Museums should unite ancestral remains with tribes.

By Janine Pedersen-Guzman, especially for CalMatters

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Native American Heritage Month brings attention to how we relate to issues that are important to Indigenous people. Below: A former museum curator describes how museums and universities ignore ancestral remains and tribal artifacts instead of returning the objects. Another view: Assistant Professor of Indigenous History Describes How American Political Leaders Disrespect Native American Governments.

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Imagine the bones of your relatives stored in the basement of an unknown university or museum.

Boxes of ancestors and artifacts are often stacked on top of each other for use in research, education, or just plain curiosity. Most often they are ignored or forgotten, left to gather dust.

When I first started working in museums, I thought they were magical places full of history and that universities stood behind truth and learning. But I soon realized that for local people these places can be painful.

What I saw as saving history, others saw as a loss. What I considered education, others considered misrepresentation.

Ever since museums and universities were established in the United States, the stories of indigenous peoples have been told by those who colonized their lands and spread harmful ideas.

This led to more than 100 years of disinheritance without permission. Museums and universities have taken hundreds of thousands of Native American human remains and millions of cultural items.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 challenged these practices. It gave indigenous communities a legal path to reclaim their ancestral and cultural assets. California passed a similar lawThe California Native American Graves Protection Act of 2001.

Yet decades later, too little has been returned to the tribes, and some institutions still resist, saying items are required for education or research.

I have worked in museums and universities for 25 years as a curator and collection manager. I have seen how cultural collections are treated.

Museums display only about 1% of their collections; the rest is accumulated in non-standard warehouses. Universities have boxes of artifacts that have not been opened or studied since they were first collected.

I often had to fight for the basic care of the collections. My concerns were ignored. I used to work in warehouses with leaky pipes. I have removed culture materials from mold infested containers. And I tried to organize a warehouse of 5,000 boxes of archaeological material that had been neglected for years.

In one museum, collection storage was removed by a new building plan, leaving the collection without a suitable home.

Why do these places want to keep their collections? Many do not have the money, interest or cultural knowledge to care for them. Most of the people will never see these things.

And how can scientists understand this material if they are not working with tribes?

The change is underway. New rules for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed last year. They make things clearer, remove barriers and require tribes to be consulted before items are displayed or studied.

Some scientists believe that the changes are a threat to knowledge, but they are long overdue.

Today, repatriation does not always mean removal of belongings. Tribes sometimes work with museums and universities through “trust holding” agreements. This means that the institution keeps the objects, but the tribe has legal control and decides how their cultural heritage is used or shared.

Each tribe has different views: some are fine with showing off and exploring; others are not. Some items can be used for teaching; others cannot. It’s about pausing to ask, listen, and ideally work together.

The tribes say, “Nothing for us, without us.” They want to tell their own stories, but they’re also willing to collaborate. It is here that knowledge can be transformed.

After the new regulations were passed, many museums reassessed their Native American galleries. They now actively consult with tribes to tell authentic stories through local voices and perspectives.

The Act also led to more community-based archaeology. For example, in 2018, during the construction of their new museum in Palm Springs, the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians stopped work after noticing a piece of dark soil.

Thousands of artifacts were found and archaeologists helped identify the site as the oldest in the Coachella Valley. The tribe published a book about the discovery and now shares the story in their museum.

After years of trying to improve the care of the collections, I chose to leave museums and universities to help Native American tribes bring their ancestors and cultural objects home. Today, I find meaning in watching tribesmen connect with returned cultural objects or helping to rebury an ancestor held in storage for 100 years.

I know in my heart that this is the right thing to do. I hope that as the new federal administration sets its priorities, this fundamental law will remain in place.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.