I object to The Denver Post’s tilted and negative recent coverage regarding the repatriation of Native art works by the Denver Art Museum. I am a trustee of the museum, but my objections, as reflected by the brief biography below, have additional roots. In that broader context, the substance and tonality of The Post’s coverage is regrettably imbalanced and misleading.
I know well what “colonized Native museum collections” and associated practices are all about. Indeed, those were the historical origins of the vast Native collections in both the museums I directed – the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Autry Museum of the American West. In each case, the founding “boxcar collector” envisioned his work as a “cultural ethnographic reclamation project” for Indigenous communities each expected to fall off the stage of history.
I am equally familiar with current reformed museum practices compelled by the spirit and mandates of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990. I oversaw and witnessed up close the dramatic reversal and decolonization of those museum collections and practices — with the return, sometimes upon tribal application and
often at the museums’ initiative, of Native ancestors’ remains, sacred material, and cultural patrimony to communities of origin.
In a sentence, by personal, professional, and lived experience, I can distinguish between museums that lead and those that lag. Contrary to the inference in substance and tone of The Denver Post’s recent article, the DAM unquestionably rests in the former and not the latter category.
The Post’s readers would benefit from journalism that abandons its habit of “cherry picking” facts and quotes. And in this case, giving deserved weight to Indigenous voices already familiar with the DAM’s engagement through time with Native communities.
My central criticism of The Post’s approach to covering Indigenous cultural property issues, however, is a matter of substance rather than quibbling about quotation choices and placement. I emphasize that this statement is made as the citizen of a Native nation, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, rather than as a museum director: we measure the commitment of a museum to matters of repatriation in “systemic” and “institutional” terms because those metrics speak to true and enduring change and future permanence.
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With respect to repatriation, the DAM’s markers are distinct and material:
• Consistent with its full embrace of the intent and spirit of NAGPRA, the DAM, among only a handful of museums, has a dedicated Department of Provenance Research focused on four areas of its collections, including art works subject to NAGPRA;
• The DAM’s repatriation process has been guided for three decades by seminal internal policies written in collaboration with Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) and Jhon Goes (Oglala Lakota – and former DAM trustee) and adopted by the Board;
• Pursuant to that policy, curatorial staff regularly hold NAGPRA consultations with Indigenous community members to support access to collections and repatriation inquiries and applications;
• Since the 1990s, the DAM has repatriated 30 art works to originating Native communities under NAGPRA; and
• In addition, the DAM has repatriated, completely apart from NAGPRA and on a voluntary basis, 18 art works, including the return of a war god to the Pueblo of Zuni in 1979, even prior to the enactment of NAGPRA, and art works to the Blackfeet Nation in 1995.
The foregoing is buttressed by even broader collaborations with Natives and Native communities that are deeply embedded in the institutional and organizational fabric of the DAM:
• The DAM’s Indigenous Community Advisory Council established five years ago, along with other Native advisors, provide Indigenous perspectives and participate in the formulation of numerous programs, installations and exhibits – as authentic and authoritative first-person Native voices;
• Through this systemic process of engagement and interaction, Council members serve the Native and larger DAM communities as cultural leaders, artists, and educators – often with a focus on youth.
These fundamentals of innovative institutional practice at the DAM seem lost on The Denver Post. I suggest in future reporting more focus there and less on a quest for the latest “gotcha’ moment.”
Rick West, a current trustee of the Denver Art Museum, is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and a member of the Society of Southern Cheyenne Peace Chiefs. He served previously as the chair of the American Alliance of Museums and vice president of the International Council of Museums. West is the founding director and director emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and president and CEO emeritus of the Autry Museum of the American West.
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