The Study Centre features a replica of the Ghost Dance Shirt made by Marcella le Beau.
Marcella is a descendent of Rain in the Face, a noted Lakota warrior. The shirt is a replica of an original Ghost Dance shirt given back to the Lakota people of South Dakota by Glasgow City Council in August 1999.
It was formally presented to Glasgow at a public hearing in November 1998. The hearing was attended by the Lakota descendents of survivors of the massacre at Wounded Knee in December 1890.
In 1892, Glasgow's City Industrial Museum obtained a number of items from George C Crager. Crager was an interpreter for the Lakota performers at the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show when it performed at Dennistoun in Glasgow. He claimed that the objects had been taken from the battlefield of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on 29 December 1890. Included was a Lakota Ghost Dance shirt.
In 1999 the shirt was returned to the Lakota. This followed Glasgow City Council’s approval of a repatriation request from the Wounded Knee Survivors Association. Marcella le Beau was involved in the negotiations.
In honour of Glasgow’s work Marcella made Glasgow City Council was presented with a replica Ghost Dance shirt. Marcella decorated it with a buffalo hide strip and red clay from the Cheyenne River Reservation and ring-necked pheasant feathers.
The original shirt is now kept at the South Dakota State Historical Society Museum in Pierre , South Dakota. It is still important to the Lakota people and you can listen to some of their views on the South Dakota Public Broadcasting website.