For more than a century, leaders of the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians in San Diego County, California, yearned to find their missing Dragonfly Basket. Created by an unknown artist, the three-dimensional dragonfly design danced across a large, expertly woven basket made of deergrass and Juncus, or rush grass. The basket’s dragonfly motif was even incorporated into the Rincon tribal seal. But in 1905, the piece was either lost or stolen. No one knows exactly what happened, according to Rincon Tribal Council Member Laurie Gonzalez.
In 1969, tribal members discovered that the basket was locked away inside the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. After the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which requires museums that receive federal funds to repatriate ancestors and objects taken from Native American sites, the Rincon Band tried to retrieve it.
They soon learned that the institution was notorious for refusing to return Indigenous items, in open violation of NAGPRA. “The problem with NAGPRA was that it had no teeth,” said Gonzalez. The deadline for UC to return those objects had been set for 1995. But as of 2020, the Hearst Museum still held about 80% of its inventory, according to a California state audit. Shockingly, it had a half-million Native American objects — including some 9,000 human remains. This revelation triggered a public outcry and yet more scrutiny and resulted in some major changes in museum practices.
THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 9,000 museums and institutions in the West, ranging from roadside attractions like the Cow Canyon Trading Post outside of tiny Bluff, Utah, to cosmopolitan venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. Any institution with a depository of Indigenous items that receives federal funds must comply with NAGPRA by notifying a tribe if it has the tribe’s property and obtaining informed consent before exhibiting or studying a tribe’s items. It must also consult with the tribe about repatriating those objects.
But a staggering number of institutions have ignored the law. While working on a story for ProPublica’s Repatriation Project in 2022, I saw repeated NAGPRA violations at some of our nation’s largest institutions. The ongoing lack of Native American curators at these institutions exacerbates the problem. Some museums displayed Indigenous items inappropriately, mislabeled them or used incorrect — even insulting — signage.
Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), a 2014 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and co-founder of the National Museum of the American Indian, said that she believed that the historical lack of Native American, Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian curators has been deliberate. “A lot of institutions don’t want (Indigenous) experts inside their museums to see what their collections are and what should be repatriated,” she said.
There are other reasons why Indigenous curators are few in number, said Sven Haakanson Jr., (Alutiiq), curator of Native American Anthropology at the Burke Museum in Seattle and chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington. “I’ve been in museum curation for 30 years, and I haven’t seen a growth in indigenous curators,” he said. Indeed, only 1% of the archivists, curators and museum technicians currently employed in the U.S. are Native American, according to 2022 numbers from Data USA.
“A lot of institutions don’t want (Indigenous) experts inside their museums to see what their collections are and what should be repatriated.”
“It’s a life choice that requires a lot of commitment,” said Haakanson. “Many (Native) people choose to go into better-paying fields.”
The Burke boasts a collection of more than 16 million artifacts, ranging from the world’s largest collection of spread bird wings to the fifth-largest array of Northwest Coast Native art in the U.S. As a Native Alaskan, Haakanson not only complies with NAGPRA, he works to educate donors and museums about their responsibilities to tribes. “When we get a collector who wants to give us something, I’ll be honest. I’ll tell them that if there is anything that we have to return to a tribe, we will.” When appropriate, he’ll introduce a prospective donor to a tribal representative, facilitating not only repatriation but a relationship as well. “It’s one of the things that we can do for communities that have been traumatized for centuries,” he said.
CURATOR TAHNEE AHTONE (Kiowa/Seminole/Mvskoki) spent many frustrating years applying to museums as a curator, despite the fact that she hails from a family of renowned artists. In 1933, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City purchased a cradleboard made by Ahtone’s great-grandmother, Tahdo Ahtone. Starting in the 1960s, her grandfather, Jacob Ahtone, became a close friend of Ralph T. Coe, a collector who championed North American Native art and who became the director of the Nelson-Atkins. Today, paintings by Tahnee’s mother, Sharron Ahtone Harjo, are collected by people who lend to museums like the Nelson-Atkins.
But Tahnee, a bead worker, textile expert and trained curator, couldn’t get her foot in the door. She felt stymied by socioeconomic obstacles: “Many of us come from rural communities with low-economic backgrounds, which makes it tough to land curation jobs,” she said. Few students can afford to take low-paying internships, pay for city housing or gain entrée into the kind of philanthropic circles that lead to prestigious jobs. “But our inherent knowledge of American Indian art is very valuable to most institutions,” she said. Experts like Ahtone have lived the history of their people and understand the origins and meanings of their people’s artistic traditions.
In 2024, the Nelson-Atkins Museum hired Ahtone as its first curator of Native American Art. The wait was worth it, she said, adding that the position gives her greater standing in the art world and a chance to be a “change-maker.”
DAKOTA HOSKA (Oglala Lakota), associate curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum, said she is starting to see more Indigenous curators emerge, primarily as a result of mentoring. Museum curators, such as Janet Catherine Berlo and George P. Horse Capture Sr. (Gros Ventre), trained students who are now curators in Native American departments at various museums. Some of those curators are themselves training a new crop of professionals.
“I know a lot of Indigenous curators at museums. I’ve mentored some of them,” said Hoska. As a result, she added, “I think there will be a lot of Native people coming up soon.”
Her institution has avoided scandal in part because of its unique heritage. In 1925, it became one of the first museums in the country to recognize and collect contemporary Native American art. “Donors bought pieces directly from individual artists, or at the (Indian) market,” said Hoska.
The museum has a significant collection of contemporary Indigenous art with strong provenance — the record of an object’s origin and its owners up to the present day. The museum’s works include wall textiles, baskets, jewelry, musical instruments, sculpture, blankets, photography and ceremonial trappings, all labeled by artist, year and any relevant historical details. But it doesn’t have many anthropological objects and doesn’t acquire them, she explained. The museum and Hoska also partner with regional Native artists, consulting them in nearly every decision the institution makes. “Now we look for pieces that tell a story about a historical event or that the tribes want to talk about,” said Hoska.
“Our inherent knowledge of American Indian art is very valuable to most institutions.”
As this story was going to press, Hoska told me that she was leaving the Denver Art Museum to join the staff of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Lakota curator from Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, will be the first curator of Native American Art at the National Gallery — and its first Native American curator.
IN 2022, THE HEARST museum finally returned the Dragonfly Basket to the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians. “It’s monumental for our people,” said Tribal Chairman Bo Mazzetti. “The symbol of our tribe is now where it belongs.”
But the process took decades. On a visit to Berkeley in 1997, Tribal Council Member Gonzalez heard the basket was still in the Hearst Museum. At the time, the tribe lacked the resources to retrieve it. “You need money to be heard,” said Vice Chairman Joe Linton. Tribal leaders opened discussions with museum officials, but they went nowhere. “It was a different time in the 1990s,” Linton explained. “None of the institutions were willing to let go of anything in their collections.”
But in 2020, Gonzalez was at Berkeley again when Thomas Torma, the campus NAGPRA liaison, showed her the basket. “I almost cried,” she said. “I held it like a baby and said, ‘we need to bring this home.’” That same year, California released a report about how UC facilities were hoarding Indigenous objects. State lawmakers passed AB 275, requiring state-funded museums to re-inventory their Native American collections by 2022, and to include tribal liaisons in the process.UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ oversaw a revision of the university’s repatriation policies, including a mandate that half of the campus NAGPRA advisory committee would consist of tribal members.
“Today, we are helping tribes take home their things,” said Sabrina Agarwal, chair of Berkeley’s Anthropology Department, who also serves on its NAGPRA committee. The goal is to empty the Hearst of Indigenous materials. “It’s been a 180-degree change,” Agarwal said. (According to ProPublica, however, UC Berkeley still has the nation’s fourth-largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains.)
Now, the Rincon Band hopes to repatriate other belongings, not just from the Hearst but from other museums as well. Currently, however, the tribe has a 500-square-foot museum, about the size of a living room. If it’s going to repatriate more objects, it will need a bigger space. UC Berkeley has offered to collaborate with the tribe on creating a new museum. “We are getting students from the schools of engineering, architecture and archaeology to work on designing and building it,” said Agarwal. “It’s a great learning tool for students to be able to work with the tribe.”
The tribe welcomes the expertise. Plans are still preliminary, but the cultural shift is huge. What was once the worst violator of Native American civil rights in the United States has suddenly become one its most enthusiastic repatriators as well as a tribal partner. “It feels very healing,” said Council Member Gonzalez.
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the April 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The caretakers.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
