On Sept. 25, Georgetown returned a hair clipping that is believed to belong to Chief Spotted Elk, a 19th-century leader of the Mnicoujou Lakota, to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.
The university issued a formal apology to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe located in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, for the hurt and pain caused to Chief Spotted Elk’s descendents.
“We were saddened to discover that the university had received and possessed the human remains of Chief Spotted Elk in the collections of our former Coleman Museum,” said Georgetown Interim President Robert M. Groves. “We offer our formal apology for this violation of human dignity and the hurt and pain caused by our actions. We are committed to returning Chief Spotted Elk’s remains to his descendants and to acknowledging this painful part of our nation’s history.”
The return of the hair clipping is the final step in Georgetown’s process of repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA), a federal law that requires institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American human remains, funerary, sacred and cultural objects to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.
The hair clipping was found inside an envelope in a box of unrelated materials in Georgetown University Library’s archives that had been donated to the university’s former Coleman Museum, which closed in 1947. After reviewing archival records, library archivists believe the hair clipping likely belonged to Chief Spotted Elk, also known as “Big Foot,” after he was killed by the U.S. Army, along with at least 300 Lakota men, women and children, in the brutal massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1890.
Archivists believe the hair clipping was taken by John Sanford Mason Jr., a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army who was at Wounded Knee. It was included among Mason’s personal effects that his wife, Lucy Ord Mason, donated to the former Coleman Museum.
Georgetown conducted a full inventory of any and all Native American human remains and funerary objects, and in compliance with NAGPRA, consulted with tribal officials of the Native American tribes to return the remains.
On Feb. 3, 2025, Georgetown filed a notice of inventory completion with NAGPRA, after which the repatriation of human remains formally began. The notice was published in the Federal Register on March 19.