Wisconsin museums must comply with new federal rule about certain tribal artifacts
Museum directors across the state are scrambling to comply with a new federal rule that requires permission from tribal nations before displaying certain affiliated artifacts.
“Milwaukee Public Museum is thoughtfully reviewing the Native American cultural heritage items currently on display, and in the coming weeks, will remove items from view or cover exhibits that do not comply with the latest … regulations,” said a statement released Tuesday by the museum.
Milwaukee Public Museum officials say the changes to exhibits will likely be small.
“Thanks to the museum’s ongoing consultation work with tribes, the new regulations will have a relatively small impact on MPM’s exhibits compared to other museums who have closed entire galleries,” the statement read.
The new rule has caused significant changes to museum displays in other parts of the country.
The Field Museum in Chicago, for example, has covered several display cases in its Halls of the Ancient Americas exhibit, according to a statement on its website earlier this month. And the American Museum of Natural History in New York is closing an entire exhibit to comply with the new rule.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, also known as NAGPRA, was enacted in 1990 and calls for the protection and return of Native American remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to affiliated tribes.
The new rule requires that those items not be displayed without tribal permission or if within the process of repatriation.
But the process of returning those ancestors and items can take years and even decades, particularly if museum officials aren't certain which tribe those human remains and items belong to.
Museums in Wisconsin today don't have any Native American human remains on display, but many still have bones as part of their inventory, as well as burial items.
The Milwaukee Public Museum, for example, has the remains of more than 1,600 Native Americans in its possession.
Beth Kowalski, executive director of the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, said the museum’s latest return of Native ancestors took place in 2016 with the Ho-Chunk Nation.
She said the museum is working on returning funerary items, such as trade beads dug up from burial mounds, to several California tribes.
With the Neville Museum being 109 years old, Kowalski said many of the artifacts came from a time when non-Native Americans thought it was acceptable to dig up burial mounds and trade or sell the artifacts they unearthed. She said the Neville has been compliant with NAGPRA since it was enacted.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, which is led by an Indigenous person — Deb Haaland — for the first time, announced the new rule to NAGPRA on Dec. 6.
Officials with the Wisconsin Historical Society, which has a museum in Madison, said they also have been compliant with NAGPRA and have worked closely with tribes in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“In response to the NAGPRA changes, the Wisconsin Historical Society has introduced formal amendments to our collections policy to ensure compliance with the updates, and these amendments were approved by the Board of Curators earlier this month,” museum officials said in a statement.
The Beloit College Logan Museum of Anthropology is planning to cover up one of its exhibits to comply with the new NAGPRA rule, said director Nicolette Blum Meister.
She said its second-story visible storage display contains hundreds of objects and some are funerary items, which the museum in the process of obtaining permission from associated tribes to display or will return.
Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin museums must comply with new rule on some tribal artifacts
