Pamplin Media Group – Locked for decades, Oregon City cabinet reveals Native

McLoughlin Memorial Association repatriates large batch of items to Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde

An Oregon City-based nonprofit organization’s surreptitious discovery of Native artifacts spurred the McLoughlin Memorial Association to repatriate a large batch of items to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.

MMA volunteers recently returned the items to the Grand Ronde, including five baskets, one large shark tooth, red dentalium beads used for jewelry, a large round weight, three pestles and two small stone bowls.

“The return of belongings, like these, is always a homecoming,” said Grand Ronde spokesperson Sara Thomson. “For the community, their presence grounds our people and practices in the past and reminds us of our ancestor’s efforts to persist, while also reassuring us as we move forward into the future.”

Oregon City Commissioner Denyse McGriff was among the volunteers on the Rose Farm Management Committee who recommended the items’ transfer to the MMA, whose board approved their return to the Grand Ronde.

“We all felt that it was the right thing to do,” McGriff said.

For many years, members of the Rose Farm Management Committee were unable to open a bookshelf/desk secretary in the 1847 Holmes House, the oldest American home in Oregon City. After giving up on finding a key that fit, Abba’s Integrity Lock and Key came to open the cabinet.

“To my great surprise the shelves that were not visible contained many artifacts,” McGriff said. “Mrs. Ruth McBride Powers had not documented many of the items in the house, and we were not sure where they came from.”

Grand Ronde tribal archeologist Michael Lewis identified all of the items transferred from the Rose Farm to the Grand Ronde as being from the many bands of Native peoples who now make up the tribal confederation. In the coming months, Grand Ronde officials said, the items will be studied and accessioned into the tribe’s collection.

“The contents of the tribe’s collection is used for rotating exhibits at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center, as well as for learning and research by tribal members and staff for supporting ongoing cultural practices and lifeways of our people,” Thompson said.

The staff from the Chachalu Tribal Museum and Cultural Center also helped the Rose Farm identify other baskets that may belong to tribes in Washington state. Grand Ronde officials said that baskets are identifiable by region, tribe, and sometimes to the family or maker through the understanding of different material types, weaving techniques, patterns and designs.

“There are dozens if not hundreds of variables that can indicate to a knowledgeable person information about a basket’s origin and maker,” Thompson said.

Rose Farm’s donation of the artifacts to the Grand Ronde is part of a larger trend of repatriation of Native objects to various tribes nationally.

In March, two obsidian artifacts found in a Lake Oswego backyard over 50 years ago were repatriated to the Grand Ronde’s museum and cultural center by the Oswego Heritage Council. The tools, identified as a projectile point and a scrape made from stone glass over 11,000 years ago, were commonly used by Indigenous…