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There was a recent change to the "Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act" which has led to several of the best natural history museum museums simply shutting down their Native American exhibits last week, rather than (what I would naively expect, based on the title) removing human remains from display or something. For instance, The Field Museum papered and curtained over their displays. The American Museum of Natural History is closing two exhibit halls.
This seems like the sort of rule that looks like it might make sense initially, of not grave digging and talking to descendants, until everyone is suddenly reminded that archeology largely is grave digging, and finding descendants is often fraught, with plenty of Tribal Council politics even if a museum can figure out the right authorities to talk to.
I can't tell if this was the intention of the President's Office when they passed the rule, and how much will be left after everything settles (or if it won't settle, and everything will just sit in storage awaiting a change of zeitgeist).
Admittedly, I already mostly go to the local natural history museum for the animatronic dinosaur, and my state has lots of Pueblo Ruins museums, but they're not very good, and run in partnership with the Native American communities. It isn't clear how this will affect locally interesting museums about communities not continuously inhabited since the most archeologically interesting period, such as the Dickson Mounds museum (I recommend stopping by if you're in the area!). Their most interesting parts for non-archeologists are landscape, reproductions and dioramas anyway, so perhaps not much. The Milwaukee Natural History Museum has an unusually enjoyable Native American section (very good in general, go if you're in the area!), but iirc it was also mostly reproductions and dioramas as well.
Ultimately, I suppose it will probably not deteriorate the experience all that much for non-archeologists once the dust settles, but will be one more step of history museums in general toward irrelevance.
My take on this is that it has less to do about museums, and more a general decline in the US-American cultural/social reelvance of the Native American groups.
From an admittedly distant view, even as the sort of progressive/SJW criticisms of problematic Native American cultural references and caricatures increased in the 2000s/2010s, my sense is that rather than replace these with 'better' alternative symbols, there's been a broader trend of simply stripping Native American references entirely, with no indian cultural identifier left. Whether it's a butter company removing an iconic native american from branding, or the (American) football team Washington Redskins changing to the Washington Commanders following years of activist pressure, 'you can't have bad things- change it' isn't the same as 'do better things.'
I don't know about that. I feel like Native American culture is having a little bit of a moment, popular shows like Reservation Dogs, there's the new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, I've heard the phrase "Land Back" a lot more in recent times. Things like land acknowledgments are a thing, at least in certain liberal cities.
I think the difference then vs. now is that Native American culture feels more straightforwardly oppositional, whereas back in the rose-tintedly colorblind 90's and 2000's, it felt more...cooperative? Integrative? Like they were just other people alongside all of us. Of course, there is too much trauma in history for that view to have survived, but I think it definitely used to be more an added flavor sort-of thing rather than a separate culture. (Again, though, reality suggests that it has always been the latter.)
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That has been my sense as an outsider from New Zealand comparing our own indigenous politics to American. It seems that the well meaning attempts have done more to 'erase' the culture than to protect it. Overall the welfare of indigenous Americans seems to have been pretty well ignored by the mainstream liberal/progressive left whilst at the same time they have spent the majority of their attention on the plight of African Americans.
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I think there's something to this, and that it's unfortunate. American Indian culture is often quite interesting.
I do like what the Ojibwe adjacent areas have been doing in Minnesota, with "Indian Education" teachers in the schools, both academically supporting native youth, but also making popped wild rice and leading field trips to the art and culture exhibits, leading plant walks, and inviting drum circles to assemblies. It adds regional flavor, which seems good. Not that (clearly!) Minnesota doesn't have their own problems, but Ojibwe teachers and artists are, on he whole, doing good work.
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