Batchewana remains return home

Batchewana First Nation Chief Dean Sayers (right) carries a box containing remains of six Anishinabek who were returned by the Smithsonian Institute, onto the shore at Bellevue Park on Thursday.Michael Purvis Sault StarThe remains of six Batchewana First Nation ancestors returned home Thursday after a 135-year absence.

Chief Dean Sayers said the return of the remains from the United States marked a "moving forward," for Batchewana.


"We want our kids to have good memories," said Sayers. "This is one of those good memories that they're going to be able to tell their children and their grandchildren and their grandchildren."
A crowd lined the St. Mary's River as a box containing the remains of three men and three women was paddled from Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., to Bellevue Park in a 20-foot birch bark canoe. The remains were then loaded in a vehicle for transport to a traditional burial ground at Batchewana's Goulais Mission reserve.

Thursday was the first time the Smithsonian Institution has been involved in transferring human remains back to Canada.

The unidentified Anishnabek as well as four associated funerary objects, had been unearthed from unknown cemetery sites at or near Sault Ste. Marie in 1875 by the U.S. Army surgeon at nearby Fort Brady for the purpose of scientific research.

The skeletal remains, believed to have been buried 50 to 100 years prior to being unearthed, were forwarded to the U.S. Army Medical Museum in 1875 then transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1898 – where they were stored and forgotten for over a century.

The Smithsonian, as well as all American museums and institutions, as a result of federal legislation over a decade ago were mandated to take an inventory of their Native American cultural items and human remains for return to their respective peoples.

Cultural and other items have been returned to tribes in Canada in the past, but never human remains, said Eric Hollinger, an archaeologist at the Natural Museum of Natural History, where the remains were housed.

"We have worked with cross-border situations like this before, but this is the first time human remains have been transferred in this way," said Hollinger.

The existence of the Batchewana remains was discovered during a transfer of remains to the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians on the Michigan side of the border. Sault Tribe learned of additional Anishinabek remains and contacted Batchewana.

"The United States, unfortunately, doesn't recognize Canadian tribes, they only recognize Native American tribes in the States, so the Sault Tribe was instrumental in helping us, in sponsoring us, in supporting us through this whole process," said Sayers.

Sayers said it was important that the remains be conveyed across the river in a traditional birch bark canoe, and that they be properly received on the north side.

He said the First Nation took great care in preparing for the burial ceremony at a traditional Batchewana burial ground in Goulais Bay.

"The elders wanted to make sure that our ancestors stayed as close to the earth as they could throughout this whole trip home," said Sayers. "There's comfort with our mother, the Earth, and they feel that and they want to return there and they want to feel that support."

The significance of Thursday's repatriation was not lost on Verna Sewell, who made sure to usher her grandchildren to the river's edge, where they could witness the event first hand.

"It was pretty emotional, it brought back memories – not that I would have had, but of my father and my fathers before that," said Sewell, 54.

She said the river crossing and its symbolism were important nods to a past when her ancestors would have freely travelled the St. Mary's in canoes like the one used Thursday.

The birch bark canoe used to transport the remains from the U.S. to Canada was specially commissioned for the repatriation.

"An elder from the Sault Tribe of Chippewas built it and taught a whole group of our youth," said Sayers. "Our day camps, our men and some of our women learned how to make the birch bark canoe right from scratch, how to pick the birch bark, where to pick it, how big the sheets are, the cedar, the spruce roots."

Hollinger said no DNA or other destructive testing has been conducted on these remains.

What is known about the individuals comes from what was written at the time of their exhumation, the remains themselves, and from four objects – three nails, believed to be from coffins, and a lead ornament that may have been a pendant or other adornment of one of the individuals – which stayed with the remains.

One of the individuals was said to have been killed at Batchewana, and the others likely came from the Whitefish Island burial ground.

"We aren't sure exactly where they were exhumed, except that they were near Sault Ste. Marie or in Sault Ste. Marie," said Hollinger.

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