2025/09/17 by Roberto J. González, Jan English‐Lueck, Alan Leventhal +2 · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies #Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
paper · doi:10.1080/08884552.2025.2560012
openalex publication_date 2025/09/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article is about how the New Museum of Los Gatos, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, and anthropology faculty and students from San José State University jointly developed a collaborative museum exhibition. The interactive exhibit, titled Reclamation: Resilience of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, lasted from November 2022 through May 2023. The paper describes how we achieved the common goal of creating an exhibit “with, by, and for” the Tribe, which is attempting to regain federal recognition from the US government after having it rendered invisible nearly a century ago. (The Bureau of Indian Affairs and two federal courts agreed that the Tribe’s federally recognized status was never terminated.) The exhibit was designed to inspire visitors to think critically about complex, politically contentious issues such as the ongoing struggle of many Native American tribes to obtain federal recognition; the process of repatriating cultural items; and the relationship between anthropologists and Native American descendant communities.