Coming Home: How the Nez Perce Tribe Regained Their Cultural Heritage

Western Libraries will host a talk by professor and author Trevor Bond entitled “Coming Home: How the Nez Perce Tribe Regained Their Cultural Heritage.” This free, public event will take place on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, at 4 p.m. in the Reading Room (Wilson 4 Central) at Western Washington University Libraries. 

Belongings deeply important to tribal communities are often housed in museums far away from those communities. In this talk, hear the remarkable story of how the Nez Perce Tribe and their allies purchased the largest and oldest collection of Nez Perce material culture—including dresses, shirts, and other regalia—from a museum over 2,000 miles away from their homeland.

In this hopeful story of cultural resiliency and making amends for past injustices, explore issues surrounding collection and curation, and the changing relationships between museums and Native communities. It’s a story that transcends the efforts of one Northwest tribe to show how many indigenous communities are reuniting with their heritage.

Trevor James Bond (he/him) is the director of the David G. Pollart Center for Arts and Humanities and the associate dean for digital initiatives and special collections at the Washington State University Libraries. He is the author of Coming Home to Nez Perce Country: The Niimiipuu Campaign to Repatriate Their Exploited Heritage, a finalist for the 2022 Washington State Book Award for non-fiction. Bond lives in Pullman.

This talk is offered as part of the Archives & Special Collections Distinguished Speaker Series and the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau and is co-sponsored by Western Libraries Archives & Special Collections, Humanities Washington, and WWU’s departments of Anthropology, Art & Art History, and History. 

This event is intended for all participants, including those with apparent or non-apparent disabilities. For more information or for disability accommodation(s) (such as ASL interpretation, etc.) please contact Elizabeth Joffrion, Director of Archives & Special Collections, Elizabeth.Joffrion@wwu.edu, (360) 650-3283.  Advance notice is appreciated and sometimes necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. 

[Complete Image Caption & Description: Part of the Spalding-Allen Collection purchased by the Nez Perce Tribe in 1996 from the Ohio Historical Society. Re-named the Wetxuuwíitin' (meaning captive returned home) Collection by the Nez Perce Tribe in 2021. A cloth and fringe decorated horse crupper made of bison hide with cut and rolled tin cone jingles on two side attachments. Red wool broadcloth and blue trade cloth are stitched with sinew through both sides forming a decorative boarder. The hide is in good, but soiled condition. The fabrics are in poor condition. There is much soling from use and insect damage to nearly all segments of the cloth (fabrics).]