Museums closed Native American exhibits 6 months ago, tribes still waiting for items to be returned

NEW YORK (AP) — Tucked away in the sprawling Native American corridors of the American Museum of Natural History is a tiny wooden figure that holds a sacred place among the tribes that once called Manhattan home.

For more than six months, the ceremonial Ohtas, or Doll Creature, has been hidden from view after the museum and others across the country took sweeping steps to close or cover exhibits in response to new federal rules requiring institutions to return sacred or culturally significant objects to tribes — or at least seek permission to display or study them.

The doll, also known as Nahneetis, is just one of about 1,800 objects that museum officials say they are assessing as they seek to meet requirements while also thoroughly refurbishing exhibits that are more than half a century old.

But some tribal leaders remain skeptical, saying museums have not acted quickly enough. The new rules were prompted by years of tribal complaints that hundreds of thousands of items that should have been returned under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 are still in the possession of museums.

“When things are slow, take it,” said Joe Baker, a Manhattan resident and member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, descendants of the Lenape peoples who encountered European traders more than 400 years ago. “The collections, they’re part of our story, part of our family. We need them home. We need them close by.”

Sean Decatur, president of the New York museum, promised that the tribes would hear from officials soon. He said staff had spent the past few months reexamining the exhibits in an effort to reach out to tribal communities.

The museum also plans to open a small exhibit in the fall that will feature Native American stories and explain the history of the closed halls, why changes are being made and what the future holds, he said.

Museum officials anticipate a complete renovation of the closed Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains halls, similar to the five-year, $19 million renovation of Northwest Coast Hall, which was completed in 2022 in close collaboration with tribes, Decatur added.

“The ultimate goal is to make sure we tell the stories well,” he said.

Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, a government-recognized tribe in the Hamptons, New York, says he worries about the loss of local tribal representation in public institutions as the exhibits are likely to remain closed for years.

The American Museum of Natural History, he noted, is one of New York’s biggest tourist attractions and a mainstay for generations of students from the region who want to learn more about the region’s tribes.

He proposes that museums use replicas made by indigenous peoples so that sensitive cultural objects are not physically on display.

“I don’t think tribes want our history written out of museums,” Gumbs said. “There’s got to be a better way than using artifacts that were literally stolen from graves.”

Gordon Yellowman, chief of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal language and culture department, said museums should create more digital and virtual exhibits.

He said the Oklahoma tribes will request from the New York museum a sketchbook by Cheyenne warrior Little Finger Nail, which contains his drawings and illustrations from battle.

The book, which is in storage and not on display, was taken from his body after he and other tribe members were killed by U.S. soldiers in Nebraska in 1879.

“These drawings weren’t just done because they’re pretty,” Yellowman said. “They were done to show the real history of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.”

Institutions elsewhere use different approaches.

In Chicago, the Field Museum has established a Center for Repatriation after the museum covered up several items in its galleries devoted to ancient America and the peoples of the Northwest Coast and Arctic.

The museum has returned four artifacts to the tribes and is processing three more, efforts that were underway before the new regulations, said spokesperson Bridgette Russell.

At the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, a display case of artifacts from the Tlingit people of Alaska has been reopened after their leaders gave permission, museum spokesman Todd Mesek said. But two other cases remain covered, one of which contains funerary objects from the ancient Southwest that need to be redecorated with a different subject and materials.

And at Harvard, the Peabody Museum’s Native American hall reopened in February after removing about 15 percent of the roughly 350 items from the exhibit, university spokeswoman Nicole Rura said.

Chuck Hoskin, Chief of the Cherokee Nation, said he thinks many institutions now understand they can no longer treat Native artifacts as “museum curiosities” from “peoples who no longer exist.”

The Oklahoma tribe leader said he visited Peabody this year after the university reached out about returning hair remains collected in the early 1930s from hundreds of Native children, including Cherokee children forced to assimilate into the notorious Native American residential schools.

“The fact that we’re in a position where we can sit down with Harvard and have a really meaningful conversation is progress for the country,” he said.

As for Baker, he wants the Ohtas to be returned to their tribe. He said the ceremonial doll should never have been put on display, especially since it was placed among wooden bowls, spoons and other everyday objects.

Museum officials say discussions with tribal representatives began in 2021 and will continue, even though the doll technically does not fall under federal regulation because it is associated with a tribe outside the U.S., the Munsee-Delaware Nation in Ontario.

“It has a spirit. It’s a living thing,” Baker said. “So to think that it’s been hanging on the wall in a static cabinet for all these years, suffocating from lack of air, it’s just horrible, it really is.”

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Follow Philip Marcelo on twitter.com/philmarcelo.