There is evidence that humans have lived here in the Southeast for at least 12,000 years and the stories of their history and some of the physical artifacts they left behind can be seen in museums like the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. How the museum presents those stories and artifacts to the public, however, is evolving.
In 2022, the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee closed its long-running Archaeology and Native Peoples of Tennessee exhibit, which was similar to those seen in museums around the world: a chronologically-presented history stretching from the earliest evidence of humans in this region to the period of contact with Europeans. Claudio Gómez is McClung Museum’s Jefferson Chapman Executive Director and he says this method of presenting history has been problematic for a long time:
Usually what happens is with this kind of approach, and this happens everywhere, not just here at the McClung… sometimes you get the impression these people are dead, they are not present today.
So the museum is changing its approach and that’s happening under the umbrella of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990. NAGPRA requires any institution getting federal funds to inventory any Native American Ancestral Remains, burial artifacts, or any other sacred or culturally significant items in their collections and to inform Tribes and Native Nations of those inventories. In 2022 alone, McClung Museum returned more than 300 artifacts and cultural items to Native American groups. Ellen Lofaro is Director of the University of Tennessee’s Office of Repatriation:
We’ve been having many different conversations with a large number of tribal communities and some of those have been legal conversations tied to repatriation claims and requests. So for those discussions, we have 20 tribes with ancestral ties to the state of Tennessee.
Lofaro says that five Tribes with ancestral ties to Knox County, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, then came forward with a desire to partner with the McClung Museum on its latest exhibit, Repatriation of Archaeology & the Native Peoples of Tennessee:
These types of collaborations and partnerships that come out of the repatriation work are really what it’s all about, it’s how we’re moving forward, it’s really exciting progress, and I think it’s going to tell really interesting stories that people are fascinated to hear.
Catherine Shteynberg is Assistant Director and Curator of Arts and Culture Collections at the McClung Museum:
When people come in, they’ll see signage that explains what actually is NAGPRA, why is it an important civil rights and sovereignty issue for a lot of these communities, and it will help a visitor understand the changing museological practice that’s been happening, especially in the last 20 or so years.
The primary point of contact for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in conversations with McClung and other museums is Shana Bushyhead Condill, a member of the EBCI and Executive Director of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Condill has also worked at the National Gallery of Art and the National Trust for Historic Preservation and she understands the role that museums have and could have in boosting diversity, equity, inclusion, and access:
Twenty years ago when we were having these conversations, we were like, ‘Hey, can we be at the table?’ Today, it’s like we’re making the table and that’s so exciting from a native museum perspective.
Condill’s mandate is to reimagine how the Museum of the Cherokee Indian tells its own stories and to correct what visitors think they know about Native Americans:
They walk in, they think they know. ‘Oh, I know about Indians from Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves, and I didn’t realize there were still native people alive.’ How we tell these stories is the thing that’s gonna help make that connection.
That’s a sentiment shared by Claudio Gómez, who says these connections can really only be made through the voices of the Tribes and that diplomacy is key in the stories:
Diplomacy is what is needed if you are treating with nations that are sovereign, so I don’t think that our role should be any different than any other diplomat. All of these Tribes have the right to say they are the descendants of people who live in this region. These communities, these Tribes, are very much alive and this display of their heritage is a way to honor them, share their pride, in the sense of, you know, not just survival but thriving societies, too.
McClung Museum and its Native American partners are now developing a future exhibition: A Sense of Indigenous Place: Native American Voices and the Mound at University of Tennessee.
