by Seth Grooms
I sought an internship at IUMAA because I wanted to broaden my resume and get some museum experience. I’m a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology and thought museum experience would make me that much more competitive in the job market. However, as my internship comes to an end and I reflect on my experience, it’s apparent I got much more from my time here, which I will attempt to articulate in this essay. First, some context may be appropriate. I’m a Lumbee Indian from the Piedmont of North Carolina. I’m also a Marine Corps veteran. I think this is relevant information because it means I bring a unique perspective to museum work and academia generally. Military service is common among Lumbees and so is pride in our tribe, and in our culture. If you go to Robeson County today, the geographic and cultural center of the Lumbee, you may hear words and salutations that sound strange to you. An affectionate “hey bo!” bellowed from a grinning Lumbee man on the street who’s just seen a friend, or a Lumbee woman enjoying a cup of ellick in a diner. This is all to say, I have a deeply personal interest in, and perhaps a different perspective of, the study of past Native peoples. I am especially interested in how we, as archaeologists and educators, communicate this knowledge to the public. I believe that the way we choose to communicate our scholarship (and who’s communicating it) is not something to be taken lightly. After all, words matter. What follows is an account of my experience as an intern at IUMAA, and my opinion of the work being done there, for whatever that’s worth.
Since beginning my 6 week internship with IUMAA I have worked with each department head to get a sense of what their jobs entail and how a museum operates behind the scenes. It has been an informative 6 weeks and I have indeed learned a lot about museum operations. However, the most impactful aspect of my time with IUMAA has been witnessing their commitment to complying with NAGPRA laws, and perhaps more admirably their commitment to honoring the spirit of NAGPRA. IUMAA has made some impressive strides lately involving ancestor repatriations, but there’s more to the work than that. Frankly, repatriations should be happening at institutions everywhere. After all, it’s federal law and has been for more than 30 years. What has struck me is the extra work IUMAA has taken on to foster relationships with tribes, and their commitment to truly collaborative partnerships with tribes. This is important work. Like I said above, it’s incredibly important how we communicate knowledge to the public, and it’s equally important who is producing and communicating it. In regard to IUMAA and their approach to knowledge building and public education, and their partner meeting are a great start.
Every two weeks, the IUMAA team meets with tribal partners to discuss museum exhibit designs and scripts. I’ve participated in these meetings during my time here. The workflow goes something like this: IUMAA staff come up with an exhibit idea and write up a script draft that will inform the visitor about the exhibit.* These materials are distributed to the tribal partners for review in preparation for the partners meetings. The tribal partners then provide edits and ideas for how to improve the exhibits and scripts. This may seem small but it’s critical if museums hope to stop perpetuating practices that facilitate the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples. This is done by more colonial institutions by insisting that Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies are somehow inferior to those of the dominate worldviews of most western trained academic institutions. This erroneous notion is furthered by maintaining a monopoly on Native people’s stories, histories, and even their ancestors. So, I applaud IUMAA’s initiative in fostering the co-creation of knowledge with tribal partners, and especially the impact these partnerships have on how that knowledge will be communicated to the public. The result is a more comprehensive, respectful, and truthful telling of Native history to the public.
Another example of the work IUMAA is doing is their handling of legacy, antiquarian collections. At IUMAA, the largest such collection, dealing with Native Americans, is one obtained through “charitable” donations about 6 or 7 decades ago. It is fairly straight forward for a museum to complete a NAGPRA inventory of the materials collected in recent professional excavations. One might say that’s the low hanging fruit of NAGPRA compliance. In all actuality this is a massive simplification and is very much not a simple task. However, it’s a cake walk compared to assessing some legacy collections. There is value in these legacy collections. Often, they are full of incredible artifacts that are extraordinary teaching aids in terms of museum exhibits. Whole ceramic vessels, decorated in Native motives. Exemplary projectile points. Unique ground stone effigy pipes. The list goes on, but the point is these collections are comprised of stunning pieces that make for great display items that require little imagination on the part of the visitor. It’s all there. However, there is often a darker side to antiquarian collections. Usually, the reason the items are so extraordinary is because they were preferentially looted based on their aesthetic appeal, and economic value in late 19th and early 20th century America. Antiquarians and looters of the era often targeted culturally sensitive contexts such as graves or mounds precisely because these contexts often contain the most extraordinary artifacts. Depending on your perspective, antiquarians and looters are synonymous terms. From what I can tell the main difference hinges on the amount of tweed worn, and whether you display your treasures in a mahogany laden library or sell them off to the former type of chap for a quick buck. But I digress. These kinds of legacy collections pose a great challenge to institutions who want to be compliant with NAGPRA.
The most common difficulty encountered is trying to ascertain the provenience of items in these collections. A usual catalog card attached to an item in the donated collection I worked with at IUMAA only lists the county the item was taken from. It would be easy to stop there. To throw your hands up and claim you gave it the ole college try but were hindered by vague provenience information. IUMAA has taken a decidedly different tack. IUMAA is consulting the original correspondence between the donor and his contacts who specialized in obtaining rare “Indian relics.” By reading these letters, you get a play by play breakdown of just how these massive collections were built, one “relic” at a time. I spent a week pouring over letters and flagging explicit mentions of grave robbing regarding artifacts that IUMAA may have today. These letters detailed which items were taken from graves, which from mounds, and often gave precise geographic information within Indiana. I flagged these items and provided a report to IUMAA staff. They plan to continue this work until they can produce a comprehensive list of items in the aforementioned collection that need to be taken out of display and returned to the appropriate tribes. This work is laborious and time consuming, but it’s worth it if it results in tracking down the personal belongings of ancestors that were taken from their resting places and getting it back to descendants. Some of these wrongs will be impossible to fully resolve. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. When a boat is sinking you have two options. You can sit there and watch the water pour in or you can grab a bucket and start bailing. At this point, being an obstructionist to repatriation efforts is analogous to option #3 in our sinking ship analogy: bailing water into the boat.
I do want to dedicate some space to acknowledge the nuance of the legacy of antiquarian collections, specifically the collection I worked on here at IUMAA. The unscrupulous antiquarian blowing through Indian graves is a well-worn trope in intro to archaeology classes. Of course, like most tropes, there’s an element of truth to this. Furthermore, it’s certainly important to highlight the unethical and harmful ripples that the antiquarian era set into motion. But real life, flesh and blood people tend to be more complicated. When reading the rather personal letters, I was struck by a few unexpected themes. One, it’s abundantly clear that the donor and many of his contemporaries genuinely believed that they were saving history from our ever-expanding industrial society. After all, this was a time well before federal law mandated archaeological consultation with Native American tribes for infrastructure projects. New dams, roads, and towns, were all decimating our cultural heritage. This donor, and people like him, believed they were preserving history, and the legacy of this continent for posterity. Right or wrong, many of these collectors believed this is fact. Second, the admiration that this donor had for the Native artisans who crafted the relics in his collection is apparent when reading his correspondence. Again, these observations should not be interpreted as a defense of antiquarianism. But I don’t think it helps anyone to ignore nuance and complexity in history. People have left behind a complicated legacy in archaeology. On the one hand, as a benefactor to many professional archaeologists, this collector facilitated the preservation of precious information about the Native histories of Indiana. On the other hand, he often was an accomplice to looting, however noble his intentions were. And I think it’s okay to leave it at that.
*So, there is more to the story than this. Museum staff spent months working together with partners to identify what they wanted this exhibit to do and say, how they could communicate respectfully about the People of Angel Mounds, and more.