FOR TRIBES

Each museum partner has a page that provides general information about the museum as an institution, it’s collections, resources, opportunities, and pertinent contact information. Identifying existing programs and exhibits may be relatively straightforward. However, identifying which museums hold collection items of interest to your tribe can be tricky. Given common information gaps and differences in record keeping that may affect the results of your online searches, consider this website a beginning point to engage with museums. If you have any doubts or questions, it is best to reach out directly with an email or phone call to the contacts listed on the museum’s page. That said, below are some considerations and practice tips for using this website to identify which museums might have items of interest to you.

While each museum partner has provided what information it can, there are likely to be gaps in information for a variety of reasons, such as:

• The transfer of items among museums worldwide and information that is lost in this process
• Incomplete record keeping for items in museum collections
• Incomplete information provided by people who originally obtained the items and later gave them to museums
• Improper tribal affiliation of an object due to lack of knowledge about the item
• Diverse methods for affiliating items with geographic regions
• The fact that not all museums have cataloged 100% of the items in their collections

The default language, terminology, and spellings used in collection databases often vary among museums so be sure to identify appropriate search terms that will be effective in each museum’s search engine. As you search museum collections online, consider asking the museum for recommendations about how to use their search engine effectively and by verifying the appropriate terminology and spelling for the following

• The word for Native American and for particular tribes
• Words for geographic regions affiliated with a museum’s collections
• Categories used to describe different types of items
• Terms for various materials used to create items of interest
• The name of a collector or donor from whom the museum obtained particular items

FOR MUSEUMS

This website is intended to help facilitate connections and collaborations between museums in Europe and Native American communities. We need your help! If you are already a museum partner, please contribute by keeping us up to date on your page, spreading the word among your colleagues, and actively responding or proactively reaching out to tribes.

Additionally, this website offers you some resources. Please check out the tribal partner pages to learn about each tribe and their cultural preservation work. We encourage you to explore, looking for opportunities to partner and find shared opportunities to preserve, protect, and share Native America’s rich cultural heritage.

 Note that Restoring Ancestral Connections’ current network of Tribal partners provides a starting point for connecting with tribes and identifying mutually beneficial collaborations. Although we expect the number of participating tribes to grow over time, there are currently 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States. If you would like to contact tribes that are not currently partners with Restoring Ancestral Connections, below are some resources to support your search for appropriate contacts.

• The National Congress of American Indians’ Tribal directory for federally recognized tribes
• The official tribal website of the tribe you are interested in contacting
• State Indian Affairs Offices which can typically advise on appropriate contacts and outreach strategies
• History Colorado maintains a contact list for Colorado’s 48 historic tribes.  The directory is designed for cultural resource managers and was created in conjunction with the implementation of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act in the State of Colorado.

If you are not yet a part of this project, please consider joining us as a partner!

Cultural Regions of North America