Posted on 01/27/2024 9:39:51 PM PST by Red Badger
New York’s venerable American Museum of Natural History and leading institutions across the country are shutting down major exhibits of Native American artifacts in response to new federal regulations limiting the display of cultural items.
Under the guidelines announced recently by the Biden administration, museums must obtain permission from Native American tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items, many of which were donated generations ago by archeologists who had stolen them after digging up sacred burial grounds.
The policy led the museum to close two exhibits — the Hall of the Great Plains, which includes jewelry, tools and weapons from the Cree, Cheyenne, Assiniboine, and Crow tribes, and the Eastern Woodlands exhibit, which features items from the Iroquois, Mohegans, Ojibwas and Crees.
The closures go into effect Saturday. The exhibits will be closed to visitors and staff.
“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning.
“Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”
The closures, first reported in the New York Times, represent a seismic shift in how artifacts are displayed.
Along with denying access to the affected exhibits, museum officials are also covering other display cases throughout the museum that feature Native American cultural items.
The rules come out of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which was passed more than 30 years ago.
But efforts to return such items dragged on for decades. This month, new federal regulations took effect that were designed to speed up returns, giving institutions five years to prepare all human remains and related funerary objects for repatriation and giving more authority to tribes throughout the process.
“The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is an essential tool for the safe return of sacred objects to the communities from which they were stolen,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said last month when the new rules were finalized.
“Among the updates we are implementing are critical steps to strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process. Finalizing these changes is an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people.”
The new guidelines took effect Jan. 12 and affect museums throughout the country including institutions in Chicago, Cleveland and Cambridge, Mass.
The displays in New York City will be off limits to the nearly five million people who visit the American Museum of Natural History every year.
According to museum staff, student field trips will be rerouted for the foreseeable future.
“The number of cultural objects on display in these halls is significant,” Decatur said. “And because these exhibits are also severely outdated, we have decided that rather than just covering or removing specific items,we will close the halls.”
Artifacts, dioramas, and representations of Native American culture from the northwest coast of North America are displayed, Tuesday, May 10, 2022, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
And the Federal authority for this action comes from where???
And the Federal authority for this action comes from where???
For decades the law never meant what the “regulators” now say it means.
Instead of caving the museums should be challenging the new regulations in court.
“The objective is to make real history disappear.”
Funny thing is that liberals are too impatient. History morphes over time and that is a commodity they don’t have in their short term goals. Knowledgeable people have to die so the information can’t be disputed. Plus they are not going after the little things. They are trying to BS the big ones like the haulocost never happened. Over time, everything comes out. But by the time it does, normally, it isn’t important or worth bringing up again as nothing can be done about it. Time may heal wounds, but it doesn’t change the history. Only the attitude of those hearing about it wrong if they allow it. Baaa!
wy69
65. It is WHO and how an artifact was made that is important as it shows man’s development of ceramics, woodworking and metallurgy over millions of years. This is also important in tracing man’s mental capacities development over time.
You are right!
I just saw this:
That LED sign touting the Redskins they show in the article is at the school I was talking about. It’s deep in the middle of the Navajo reservation, out in the middle of nowhere. When we passed it on the road a couple of years ago it brought a big smile to my face. Living in the Southwest and knowing the attitudes of most American Indians to such things, it didn’t surprise me. But I just had to laugh at the absurdity of busybody white liberals trying to erase every symbol of Native American culture while the very people they pretend to protect proudly display exactly the same names and symbols that the liberals are busy tearing down.
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