Silent, airless cases of artifacts

tell their own soundless stories

Are you up to date on your acronyms? ¹ Here’s one to know, if you’re going to a museum: NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

NAGPRA requires federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funds (including museums, universities, state agencies, and local governments) to repatriate or transfer Native American human remains and other cultural items to the appropriate parties.

Here’s more on that. It’s been in the news lately because guess what? Many of those places haven’t been doing any of that, or doing it poorly. But let us rewind history.

Collectors, anthropologists, museum people, or whoever you want to name, looted Indian graves and other sites for centuries looking for cool shit to put in their pockets or displays. “Oh look, a pipe.” “Oh look, a digging stick.” “Oh look, some human bones.” “These will make for some solid educational exhibits.”

NAGPRA is in the news because even though it’s a law from 1990, it has not been enforced until now. Like, 2024. Suddenly museums are rushing to cover and remove their displays so they can engage in long-overdue appropriate consultation with tribes and/or families to return items to proper resting places. A few weeks ago I visited the Field Museum while I stayed with a friend who lives in Chicago, and we saw lots of this:

If you take your phone out, you can QR-code yourself right to the FM’s explanation website.

We actually spotted museum workers behind temporary curtains, dressed head-to-toe in white smocks, in the act of removing artifacts from displays.

It’s not just grave robbing that fills display cases. In another museum, I recently saw a stunning floral beaded tradecloth made by a Nez Perce woman who was forced to exchange it for food after her people were chased into starvation by the US Army in 1877.² Now it’s sitting in an interpretive center. What did that woman receive for her gorgeous work? Did she starve to death anyway? Was she captured and shipped with the rest of her people to prison in Kansas?

Or, how about a 1880s-era beaded knife sheath or a parfleche? Those items didn’t just materialize into collectors’ hands. As a friend said, the late 1800s wasn’t a great time to be an Indian. Their original owners, probably their makers, likely had immediate needs greater than the need for that sheath, parfleche, dress, tradecloth, moccasins, or other objects, needs brought on by harrowing circumstances such as running from enemies, impending starvation, forced handovers, being shipped via railcar to prison (or Canada), or massacres of families and entire villages. Those objects make my heart drop when I see them, because of the soundless stories they tell, from inside their silent, airless cases.

It’s important to commemorate the past, our ancestors’ actions and experiences, both good and evil. But we can do better than displaying the evidence of this evil in the form of stolen artifacts or other items obtained under the most horrifying of circumstances. Surely we must also commit to asking questions that will lead to full understanding, not simply a concealment or partial rendering, of the truth. And then share those stories.

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On a positive note…

Fortunately, the Field Museum’s Native American wing is halfway redone, and the new section is refreshing and modern. They remade it with appropriate consultation and in light of contemporary tribal experiences. They displayed tribal flags on a looping screen and included contemporary art and music by tribal creators. There were recordings of youth poets reading their poetry in their own languages, and a loop of Reservation Dogs playing on a floating screen.

This is the scene where Bear meets the Unknown Warrior for the first time. Here’s the whole clip.

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Side story…

I also made my friend go through the entire bird section³ and at the end, we spotted this gorgeous painting of ravens by Blackfeet/Métis painter Valentina LaPier. Woot!

1. I’m about to drop some ultra-nerd knowledge on you: when the initials create a pronounceable word, like RADAR or SCUBA or NAGPRA, it’s an acronym. When it’s just a collection of initials that you have to utter independently like CIA or FBI or BIA, it’s called an initialism. IYKYK

2. This fact is actually shared on the museum label for that tradecloth. I didn’t just guess.

3. So many little stuffed birdies were a bit horrifying to see as well. Maybe I’m not made for exploring museums.