The American Museum of Natural History will close two large rooms that exhibit Native American objects, its authorities said last Friday the 26th, in drastic response to new federal regulations, which require museums to have the
consent of different communities
before exhibiting or conduct research on cultural artifacts.
The rooms we are closing are
remnants of a time
when museums like ours did not respect the values, perspectives and, indeed, the shared humanity of indigenous peoples," the museum's president, Sean Decatur, reported last Friday. in a letter to the institution's staff: "Actions that
may seem sudden
to some, others may consider necessary for a long time."
The same weekend, the museum closed galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and Eastern Great Plains regions and
covered another series of display cases
displaying cultural artifacts from Native American communities, while it reviews its massive collection to Make sure you comply with new federal rules, effective in January.
Great Plains Hall of the Museum of Natural History in New York.Jeenah Moon/NYT
Museums across the country have been covering their display cases while
curators review inventories
to determine if they can be displayed in accordance with new regulations.
The Field Museum in Chicago covered some, the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University reported that it would remove all funerary collections from its display locations, and the Cleveland Museum of Art covered part of its displays.
New ethics for museums
The decision by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which attracts 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends
a powerful message to the local museum scene.
Its anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States, known for carrying out
pioneering work
under a long line of curators that includes such figures as anthropologists Franz Boas and Margaret Mead.
The closures will leave more than
900 square meters of exhibition space
off-limits to visitors.
The museum made it known that it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.
“Some objects may never be displayed again as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur responded in an interview.
"But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that explain what kind of process is going on."
The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to
accelerate the repatriation of artifacts and remains
, funerary objects and other sacred objects from Native American communities.
In fact, the restitution process began in 1990 with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which
established protocols
for museums and other institutions to return human remains, objects funeral and other goods to the corresponding tribes.
However, as such aspirations dragged on for decades, tribal representatives criticized the law as being too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance.
This January, new federal regulations aimed at
speeding up restitution
came into effect , giving institutions
five years
to prepare all human remains and funerary objects for repatriation and granting
greater authority to tribes
throughout the process. .
“We are finally being heard, and this is not a fight, it is a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, archaeologist and curator of the Pechanga Band of Indians.
Will this be the best solution?
Already in the two weeks since the new provisions came into force, Masiel-Zamora says that she felt that the tenor of the conversations had changed.
In the past, institutions often viewed Native oral histories as less persuasive than academic studies in determining which modern tribes objects would be repatriated to, she said.
But the new regulations require institutions to “defer to traditional Native American knowledge from their
direct descendants,
Indian communities, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”
"We can say 'This must come home,' and I hope there is no setback," said the archaeologist.
Museum officials have been preparing for the new regulations for months,
consulting with lawyers and curators
and holding lengthy meetings to discuss what might need to be covered or eliminated.
"We can say 'This needs to come home' and I hope there's no pushback," one expert said.
Many institutions plan to hire staff in order to comply with the new rules, something that may involve extensive consultation with tribal representatives.
The result has been
a major change
in practices regarding Native American-related exhibits at some of the country's major museums, a change that will be noticeable to visitors.
Segments of the collection once used at the American Museum of Natural History to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohawks, Cheyennes, Arapahos and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible.
That encompasses large objects like the Menomini birch bark canoe from the Eastern Woodlands Hall, and smaller ones, including darts dating back to
10,000 BC.
C. and a Hopi Katina doll from what is now the state of Arizona.
Now that they will no longer have access to those galleries,
student field trips
to the Eastern Woodlands Hall are being rethought.
The display of Native American human remains is generally prohibited in museums, so the collections under review comprise sacred, funerary objects and other cultural heritage items.
Aboriginal cemetery looters
As the new rules have been scrutinized and debated over the past year, some professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, expressed concern that the rules were going too far in museum collection management practices.
But since the regulations went into effect on January 12, there has been little public opposition from museums.
Much of the native human remains and cultural objects were collected through practices now considered outdated and even detestable, including
donations from grave raiders
and archaeological excavations that emptied indigenous cemeteries.
"This is
human rights work
, and we should think of it in those terms and not as science," said Candace Sall, director of the University of Missouri Museum of Anthropology, which is still working to repatriate the remains of more than 2,400 Native Americans.
"This is human rights work and we must think in those terms and not as science," said the director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Missouri.
Dr Sall said she had added five staff to work on the repatriation in anticipation of the provisions and was confident she could add more.
Criticism of the pace of repatriations put visible public pressure on institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History.
In more than 30 years, the museum has repatriated remains of approximately 1,000 people to tribal groups;
It still houses the remains of about 2,200 other Native American settlers and thousands of funerary objects.
(Last year the entity announced that it would review practices that extended to its largest collection of about 12,000 skeletons by removing human bones from public display and improving the facilities where they are stored.)
One of the top priorities of the new regulations, which are administered by the Department of the Interior, is to finish the work of repatriating Native human remains in institutional holdings, which number more than
96,000 people
, according to federal data released last fall. .
The government has given
until 2029
for institutions to adequately prepare human remains and funerary belongings for repatriation.
Both human remains and cultural objects contain little information in many cases, which in the past delayed repatriation, especially in those institutions that sought rigorous
anthropological and ethnographic evidence
of links to a modern native group.
Now the government is urging institutions to continue moving forward with the information they have, in certain cases based solely on geographic information, such as in which county the remains were discovered.
Some tribal officials expressed fear that the new rules would trigger
a flood of requests
from museums that could overwhelm their organizations' ability to respond and create a financial burden.
Some officials expressed fear that the new rules would lead to an avalanche of requests from museums that exceed the capacity of their indigenous peoples' organizations to respond.
Speaking in June before a committee reviewing the law's implementation, Scott Willard, who works on repatriation issues for Oklahoma's Miami community, expressed concern that rhetoric about the new regulations sometimes made it seem like Native ancestors were “disposable items”.
"This
garage sale mentality
of 'give everything away right now' is very offensive to us," he said.
Officials who drafted the new regulations clarified that institutions can get extensions of their deadlines as long as the communities they are consulting agree to, emphasizing the need to hold institutions accountable
without burdening tribes
.
If museums were found to have violated regulations, they could be subject to fines.
Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs and former tribal chairman of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the rules were written in consultation with tribal representatives who wanted their ancestors to regain their dignity when they died.
“Repatriation is not just a rule on paper,” Newland noted, “but it brings people truly meaningful healing and closure.”
Copyright The New York Times. Translation: Román García Azcárate