Navajo delegation brings back Yei Bi Chei masks from Paris
WINDOW ROCK
The Navajo delegation tasked with retrieving seven Navajo Yei Bi Chei masks from a Paris auction house has successfully completed its mission.
This is according to Jared King, spokesman for the Navajo Nation Washington Office, who is one of four tribal officials representing the Navajo Nation in France on the tribe’s repatriation effort to retrieve the masks. The delegation, led by Vice President Rex Lee Jim, secured all seven masks that went on sale by bidding and outright purchasing them.
“This was a very delicate mission,” Jim told foreign reporters after the auction, according a press release from the Navajo Nation Washington Office. “We are happy to be taking these Navajo sacred masks home to be cleansed by our Navajo medicine people, who will determine when these masks will be used for our wintertime ceremonies.”
The visit by Jim and the rest of the Navajo delegation comes after the Navajo Nation Council’s Subcommittee on Sacred Sites met to discuss the matter with officials from the Navajo Nation Human Rights Office and Navajo Historic Preservation Department last week on Dec. 10.
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