Grand Rapids Public Museum

by Marilyn Merdzinski
Director of Collections and Preservation, Grand Rapids Public Museum

 When the truck pulled away, Marilyn Merdzinski, Director of Collections and Preservation at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, felt a great sense of peace. She had just experienced a major milestone in the Museum’s history - the repatriation (or return) of local Native American human remains and cultural items that had once been part of the Museum’s collections. Returning these remains to their rightful home was a major journey for the Grand Rapids Public Museum, one that led Merdzinski to reflect on the history of museum collecting and the Museum’s relationship with local Native Americans…

The Journey

Building relationships with Native American communities alongside the federal legislation, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), has led museums across the country to experience the same sense of peace I felt after the repatriation. The law has helped museums reflect and take responsibility for years of collecting, preserving and interpreting regional, cultural and natural history.

The NAGPRA legislation, enacted in 1990, was the culmination of a long-term struggle for human rights and equal protection for Native American people in this country. For the first time, the law provided a process that both museums and tribes could follow to repatriate the thousands of Native American human remains and cultural items in museums across the country.  For the Grand Rapids Public Museum, reflecting on 156 years of collecting and how the philosophy has changed over time was critical for gaining an insight into the push and pull between science and human rights - between museums and Native Americans.

156 Years of Collecting and Interpreting

The Grand Rapids Public Museum, began in 1854 as the Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History. At that time, all over the country amateur scientific societies were being founded, and hobbyists were scurrying around trying to collect and classify every rock, butterfly and fossil of the natural world. Museums and universities mounted and displayed these specimens in cabinets of curiosity to delight and educate the general public.

The same zeal was also applied to understanding human cultures. Fledgling ethnologists traveled around the world to collect curiosities from strange and remote people for study and display. Closer to home, American settlers marveled at the mounds, earthworks and petroglyphs they discovered that were clearly built by skilled hands.

The people of West Michigan shared in that national trend. In 1870, Elliot H. Crane opened an attraction called the Museum of Freaks, Snakes & Whiskered Ladies, in downtown Grand Rapids. In order to fill his museum, Crane regularly dug into burial mounds in Michigan and Indiana to remove human skulls and other objects. He later sold most of them to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which added them to their collection.

A century later the Museum participated in another national trend when it supported amateur and professional archeology in the 1960s and 1970s. As an advocate and eventual caretaker for the Norton Indian Mounds on behalf of the City of Grand Rapids, the Museum protected the Mounds from destruction by a new interstate highway, even standing alongside Native American activists to do so. But parting with the wishes of these Native American leaders, the Museum then invited archeologists and university students to open the Mounds for scientific study, and remove the human remains and funerary objects that they found. Much was learned about the Hopewell-era people who lived along the Grand River and built the Mounds. But the digs also resulted in the disturbance of their burials, and the placement of their bones and assorted sacred objects into museum storage.

In Their Own Words

At the same time that the Museum was causing anger and suspicion among Native Americans by digging up graves of their ancestors, it was also cultivating a closer relationship in other areas. Several exhibits and programs were featured at the museum that included Native American people and their culture. When planning began in the late 1980s for a new museum building the Museum created an advisory committee of Native American tribal leaders, historians and educators from across the state. They were invited to share their history with the Public Museum in their own words.

Local Native Americans were tired of museums placing their story next to the “dinosaur gallery” where they were seen as fossil specimens of some vanished world. They told a story of continuity and survival of a living culture; of people who deserved equal rights as citizens and neighbors. The Museum interviewed more than 70 Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibway people to be the interpretive voice for the exhibit Anishinibek: The People of This Place. Smudging ceremonies dedicated to the exhibition included Museum staff and Native leaders standing side-by-side.

However, despite progress in this area, there was still the unresolved issue of human remains in the collection. This led to a 2009 consultation with the Michigan Anishinabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance in Harbor Springs, Michigan. The purpose was a joint disposition of culturally unidentified human remains and funerary objects going back to the Michigan tribes. One elder who had helped the Museum develop the Anishinabek exhibit spoke up: “After the pride I felt in helping to put that exhibit together, I feel very distant from your museum over this issue [repatriation]. Now it’s time to fix this... it’s time for some healing to take place.” A National Park Service NAGPRA grant allowed for extended consultation and research in order to move forward and make a positive change for the Museum and the community.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum’s recent repatriation is a real-life example of healing and change for museums and local tribal communites.