Native American Museum Representation

 

  Representation of Native American tribes in museums is dominated by the culture of oppression and colonization that now wishes to use the artifacts of the people it destroyed to drive patronage at their museums. The representation of native culture has been done by museums that use artifacts that were often acquired through grave robbing and theft as well as artifacts that were acquired well before American society was a space that was welcoming to debate regarding native artifacts. 

    One of the first steps in the right direction was the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian in 1989. It features a striking design that was created by Native American architects and is part of the Smithsonian museum group. It features a few different exhibits that are rotated after a period. The museum's current exhibits are Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake and The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire. The National Native American Veterans Memorial is also located on museum grounds. This museum is the token model of how a museum can use its space to represent native cultures effectively and reasonably, and officials worked closely with native communities to curate the exhibits (1). 

    Another step towards proper representation was created with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1991 (2). This act was intended to create a dialogue between native groups and museums that were in possession of native artifacts, but it has not been entirely successful in the 30 years since its creation. Still, museums held onto the remains and artifacts of native tribes and resisted calls for repatriation. One such museum is the Peabody Museum ran by Harvard University. It has resisted the repatriation of native remains, of which at one point stored over 5,000 different human remains. Museum's like the Peabody Museum at Harvard use loopholes in NAGPRA to deny tribes the remains and exploit the fact that most tribes kept oral histories rather than physical ones to hang onto their artifacts (3). 

   Recently, The White House revised NAGPRA in order to make it easier for native groups to rebury their ancestors. The updated regulations are meant to prevent museums from using the loopholes the they have abused for the last 30 years, and require them to defer to native knowledge of the the regions that the remains were removed from (4). It remains to be seen whether or not these new regulations will have a positive effect on repatriation, but it is another step towards proper representation of native cultures in museums. 

1. Visiting the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. https://washington.org/DC-guide-to/smithsonian-national-museum-american-indian#:~:text=The%20National%20Museum%20of%20the,%2C%20photographs%2C%20artifacts%20and%20media. 

2. Facilitating Respectful Return, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index.htm

3. Tribes in Maine Spent Decades Fighting to Rebury Ancestral Remains. Harvard Resisted Them at Nearly Every Turn, ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-wabanaki-tribes-struggle-to-reclaim-ancestral-remains-from-harvard

4. New Federal Rules Aim to Speed Repatriations of Native Remains and Burial Items, ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/interior-department-revamps-repatriation-rules-native-remains-nagpra#:~:text=The%20Biden%20administration%20has%20revised,Indigenous%20remains%20and%20burial%20items. 

5. Image source: The Peabody Museum, Sophie Park, ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/interior-department-revamps-repatriation-rules-native-remains-nagpra#:~:text=The%20Biden%20administration%20has%20revised,Indigenous%20remains%20and%20burial%20items.