 |
 |
||
 |
 |
||
 |
|
||
    |   |  |  | ||||
 | |||||||
| A Rock in a Hard Place | |||||||
| Once again, the Willamette Meteorite is caught up in scandal | |||||||
| |||||
| Feb. 19 — If you ask me, it doesn’t even sound like such a good trade. |
 |  | |||
 |
||||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
BACK IN 1998, the American Museum of Natural History hacked a 25-pound chunk and a smaller nub off its famed Willamette Meteorite and traded it for a mere 20-ounce piece of Mars. That’s it. No draft picks. No cash. No “meteorite to be named later.” Just the 20-ounce Martian pebble. Think about it: Twenty ounces of Mars (Mars! It’s so close that it’s practically the Hamptons!) for more than 25 pounds of a rock that may date back to the beginnings of time? That’s the meteorological equivalent of Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi. That dusty deal might never have become widely known except that last week, a sharp reporter named Richard Hill of the Oregonian newspaper reported that a private meteorite collector named Darryl Pitt was about to auction off a couple of slivers of the Willamette Meteorite. When Hill asked the tough questions—something along the lines of “Where did you get your Willamette pieces?”—Pitt told him about the four-year-old Mars-for-meteorite deal. And that’s when all hell—or at least a big break for underworked reporters on both coasts—broke loose. This is the Willamette Meteorite, after all, a national treasure known to tens of millions of schoolchildren who have been marched through the Museum of Natural History over the years and told how this 15-ton mass of iron and nickel crashed into Canada millions of years ago and was carried by glaciers to Oregon, where it supposedly became a sacred relic to the Native American tribes living there. The rock was “discovered” by the white man in 1905 and was later sold to a rich New Yorker who donated it to the museum and spirited it out of Oregon forever. Descendents of the Clackamas Indians have been trying to get their rock back for years. Two years ago, in a move that sent shockwaves through virtually no one except the small community of meteorite collectors, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde asked the American Museum of Natural History to return the meteorite on the grounds that it was a sacred object covered under federal law. The museum responded by suing the tribe, claiming that the meteorite was “a natural feature of the landscape rather than a ceremonial object.” The tribe countersued on the grounds that their lawyers needed some work. In the end, the tribe settled with the museum for a mere pittance that consisted of some paid museum internships for tribal teens, a plaque installed near the meteorite that would explain its supposed spiritual connection to the native people and the right to hold an annual religious ceremony at the meteorite. | ||||||||||||||||||
|
Now it finally made sense why Willamette is pronounced like dammit. I called the tribe for a comment and was immediately put on hold (whoever heard of a tribe that takes your call “in the order it was received”? Who am I calling here, IBM?). When I finally got tribe spokesman Brent Merrill on the phone, I first fought off the urge to question whether anyone named “Brent Merrill” could be a spokesman for an Indian tribe and then asked him about last year’s religious ceremony. “It was very moving,” said Merrill. “There is definitely some spiritual power given off by that meteorite. We all felt it.” Nonetheless, Merrill said the tribe was so satisfied by the paid internships and the annual access that it no longer even wants the rock back. That bothered me, considering how vehemently the tribe had once demanded the return of the meteorite. Now, the meteorite doesn’t even earn a mention on the tribe’s Web site, which is much more concerned with details of a recent casino expansion project than staking a spiritual claim. But that hasn’t stopped everyone else from weighing in. Kathryn Harrison, a former chairwoman of the Grand Ronde (check her out painting the casino’s new “non-smoking” area), told the New York Times that the auction was no different from “someone want[ing] to auction off a crucifix, one of the holy statues out of the Catholic Church or something like that.” And the editorial page of the Oregonian, which has fanned the flames of the “Return the Rock” rebellion, slammed the museum for “disgraceful stewardship” of the meteorite and “profiteering” from its “desecration.” “If we had our way,” the editorial continued, “it would be heading back on the next westbound freight train.” (I won’t quibble with the Oregonians’ emotions, but I’m duty bound to report that there is no freight train that goes from Manhattan to Portland anymore.) |
||||||||||||||||||
|
Now, you may not know this, but I pride myself on being aware of all the latest meteorite developments, yet I could not help but be stunned by what was going on—especially since I hadn’t even known that the museum had circumcised its meteorite and traded it for a piece of Mars smaller than a Mars bar. So I rushed right over to the Natural History Museum to conduct one of my renowned fact-finding tours (and enjoy the unbelievable hot chocolate they serve at a little French restaurant around the corner—and if you think I’m giving you the name, forget it). When I got to the museum, I didn’t feel the power that Merrill spoke of, but I did feel hungry. With its craggy surface, the Viagra-shaped meteorite resembles a large English muffin, especially that brand with all the nooks and crannies that hold the melted butter. Mmm, butter. And then I saw it: Almost out of view on the top of the meteorite, is a smooth, polished scar that marks the spot where the 25-pound chunk was ruthlessly amputated. Seeing the desecration made me angry at the museum’s much-vaunted scientists. They had been given a great cosmic souvenir and what did they do with it? They cut off a hunk and re-gifted it! | ||||||||||||||||||
|
But I was angry at the tribe, too. Just two years ago, the Grand Ronde showed some pluck by demanding back their rock, only to back down for a few trinkets from the museum. A once-proud Indian tribe was now comprised of sell-outs and lapdogs. I called the museum’s provost of science Michael Novacek, who, after dodging my relentless questioning about the meaning of the word “provost,” explained that meteorite horse-trading is “common” and that the museum saw its behavior as a necessarily part of scientific study, not desecration. “Diversifying our meteorite collection is really important,” Novacek said. “The more meteorite samples we have, the wider variety of information we can gather about the origin of our solar system.” So Darryl Pitt gets his $11,000 from the auction, the museum gets its sliver of Mars and the tribe gets a small plaque. Like I said, it doesn’t sound to me like a good trade at all. Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||
  |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
