Robert Davidson. Three Variations of the Killer Whale Myth. 1985.
NAGPRA and Repatriation
In acknowledging the history of Indigenous art in museums, it is important to note the need for repatriation, and how the creation of NAGPRA has allowed for that to occur in the United States. The Native American Grave Protections and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which was established in 1990, requires institutions that receive federal funding to return cultural items to the respective lineal descendants, or to the associated tribes, Alaska Native villages, or Native Hawaiian organizations.
Here at UIUC, we have a separate office that ensures that the University is complying with NAGPRA, and that implements the campus's moratorium on "research, teaching, display, imaging, and circulation of human remains and cultural items that are potentially subject to NAGPRA at the University."
While the work of NAGPRA is important, it is not the only example of the repatriation of Indigenous cultural items. The national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, has set an example for a more active approach to repatriation. For more information about repatriation and NAGPRA, check out some of the books included on this page.
Introduction
"Objects in museums are living entities... In the presence of objects from the past, we are privileged to stand as witnesses to living entities that remain intimately and inextricably tied to their descendant communities."
Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums
This section aims to examine the harm and violence that museums have historically inflicted on Indigenous communities, and continue to do, while also acknowledging current representations of Indigenous art that set a positive example moving forward. The "About Indigenous Art in Museums" sub-page takes a more general approach, with the inclusion of resources about past and present representations of Indigenous art and artifacts, as well as information about NAGPRA and the act of repatriation. The "Notable Museums with Indigenous Art" sub-page includes a list of museums that are either entirely focused on Indigenous art, or have notable collections that include past and contemporary art made by Indigenous artists.
Resources from the Catalog
Accomplishing NAGPRA by
Accomplishing NAGPRA reveals the day-to-day reality of implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The diverse contributors to this timely volume reflect the viewpoints of tribes, museums, federal agencies, attorneys, academics, and others invested in the landmark act. NAGPRA requires museums and federal agencies to return requested Native American cultural items to lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Indian tribes, and Native Hawai'ian organizations. Since the 1990 passage of the act, museums and federal agencies have made more than one million cultural items--and the remains of nearly forty thousand Native Americans--available for repatriation. Drawing on case studies, personal reflections, historical documents, and statistics, the volume examines NAGPRA and its grassroots, practical application throughout the United States.' Accomplishing NAGPRA will appeal to professionals and academics with an interest in cultural resource management, Indian and human rights law, Indigenous studies, social justice movements, and public policy.
Call Number: 344.73094 Ac271ISBN: 9780870717208Publication Date: 2013-11-01
Cataloguing Culture by
How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations - much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism has operated through the technologies of museum bureaucracy: the ledger book, the card catalogue, and eventually the database. As Indigenous communities reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on the importance of documentation for access to and return of cultural heritage.
ISBN: 0774863927Publication Date: 2020-08-01
Colonialism and the Object by
Drawing together an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, Colonialism and the Object explores the impact of colonial contact with other cultures on the material culture of both the colonized and the imperial nation. The book includes intensive case-studies of objects from India, Pakistan, New Zealand, China and Africa, all of which were collected by, or exhibited in, the institutions of the British Empire, and key chapters address issues of radical identity across cultural barriers, and the hybird styles of objects which can emerge when cultures meet. Colonialism and the Object is essential reading for all those interested in post-colonial theory, museum studies, material culture and design history.
Call Number: 704.03 C718ISBN: 0415157757Publication Date: 1998-01-16
Decolonizing Museums by
Museum exhibitions focusing on Native American history have long been curator controlled. However, a shift is occurring, giving Indigenous people a larger role in determining exhibition content. In Decolonizing Museums, Amy Lonetree examines the complexities of these new relationships with an eye toward exploring how museums can grapple with centuries of unresolved trauma as they tell the stories of Native peoples. She investigates how museums can honor an Indigenous worldview and way of knowing, challenge stereotypical representations, and speak the hard truths of colonization within exhibition spaces to address the persistent legacies of historical unresolved grief in Native communities. Lonetree focuses on the representation of Native Americans in exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. Drawing on her experiences as an Indigenous scholar and museum professional, Lonetree analyzes exhibition texts and images, records of exhibition development, and interviews with staff members. She addresses historical and contemporary museum practices and charts possible paths for the future curation and presentation of Native lifeways.
ISBN: 1469601443Publication Date: 2012-11-19
Grave Injustice by
Grave Injustice is the powerful story of the ongoing struggle of Native Americans to repatriate the objects and remains of their ancestors that were appropriated, collected, manipulated, sold, and displayed by Europeans and Americans. Anthropologist Kathleen S. Fine-Dare focuses on the history and culture of both the impetus to collect and the movement to repatriate Native American remains. Using a straightforward historical framework and illuminating case studies, Fine-Dare first examines the changing cultural reasons for the appropriation of Native American remains. She then traces the succession of incidents, laws, and changing public and Native attitudes that have shaped the repatriation movement since the late nineteenth century. Her discussion and examples make clear that the issue is a complex one, that few clear-cut heroes or villains make up the history of the repatriation movement, and that little consensus about policy or solutions exists within or beyond academic and Native communities. The concluding chapters of this history take up the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which Fine-Dare considers as a legal and cultural document. This highly controversial federal law was the result of lobbying by American Indian and Native Hawaiian peoples to obtain federal support for the right to bring back to their communities the human remains and associated objects that are housed in federally funded institutions all over the United States. Grave Injustice is a balanced introduction to a longstanding and complicated problem that continues to mobilize and threatens to divide Native Americans and the scholars who work with and write about them.
Call Number: 323.1197073 F493gISBN: 0803220189Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Indigenous Notions of Ownership and Libraries, Archives and Museums by
Tangible and intangible forms of indigenous knowledges and cultural expressions are often found in libraries, archives or museums. Often the "legal" copyright is not held by the indigenous people's group from which the knowledge or cultural expression originates. Indigenous peoples regard unauthorized use of their cultural expressions as theft and believe that the true expression of that knowledge can only be sustained, transformed, and remain dynamic in its proper cultural context. Readers will begin to understand how to respect and preserve these ways of knowing while appreciating the cultural memory institutions' attempts to transfer the knowledges to the next generation.
ISBN: 9783110363234Publication Date: 2016-07-11
Interventions by
Interventions examines how members of Native American and Canadian First Nation groups situate their art in contemporary global environments, creating a new kind of nexus between the requirements of Native communities and the forms of public display that are of interest to worldwide audiences. Judith Ostrowitz selects several critical cases to demonstrate this strategic tacking between macro- and micro-identities. The long-term implications of the totem pole restoration projects of the second half of the twentieth century; the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian; the dance event in Juneau known as Celebration; the impact of modernism and postmodernism on Indian art; and the use of electronic media to establish Indian territory on the Internet all demonstrate facets of the purposeful and context-driven strategies of self-representation designed by Native communities. The NMAI may be the paramount example of the construction of public identity originating from Indian Country to date. Ostrowitz describes how, in the course of the museum's creation, the distinctions among many specific groups of origin were selectively blurred in service of larger goals. In contrast, the purpose of the gathering of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people at the biennial Celebration is to rejoice in distinct Native groups and in the vitality of their traditions. Postmodernism has afforded twentieth- and twenty-first century Native artists the opportunity to penetrate mainstream art worlds, where experimentation is encouraged and the former criteria for the production of ?Native art? are selectively referenced. Through close readings of Native cultural productions, Ostrowitz puts Native art practices into conversation with larger issues in cultural studies. Art audiences are becoming familiar with many works that address global communities but are generated in environments affected by specific ethnic, gendered, and cultural perspectives. As the work of non-Native artists in world-system venues is now also interpreted in the context of the biographical and cultural histories of their makers, all works of art may be better appreciated as expressions of local artistic position.
Call Number: 704.0397 Os79iISBN: 9780295988511Publication Date: 2008-12-01
Legible Sovereignties by
An interdisciplinary work that draws on the fields of rhetorical studies, Native American and Indigenous studies, and museum studies, Legible Sovereignties considers the creation, critical reception, and adaptation of Indigenous self-representation in three diverse Indigenously oriented or owned institutions. King tracks the exhibit spaces at the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan's Ziibiwing Center, Haskell Indian Nation University's Cultural Center and Museum, and the Smithsonian's Washington, DC branch of the National Museum of the American Indian over their first ten years, from their opening until the summer of 2014. Far from formulaic, each site has developed its own rhetorical approaches to reaching its public, revealing multiple challenges and successes in making Native self-representation legible and accessible. Through documentation and analysis of the inaugural exhibits and recent installations, interviews with curators and staff, and investigation into audience reception of these spaces, Legible Sovereignties argues that there can be no single blanket solution for effective Indigenous self-representation. Instead, Legible Sovereignties demonstrates the nuanced ways in which each site must balance its rhetorical goals and its audience's needs, as well as its material constraints and opportunities, in order to reach its visitors and have Indigenous voices heard.
Call Number: E76.85 .K56 2017ISBN: 9780870719127Publication Date: 2017-10-15
- Inclusivity or Sovereignty? Native American Arts in the Gallery and the Museum since 1992Ash-Milby, Kathleen, and Ruth B. Phillips. “Inclusivity or Sovereignty? Native American Arts in the Gallery and the Museum since 1992.” Art Journal 76, no. 2 (2017): 10–38.
- Objects, Documentation, and Identification: Materiality and Memory of American Indian Boarding Schools at the Heard MuseumRobinson, Emily. 2021. “Objects, Documentation, and Identification: Materiality and Memory of American Indian Boarding Schools at the Heard Museum.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 51 (2): 94–108. doi:10.1080/02773945.2021.1877799.
- Sovereignty out from under Glass?: Native Hawaiian Rhetorics at the Bishop MuseumKing, Lisa. “Sovereignty out from under Glass?: Native Hawaiian Rhetorics at the Bishop Museum.” In Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific, edited by Jeffrey Carroll, Brandy Nālani McDougall, and Georganne Nordstrom, 125–43. University of Hawai’i Press, 2015
- "The People Shall Continue": Native American Museums as Archives of FuturityDäwes, Birgit. 2020. “‘The People Shall Continue’: Native American Museums as Archives of Futurity.” Anglia: Zeitschrift Für Englische Philolog