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Description: Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art
~Many Indigenous peoples choose to adhere to protocols regarding objects that have been used in a funerary context, often deeming such objects unsuitable for display in museums. In the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires institutions receiving federal funding to identify objects in their collections...
PublisherYale University Art Gallery
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Note to the Reader
Many Indigenous peoples choose to adhere to protocols regarding objects that have been used in a funerary context, often deeming such objects unsuitable for display in museums. In the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires institutions receiving federal funding to identify objects in their collections that are from funerary contexts, including human remains and ceremonial objects. As curators, we have sought to display only objects whose records indicate they were sold or gifted to collectors, but due to archival gaps, we cannot state with absolute certainty that none of the objects in this exhibition were taken from a funerary context. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History has been engaged in the process of identifying and repatriating or returning NAGPRA-related objects since the act was passed in 1990. In 2012 the Peabody hired a full-time NAGPRA coordinator, significantly accelerating the process.
Artists whose names were never recorded in Yale’s various archives are identified in this publication not with the conventional phrase “Unknown Artist” but instead as “Artist Once Known,” to acknowledge that they were once known—and perhaps are still known—to their communities.
Throughout this publication, we use “Indigenous North American” to refer to Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada, Mexico, and the United States, acknowledging that the borders between these countries are settler imposed and regulated. However, the majority of the art in this exhibition is from the present-day United States.
Finally, Yale University acknowledges that Indigenous peoples and nations, including the Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill Paugussett, Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan, Niantic, Quinnipiac, Schaghticoke, and other Algonquian-speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
Contributors
Nolan Arkansas (Eastern Band of Cherokee)
Katherine Nova McCleary (Little Shell Chippewa–Cree)
Leah Tamar Shrestinian
Anthony Trujillo (Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo)
Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan)
Joseph Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe)
Note to the Reader
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