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 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000228/sc/science_meteorite_1.html
 

 Monday February 28 3:43 PM ET
Museum Sues Indians Over Meteorite Ownership
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The American Museum of Natural History sued an American
Indian group Monday to block its claim to the 15.5-ton Willamette Meteorite,
one of the museum's oldest treasures and a centerpiece of its newly opened
planetarium.

The suit seeks a court ruling that the museum is the rightful owner of the
largest meteorite ever found in the United States. It also seeks a ruling
that it does not have to repatriate the extraterrestrial object to an Oregon
Indian group that alleges that the gigantic meteorite is a holy tribal
object that brought messages from the spirit world long before the arrival
of white men.

The museum's lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court a little over a
week after the much touted opening of its sleek $210 million Rose Center for
Earth and Space on Manhattan's upper West Side.

The metallic iron meteorite, which is believed to have fallen to earth
10,000 years ago from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, holds a
place of honor on the main floor in the planetarium's astrophysics hall. It
has been viewed by countless scientists, teachers and schoolchildren for
nearly a century.

The lawsuit alleged that the meteorite's ownership history dates back to at
least 1855 when various Indian tribes voluntarily ceded the meteorite, which
was once located in the upper Willamette Valley in Oregon, to the United
States in exchange for reservation land and other considerations.

In 1905, the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon ruled that the meteorite
belonged to the Oregon Iron and Steel Company as owner of the land on which
the object was found. The company sold the meteorite to the American Museum
of Natural History the next year for $20,600.

Almost immediately after its purchase, the museum began to study the object
and it has been on almost continuous display since 1906.

According to the lawsuit, the current ownership dispute began during the
fall of 1999 when representatives of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand
Ronde Community of Oregon visited the museum. The federally recognized group
consists of a number of tribes from the Upper Willamette Valley, including
the Clackamas which ceded the meteorite in 1855, the suit said.

At the end of their visit, the representatives submitted a written claim for
repatriation to the museum stating that the meteorite is a sacred object. It
filed its claim under the federal law known at the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA. The law was written for
the preservation and repatriation of Native American cultural and religious
artifacts.

To obtain repatriation of a sacred object, a tribe must show that it is a
sacred object, that the tribe owned or controlled it and that the museum
does not have a right of possession, the suit said.

The museum alleged that the Oregon Indian group did not meet these
requirements.
 

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