In 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was established by an Act of Congress transferring the distinguished collections of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, to the Smithsonian Institution. The mission of the museum is to advance knowledge and understanding of Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere—past, present, and future—through partnership with Native people and others. The museum works to support the continuance of culture, traditional values, and transitions in contemporary Native life.

As a source for research, the National Museum of the American Indian offers not only one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Native American objects in the world, but also significant archival, photograph, and film and video collections.  The museum’s research programs are essential to its operation. The professional staff is concerned with exhibitions, public programs, and educational programs as well as collections research and other curatorial duties.  Discussions, seminars, and symposia support the exchange of ideas among national and international researchers and the general public. Publication opportunities are available through exhibition and collection-related catalogues as well as scholarly books that explore the history and significance of Native cultures and offer Native perspectives.

To complement its research programs, the museum offers educational opportunities, interpretive programming, and hands-on workshops for the general public, families, and school groups at facilities in Washington, D.C., and New York City.  NMAI’s Education Office offers professional development for educators, and creates teaching materials for classroom use.  The museum’s Cultural Arts programming provides opportunities for visitors to experience the living arts, lives, and concerns of Native peoples through performances by artists, musicians, dancers, actors, writers, and storytellers as well as film and video programs.

In addition to the Smithsonian fellowships, NMAI provides educational opportunities through its own internship and fellowship programs. These programs are designed for students interested in the museum profession and related programming. They offer exceptional guided work and/or research experience using the resources of NMAI. Placements can be made at any of the museum’s three facilities. To learn more about these opportunities or to apply, please visit our website, http://www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.

Facilities

The George Gustav Heye Center (GGHC), located in the historic Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, opened to the public in 1994. The GGHC hosts exhibitions, music and dance performances, films, and symposia.

The Cultural Resources Center (CRC), a state-of-the-art facility in Suitland, Maryland, houses the more than 1,000,000 objects in the museum’s collections and serves as a hands-on research center for Native and non-Native visitors.

The museum on the National Mall, opened to the public in 2004, in Washington, D.C., is the museum’s major exhibition space—offering three floors of permanent and changing exhibitions. The building is also a center for performances, films, special events, and educational activities.

Collections

The NMAI’s collections holdings total approximately 1 million items, organized as four major collection categories. While discrete, the collections are intertwined: each contains items that refer to and document one another: the Photo and Media Archives include images of NMAI objects in use in Native communities or in excavation contexts and the Paper Archives includes fieldnotes and accompanying documentation for all aspects of the collection.

Object Collections

There are more than 840,000 items represented by 270,000+ catalogue numbers, divided into Archaeology, Ethnology, and Modern and Contemporary Arts. The collections represent all major culture areas of the Americas and almost all tribes of the United States, most of those from Canada, and a smaller number from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Chronologically, the collection includes artifacts from the Paleo-Indian period to contemporary art. Object types range from the strictly utilitarian to masterworks of Native American art.  Many are of great historical or aesthetic importance.

Photographic Archives

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Archive Center actively acquires and serves as a repository for the records of contemporary Native and Indigenous artists, writers, activists, and organizations. In addition, the Archive Center holds the records of the NMAI’s predecessor institution, the Museum of the American Indian (MAI), Heye Foundation.

The Archive Center supports the mission of the museum by collecting, organizing, preserving, and making available papers, records, photographs, recordings, and ephemera that reflect the historical and contemporary lives of Native peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. The archival collections are particularly focused on Native arts, cultures, knowledge systems, politics, events, and social and political movements. They also complement the NMAI’s object collections and are used for scholarly research, exhibitions, journalism, documentary productions, and other research, educational, and Native community activities.

The Archive Center houses approximately 1,500 linear feet of manuscripts, over half a million photographs, and thousands of sound and audiovisual recordings dating from the late nineteenth century to the present. Many of the Archive Center’s resources and a selection of archival photographs are available online through the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA), the Smithsonian Collections Search Center, and the Smithsonian Transcription Center.

Museum Scholarship 

The Museum Scholarship Group (MSG) conducts original research and provides curatorial support for scholarly publications, exhibitions, and educational programming and provides museum staff with substantive factual and culturally appropriate information in the multidisciplinary field of American Indian studies. The disciplines of history, anthropology, geography, and art provide cohesion and context for the museum’s diverse programming. In keeping with the museum’s unique mission, research focuses on Indigenous perspectives, and includes active and reciprocal engagement with indigenous communities to ensure that research is not only balanced and equitable, but also empowers Indigenous peoples to exercise authority over their own cultural expression.

Staff undertakes research on NMAI collections, material culture, museum history and interpretation, research and collaborative methodologies, individuals associated with the collections, and other subjects.  The museum seeks to coordinate the overall improvement and enhancement of all NMAI collections information, set and maintain information standards, and make collections information accessible to staff and all external constituents.

Also, part of the Museum Scholarship Group, the Repatriation Office, formed in response to the National Museum of American Indian Act (Public Law 101 185), handles repatriation requests; coordinates community visits; prepares research reports; and makes recommendations regarding repatriation and deaccession to the Board of Trustees. The goal of the museum’s repatriation policy is to support the continuation of ceremonial life among Native peoples; to foster and support the study by Native peoples of their own traditions; and to forge consensus between the museum and Native communities while accounting for and balancing the interests of each.

Research Staff

Curet, Luis Antonio, Associate Curator, Ph.D. (1992) Arizona State University. Research Specialties: Caribbean and Mesoamerican archaeology, ceramic analysis and social and cultural change. Contact: CuretA@si.edu

Her Many Horses, Emil, Associate Curator. B.A. (1979) Augustana College; (1995) Loyola University, Chicago. Research specialties: Northern Plains Tribal Arts. Contact: HerManyHorsesE@si.edu

McMullen, Ann, Curator. B.A. (1981) Dartmouth College; M.A. (1990), Ph.D. (1996) Brown University. Research specialties: Native American ethnology, history, and material culture; ethnohistory; indigenous historiography; history of museums; history of ethnographic research and collecting; 20th-century Native American art/craft; invention of tradition/cultural revitalization; ethnicity, identity, and material culture. Contact: McMullenA@si.edu

Affiliated Research Staff

Shannon, Jennifer A.  Manager, Outreach & Engagement Planning Office. PhD, Sociocultural Anthropology, Cornell University; MA, Social Science, University of Chicago; BA, Anthropology and Biology, Bowdoin College. Research interests: anthropology of museums; community engaged museology; collaborative anthropology; public scholarship and social science communication; Indigenous rights and representation; Indigenizing and decolonizing methodologies; NAGPRA and repatriation; Native North America. Contact: ShannonJA@si.edu

Trautmann, Rebecca, Research Specialist. B.A. (1996) University of Texas, Austin. Research specialties: Modern and contemporary Native American art; Plateau baskets. Contact: TrautmannR@si.edu

History and Culture

Research Staff

Adams, James Ring, Senior Historian. B.A (1966) Yale College; Ph.D. (1983) Cornell University. Research specialties: Contact period and impact on European political theory, as determinant of subsequent legal and ideological framework for interaction with Native population; Emphasis on 16th century Spanish debate culminating in Valladolid disputation; 17th century English religious and economic exploitation from Samuel Purchas to in John Locke; 18th century French narratives culminating in Jean-Jacques Rousseau; pre-Columbian contact in the American Northeast and Greenland and tribal strategies for coping with newcomers. Contact: AdamsJR@si.edu 

Delaney, Michelle Anne, Assistant Director for History and Culture, B.A. (1987) Manhattanville College; M.A. (1991) George Washington University; Ph.D. (2018) University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Research specialties: American visual culture and the history of photography, Native American photography, Daguerreian-era photography 1839–1860, 19th- and 20th-century art photography; White House photography and photojournalism; mass entertainment in America and Wild West shows, including advertising images and posters. Contact: delaneym@si.edu

Halena Kapuni-Reynolds (Kanaka ʻŌiwi/Native Hawaiian), Associate Curator. B.A. Anthropology and Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Hilo; M.A. Anthropology with a focus in Museum and Heritage Studies, University of Denver; and Ph.D. American Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Research specialties: Hawaiian place-based history, public history, museum anthropology, Indigenous studies. Contact: Kapuni-ReynoldsH@si.edu

Montiel, Anya, Museum Curator. M.A. and PhD (2018) Yale University; B.A. (1997) University of California at Davis. Research specialties: North American Indigenous histories and cultures; Native American art; global arts and crafts. Contact: MontielA@si.edu

Vidaurri, Cynthia L., Folklorist. B.A. (1979) University of Texas; M.A. (1991) Texas A&I University. Research specialties: Mexico, Cuba, US-Mexico borderlands; traditional medicine and belief systems; religious folk art; ranching culture; cultural/heritage tourism;  museology.  Contact: VidaurriC@si.edu

Conservation

Conservation staff care for NMAI’s collections and actively pursue research related to the collection, preservation, study, and exhibition of Native American objects. Ongoing research focuses on: testing and evaluating materials for storage, packing, exhibition casework, and mounts; identifying hazards in NMAI’s collections and developing mitigation strategies; providing material analysis on items related to NMAI’s collections; identifying new technologies for preservation and treatment of collections; and developing strategies for training conservation students that incorporate collaborative approaches to conservation.

Conservation Staff

McHugh, Kelly, Supervisory Conservator. M.A. Art History/Certificate in Conservation (2000), New York University, Institute of Fine Arts; B.A. in Art History/Peace and Global Policy Studies (1990), New York University. Areas of interest: collaborative work with North, Central, South American Native communities, contemporary art, materials and technology of ethnographic objects. Contact: McHughK@si.edu 

Heald, Susan, Senior Textile Conservator. B.A. Chemistry/Anthropology (1985) George Washington University; M.S. Art Conservation (1990) Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program; Postgraduate Fellow (1991) Smithsonian Institution Conservation Analytical Laboratory and Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Research specialties: Collaborative work with indigenous communities, preservation of contemporary, historic, and ancestral textiles and clothing, including methods for housing and display. Contact: HealdS@si.edu

Kaplan, Emily, Objects Conservator. B.A. (1984) University of Massachusetts; M.A. (1993) Queens University, Kingston, Canada. Research specialties: Materials and technology of archaeological and ethnographic objects of the Americas, particularly Andean region. Contact: KaplanE@si.edu

Outreach and Engagement Planning Office

The Outreach and Engagement Planning Office centralizes communication, coordination, and resources in service of collaborations and partnerships between NMAI staff and Native and Indigenous communities and allied organizations. 

The main activities of the Office include:

• Conducting and organizing outreach to communities, organizations, universities, and other Smithsonian units in service of NMAI’s mission – and the hemispheric scope of the museum.
• Facilitating engagement by providing resources for NMAI staff to collaborate with Native and Indigenous communities. Engagement is not limited to collections; it can be with any department.
• Centralizing information relating to collaborations and partnerships.
• Providing a point of contact for Native and Indigenous communities and allied organizations who wish to work with NMAI. 

Research Staff

May Castillo, Manuel, Program Manager and Latin America Outreach Specialist. Ph.D. (2014) Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Research specialties: Indigenous Studies, Indigenous heritage and rights, global Indigenous movements, decolonizing methodologies, community-based research, Mesoamerican anthropology & archaeology, Maya architecture. MayCastilloM@si.edu

Affiliated Research Staff

Melissa Shaginoff, Alaska Outreach and Engagement Specialist. B.A. (2012), University of Alaska Anchorage; BFA (2015), Institute of American Indian Arts & Alaska Native Cultures. Research Specialties: Native American and Indigenous studies, specifically Alaska Native tribes. Indigenous arts and history of Alaska. Alaska Native Languages.  Community outreach and organizing. shaginoffM@si.edu

Elayne Silversmith, North America Outreach and Engagement Specialist. B.A. (1987), Fort Lewis College; MLIS (1995), Emporia State University. Research Specialties: Native American and Indigenous Studies, primarily history and culture of tribes in the American Southwest, including the Spanish colonial period. silversmithE@si.edu