In 1984, a series of burglaries began across Santa Ana Pueblo. Over the course of nine months, 150 cultural items were stolen from homes and sold, never to be returned. Now, over 40 years later, an investigative team is trying to find these artifacts.
Pottery, rugs, war shields – these are just a few of the cultural items stolen from people’s homes on the pueblo between August 1984 and May 1985.
The thieves were quickly apprehended, but after their prosecution, the investigation went quiet. With the perpetrators caught, federal agents thought the case was closed, but what about the 150 items ripped from pueblo homes?
The Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) is now on the hunt to bring these pieces of cultural history back to the Pueblo. THPO Officer Monica Murrell says getting access to the original case files was a large task, and that was just the beginning.
“We looked at every single reported missing item and started making an exhaustive list,” she said, “Then using all of the descriptions that were available at the time to start combing auction sites, galleries, to start matching things up that appeared in the market just subsequent to the actual burglaries,”
Santa Ana has historically been more private about their cultural practices than other pueblos. It only started commercially selling pottery outside of the community in the 1940s. This made the items a hot commodity amongst collectors.
Murrell said many of these items were sold by the thieves to antiquity dealers in New Mexico and then to international auction houses like Sotheby’s and Bonham, spreading these artifacts across the world, farther than they were ever meant to go.
This is not a unique case. A war shield from the Pueblo of Acoma was found at a Paris auction house in 2016, hundreds of thousands of miles from its home.
Many of the stolen items are used in traditional activities, which means they qualify as sacred objects under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Items more than a century old qualify as antiquities protected under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
NAGPRA has created more opportunities for tribes to reclaim culturally significant items from museums and other institutions over the last year, and Congress passed legislation in 2022 to prohibit the export of sacred Native American items.
The export law has not been put into effect, and tracking items through auction houses and private collections can be difficult because descriptions are often incorrect or intentionally misleading, according to Shannon O’Loughlin, CEO of the Association on American Indian Affairs.
The THPO investigative team is now combing auction websites, as well as social media and archives for any hint of Santa Ana items.
The new investigation began in September of last year, and so far one item has been returned: A bowl adorned with traditional geometric designs that was used to make dough for bread. Tribal member Jarrett Lujan is on the investigative team and says it was moving to return the item to the family.
He hopes to also return the other 149 cultural items that he said can feel like family. Right now the team has a promising lead on a buffalo horn war shield that dates back to the 1700s.
Visit KUNM’s social media pages for a video of more cultural items that are currently under investigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
