If you’re a regular here, you’ve heard a lot about how westward expansion drastically changed Indigenous peoples and their cultures. Communities lost the remains of their beloved relatives – and they lost untold numbers of objects, both the sacred and the everyday.

Reclaiming what was lost is an ongoing journey for many tribal nations, including the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming. 

The tribe finally regained ownership of a collection of about 200 items in the fall of 2024: toys, beaded moccasins, rawhide bags, traditional dresses. 

The items made their way back to the Wind River Reservation after being in the possession of the Episcopal Church for the past 80 years. Their history is intertwined with the long-lasting impacts of assimilation policy and boarding schools – and the items hold powerful memories for the people connected to them.

Wyoming Public Radio Reporter Hannah Habermann dives into that history and shares this story of what it means for the collection to come back to its people.

A long line of cars pull into a dusty lot in Ethete, crunching over gravel and parking in tightly-packed parallel rows. Even though it’s October, the sun is blazing overhead, reflecting off windshields as people clammer out of their cars. A few folks with walkie talkies direct the traffic.

People make their way out of the parking lot, across a road and into the courtyard of St. Michael's Mission, also known as “The Circle.” Rows and rows of folding chairs are set up in a big open patch of dirt and browned grass, and many of the seats are already filled. 

On the outer edge of the circle, there’s a small church made of red logs, a playground, and a handful of old stone buildings, some with boarded-up windows. Surrounding them all are tall green trees, stretching high into the blue sky.

It’s people of all ages – young, old and everything in between. They’re hiding from the heat under umbrellas and sun hats, fanning themselves, and chatting with each other. 

There’s even some students from the nearby Wyoming Indian middle and high schools, getting out of class to be part of this homecoming celebration.

The crowd gets quiet as Northern Arapaho tribal member Jordan Dresser steps up to the mic.

“People always ask, how do tribes get back their items? And that's a very complicated process,” he says.

Jordan’s wearing a black button up shirt, with subtle lace sleeves and one half of a star on the front, made out of gray and white and black ribbons. It’s an outfit worthy of a celebration – and today, the tribe is celebrating. They’re reclaiming hundreds of sacred and cultural items from the Episcopal Church. 

Jordan tells the story of how the community lost all these items in the first place. It all started back in the 1930’s and 40’s.

“The individual who collected the items is named Edith May Adams,” he says. “And over time, she just bought these items and she just left them to the church itself.”

Edith May Adams was a deacon at St Michael's Mission, who ran a small market on the reservation. If people came into her store and didn’t have cash to buy basic necessities, the story goes that Edith would trade food and supplies for Native-made items. 

In her will, she donated her collection to the Episcopal Church to be held in safekeeping for the tribes. The church put the collection on display at a museum here at the Circle for years. 

“ There's a museum here, if you turn to your back that way. A lot of our tribal members were the ones who was the curators of that space,” says Jordan.

Eventually – and the why is a bit murky – the Episcopal Church moved the collection to Laramie, then eventually to Casper. Some say floods, some say black mold, some say the museum fell into disrepair.

But either way, Jordan and many others have tried to bring the items back to the Wind River Reservation for decades, saying they belong with the people. 

In the last ten years, a slice of the items were loaned to the tribe for a small museum at the Wind River Casino outside of Riverton, about half an hour away.

“Initially we were given a loan and the loan was for 20 items that would be renewed every year,” he says.

Those efforts were the center of a documentary film Jordan co-produced a few years back, called “What Was Ours.”

But now, the whole collection is back for good. Jordan points to a long list of elders and community members who helped make it happen.

“ We want to thank and honor them all today because it's all their hard work that got us here today,” he says, “and also to welcome these items home and that we can build something great not only for ourselves, but also for future generations as well.”

To recap: the items came from people on the reservation. They ended up in Edith May Adams’ personal collection, which was then deeded to the church. The items lived in a museum at the St. Michael’s Circle, then were taken off Wind River. Now they’re back home, which begs the question: what next?

“The big question is what happens to these items? What do we do with them all?,” says Jordan. “I think it's the site for a museum.”

Jordan currently works at a museum in Fort Collins, which he says is a hub for community events and opens up options for young people. He thinks re-vitalizing the museum here at the Circle could help grow those possibilities and create more opportunities for increasing representation.

“That's why it's important we have a museum like that, where our Arapaho kids and Shoshone kids can come and learn about themselves in safe spaces,” he says. “And I think that could change their lives immensely.”

Members of the Northern Arapaho Post 96 Color Guard present the flags with music by the Eagle Drummers. Afterwards, Northern Arapaho elder William C'Hair launches into an opening prayer for the celebration.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It’s very wonderful to see all of us gathered here today. You know, it’s very important what we are doing here today,” he says.

William’s wearing a brown suede vest over a blue checkered shirt, and jeans. He says the story really begins with the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. In the southeast corner of what eventually became the state of Wyoming, the Lakota, Dakota and Arapaho peoples met with a delegation from the federal government.

“Negotiations, they called it, but there was no negotiation. Said, ‘You get this, you do that.’ Said, ‘We're going to give you some land.’ It was ours to give ourselves back again. It wasn't theirs,” he says.

The treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation, which was later reduced and broken into five separate reservations. The Northern Arapaho people were promised land of their own, but that never happened. They eventually ended up on the Wind River Reservation with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, their longtime enemy.

William says how we talk about treaties matters.

“ Can't say the government gave us some land, you know. Just let us use our own land,” he says.

Broken treaties were one tool in the bigger project of westward expansion and colonization. Missions were another.

“The federal government would subsidize missionaries if they go on to reservations, establish missions to Christianize and de-Indianize the Indian,” he says. “Therefore, on this reservation, St. Stephen's, St. Michael's, Robert's Mission, three of them were established.”

Many missions also had boarding schools, including St. Michael’s. From the early 1800s through as late as the 1970s, the federal government and religious institutions established boarding schools throughout the country.

There, Indigenous youth were separated from their traditions, with the goal to assimilate them into white culture. But despite all that?

“They were unsuccessful,” says William. “To this day, not one Indian has ever turned white.”

For Northern Arapaho elder Leona Buckman, all of this isn’t just history. It was her life. She was a student at St. Michael’s Mission.

“That’s the dorm that I was put in when I was a little girl in first grade,” she says.

Standing at the podium, Leona points to one of the old stone buildings with boarded-up windows on the Circle. She says she went there with her sister.

“They took us to that building. The first thing they did was cut our hair. We had long hair,” she says. “They de-loused us with kerosene. I can still feel that burn from that kerosene.”

While the dorm is still standing today, Leona says the mission’s classroom burned down. For her, boarding schools were a place where Indigenous kids were sent to learn how to be like white settlers.

“ Even the animals are here for a purpose, and that's what we believed in,” she says. “But through the years we've been told that ‘No, that's not the truth. We want you to believe what we believe’.”

That process didn’t just impact one generation. It spanned generations and separated families.

“ I remember my mother telling me that when she was in boarding school at Fort Washakie, her family moved down to the fort so they could be close to their children,” says Buckman. “Many of the people, families, moved close to wherever their children were, and they camped there, just to be able to see their children every now and then.”

But some parents never saw their kids again. Almost a thousand Native children died at federally-run and federally-supported boarding schools, like missions, across the country, according to a report released by the Department of the Interior in 2024.

One of the most notorious boarding schools was called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Pennsylvania. Over ten thousand Native students from more than a hundred different tribal nations attended the school in the 40 or so years that it operated. 

But more than a hundred and fifty students died there.

The Northern Arapaho tribe was the first in the country to bring back the remains of their relatives who died at Carlisle, and many of the people involved in that process helped bring this collection home too. 

Two children came home in 2017 – Little Chief and Horse – then a boy named Little Plume a year later. The last child – Beau Neal – just came home a couple years ago.

It was Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt who founded the Carlisle boarding school system. He put his philosophy bluntly in a speech in 1892: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

That agenda of assimilation and erasure went far beyond the schools. It also applied to religion. Leona Buckman personally remembers that history.

“We'd have our sun dances and our ceremonies, but we'd have to hide” she says. “Our people would have to hide to have a ceremony”

In 1883, Congress passed the Religion Crimes Code, banning all Native dancing and ceremonies. Leona remembers watching a pipe ceremony by the river as a kid.

“ I heard somebody say, ‘Touku3eihii, touku3eihii’,” she says. “I thought, ‘What in the world?’ I was just about five or six years old. ‘‘Touku3eihii, touku3eihii.’ That means ‘Policeman, policeman’.”

She says people acted quickly.

“ They took a big old shawl or blanket and they threw it over all of their ceremonial stuff. They threw it over and they all sat down in a circle and start gambling or throwing cards,” she says. “They were gambling. Indians were allowed to gamble, but they weren't allowed to pray. Can you imagine?”

The U.S. only officially reversed the religion crimes code when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act passed in 1978 – less than fifty years ago.

Leona says things are different now, with more repatriation happening. But she says it makes her wonder about the motive of these institutions.

“ They're bringing back our skeletons. They're bringing back our relatives, they're bringing back our, what, the things that we had, our teepees, whatever,” she says. “What's going on? Does somebody feel sorry for themselves? Somebody? Are they all feeling sorry?”

Although Leona’s in her nineties, she says she plans to stick around for at least a few more years.

“ Hopefully, I can help the young people understand who we are,” she says. “Thank you very much for listening.”

Northern Arapaho elder Merle Haas comes up in front of the crowd. She has short black hair and is in a wheelchair, wearing a zip-up teal sweatshirt. Her granddaughter holds the microphone for her as she speaks. 

“ This is my granddaughter, Lydia. I usually have one of my grandchildren with me who like to help, and I really appreciate that,” she says.

Merle graduated from the University of Wyoming and is a longtime educator. She was part of the Arapaho Language and Culture Commission and taught summer language camps at the museum for years. Later, in the mid-80s, she got a call to meet with the Episcopal Diocese in Laramie.

“ And I said, ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘Well, they can't really talk to you about it because they would like you to come and they will explain it to you’,”she says.

Merle made her way down to the church in Laramie, where she was brought to a building around back. 

“ It was kind of dark, but there was boxes, a lot of boxes in there. And I said, what is this about?,” she says. 

The church staff explained that they were artifacts brought from the museum at St. Michael’s Mission.

“And I said, ‘What are they doing here?’ I kind of panicked. I didn't understand,” she says.

The diocese told her the story of how the objects were brought down to Laramie from the museum on the reservation. 

“ They visited the museum, and some of the artifacts were becoming…you know, there were flies in the cases, and I don't, you know, I don't really like to talk about that part, so I don't,” she says.

Merle asked the staff for a few minutes alone with the collection.

“ I was just looking around, I was touching the boxes. And I was wondering, ‘What am I supposed to do about this? How do I get these back home?’,” she says.

That’s when she noticed two picture frames, tucked between a few boxes.

“It was a picture of my grandfather, Chief Yellow Calf. And so I sat there, and I stared at that picture. I didn't know what to do,” she said. “I knew it meant something, and so I talked to my grandfather. I said, ‘Grandfather, is there something that I'm supposed to do here? Show me. Guide me.’”

Merle called the folks from the diocese back into the building. She says they told her that when Edith May Adams had deeded the items, the intention was that the artifacts would eventually be returned to their home.

“ In the letter, it was written that it was supposed to go to the Arapaho people and that the diocese, you know, they didn't receive the collection. It was supposed to be for the Arapaho people, the tribe” she says.

They told Merle to get a letter from the Northern Arapaho Business Council to get the items back, which she said she did the next week. But the collection didn’t return to the reservation for forty more years.

Jordan Dresser and other community members tried to get the collection back to put in a museum at the Wind River Casino in the 2010s, but some church officials initially expressed concerns about displaying the items in a casino.

Eventually, the church agreed to loan part of the collection to the tribe.

Merle says now, with all the items returned, she has even higher hopes for revitalizing the circle. In fact, she says it’s already happening. Last summer, two of her grandkids said they wanted to take their kids to the park.

“ Me and my daughter Inez said, ‘What park?’,” she says.

Hass thought her grandkids meant the park in Lander. Then she thought they meant Blue Sky Hall, about half a mile down the road.

“They said no, the park where the church is. And they were talking about that area there, where the older ones were going to play basketball and the younger ones could play on the swings,” she said. “So the children, the children are the first ones to bring back this village, this circle, bring it back alive with their laughter, their happiness. And so I'll leave it right there. Thank you.”

Northern Arapaho elder Marian Scott also attended school at St. Michaels. She says she remembers the time when the collection was still on the reservation, in the museum on the Circle.

“That museum right there is where they were. And my little sister, Joanne, used to work there,” she says. “She was working there when she was a young girl.”

Marian was part of a group that went to Casper a few months before the collection was returned. That’s where the items were most recently stored. The group spent two days going through the items and making notes on each one.

“Every time we opened a box and we seen those things that were in there, I could actually feel those people who they belonged to,” she says.

For Marian, it was a really emotional process.

“And it still is, because they're here now,” she says. “They're back home.”

Marian says she was humbled and honored to be part of that process. And right before she passes off the mic, she tells the crowd she’s just turned 80, the day before the homecoming ceremony.

“ My grandfather, Lester Pine, used to always tell us, ‘You're not an old lady or an old man until you reach 80 years old.’ So I guess officially, I'm an old lady,” she says.

A group of high school singers called the Young Sky Singers perform a song. Then Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office Director Crystal C’Bearing takes the stage.

“ I'm a little nervous, so forgive me. It's been a big day, a very emotional day for me…trying to get through it without crying,” she says.

Crystal’s wearing a red shirt and a skirt in the colors of the Northern Arapaho flag. She says this place has been a part of her life since she was young.

“ When I was little, going and looking at the items in the museum, it was always, the door was open and we can just go in there and look,” she says.

Crystal says she never thought she would be in this position, bringing the collection back home. And she says that since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was strengthened in 2024, her office has seen a lot more interest around returning all sorts of items to the tribe from museums, institutions and individual families.

“There's so many items that are wanting to come home now. And we get so much requests and so much people that want to donate items back to us, which is really good,” she says. “So there's a change now coming.”

The day before the homecoming celebration, the Episcopal Church held a service of lament in Casper.

“I got very emotional last night during that time, to just hear a group of people say the wrongs that they've done to us and that they apologized,” she says.

Right before the items are officially signed back to the Northern Arapaho Tribe, Reverend Mary Erickson from the St. John’s Episcopal Church shares these words.

“We created systems of privilege and oppression, colonizers and colonized, oppressors and oppressed, dominators. and dominated. We ask you to show us the way forward, the way of love.”

“We come asking that you send your Holy Spirit to help comfort our indigenous brothers and sisters whose troubles have been compounded by systematic inequality that has led to long term unresolved abuse, trauma, and oppression.”

“We feel the grief of our complicity in these wrongs.”

Other members of the church join in for a litany of hope and healing, a prayer in the form of a call and response.

“ Give us strength that we might help restore all relationships and bring peace and justice to all peoples,” they say.

“Lord, make this sacred circle whole,” responded the crowd.

The prayer acknowledges that the creation of the U.S. came at the expense of Native peoples. It remembers all relations, near and far, those who are suffering and alone and whose burdens are too heavy to carry. It asks for hope, for grace, for love and for healing. 

Then, members of the Episcopal Church and the Northern Arapaho Business Council sign a paper, legally transferring the collection back to the tribe. And the items are officially home, with a victory song to celebrate.

Before a prayer for the big communal dinner that’s about to take place, Jordan Dresser shares one final thought.

“ People always ask if, as you heard from all the different people who've been fighting this battle, you know,  people have always said, ‘Can we take care of our items?’ But yes, we can. Our ancestors took care of them for thousands of years, and so can we,” he says. “Thank you.”

Some people bee-line to the dinner tent, while others mingle and chat in small groups around the circle.

Reverend Mary Erickson is associate rector at the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson.

“Joyful. Joyful,” she says. “And some sadness that it took us this long.

Mary was part of the effort to return the items.

“I think it is the beginning, just the very beginning of some healing in the relationship between the Episcopal Church of Wyoming and the Arapaho people,” she says. “And that's a good thing.”

Mary says the church still owns about a hundred acres of land nearby – and that could be the next thing to get returned to the tribe.

“Might be harder,” she says. “I don't know, maybe not. Maybe now we've broken through, we can get that done more quickly, but I think that's an important conversation to have.”

Reverend Roxanne Friday is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and is the priest at Our Father’s House. That’s the red-log church in the circle that still holds service.

“ I wish that there were people here that have gone now that could have shared this day with us, but they knew that it was coming,” she says.

Roxanne was ordained as the first female Native American Episcopal priest in Wyoming and has been part of efforts to return the items for almost forty years.

“One of the things I want to get done before I go from this earth is that this circle is revitalized, with youth and things that we can do to help in the healing of generational trauma and all the things that we've dealt with in our lives,” she says.

The next step is to refurbish one of the buildings in the Circle and create a museum: a museum to help remember, a museum to learn. A museum to bring people together and to inspire the future generations. A museum for the elders, for the people who have passed and the people to come.

A museum for the community and for the kids, playing on the playground at the Circle.

It’s been about half a year since this celebration when the Northern Arapaho Tribe reclaimed their collection. Since then, a group’s been getting together every month to move the project along. They’re actively working on the museum site at the Circle, making sure it’ll be a safe place for the artifacts, climate-controlled and pest-free. The next step is figuring out how to store the items and setting up some display cabinets.

But there’s also some sad news. In the months since this celebration, Northern Arapaho elder Marian Scott passed away. We heard her in this story, she’d turned 80 the day before the collection came home. 

This spring, Jordan Dresser told our reporter Hannah that Marian will still be a big part of the museum going forward.

“She was really a force, but her spirit will be a part of it. And all the elders too, you know, who took part in this and their families. I think this is just gonna be a community hub where we can carry those memories and those teachings forward for other people as well,” he says