Clarence Wagner | U.S. Indian historian, 64

Clarence "Curly Bear" Wagner, 64, an American Indian historian who pressed for repatriation of ancestral remains to tribes, died last Thursday of cancer on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Mr. Wagner was a cultural director for the Blackfeet Tribe. As a young man, he was on the board of the American Indian Movement, which fought for land and other rights in struggles with the U.S. government. Later, he worked for the return of human remains that were released in 1988 by the Smithsonian in Washington, and in the 1990s by Chicago's Field Museum.

Eileen Maxwell, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, said Mr. Wagner also was an important figure in the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. - AP