Transcending NAGPRA: Indigenizing Collections Care and Repatriation (Online Lecture)

The Institute for Human Science and Culture Speaker Series features Indigenous experts and scholars discussing the harmful historical collecting practices that brought ancestral belongings into museums and private collections; efforts to reconnect collection items to their communities of origin; and the reparative work of reclaiming communities’ cultural objects.

Registration is required for this free online event. All registrants will receive a link to the livestream via email prior to the event.

About the Event:

Transcending NAGPRA: Indigenizing Collections Care and Repatriation

The University of Montana Anthropological Curation Facility (UMACF) has been working in collaboration with the Tribal Historic Preservation Officers from each Montana tribe to formulate policies and procedures in accordance with cultural protocols for repatriation. The University of Montana’s NAGPRA Repatriation Coordinator will discuss what Indigenizing collections care means and what successful collaboration between institutions and tribes could look like.

About the Speaker

Courtney Little Axe is Northern Cheyenne, Absentee Shawnee, and Seminole. She grew up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and in Little Axe/Tecumseh, Oklahoma. She has an AS in Natural Sciences and a Records and Information Management Certificate from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. She also has a BA in Anthropology and a Forensic Studies Certificate from the University of Montana (UM). During her undergrad, Courtney worked as an intern in the UM Anthropological Curation Facility for two years. Following her time at UM, she was selected as a Native American fellow at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and worked on NAGPRA report preparation, researching tribal communities, and bringing an Indigenous perspective to museum exhibitions. She also worked for the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California for three years assisting the NAGPRA Coordinator there. She is now the Repatriation Coordinator and Collections Manager at the University of Montana (UM). Her skill set helped create procedures to work with numerous tribes across the country to assist with cultural protocols for handling and care of cultural materials. She has dedicated much of her adult life to repatriation and Indigenizing heritage collection care with hope that her work will help rebuild the framework for what repatriation and collections care could look like.

About the Institute

Located on the 3rd and 4th Floors of the Cummings Center, The Institute for Human Science and Culture (IHSC) is a hands-on humanities center on the corner of campus and community.

The mission of the IHSC is to promote the exploration and appreciation of the widespread human experience, both local and global, through the activation of museum collections. The IHSC enriches The University of Akron student experience with arts and culture activities, speakers, exhibitions, and programs, facilitating engagement and connections among UA departments to discover new and creative ways to nurture learning. We connect UA and Akron communities to learn from each other through arts and culture, expertise and experience, and hands-on teaching and learning.