Excerpt:
In the past few years, museums around the world have started to grapple with questions about the origins and ethics of their collections. This includes the acquisition and maintenance of natural history specimens. As museums examine their missions and processes, it seemed like a good time to talk to Sean Decatur, the new president of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. …
Determining the proper home for objects from Indigenous groups in the United States is governed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. I asked Decatur how the museum views compliance with these regulations when questions are raised about whether objects or specimens should be in New York. For items that belong to North American Indigenous groups, he emphasized that a clear process exists for repatriation and that the museum has resources to work with Indigenous groups who claim ownership of objects that are in the museum’s collection. But he also wants to make sure that commitments are “more than lip service” by ensuring that the museum returns items that are not now, and were not in the past, collected under terms that do not meet today’s ethical standards. Moreover, Decatur is focused on building fulsome partnerships devoted to healing and moving forward from the past. “There’s more to returning items as a repatriation process than just putting them in the mail,” he said.
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It’s been interesting seeing this play out. I feel like for most places, we’re at the lip service stage of real action, but very little action has actually been taken by most museums. Only time will tell if it stays stuck here (for most equity issues, this is where most of it ends up stuck, permanently) or whether real repatriation efforts are made.
I really appreciate the moral reasoning that says museums should proactively determine the origins of items in their collections, and reach out to the families/tribes/etc that were affected by the removal of the items and try to come to arrangements.
Sure, sometimes it means items will be returned. But more likely, museums will get a rich background in the history of the affected tribes & families, and be permitted to keep the item on display with appropriate documentation. It’s not just good ethics, it’s good scholarship.