Dark rain clouds loomed overhead as a small group of Zuni community members gathered outside the Zuni Christian Reform Church. Despite the gloomy atmosphere, there was a sense of happiness and enthusiasm in the air. The reason was simple.

The A:shiwi (Zuni people) believe that our ancestors sometimes come to check on how we are doing and to bestow blessings upon our people, and they usually come in the form of rain. Needless to say, the Zunis gathered outside the parking lot early Thursday morning had plenty of reason to believe that our ancestors had arrived to welcome back a small piece our illustrious history.

Just one of the over 20,000 artifacts removed from the excavation of Hawikku in 1917 and one of the 70 pieces now being returned for an exhibit in Zuni.

A little over 80 years ago, in 1917, excavations started at the ancestral site of Hawikku. some Zuni elders recalled that as children, they had seen wagonloads of boxes leaving Zuni. Many of them wondered what was in those boxes and where they were going. Back then, our elders had no idea that they were witnessing history. By th end of 1924, approximately 20,000 artifacts had been taken, almost certainly never to be seen again in Zuni.

Almost eighty years later, history is being made again. The Pueblo of Zuni, A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center, and the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) are working together to bring some of the items that were in those boxes back to Zuni, in essence, bringing them back home.

Over the past several months, a group of Zunis have been meeting with NMAI personnel in Washington, D.C. to finalize plans to bring approximately 70 pottery pieces and other artifacts that were excavated at Hawikku back to Zuni for a special exhibition and community forum entitled "Hawikku: Listening to Our Ancestors."