Submitted by Michelle McNeil | NCW Libraries, PR Specialist

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Hear the remarkable story of how the Nez Perce Tribe acquired the largest and oldest collection of its own material culture in a Humanities Washington program being presented at the Omak, Oroville and Republic libraries in July.

Author and WSU official Trevor James Bond will present “Coming Home: How the Nez Perce Tribe Regained Their Cultural Heritage: at the following locations:

• Republic Public Library, Thursday, July 18, 4 p.m.
• Omak Public Library, Friday, July 19, 4:30 p.m.
• Oroville Public Library, Saturday, July 20, 11 a.m.

Bond is the director of the David G. Pollard Center for Arts and Humanities and the associate dean for digital initiatives and special collections at Washington State University. He is the author of Coming Home to Nez Perce Country: The Niimiipuu Campaign to Repatriate Their Exploited Heritage, a finalist for the 2022 Washington State Book Award for non-fiction.

In 2009, Bond began researching a collection of Nez Perce material heritage known as the Spalding-Allen Collection. It had been collected by a Presbyterian missionary, who later offered it to a supporter in exchange for materials for his mission. The collection was later donated to a college in Ohio, which then gave it to the Ohio Historical Society. The Nez Perce discovered the collection’s existence in 1976. They raised more than $600,000 to purchase the collection and save it from ever being sold to private collectors.

In his hopeful program of cultural resiliency and making amends for past injustices, Bond will explore issues surrounding collection and curation, and the changing relationships between museums and Native communities. It’s a story that transcends the efforts of one Northwest tribe to show how many indigenous communities are striving to reunite with their heritage.