How Native Americans went from wanting MORE recognition to closing museum displays

The American Museum of Natural History’s decision to close its two major halls exhibiting Native American objects follows new Biden regulations that seek to speed up the implementation of a 1990 law on the display of artifacts.

Museums nationwide have been under increasingly shrill and uncompromising native campaigns laced with charges of racism, white supremacy, colonialism and all the rest.

Supporters say this is a kind of reparation and guilt-atonement for settler-colonial crimes. Critics worry about the disappearance of science and knowledge.

But both supporters and critics assume the key issue here is the proper handling and presentation of native American culture. It is not.

Rather, the AMNH closure is the latest example of how a complaint has become the main “culture” of American Indian tribes and how that culture is a means to the greater end of keeping these increasingly fractious political movements together.

Until the 1970s, the main issue for Native American groups was that their culture was not displayed enough, that archaeologists did not conduct enough work on native sites and remains, that their cultures were not celebrated at mainstream American museums.