American Indian groups into the mainstream culture. This combination of collection

practices and assimilation efforts resulted in the eventual weakening of traditional

cultural practices, thus diffusing Native American agency in retaining their own culture.

American Indian schools, run by missionaries or government associates, raised Native

children away from their families and Native lifeways. Traditional skills were forgotten

and objects from generations past had often been collected for museums or discarded

to promote assimilation. These new museum collections were housed in museums'

private storage areas or were displayed in urban centers far from most American Indian

communities. Geographic and socioeconomic distance created a barrier between

American Indians and access to valued "touchstones of memory" (Cooper 2008, 61).

Native groups had no legal recourse in the late 1800s and early 1900s, despite their

objections to collections activities. In time, museum collecting of Native American

human remains and burial objects eventually ignited a new movement toward

repatriation. By the 1980s, Native American groups criticized museum ownership of

certain cultural objects as destructive to the maintenance of Native cultural traditions;

these groups took a stand against museum collections practices through lobbying and

lawsuits (Cooper 2008).

                  History of Exhibition Practices Before the 1990s

Issues of Representation

       Many Museums, before the 1990s, depicted Native Americans as primitive and

exotic and this exhibition style failed to reveal their participation in contemporary

society. Museums displayed Native American objects and culture in a way that that has

been criticized as alienating Native American history from the grand narrative of

contemporary American society. These displays, some of which still exist today, often