0:00

We. Can start this episode of Today explained

0:02

and lots of places. We

0:05

could start in January twenty twenty

0:08

four when museums across the country

0:10

all the sudden just shut down

0:12

exhibits we have taken off display

0:14

or covered of the cases with

0:16

objects that are of cultural insensitivity.

0:18

Or we could start with the

0:20

Nineteen Ninety law they're attempting to

0:23

comply with the Native American Graves

0:25

Protection and Repatriation Act. Or we

0:27

could start in the decades prior

0:29

to the passage of that law

0:31

when Native American tribes were. Clamoring.

0:34

For it it wasn't just give it

0:36

some shy and along and make that

0:38

dress it's a unique out. Those were

0:40

gotten in are really really violence, genocide,

0:42

or manner. Or we could go

0:44

to the nineteenth century when some

0:46

of the country's most prestigious archaeologists

0:48

spent their time grave robbing, On.

0:51

The show Today We're going to talk

0:53

about how all the affected tribes might

0:55

finally get their ancestors and their stuff

0:57

back. Support

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stars and a new H B

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B as The Regime premieres March.

1:15

Third on max. Is

1:20

living in the United States bad

1:22

for the health of Black Americans?

1:25

When black immigrants kinatay night is

1:27

states, their health status is on

1:29

par with White American. But what

1:31

happens is after one to change

1:34

generation, their health status actually declined

1:36

to that of Black Americans. How

1:38

racism ages black people's bodies. That's

1:41

this week on the We Use

1:43

New episodes every Wednesday. He

1:51

lie guy who the adding. You're

1:54

listening to today explained. This.

1:58

might be hard to believe or maybe to It's

2:00

totally believable that American

2:02

museums to this day in 2024 hold hundreds of

2:04

thousands of

2:07

stolen Native American objects and

2:10

even ancestral remains. But

2:12

they do. Mary Hudits has been

2:14

writing all about it for ProPublica. I'm

2:16

also a Psalika, which means I'm a

2:18

member of the Crow Tribe, which

2:21

is in Montana. But thanks to

2:23

new regulations inserted into a 30-ish

2:25

year old law called NAGPRA, the

2:28

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation

2:30

Act, that's all starting to change

2:33

right now. So a lot actually has

2:35

been happening lately. Museums

2:39

have been issuing apologies in the past year.

2:41

First I must begin by apologizing

2:44

to all of our Native American colleagues, both

2:46

on campus and in the Native American communities,

2:49

for the actions of

2:51

our university over many decades. I

2:53

think we've had a shift in realizing we're not the

2:55

experts, right? It's the people whose

2:58

history that we are interested in,

3:00

which are the experts. And if they are still

3:02

alive, they're the people that we need to learn

3:04

from and listen to. They've started

3:07

to file federal notices, which

3:09

appear publicly online, saying that

3:11

they're ready to repatriate thousands

3:13

of ancestors that they had

3:16

held. Forensic experts are now

3:18

working with Dartmouth College after finding

3:20

Native American remains. Those

3:22

remains were previously unreported. And

3:24

then, probably most significantly, in

3:27

the past month, new federal

3:29

regulations went into effect. The

3:31

provision now requires museums and

3:33

federal agencies to obtain consent

3:35

of lineal descendants, Indian tribes,

3:37

or Native Hawaiian organizations to

3:39

display cultural items. They require

3:41

museums to reassess their collections, review

3:44

them, and in the next several

3:46

years they're going to have to make

3:49

determinations about their origins. The

3:52

regulations now require museums to get

3:56

informed consent from tribes to conduct

3:58

scientific research on them. Tell

4:02

me about these regulations. Where do they come from?

4:04

Certainly not Congress. They don't agree on anything. The

4:07

newest iteration of the federal regulations

4:09

actually have been sort of years

4:11

in the making, but they were

4:14

not given much attention or much

4:16

urgency by the Interior

4:18

Department until about a year and a

4:21

half ago or so. History comes full

4:23

circle in the confirmation of Deb

4:25

Haaland as the U.S. Secretary of

4:27

the Interior. And it was under

4:29

Deb Haaland, who was appointed by

4:31

Joe Biden, that the Interior

4:34

Department started a review of their

4:36

regulations. A member of the Laguna

4:38

Pueblo tribe of New Mexico, Haaland's

4:40

family traces back 35 generations on

4:43

American soil. They consult with tribes.

4:45

They receive dozens of letters from

4:47

museums telling them whether they should

4:49

or shouldn't enact these new regulations.

4:51

And now they've arrived at this

4:53

process. So tell me what

4:56

happened. The federal government, Deb

4:58

Haaland, the Biden administration, they

5:02

add some regulations to this

5:04

law, NAGPRA, about a

5:06

month ago. And what? Is it like flipping

5:08

a switch? All of a sudden, museums start

5:10

complying? How does it turn out? It

5:13

feels at the moment like a flip of the

5:15

switch. I think one of the most

5:17

dramatic things that happened is that

5:19

museums, very large ones in major

5:22

cities, started to close exhibits that

5:26

featured native cultures. Two

5:28

exhibition halls at the American Museum

5:30

of Natural History are now closing

5:32

because of new federal rules. Cleveland

5:34

Museum of Art brings in people

5:36

from far and wide. But today,

5:38

not all artifacts are on display.

5:41

And that, I think, came as

5:43

a big surprise to the public,

5:45

especially if they hadn't been following

5:47

repatriation and NAGPRA. Which let's be

5:49

honest, the public was not doing. Correct.

5:52

Yeah. Black curtains and cover

5:54

displays inside Chicago's Field Museum. Moves

5:56

the museum had to make to

5:58

follow changes to the public. of

6:01

the Native American Graves Protection and

6:03

Repatriation Act. We have taken

6:05

off display or covered the

6:07

cases with objects that are

6:10

of cultural sensitivity. Museums need

6:12

to take time to understand

6:14

what they had in their exhibits that were

6:16

sacred and that many tribal cultures

6:19

would prefer not to have

6:21

an exhibit. So now

6:23

I think many

6:25

of the closures are temporary. Some

6:27

of them involve simply closing a door. And

6:30

so it is really dramatic what the

6:32

public is seeing in certain instances.

6:34

OK, now let's talk about the

6:36

work of sorting all

6:38

of these ancestral remains and these

6:41

objects out. So how

6:43

exactly does it work? Does the tribe or

6:45

family approach these institutions and say, hey, we

6:47

think these are our ancestors, or we think

6:50

these are our objects? Here's our proof. Is

6:53

there some sort of third party who's

6:55

going to decide where objects

6:57

and ancestral remains go? There

7:00

is not a third party. But yes,

7:03

NYPRA does allow tribes to make claims. In

7:05

fact, it's very much sometimes

7:07

called a claims law. So if a

7:10

tribe makes a claim to their ancestors

7:12

held at a major institution,

7:14

that institution had like three months

7:16

to offer an initial response and

7:18

then at some point offer a

7:20

decision. But until these

7:22

new regulations went to fact, museums had

7:24

been able to tell tribes

7:27

that items in their collection were

7:29

culturally unidentifiable, which means they could

7:31

say they didn't know where items came

7:33

from. They couldn't decide if

7:36

the tribe's claim was a rightful one. And

7:39

I think NYPRA wasn't written in a

7:41

way that required museums to have definitive

7:43

proof. It understood that when museums took

7:46

from native graves, they did it

7:48

in such an aggressive way that

7:50

they didn't document everything. They

7:53

took so much at a time. But

7:55

now the new regulations, I think they require

7:57

museums to give more deference to tribes and

7:59

their heritage. histories. One of

8:01

the things that had been missing for so many decades in the

8:03

museum world is, you know, not enough

8:05

credence was given to Native people about

8:07

their understanding of who they are and

8:10

where they come from and the time they had

8:12

in their homelands. Do any serious

8:14

offenders come to mind? So

8:16

we analyzed the data and found that 10 institutions

8:19

held half of the ancestors that had

8:21

yet to be repatriated, which is

8:23

worth noting. But the museums that

8:25

get the most scrutiny are very often the very big

8:27

ones that we hear about, like the Field Museum and

8:30

American Museum of Natural History, even though they're not in

8:32

that group of 10. Harvard

8:34

University has the third

8:37

highest number of ancestral remains. Well,

8:42

we don't like to punch down here

8:44

at Today Explained, so let's punch up.

8:46

Let's talk about Harvard. How did Harvard

8:48

wind up with so many ancestral

8:51

remains? Harvard is

8:54

a very influential institution, including

8:56

in anthropology. And in the mid to

9:00

late 1800s, their Peabody

9:02

Museum of Archaeology and Ethology set

9:05

out to collect ancestors from all

9:07

across the globe, really. But the

9:09

collecting happened also very aggressively in

9:11

the United States. And so we

9:13

have a map of

9:15

collecting that happened by Harvard, where human

9:17

remains are taken from. It's pretty much

9:19

every state in the country. And

9:22

their work also influenced other

9:25

institutions, state universities

9:27

that wanted to be like Harvard. Today,

9:30

Harvard continues to hold more than

9:32

5,000 ancestors. They're

9:34

making progress. But I think a lot of tribes

9:37

feel like they still have maybe more

9:39

atoning to do or a

9:42

ways to go in mending their

9:44

relationships, given that harsh history. And

9:50

I would say I think people also feel

9:52

in more modern times that

9:54

under NAGPRA since 1990, Harvard had been...

10:00

dispute this, but had been one of the

10:02

more resistant institutions

10:05

to NAGPRA, or had acted the

10:07

slowest in responding to

10:10

tribes' claims, which was also

10:12

sort of seen as influential for

10:14

other institutions. When

10:16

we first started on reporting on repatriation,

10:19

Harvard University's record came

10:21

up repeatedly. Not only the

10:24

numbers, I mean the fact that they

10:26

repatriated fewer than half of the ancestors

10:28

they initially reported holding, but

10:30

we also heard of stories that tribes

10:34

were asked to submit

10:37

large numbers of documents

10:39

or their claims

10:41

to their ancestors were rejected for different

10:43

reasons in ways that seemed very painful

10:46

for tribes. And one of

10:48

the stories that came to us that

10:50

started to really highlight how slow

10:52

the NAGPRA process can be and

10:55

just how resistant Harvard may

10:57

have been to tribes in

11:00

the past was the story of the Wabanaki

11:02

tribes in Maine, who spent 30 years asking

11:05

Harvard to return ancestors.

11:11

The tribes make repeated claims. Each

11:14

time Harvard would tell the

11:16

Wabanaki tribes that they didn't have enough evidence

11:18

to show, I believe

11:20

that the ancestors they set to claim that were

11:23

taken from Maine around the 1930s could

11:27

be people that they had any sort

11:29

of affiliation to, cultural affiliation to.

11:32

And so initially Harvard

11:36

gave the evidence, arguments, then

11:39

they gave it again

11:42

when the tribes came back

11:44

and asked, you know, a second and

11:46

a third time. But

11:48

what we found, which I think might

11:51

have helped us really understand why

11:53

NAGPRA has taken so

11:55

long in some places,

11:58

was the fact that Harvard, not

12:01

to the tribes, it was what they weren't

12:03

saying to tribes, it was what they're saying

12:05

in an email exchanged with other institutions and

12:07

among staff, was they,

12:10

at least some in Harvard believed the

12:12

remains were maybe too important to science

12:15

or just too old to be affiliated

12:18

with the tribes of Maine, which today are

12:20

the only tribes, the

12:23

Wabanak tribes, are the only tribes of, that

12:25

are recognized tribes of Maine. So no one else could

12:28

make a really a claim to them. As

12:34

time went along, new generations of

12:36

Wabanaki were starting to become interested

12:39

in repatriation. And so

12:41

they tried to use archaeology to

12:44

convince the archaeologists that they could have

12:46

a claim to the ancestors. Harvard

12:48

still denied them. And those claims of

12:50

archaeology included explaining

12:52

the tribes' time on the land

12:54

that they have known to be

12:57

theirs or where they have established their

12:59

cultures many, many, many,

13:01

many centuries ago, and trying to

13:03

explain how maybe

13:06

certain burial practices were

13:08

not necessarily different from certain burial practices

13:10

that they might have today. And still,

13:13

I think Harvard decided in the end

13:15

that the ancestors could not be repatriated

13:18

to the tribes. In

13:22

the end, Harvard did return

13:24

the human remains to the tribes. Again,

13:27

it took 30 years. So what was

13:29

it that finally convinced Harvard? It's

13:32

hard to know again, because Harvard did

13:34

not speak with us. But what we

13:36

can tell from our timeline and understanding

13:39

Harvard and its history, it

13:41

too finally started to arrive at a

13:43

reckoning at the

13:45

highest levels of the institution to understand

13:48

its history of sort of harming communities of color

13:52

and its poor repatriation

13:56

rate. And they started to

13:58

issue a series of apologies. But

14:00

they're very broad apologies, they're public apologies.

14:03

And when they started to do

14:05

that, around 2020 and 2021, the

14:08

Wabanaki tribes decided to

14:11

take advantage of that moment and remind

14:13

Harvard they still held the remains

14:15

of their ancestors that had spent 30 years

14:18

asking for through repatriation. Nuts.

14:22

Amazing. So basically, it wasn't the

14:24

Wabanaki tribes pleading,

14:26

proving, bringing receipts to

14:29

Harvard. It was George Floyd. Yeah.

14:31

It was Harvard facing new

14:33

public pressure over its past

14:36

following the murder of George Floyd.

14:42

As a member of the Crow tribe in

14:44

Montana, I want to ask you what

14:47

it felt like to report on

14:49

these stories as

14:51

an indigenous person. And also, if you

14:54

don't mind sharing how it feels

14:56

now to see, after 30 years,

14:58

NAGPRA being taken more seriously by

15:01

the federal government, by museums and

15:03

institutions across the country. It

15:05

was really difficult to decide

15:08

whether to even embark on the

15:10

reporting, knowing how massive it

15:12

was. 600 museums must

15:14

comply with NAGPRA. We

15:16

were going to review the records for all of them. But

15:19

in addition, I think we talk,

15:21

and I know it's not just Native

15:24

people, but we speak of the deceased,

15:26

I think, in a way with such care

15:29

and respect. And there are ways that we

15:31

do it that are different than maybe the

15:33

mainstream culture would. So

15:35

just to even embrace a

15:38

topic that was about people who

15:40

have passed on, it

15:42

took a lot of thought for me. And

15:44

I think now that we're here on the

15:48

other side of our reporting, it's

15:50

gratifying to see the reward. But

15:53

I like to be careful with the

15:55

tone, because there's still nearly 100,000 ancestors

15:57

and museums. There

16:01

could be a long ways to go and it's

16:03

worth whether you're a reporter or

16:05

the public to kind of keep the

16:07

need for scrutiny in mind because I

16:11

think this issue may

16:13

still be with us for a while. Mary

16:26

Huditz is a reporter at ProPublica.

16:28

You can find all our reporting

16:30

on repatriation at propublica.org. While we're

16:32

back on Today Explained, we're going

16:34

straight to the source to hear

16:37

how museums are dealing with

16:39

these new repatriation regulations.

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Support for the program today comes from Mint Mobile. At

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20:00

Explain is Back, I'm Sean Rama's firm and

20:02

in another life, I used to report on

20:04

new exhibits at museums. And let me tell

20:07

you, when a museum has a new exhibit,

20:09

they want to talk about it. But

20:12

what we discovered in the making of this

20:14

episode is that when museums across the country

20:16

are being forced by the federal government to

20:18

close exhibits, museum people are

20:20

much less excited to talk. But

20:23

Kat Steinberg was brave enough to join

20:26

us. I'm the assistant director and curator

20:28

of exhibitions at the McClung Museum, which

20:31

is at the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville,

20:33

Tennessee. Now, per ProPublica's reporting

20:35

this past November, the University of

20:37

Tennessee has the sixth largest collection

20:40

of un-repatriated Native American remains in

20:42

the country. So Kat's kind of

20:44

working at ground zero. We

20:47

asked her what a stroll through the

20:49

McClung Museum might have looked like in, say, 2019.

20:53

I think you'd see what you'd see a lot

20:55

of museums. I think you would see something that

20:57

felt familiar, which was a very time-based

21:00

narrative that sort of walks

21:02

people through archaeological

21:04

practice. You would probably

21:06

also at that point have seen

21:09

belongings, which are funerary

21:11

objects. And it would

21:13

be focused on archaeology, but not

21:15

on Native perspectives. And we

21:17

asked her what it might look like now. We

21:19

actually had an exhibition that was about

21:21

repatriation and was sort of focused on

21:23

that removal of objects, that sort of

21:25

emptiness. That exhibition opened in

21:28

August of 2022 and it closed in December

21:30

of 2023. So funny enough,

21:32

if you were here in January, last

21:35

month, basically, that exhibit would have

21:37

been gone already. We asked Kat

21:39

how the McClung Museum went from focusing on

21:41

the familiar to exhibiting emptiness.

21:44

So what happened is in 2019,

21:46

we had a NAGPRA assessment of

21:48

all of the archaeological objects on

21:50

display in our museum. And

21:53

in August of 2021, our

21:55

university's Office of Repatriation invited 21

21:58

tribes associated with the site. state of Tennessee to

22:00

a meeting to officially consult

22:03

about the museum's NAGPRA assessment of

22:05

its exhibitions. And

22:07

then in December of 2021 there was a virtual

22:10

consultation and at

22:12

that time tribes expressed their

22:14

frustration that belongings or

22:16

funerary objects were still

22:18

on display. So from January to

22:21

March of 2022 we took down 142 known belongings

22:24

as well as 164 belongings with

22:30

limited provenance from view. And

22:32

then we started putting together text

22:34

that we thought would describe NAGPRA

22:37

and repatriation to the public. So

22:39

there's been a lot of great reporting lately that

22:42

has brought repatriation to the fore, but

22:45

for the average member of the public they've still never

22:47

heard of that law. And we

22:49

decided to put the emptiness of our

22:51

cases on display as a way to

22:53

sort of make a point about that.

22:56

So you're just displaying

22:59

nothing? In some cases yes. There's

23:01

also a lot of text, maybe too

23:03

much text now looking back on it, but

23:05

as you might imagine explaining the complexities of

23:08

the law, explaining basic

23:10

concepts like sovereignty,

23:13

how it's a civil rights issue, but there were a

23:15

lot of empty cases and there were a lot of

23:17

cases that were simply covered because

23:19

they had information that we knew was

23:21

inappropriate or offensive to our tribal partners.

23:24

When people come into the museum and see a

23:26

lot of text, but maybe not a lot of

23:29

artifacts or objects, are

23:32

they disappointed? What do you hear from people when

23:34

they come in and see a sort

23:37

of history lesson? It's a mixed bag.

23:39

I will say that certainly there were some

23:41

people that didn't understand why we were doing it,

23:44

didn't read the text, that were disappointed, that

23:46

objects that had been there before had come down.

23:49

But again we felt like it was really important to be transparent

23:51

about it. You know a

23:53

lot of museums are covering up spaces, but

23:56

there still might not be some of these

23:58

explanations of why that's happening. And

24:00

we just felt that that would be more confusing in a

24:02

lot of ways to leave the empty spaces, but to not

24:04

have any explanation of why we were doing it. Did

24:08

this approach of displaying blank space and

24:10

lots of text explaining why people were

24:12

seeing blank space, when you guys came

24:14

up with that approach, did it feel

24:18

radical? It's kind of like John

24:20

Cagey, right? It

24:23

did feel radical. Yeah. We

24:25

were very influenced by another museum scholar

24:27

whose name is Steven Lubar, and he

24:30

had a medium post called Exhibiting

24:32

Absence. That definitely influenced us. He

24:35

was talking about a lot of different situations in which

24:37

museums might have to put the emptiness of a display,

24:39

sort of on display itself, like that's literally a part

24:41

of the exhibition. And

24:43

something else that really influenced me was

24:46

there's a Chickasaw scholar and curator. Her

24:48

name is Heather Autone, and

24:50

she developed a methodology called the

24:52

Core Tenants of Indigenous Methodologies. And

24:55

basically, those would be respect, reciprocity,

24:58

relationships, and responsibility.

25:02

At that time, still sort

25:04

of COVID times, we were

25:06

thinking a lot about responsibility

25:08

in the museum, responsibility to

25:10

ourselves, responsibility to others, responsibility

25:12

to our collections, and

25:14

that's sort of another gauge that we use

25:16

to develop the exhibition. I

25:19

haven't personally heard or read

25:21

about this particular pushback in

25:24

articles about NAGPRA, but

25:26

are there people out there who say, hey,

25:29

if you take all these things off

25:31

display, you're robbing children,

25:34

adults, whomever of education

25:38

on Native history, whatever it might be.

25:41

And if so, what would you

25:43

say to that museum visitor who maybe felt that

25:45

way? I think that the

25:48

goal with all this work is to center

25:50

and to share Native perspectives. And so everything that

25:53

we do has to go back to that question

25:55

is, are we centering Native perspectives here? And

25:58

we need to do everything that we can to do that. So

26:00

that can't just be one-sided. I

26:02

can't just be like, well, I need this data or

26:04

I need this. And so I'm going to ignore the

26:06

rest of this. Being ready to

26:08

return belongings to Native communities has been a law

26:11

for over 30 years. And

26:13

so at some point, it feels

26:15

very frustrating for folks to

26:18

say, well, I don't like a federal law

26:20

that was passed over 30 years ago.

26:23

It's sort of a frustrating conversation to have.

26:30

I will tell you, though, it still is a

26:32

conversation that has had. And that's why

26:34

I think so much attention has been drawn to it in the

26:36

past few years, is because this still

26:39

happens in museums and in

26:41

institutions all the time.

26:44

And this is a basic human rights conversation as

26:46

well. And of course

26:48

it was after years and years of Native

26:53

protest and activism that the law

26:55

passed. And

26:59

yeah, I guess at

27:01

this point, I don't really think that we

27:03

need to revisit that. That

27:14

was Kat Steinberg. She's a curator at

27:16

the McClung Museum of Natural History and

27:18

Culture at the University of Tennessee in

27:20

Knoxville. Our program today was

27:23

produced by Laura Bullard and Hadi

27:25

Mwagdi. We were edited by Matthew

27:27

Collette, mixed by Rob Byers and

27:29

David Herman, and fact-checked by Kim

27:31

Eggleston. Thank you, Kim. And

27:33

thank you for listening to Today

27:35

Explained. Thank

27:55

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