Preparing for Sustained!

This new step was enacted with the most recent update to the NAGPRA legislation that came into effect in January of 2024, and it is a requirement for all museums working with historic Indigenous art collections. The NAGPRA-related items the legislation refers to include human remains, objects from a burial site, objects of cultural patrimony, and/or sacred objects.

Our museum, as an art museum, never collected human remains, and as a Native woman, I am super grateful for that, but there are other items that might be culturally sensitive to display. That’s why it’s important to always work with Native communities to better understand any items the curatorial staff has questions about before displaying them in an exhibition. In the 1990s, the Denver Art Museum completed all its NAGPRA obligations, and since then we have conducted numerous consultations with Native nations or tribal communities over the last 30 years. So, the first thing we did was check our records on each item we wanted to display to see if there were any past concerns expressed by communities from previous consultations.

However, even if no NAGPRA flags came up for items in our system, we still asked for and received permission to show any item that we worried might be culturally sensitive such as a Cheyenne shield, which depicts a warrior’s personal medicine. We also reached out to the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska or CCTHITA. There were four items we wanted to show that originated from Tlingit communities. None of them had any concerns noted in our records, but some things, like a choker, may have been used in a dance ceremony or connected to potlatch. Because we weren’t sure what some of the items were originally used for, we reached out to the CCTHITA for more information and happily received permission to show all four Tlingit items in the exhibition.

One example of something we decided not to display is a pipe. In our records, it was simply labeled as a “Sioux” object, which in some ways is an outdated term used to describe the people of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or people of the Seven Council Fires. I say it is somewhat outdated, because even though we, as people of the Seven Council Fires, don’t call ourselves that, some of our tribes still use that term in their federally recognized names. In any case, there are seven tribal nations we needed to contact to ask permission to display the pipe, and another seven sub-divisions of those same tribal nations. We reached out to every group. Some of them we never heard back from. Some of them we did hear from, and they gave us permission to show the pipe. Some of them replied that it would not be OK to show the pipe, and so we decided to remove that item from the exhibition.

As you can tell from this story, Native people have diverse beliefs and opinions; and not even people from the same group think and feel the same way about every object. For these reasons, it’s important for museums and curatorial staff to remain flexible. If, during the run of the exhibition, we learn something new or receive a differing opinion, we will listen and make any changes necessary. In the meantime, when you come to see the show, you can know that the curatorial staff researched the provenance of every item that wasn’t created by a contemporary artist to make sure that no issues were raised about it in past NAGPRA consultations. For other items where the curatorial staff wasn’t sure, we took extra steps to ensure we were working with the tribe or communities to receive permission. While there is always room for improvement, hopefully it is helpful to know that we worked hard to complete our due diligence before displaying the items in this exhibition.