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Sacred items will make their way home to Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in far northern Minnesota during the Honor Our Elders Powwow Saturday. 

The Saint Louis County Historical Society will repatriate pipes, one of which is known to be carried by the band's last hereditary chief, Joseph Maymaushkowaush, who led in the 1880s. 

Joseph Louis Maymaushkowaush inherited the position from his grandfather, also named Maymaushkowaush, who signed the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, the agreement that ceded much of northeastern Minnesota to the United States, established the Grand Portage Reservation and reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights for the band. 

Ojibwe leaders carried pipes to those negotiations. April McCormick, Secretary Treasurer of the Grand Portage Tribal Council, said in announcing the repatriation that the practice "demonstrates that they viewed treaties as sacred oaths between nations." 

The hereditary title ended with Joseph, since succession ran through the male line and he had no son. His pipe was donated to the St. Louis Historical Society in 1939 and has spent almost 90 years in the collection of the St. Louis County Historical Society in Duluth.  

Other items were donated to the museum at the same time and by the same person, and so the St. Louis County Historical Society inferred that they are also associated with the Grand Portage Band. 

Representatives of the historical society and members of its American Indian Advisory Committee will transfer all the items to band members at an event at the Grand Portage Community Center. 

Their journey home began with a name on an inventory list. 

A few years ago, Michele Hakala-Beeksma was reviewing an inventory project when an entry in the county’s records caught her attention. Hakala-Beeksma is a Grand Portage Band member, a member of the Society’s American Indian Advisory Council, and sits on the Society's Board of Governors.  

"I actually saw the pipe listed, and it had a name attached that I recognized as a hereditary chief from Grand Portage," she said. "So that was the impetus to start the process of repatriation." 

Hakala-Beeksma's first reaction was disbelief. 

"It was a shock, really. And I actually asked them to double check it,” she said.  

Part of the proof can be seen in a photograph of Joseph Maymaushkowaush with his pipe, also in the historical society’s collection. Hakala-Beeksma said she took care to assure skeptical band members that the pipe that appeared on the inventory list is the same one seen in the photo. 

"I'm looking at it too. I couldn't believe it either,” Hakala-Beeksma said.  

That image, paired with the historical society's records and the advisory committee's knowledge of Grand Portage, helped establish the pipe’s provenance — the term for an item’s documented chain of possession, from its origin to the present. Without solid provenance, repatriation cases can stall for years. With it, the path forward became clearer. 

What followed was several years of paperwork in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the 1990 federal law that lays out the process for returning Indigenous cultural items from museum collections. Because the pipe is tied to a specific person of cultural significance, they fall under the law’s cultural items provisions. 

A shift toward stewardship, not ownership

For the St. Louis County Historical Society, the return reflects a shift the institution has been making for years — from a museum culture of ownership toward one of stewardship. It's a shift toward incorporating Indigenous practices in the care for sacred items in museum collections. 

In Ojibwe culture, pipes and other items are considered living beings, Hakala-Beeksma said. 

"It becomes a living being when the bowl and the stem are connected," she explained. "It's a prayer item."  

Hakala-Beeksma said what makes this pipe culturally significant to the Grand Portage Band is its tie to a specific leader.  

"This one's being repatriated because it has a cultural significance to our chief," Hakala-Beeksma said. "It's that association with the person of who owned it." 

She also explained that in her view, not every pipe in a museum collection must necessarily be returned home. She stressed that is part of a discussion with specific tribal nations. 

The executive director of the St. Louis County Historical Society said museum professionals should use the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act as a practice of stewardship, not compliance.

"Stewardship is an ethic that is embraced, whereas compliance is you're following the letter of the regulation, but maybe not the spirit,” executive director Wayne Gannaway said. 

That shift has been guided since 1994 by Hakala-Beeksma and other members of the Society's American Indian Advisory Committee. Gannaway says many county historical societies have not done the same work. 

"It's more of a challenge for other, especially county historical societies, where they have not developed that rapport with their neighboring tribal communities," he said. "They have been an extremely stable group. You have this continuity of relationships and continuity of knowledge." 

Gannaway says it was the committee's persistence that carried this repatriation through years of staff turnover at the historical society. The legal paperwork was completed last fall, and organizers waited for spring so the transfer could take place at a community gathering. 

For Hakala-Beeksma, the repatriation event Saturday is about more than the handoff. 

"I'm looking forward to the transfer, of course, but I'm actually looking forward to dancing too," she said. "It'll be nice to have everybody together and the drum and being able to dance with the pipe coming home." 

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The St. Louis County Historical Society will return sacred items to Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The repatriation, guided by the organization's American Indian Advisory Committee, reflects a growing shift in museum practice from ownership toward stewardship.

A black and white photo of a man holding a pipe.

Courtesy of the St. Louis County Society, year unknown

Courtesy of the St. Louis County Historical Society

Two people stand near a historical display.

After 87 years, a hereditary chief's pipe returns to Grand Portage

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