have become more open to collaborating with Native groups to achieve more nuanced

and culturally sensitive collections information and representations of Native culture and

history.

      To summarize, the museum field, and natural history museums in particular,

have witnessed an ideological shift that resulted in several important changes for

museum policy and practice: 1) Museums altered exhibition styles that promoted a

paternalistic perspective and adopted more collaborative exhibition methods. This

positioned the museum as a resource for all communities. 2) Museums promoted more

inclusive stewardship of Native American collections by inviting feedback on and

expanding Native access to sensitive cultural objects. This, in turn, enhanced Native

agency in maintaining cultural practices. 3) Museums and American Indian communities

began forming more mutually beneficial partnerships: these collaborations offered the

museum visitors a more informed presentation of Native culture, and American Indian

groups gained agency in representing their heritage.

                 Museum Collections Practices Before the 1990s

Collecting Practices for Ethnographic Collections

       Museum collections practices of the late 1800s and early 1900s were

problematic for Native American communities, because the collectors' paternalistic

motives weakened 20th century Native American culture by separating the communities

from artifacts of their own recent past. Although these objects were collected in a

scientific spirit, and many ethnographers adhered to the collecting norms of the time,

certain practices of obtaining the objects were, by today's standards, unethical at best.

The Bureau of American Ethnology sponsored ethnographers such as Frank Hamilton

Gushing, William C. Sturtevant, and Franz Boas to conduct what was later termed