris last week following a multiagency effort that involved U.S. senators, diplomats and prosecutors.
It will formally be returned to Acoma Pueblo after a judge dismisses a civil forfeiture case that prosecutors filed in an attempt to secure the shield’s return, U.S. Attorney John Anderson said. Until then, it’s being held in a federal building in Albuquerque.
“It will be a day of high emotion and thanksgiving,” Gov. Brian Vallo of Acoma Pueblo said ahead of the shield’s expected return to his tribe.
The shield is a colorful, circular piece featuring the face of a Kachina, or ancestral spirit. Iy is among hundreds of Native American items, many considered sacred by tribes, that were sent to Paris auction houses by collectors over the years. U.S. laws prohibit the trafficking of certain tribal items domestically, but it doesn’t explicitly ban dealers from exporting them.
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