The Register-Guard

Representa­tion

journal. Their piece challenges institutio­ns to rethink how they interpret and handle items from Indigenous communitie­s.

“All of our belongings are made from the land,” Craig said. “They’re made from living items: plants, trees, animals, and there’s an exchange that happens in the natural world when we are gathering the materials. We are full of good energy, there’s no negative energy because the plant is giving its life for us, or the animal is giving its life for us.”

Offerings are traditiona­lly provided in exchange and the item itself – whether it’s a baby’s rattle, or a carved canoe – needs to be utilized for its purpose, by the people who made it, or it was made for. The concept of keeping things locked up in a glass case or secured in a curator’s drawer runs contrary to those Native beliefs.

“It’s important for these belongings to still be handled and touched, because of the exchange of energy,” said Craig. “They once were living and we’re living and in order to keep the energy flowing and the good energy going, they need to be touched. They need to be appreciate­d.”

Indigenous insights

It’s insights like these that make Indigenous voices so critical to intentiona­l care and the movement for a decolonial lens in museums.

Roughly 200 miles away in Bend, Ore., Phil Cash Cash, Nez Perce and Cayuse, plays one of two hand-carved elderberry flutes he made for an exhibit at the High Desert Museum, called Cre

ations of Spirit . Cash Cash has been a consultant with the High Desert Museum for five years, providing interpreti­ve services and cultural context.

“I will actually address the elderberry tree as a living being and talk with it,” explained Cash Cash. “I’ll say ‘Look how beautiful you are,’ and then I’ll request to the elderberry, ‘Now you’re going to come with me.” This reverent communicat­ion continues as the flute is carved and painted.

Cash Cash’s two finished flutes have their upper halves painted blue and red, respective­ly, with leather straps and adornments including deer hooves. According to Cash Cash, the greenish-yellow tinge to his flutes indicates when the wood was harvested.

“These are spring flutes, and they will carry that attribute through the wood,” Cash Cash said. “Sometimes flute makers prefer to harvest during the fully ripened August to September timeframe when the elderberri­es are ripe.”

During his time as a consultant, Cash Cash has examined some of the older items in the museum’s collection, including a Cayuse buckskin shirt adorned with ermine skins.

“It’s a well-known, small, but very fierce creature, and the white also makes reference to a kind of purity,” Cash Cash said. He noted that a yellow pigment was generously applied to the shirt, suggesting the wearer wore the garment to commemorat­e a vision quest. When worn for warfare or cere

mony the shirt spirituall­y empowered its owner.

“And when they put on the shirt, this came alive for them and they can engage in warfare or other ceremonial life and people would see that the person is an empowered spiritual person as well,” Cash Cash said.

The shirt's pigment had also been reapplied, likely by a descendant of the shirt-wearer, who wanted to preserve and honor the garment's attributes.

“All of this really points to the idea that we are part of a larger continuum of life that is full of energy and power that we can link to,” Cash Cash said.

There are ten Native consultant­s, including Cash Cash, who work with the High Desert Museum according to executive director, Dana Whitelaw.

“There's been a real shift in the entire field to incorporat­e Indigenous voices and perspectiv­es and it's long overdue,” Whitelaw said.

The High Desert Museum is a Smithsonia­n affiliate and has worked to build trust and partnershi­ps with Native American tribes and individual­s, according to Whitelaw. For example, administra­tors are planning for a renovation of the exhibit which opened 24 years ago and was curated by Vivian Adams of the Yakama Nation. Cash Cash is part of the lead exhibit team and will help select objects for the new space that begins constructi­on in 2025 or 2026.

“So there's a movement in museums where object care is more culturally responsive, more culturally relevant, and embedding that into museum practice,” said Whitelaw. “We know more than we did in 1999 how visitors learn in formal learning spaces, so we have that depth of knowledge and content from that research to help support the Indigenous voices and perspectiv­es.”

Many Native American items were essentiall­y plundered from villages, gravesites, and burial mounds by “collectors”. Now, these items are in a number of museum collection­s across the globe, including some of the most prominent, like the Smithsonia­n Institutio­n which accumulate­d over 13,000 items between 1860 and 1873.

Hits and misses

By Hand Through Memory

The National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989, and the Native American Graves and Repatriati­on Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 have spurred a lot of reform, empowering Native nations to demand the return of ancestral remains and possession­s. Unfortunat­ely, in the 30 years since these landmark regulation­s were enacted, many institutio­ns have failed to return stolen items and ancestral remains. A January 2023 ProPublica report found that there were over 110,000 remains that had yet to be returned by many prominent museums.

There's also the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, which was intended to be a bicultural re-enactment program that featured both the early histories of the Mayflower Pilgrims and the region's Indigenous peoples, but in 2022, the Wampanoag community called for a boycott of the site, calling the presentati­on and lack of maintenanc­e “tone deaf.”

Institutio­ns like Portland's Five Oaks Museum have also incorporat­ed exhibits curated by Native Americans, or have invited them to consult on programmin­g but Native advocates say there's still room for improvemen­t, and they continue to monitor progress. While the Smithsonia­n says it's repatriate­d roughly 5,000 human remains since 1989, there are still roughly 2,000 more in its collection.

Others, like Chicago's Field Museum, recently unveiled an overhaul of its interpreti­ve displays and programmin­g, in an effort to rectify decades of inaccurate and Eurocentri­c presentati­ons. The five-year effort involved 105 tribes, working to improve on exhibit work that hadn't been updated since the 1950s, and was deemed “racist” and “insensitiv­e.”

Not gone, not dead, not silent

At the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene, Ann Craig, director of public programs, recalls ways harmful narratives were perpetuate­d even while working with Native nations and Native consultant­s. It highlights why continued conversati­on and consultati­on are so important.

“And at the time, that was really progressiv­e," said Craig. "But the hall had previously been all sepia tone. Even if there was a historic image and a contempora­ry image, they were both sepia tones, so it made Indigenous people in the exhibit all look historical.”

In 2014, a Cow Creek tribal member said some objects on display were inappropri­ate, prompting staff to remove them. MNCH's executive director, Todd Braje, said they continue to be receptive to Native concerns, and work to portray them in the present tense as well as past historical tense.

“Rather than museums being set up to be sort of mausoleums where we put artifacts from the deep past into a case and we talk about deep history, what you see in this case, are weavings that are thousands of years old, next to contempora­ry baskets," Braje said. "It shows this connection between present people and deep tradition in Oregon.”

He added that they don't pretend to have all the answers and that humility and openness make the MNCH a better and more welcoming museum. Staff also have a special arrangemen­t with nations over the museum's cultural materials. Visitors can watch short clips of Native nations in Oregon discussing their history, or practicing traditions near exhibit areas. One showed members of the Confederat­ed Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians taking their ornately carved canoes out on the waters as a part of the "Oregon - Where Past is Present" exhibit.

“For us, it was also about not just asking for collaborat­ion, but asking ‘What can we do that is in support of your goals?'” said Craig.

The smallest changes can make the biggest difference

During the last 200 years as colleges, universiti­es, and historical societies took in baskets, pottery, and human remains, it was commonly believed that these were relics of a dying people. Famous photograph­ers like Edward S. Curtis perpetuate­d this fallacy in his staged photos of Natives, making sure they removed modern appliances and items like wristwatch­es during shoots.

Back in the 1870s, Reverend Robert Summers, the First Episcopal Priest of McMinnvill­e, Oregon was a major contributo­r of Indigenous items to local institutio­ns. He acquired more than 600 items from the area's Native nations. Most of those pieces were from the Grand Ronde Reservatio­n, which made it more personal for Stephanie Craig. While the British Museum has loaned out pieces of its Indigenous collection called, Summers Collection of Indian Artifacts, in the past, it would take action by England's governing body, the Parliament, to do a full repatriati­on of the pieces.

For Craig, it's as much a personal mission as a profession­al one to be able to consult for the British Museum. She hopes to one day be invited to consult for it in order to finally correctly identify the items in the museum.

Stephanie Craig also wants people to understand that decolonizi­ng museums means changing the language we use.

“I hope people will start looking at things more as belongings,” explained Craig. “You don't call your family's items 'artifacts' or 'relics.' They're family heirlooms, and that's the same for us.”

Underscore is a nonprofit collaborat­ive reporting team in Portland focused on investigat­ive reporting and Indian Country coverage. We are supported by foundation­s, corporate sponsors and donor contributi­ons. Follow Underscore on Facebook and Twitter .