finding-my-culture: srsfunny: Everyone liked that. I was worried that this was more clickbait but it
finding-my-culture: srsfunny: Everyone liked that. I was worried that this was more clickbait but it’s 100% true. The auction went ahead as scheduled on Saturday, with the pipe expected to fetch $15,000 to $20,000, according to the auction catalog. But when the hammer fell on the bidding, the pipe was sold to an anonymous bidder for $39,975. Shortly after the auction ended, the tribe learned that the winning bidder intended to return the pipe to the tribe. […] The Prairie Island Tribal Historic Preservation Office, along with tribal spiritual leaders, will receive the pipe and handle it “through ceremony and community,” Buck said. That would be a fitting fate for the pipe, which the tribe would see as having a life of its own, Doerfler explained. “In English, objects are generally inanimate,” she said. “But in a lot of native cultures, that pipe has its own being, its own entity, and it has to be cared for.“So with items like a pipe or a drum, items of cultural significance, the person who is the holder or the keeper of that object has a responsibility to care for it and to utilize it properly.” Please note the anonymous part. This wasn’t some rich white settler trying to get recognition, praise, or a reward. It was someone who recognized that this situation was wrong and that they were in a position to make it right and so they did. -- source link