Illinois Steal Museum (Illinois State Museum)
Title: Museum are Thieves: Illinois Steal Museum (Illinois State Museum)
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 Illinois State Museum has the 2nd largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. The institution reported still having the remains of at least 7,100 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.
The Repatriation Database (ProPublica)
“The Illinois State Museum has the 2nd largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. The institution reported still having the remains of at least 7,100 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.
The institution has made available for return 3% of the more than 7,300 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.”
– The Repatriation Database (ProPublica)
“For centuries, Europeans carving up the prairie to suit their own idea of settlement dug up the graves of Native Americans as they conquered lands and pushed tribes to the West.
Now, Native Americans whose ancestors’ remains ended up held for study in sterile, nondescript boxes on shelves in educational facilities or displayed in cultural locales hope a new Illinois law will speed their recovery for proper reburial in their homeland.
“I always have a bit of unease because I know if I’m going to a university or to a museum … that chances are pretty high that we’ve got some ancestors sitting in a basement or in a closet somewhere,” said Raphael Wahwassuck, tribal preservation officer for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Mayetta, Kansas. “I hope that this (law) will help ease those concerns, knowing that we are working on correcting that and taking care of our ancestors to put them in a good resting place.””
– AP News, Centuries after Native American remains were dug up, a new law returns them for reburial in Illinois
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 11″x8.5″ poster (.pdf), Museum are Thieves – Thief Museum (Field Museum of Chicago).
Close-ups
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.
