Museums Can Help Us Break the Cycles - What Are They Waiting For?

While in my role as a former museum collections professional, I witnessed and experienced firsthand the intergenerational trauma that has been inflicted upon Indigenous communities via the theft of ancestors, material culture, traditions, and lands. Despite always having been racist and extractive, these practices were once considered status quo. Today, there are many people dedicating their time and an unfathomable amount of emotional labor to repairing this specific harm, and I want to take a moment to thank them. The importance of authentic reconciliation work and related mental health services cannot be overstated. Simultaneously, it is vital to emphasize that these rematriation (repatriation) efforts are indeed reactive and have been mandated by U.S. federal law since 1990. Boards and executive leadership should not be patting themselves on the back for compliance. 

Over the past year and a half, I’ve seen local museums engaged in such reparative work post on social media about celebrity engagements, casino nights, and laser shows. I have not seen them leveraging their programming and events to relevantly educate our community as we face unprecedented attacks on our democracy. While arts and entertainment are crucial to the human experience, are these attempts at carrying out business according to the modern status quo enough? Are they even appropriate while our costs of living skyrocket? When our Brown and Black neighbors are being demonized as “illegal aliens,” despite Earth being our one and only collective home? When scientists are being discredited? When our trans friends, colleagues, and family members are being vilified and targeted through sweeping executive orders? When protestors are being killed by federal agents? When museums and libraries are losing funding? When the President, the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security are sharing anti-Black and anti-Indigenous imagery? When museum funders are also financing war and genocide? When data centers are destroying Native land and depleting our water supply?

My answer is no, it is not enough or appropriate, and leads me to further questioning. If an institution’s mission is to “create a better world through inspiring curiosity, exploration and engagement across history, science, culture and the natural world,” why would its leaders not leverage their power to proactively do so? Does our community not exist as a part of those disciplines? Is it not important to apply history to current events, especially in a city that is home to social reformers such as Frederick Douglass? Why would these organizations want to be complicit in unending cycles of harm and repair? How can publicly ignoring such widespread devastation be mission-aligned? 

On July 4, 2026, the White House released a report entitled, Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage. The report concludes that “the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic” (p.6). In other words, a world-renowned historical and educational establishment has been deemed untrustworthy by the Trump administration - for telling the truth about this country’s past. This report and its impending effects are overt acts of censorship. And remaining silent about this country’s present is an overt act of self-censorship;  of complicity; of fear. Every single one must be resisted. To do that effectively, it’s going to take all of us: every community member, every leader, and every institution who sincerely desires to create a better world. We must stand in solidarity with one another and speak out against the harms today, not through reactive measures of the future.

What are we waiting for?

Calls to Action

Community Survey: https://forms.gle/17SXHWMRFQcbYsd8A 

Additional Comments: https://forms.gle/XUuTkUzTcsrgNhat7