NEW YORK — Hidden in the spacious Native American halls of the American Museum of Natural History is a small wooden doll that holds a sacred place among the tribes whose territories once included Manhattan.
For more than six months, the ceremonial Ohtas, or Being Doll, has been hidden from view after the museum and others nationwide took dramatic steps to place boards or paper over exhibits in response to new federal rules that require institutions to return sacred or culturally significant items to tribes — or at least obtain consent to display or study them.
The doll, also named Nahneetis, is just one of about 1,800 items that museum officials say they are reviewing as they work to meet requirements while also pursuing a broader overhaul of exhibits that are more than half a century old.
But some tribal leaders remain skeptical, saying the museums did not act quickly enough. After all, the new rules were prompted by years of complaints from tribes who hundreds of thousands of items which should have been returned under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, still remain in the museum’s custody.
“If things move slowly, then address it,” said Joe Baker, a Manhattan resident and member of the Delaware Indian tribe, descendants of the Lenape people whom European traders encountered. more than 400 years ago. “Collections are part of our history, our family. We need them at home. We need them around.”
Sean Decatur, president of the New York museum, promised that tribes will hear from authorities soon. He said the team in recent months has been re-examining the exhibits to begin contacting tribal communities.
The museum also plans to open a small exhibit in the fall incorporating Native American voices and explaining the history of the closed halls, why changes are being made and what the future holds, he said.
Museum officials envision a total overhaul of the closed Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains corridors — similar to the five-year, $19 million renovation of Northwest Coast Hall, completed in 2022 in close collaboration with the tribes, Decatur added.
“The ultimate goal is to make sure we’re telling the stories correctly,” he said.
Lance Gumbs, vice president of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, a federally recognized tribe in the Hamptons of New York, said he worries about local tribes’ loss of representation in public institutions, with exhibit closures likely to extend for years.
The American Museum of Natural History, he noted, is one of New York’s top tourist attractions and also a mainstay for generations of area students learning about the area’s tribes.
He suggests that museums use replicas made by native people so that sensitive cultural items are not physically on display.
“I don’t think tribes want our history written in museums,” Gumbs said. “There must be a better way than using artifacts that have literally been stolen from graves.”
Gordon Yellowman, who directs the language and culture department for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, said museums should look to create more digital and virtual exhibits.
He said the tribes in Oklahoma will search the New York museum for a sketchbook of Cheyenne warrior Little Finger Nail, which contains his battle drawings and illustrations.
The book, which is in storage and not on display, was ripped from his body after he and other tribesmen were killed by American soldiers in Nebraska in 1879.
“These drawings weren’t just made because they were pretty,” Yellowman said. “They were meant to show the real history of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.”
Institutions elsewhere are taking other approaches.
In Chicago, the Field Museum created a Repatriation Center after covering up several cases in its halls dedicated to ancient America and the peoples of the Northwest coast and the Arctic.
Since then, the museum has also returned four items to the tribes, with three others pending, through efforts that were underway before the new regulations, according to spokeswoman Bridgette Russell.
At the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, a display case displaying artifacts from the Tlingit people of Alaska was reopened after its leadership gave consent, according to Todd Mesek, a museum spokesman. But two other exhibits remain covered up, one containing funerary objects from the ancient Southwest to be remade with a different theme and materials.
And at Harvard, the Peabody Museum’s Native American hall reopened in February after about 15% of its roughly 350 items were removed from exhibits, said university spokeswoman Nicole Rura.
Chuck Hoskin, chief of the Cherokee Nation, said he believes many institutions now understand that they can no longer treat indigenous items as “museum curiosities” from “peoples who no longer exist.”
The tribe’s Oklahoma leader said he visited Peabody this year after the university contacted him about returning hair clippings collected in the early 1930s from hundreds of indigenous children, including Cherokees, forced to assimilate into the notorious Indian boarding schools.
“The fact that we are in a position to sit down with Harvard and have a really meaningful conversation is progress for the country,” he said.
As for Baker, he wants the Ohtas to return to their tribe. He said the ceremonial doll should never have been displayed, especially arranged among wooden bowls, spoons and other everyday items.
Museum officials say discussions with tribal representatives began in 2021 and will continue, although the doll technically does not fall under federal regulations because it is associated with a tribe outside the U.S., the Munsee-Delaware Nation in Ontario.
“He has spirit. He’s a living being,” Baker said. “So if you think about him hanging on the wall all these years in a static box, suffocating from lack of air, it’s just horrible, really.”
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