Thief Museum (Field Musem)
Title: Museums are Thieves: Thief Museum (Field Museum of Chicago)
Subject: Repatriation of Native American Cultural Items and Human Remains and Theft by White Institutions
Created: 2023
Medium: Graphic Design
Software: Adobe Illustrator CC
Dimensions: 36″x36″
Articles
The institution reported still having the remains of at least 1,300 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.
The Repatriation Database (ProPublica)
“The Field Museum has the 20th largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. The institution reported still having the remains of at least 1,300 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.
The institution has made available for return 28% of the more than 1,800 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.”
– Propibica, The Repatriation Database
“Thousands of Native American remains in Ohio could finally be laid to rest under a provision that has passed the state House, the start of a process that tribal members have waited on for decades.
The Ohio History Connection, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve Ohio history, currently has over 7,100 ancestral remains and funerary objects like pieces of clothing or jewelry in its possession that should have been returned under a loosely followed federal law in the 1990s, a ProPublica investigation found as part of a look into U.S. museums and universities still holding Native American remains.
The organization has the third-largest amount of these remains in the country, following the University of California at Berkeley and the Illinois State Museum.”
– CBS News, 7,100 Native American remains could be laid to rest in Ohio
The Repatriation Project
“Use this database to find out where Native American remains were taken from and which institutions report still having them. Check on institutions near you.” – ProPublica Repatriation NAGPRA Database
Poster
Download the 10″x10″ poster (.pdf), Museums are Thieves – Thief Museum (Field Museum of Chicago).
Close-ups
Alternative Version
Museums are Thieves
Native Chicago is a series of artworks by Ihanktonwan Dakota artist David Bernie that discusses the relationship Native American and First Nations communities have with the city of Chicago.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
