This is a recorded session from the 2023 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Museums that care for Native American cultural objects or educate the public on Native American histories must work with descendant communities. Outreach from multiple institutions, however, can overburden these communities. In this panel, museum representatives and members of Native American communities in Los Angeles will share insights on implementing a regional approach to working together.

Transcript

Milena Acosta:

We will be getting started. Thank you so much for joining us today. I wanted to start us out by letting you know what session you’re in, just in case. You are up here in Get It Together: A Regional Approach to Connect with Descendant Communities. My name is Milena Acosta, my pronouns are she/her, and I am the Senior Manager of Community Engagement at the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. We’re going to go through introductions shortly, but I’m going to hand it over to Cindi Alvitre who’s going to do a welcome for us.

Cindi Alvitre:

Can you all hear me? Can you hear me now?

Desiree Martinez:

We can hear you.

Amy Gusick:

Wait, you want to pass the mic?

Cindi Alvitre:

I hate microphones, but that’s okay. Anyway, let me start by giving you a blessing. And so if we could all stand, please?

Amy Gusick:

[inaudible 00:00:52] microphone, [inaudible 00:00:53]?

Cindi Alvitre:

No, no, I’m okay. Can you hear me? You can hear me well enough? Okay.

[foreign language 00:00:58], grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, spirit, Creator, ancestors. We are grateful for being here today as a people, and to acknowledge the people of this land, the Ute, the Cheyennes, and all people on this land, their ancestors who have struggled to bring us where we are today. We pray for the land, we acknowledge the land, we acknowledge the air, as creepy as it’s been the last couple days, which is really an indication of where we are as human beings today, Creator. May we all honor the people of this land, their ancestors, all that is sacred and precious to them. And may we all make our contributions today, as human beings gathered together today to make a community of one people. [foreign language 00:01:43]. Thank you.

Milena Acosta:

All right, we’re going to do some introductions.

Germonique Ulmer:

Hi everybody. So I’m Germonique Ulmer, I’m the Managing Director for Social Impact at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. We are a museum under construction in Los Angeles, slated to open in 2025, and I’m glad to be here.

Desiree Martinez:

Hello, my name’s Desiree Martinez. I’m a member of the Gabrieleno Tongva community, the original people of Los Angeles. I’m also President of Cogstone Resource Management, which is a cultural resources firm.

Cindi Alvitre:

Good morning. I’m Cindi Alvitre. I am Gabrieleno Tongva, affiliated with the Ti’at Society and Traditional Council of Pimu, which are the maritime people of the Southern California coastal region.

Sarah Wilson:

Sarah Wilson, Director of Education at the Autry Museum of the American West.

Amy Gusick:

Hi, I’m Amy Gusick. I’m the Curator for Anthropology at the Natural History family of museums of Los Angeles County.

Milena Acosta:

Great, thank you. So we’re going to kick off our discussion, and actually my first question is to Cindi. Cindi, as a cultural educator and co-founder of the Ti’at Society, you’ve collaborated extensively with many types of organizations; big, small, and everything in between. Can you tell us from your perspective, from the descendant community and its representatives, what strategies or concrete approaches from cultural institutions or museums have been the most effective when building meaningful relationships? That have led to partnerships that really, truly center the community in its goals, and don’t overburden the community?

Cindi Alvitre:

Thank you, Milena. So first of all, let me just say that I’m from the older generations. So my experiences with museums, especially in Los Angeles, go way back, to a time before there was NAGPRA, before there was ICWA, before there were any kind of legislation or laws to protect Native American people and to provide access. So in relationship to the museums that we have represented here today, the Autry Museum with Sarah Wilson, the Autry was the Museum of the West. That’s Gene Autry, the cowboy, right? So you can only imagine. But they also absorb the collection from the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, the oldest museum, the oldest museum in Los Angeles. The Autry Museum, and we’ll talk about that a little bit more.

LA Natural History Museum obviously has a long history, a very long history within the county, and with the Lucas Museum, they’re very new, so we have a couple of different situations here. We have these relationships with institutions who… There was no access. That’s all there was to it. There was no access. All the property, all the ancestors, all these belongings, not artifacts, as CJ said in the keynote, those were considered to be the scientific property of particular individuals. And so access to any of that was prohibited. It didn’t happen.

We’ve seen a lot of changes. I think that’s what a lot of us are here today to really be able to acknowledge and to measure. It’s measure what you value, and value what you measure, right? And I can say that we’ve progressed tremendously, tremendously from Southwest Museum being transferred over to the Autry, the Autry making significant progress, moving beyond the Cowboy Museum that has an immense holding of Native American treasures, right? And as Gregg Deal, and as they were stating, as far as acknowledging, even in a museum where all you saw… Where it was more of the concern of the culture, not people, and not acknowledging that this pair of moccasins was made by a particular artist, or was there ethical acquisition? A lot of things. We’ve moved into a place where there is the act of participation, open conversations, which are very important conversations with the people.

And with the LA Natural History Museum, I can say that… And I’ll tell you what we have done with them most recently through COVID is, as the co-founder and a member of our maritime community, our canoes, our ti’ats are very important. And we made the decision to build one, a baby ti’at, to go into the LA Natural History Museum. That was the first significant collaboration that we have had with the LA Natural History Museum. And from there, that little vessel, which happened during COVID, during the significant, horrible Montecito flood, fire, a lot of natural reminders to us as human beings, are immersed, they’re etched into this little boat that we all had to experience, not only as the Indigenous community, but also as a collective community of people within the museums too. So that’s been significant.

The Lucas Museum, I look forward to. So there’s been a lot of things that have worked. Conversation, changes of perceptions, how people perceive. And I think in the keynote they said that, what, 40% of the United States… I know this with my students, that in their interviews with other people, they don’t even acknowledge Native people, aside from acknowledging the people of the land. Support, support is something that now, we have. We have the support, based on those conversations, based on the acknowledgement, and I’ll just put it this way, just to summarize this.

What works, and what has been activated within our relationships, or what, with my particular community, we call the three R’s, not reading, writing, ‘rithmetic; recognition, respect and responsibility. Recognition first and foremost. When you acknowledge the people, you acknowledge the history, you acknowledge the situation that they’re in as marginalized people, oppressed people, as people who have without, and with our particular people, we are not a federally recognized tribe. Immersed now in a setting, an urban setting of one of the world’s wealthiest countries, where we have become the most invisible. Acknowledgement of those things is important. When we have acknowledgement of each other as human beings, and our history, and our struggles, then we can garner respect.

When we have those two, then we can take the next step to having responsibility, that we take individual responsibility, institutional, and agency responsibility to move forward, to prepare a future for the generations of our children and your children and our grandchildren, and of everything that is related, not only to the people in entering and ensuring there’s a reciprocity. Compensation is one thing, reciprocity is something that’s very significant. So when we do that, then we can move together and make progress, and hopefully we’ll have an outcome that will build the cultural confidence of the people, something that’s been shattered, to have that cultural confidence. So there you go.

Milena Acosta:

Thank you. Desiree, did you have anything to add to that kind of question about overburdening? I saw you nodding a couple of times. Obviously, you and Cindi work very closely together through that lens of recognition, responsibility, and all of that. Any thoughts there?

Desiree Martinez:

Yeah, definitely. And it’s one of those things, and actually they were talking about it at the keynote about land acknowledgements, right? That’s the low hanging fruit. And so I’ve had so many institutions, and not just museums, but other cultural, the Getty, I won’t name them, but the Getty. Who came and like, “Oh, we want to do a land acknowledgement. Who should we contact?” And there’s seven bands of Gabrieleno Tongva within the Los Angeles area, and some of us like each other and some of us don’t. Typical when you have family relations and stuff like that. And what I always said, and I actually did this for one of the community colleges in LA, my whole talk was, “So what?” You want to do a land acknowledgement? So what? I like to quote songs, and I really wanted to quote Janet Jackson, What Have You Done for Me Lately? But I held back from saying that.

But it’s one of those things, it’s like, “Yeah, great, you’re acknowledging the trauma that the community, everybody, the settlers have on our community. And you’re saying, “Okay, we’re the original people.” So what? How is that going to help my community? How is that going to forward any of the goals that my community wants?” And a lot of people, a lot of my elders and the community leaders and educators within the Gabrieleno Tongva have worked for decades with these museums and institutions to make sure that we’re not considered extinct. Current anthropological literature says the Gabrieleno Tongva no longer exist, or that it says there are descendants that claim to be descended from the Gabrieleno Tongva people. And we also get this label that we’re delusional Mexicans as well, because a lot of our community intermarried because of the history that has happened because of colonization.

And so trying to fight against that and having, particularly as it relates to trying to get back our ancestors, or even work with museums, where they look to this anthropological literature and say, “Well, the archeologists say you guys came here 4,000 years ago, so the ancestors that are 8,000 years ago aren’t your ancestors. They’re some unknown people.” And so those are some of the things that are affecting us as a people today. And then we have people that are still poor, that have no healthcare, that need social services. We have unhoused people in our community, people sleeping in their cars. And those are everyday social issues that a lot of institutions forget. Yet you want to come to me, and you want free labor; you want me to give you my history so we can teach the public? Great, I want the public to know we are not extinct, but we also need to talk about our current problems of just a people living in the world today. And a lot of people forget that.

And then us as a community are trying to capacity build within the Gabrieleno Tongva community. There’s a handful of us that do this work, that have a higher education. And not to say you need a higher education to speak, but as somebody who’s gone to school, I’m able to move between the two worlds in terms of academia, a museum, and my community to make people start to have communication with each other, so we can get toward these goals. And I’m rambling on, but that’s one of the big things, is trying to make sure that what you’re doing is from the heart, that you’re sincere about it, and that you’re going to do something that’s going to help the community in some way.

It’s not just about patting yourself on the back, and I say this, I don’t want to be involved in this conversation for year-long, and then you pat yourself on the back of like, “Oh, we talked to the tribes, we did this.” Yeah, I could care less about that. What are you going to physically do for us? And it might not even have to do anything with your institution, it might not bring in more public, getting more funds for your institution. It might be you actually volunteering your time to help us weed out our traditional garden that’s at our sacred lands. Has nothing to do with your museum and what your goals are. It has to do with what we need for our community.

Milena Acosta:

Desiree, is it safe or fair to say that you’re saying the sincerity or the key indicators is action, right? It’s the action, it’s Janet Jackson’s, What Have You Done for Me Lately?

Desiree Martinez:

Yeah, it’s, what is it? Walking the walk, or talking the talk, walking the walk, whatever? And doing more than just the platitudes, or making your board feel good about themselves. And that’s great and stuff, but it’s really putting that sincerity into action. So one of the things I talk about is Indigenous archeology, and that’s archeology done for, by, and with Indigenous communities. And one of the things that I talk about is that there’s George Nicholas who came up with that term, who’s at Simon Fraser, has eight characteristics of what an Indigenous archeology project looks like. And one of them talks about archeologists and being self-reflexive about how they are interacting with the community.

And I always use this example of Jack Rosen, who was working with the Cayuga community, who were not federally recognized in New York. He helped them create this capacity-building education center on a farm for the Cayuga, where they’re teaching their communities, they’re also doing education in the public. They were renting out this farmland for a dollar, and then the farmers decided to sell the land and gave the Cayuga the first opportunity to buy the land. They didn’t have the money. So he mortgaged his house to buy that land for them, so that they can continue that project. And ultimately, through fundraisers, they paid him back. Not to say that you should go mortgage your house. His wife was mad at him, because he did it without telling her. And ultimately they got paid back, so there was really no risk.

But that’s putting yourself in your… You really care about the community and you’re going to help them. That’s the kind of, I don’t want to say sacrifice, but sacrifice, and acknowledgement of what you’ve gained as somebody, as a colonizer, as a settler on this land, that you’re now trying to not necessarily make up for it, but recognize what’s happened and then, through reciprocity, continue or create that relationship with the Indigenous communities that you’re interacting with.

Milena Acosta:

So my next question is maybe for the both of you, because we’re here to talk about regional approaches, and examples of where you have seen a concerted effort by museums to just be on the same page or be in communication. So my question is, how can museums balance the need to engage with descendant communities, while also respecting the autonomy and minimizing the potential burden to be inclusive and sensitive and respectful? Through that lens of how have you seen, or are there any moments or indicators that you have seen this kind of work in Los Angeles, that could be a cue for some of the folks that are here in the audience?

Cindi Alvitre:

I think one of the main things is that acknowledgement. And part of it is, directly, we’re back to perception. That even within a museum institution, there are cultural institutions or historical institutions, but their staff may not have the information. They themselves may not be educated about the community, their history, their cultural background, protocol, these sorts of things, which leads to a lot of misunderstandings, especially when you implement a program. And that’s where you can get even into microaggressions and a lot of other things. But communication, transition of perceptions is really important too. Those are part of the steps, and not being afraid to engage the community.

With our community, as Desiree said, there are seven, at least seven communities, seven bands, and we have families who are not connected to those particular clans or those bands. So how do you become inclusive with all of those individual people? Just because you have people who may represent, and it becomes very complicated when we look to academics. My fear in the Native American world is that we’re replacing culture with a degree. Your access to culture is becoming when you get a degree, that’s part of the unfortunate consequence. Know the community you’re working with.

Provide the support that’s necessary, which we have gotten. That’s not only the monetary support, but it’s also the community support. It’s the engagement through assisting in publishing. And when you narrate this history, that that becomes part of the public narrative. Museum institutions are very, very powerful, and they are becoming a sector of education. Absolutely, they are. So we have to be very cautious, working with the Indigenous community is very, very important.

And listen, listening. Which I think has been very, very… I feel very content, not completely content, I can never feel completely confident, but in the conversations and the relationships that we’ve established with these different institutions, is significant, simply because if we measure it from where we came from to this point, and that doesn’t mean it stops there, there has been significant transitions, but it never can stop. It can never stop, because remember that, as institutions, you’re inherently part of this trauma, the unresolved, intergenerational, historical grief that all the Native people within these collections… Those are the ancestors that you’re holding, whether they’re the belongings, whether the ancestral remains, you’re holding those. And that, in itself, is a trauma. I think that, in this country, we fail to recognize that. NAGPRA, as one of the most significant, ongoing human rights legislation that we have to protect Native people, is part of that, too.

So listen, provide support, provide access, and keep open, inform your staff, educate people, acknowledge all the people that are involved. That’s the most difficult thing, because I think institutions always want to go to one person. They want their go-to people, right? And it’s not like that. At the university I work with, they said, “Who do I contact?” I said, “You contact everybody.” I am not the person. Desiree is not the person. We are not individuals. We are part of larger community. That’s how we act, as communalist. That’s how we practice.

Milena Acosta:

Thank you.

Desiree Martinez:

And also thinking about regional and overburdening… Whatever, I can’t speak today, didn’t have enough coffee. Both Cindi and I have worked with UCLA and the Fowler Museum for a number of years, and I helped them develop their Mapping Indigenous LA. So you can go ahead and Google it. And one of the first story maps that they created was with the Gabrieleno Tongva. And one of the reasons why we’re doing that, because we wanted to create, not unnecessarily a one-stop shop, but a place where they could get information from the community about our sites, our spaces, and places that we hold dear to our hearts. To learn about who we are as a people, but also provide resources to teachers that we have vetted, because there’s so much crap out there in the curriculum about us being extinct, and we’re not warlike like the other people, or the Chumash are better, who are our northern neighbors, better than us, et cetera, et cetera. But the other thing too was that they would… Hopefully, they’re not here today.

Cindi Alvitre:

There’s Chumash in the next room.

Desiree Martinez:

In the next room, yeah, she’s over there.

Cindi Alvitre:

Just heard us.

Desiree Martinez:

Yeah. But one of the things too was that because UCLA is well known for working with the Gabrieleno Tongva community, a lot of the faculty were getting emails like, “Who do I contact?” So they actually created this form on our behalf and we internally call it Ask a Tongva, because they’re always looking for some type of blessing, some type of land acknowledgement, “Here, come speak at my class next week.” And all of this crap. And it was just like we, we, who are the usual people that get tasked or asked, we don’t have time to weed through that. So they developed this form so they can weed for it through us, but it has all these questions like, is there compensation? When is this date? Why? How is this going to help the community? All of these questions so that they can be self-reflexive about why they’re asking to do this. And so that was a really… It’s now not taking submissions anymore, but hopefully I can get it back up again. But it’s a way to think about that ask, because it really is a burden, even just an email.

I was asked by this foundation, the Coro foundation, you can look it up, where they’re training the next leaders in social justice in Los Angeles. And a week before, I got an email from students saying, “Hey, can you come talk to us?” They wanted to go to the Fowler Museum, and learn, and go see human burials and their burial items, so that they can learn about the history of the Tongva. And so I wrote this irate letter, and I’m known for irate letters. That’s kind of one of the reasons why I’ve gotten into a lot of institutions and harassed them. And I said, “How dare you even ask that? And if you want somebody from the Gabrieleno Tongva to talk to you, then there’s protocol, cultural protocol, payment. It’s a week less than you want, and who are you? I don’t even know your foundation or anything.” So I write this irate letter.

And then while I wrote this irate letter, they sent another email to another tribal leader. And it’s one of those things, where they go shopping around until somebody says yes. And the way that I play it, I CC all of my leaders. I’m like, “Here’s my irate letter to these people. So if you happen to get it, I’ve already told them, “You guys are stupid.” And don’t deal with them or anything like that.” And we communicate that way, and we have to, because you get those types of institutions. It’s a world of no until they get somebody who says yes. And sometimes those are people that may not have the cultural knowledge that really needs to be imparted to whatever institution they are speaking to.

Milena Acosta:

Thanks.

Cindi Alvitre:

Let me just say, just speak directly to a regional approach, because that’s part of what we’re talking about here. And it was something that I wasn’t aware of until this panel. We’ve been practicing this, but there hadn’t been a label on it. And I think a regional approach really resolved some of these issues, of having to have multiple institutions, and restarting the cultural biography. The burden to the Native community is having to repeat your biography over and over and over again. That’s a huge challenge. But you don’t want to institutionalize knowledge either, right? There’s a danger to that. So I think that’s what we’re grasping at right now, and just within these institutions that are represented today, to find that solution and to have that communication and to be able to establish, hopefully, a model, I hate that, model of best practices. But ways to respect the three Rs, ways to acknowledge recognition, respect, and take responsibility.

Milena Acosta:

Thank you, Cindi and Desiree. Amy, I’m going to shift over to you. We’ve heard from Cindi and Desiree that actions matter, moving us away from episodic relationships into long-term, meaningful relationships that are based on trust are important. The Natural History Museum is a well-established cultural institution. We’re over a hundred years old. And building trust, and likely rebuilding trust, is very important, well before the time that you came on as curator. So considering these important points from Cindi and Desiree, what are some specific actions that the museum has taken to lessen that engagement, and ensuring that perspectives are valued and elevated?

Amy Gusick:

Yeah, thank you so much, Milena. And thank you Cindi and Desiree… Sorry, I choked on your name there. Sorry, Desiree.

Yeah, thank you so much. And I just want to “Yes, and…” Everything that they said. These are all such important points. And the three Rs, education, these are all things that, when I came on as curator at the Natural History Museum about five and a half years ago or so, one thing that I was particularly interested in doing is kind of taking the pulse and understanding where, as an institution, we were with some of these relationships, where we were with access, where we were with reciprocity. Because I’ve had friends in the Native community that have said to me, “Oh, the Natural History Museum really kind of stinks, in terms of its relationships with Native communities.” And so that, to me, was upsetting, certainly, and certainly upsetting to a lot of my colleagues at the institution as well. And these relationships have kind of waxed and waned through time, but we really wanted to understand how can we, as an institution, and certainly as people, as our personal relationships that we have, use those to work into this institutional relationship?

And the one thing we realized we needed to do first was internal work. And that was one of the big, big things that we realized, off the bat, that we had to do. So we had to understand what does it mean to have a meaningful relationship, as an institution, with the different descendant communities within Los Angeles? What does that look like? How can we educate our staff to understand what are the histories, what is the history of Los Angeles? And that history includes, very strongly, Native peoples. It’s not separate from it, it is part of it. And that history is told by the Native peoples themselves. So we began understanding who do we work with in the institution? Who has worked with people from these descendant communities? Are we going back and asking people, this person, this person, are we taking this kind of piecemeal approach? Are we overburdening, for instance, Cindi, who’s very generous with her time, or Desiree, also very generous with her time, and asking them over and over again to do these things, and not really building these meaningful relationships and not giving back?

So we wanted to understand how do we educate our internal staff to be able to do this? And that was a key piece of what we needed to do. One of the questions that I wanted to mention, something that Desiree talked about, is the land acknowledgement. One thing that we kept getting from our staff was why do we not have a land acknowledgement? And we looked at that and we said, “You know what? The land acknowledgement will come when we do the work. We don’t want to do it the other way around.” So we chose not to spend our time on thinking about how do we develop this land acknowledgement, burdening the community with, “Can you help us develop this land acknowledgement?” Because it was going to come out of the work we were doing with them. So to this day, we actually have a county land acknowledgement, but not one that’s very specific to our institution, because we’re focusing on the work of what that land acknowledgement says.

And that’s what was important to us, in educating our staff on what that means, on what does it mean in terms of co-creation of a program? What does it mean to co-create an exhibit? What does it mean to invite someone to talk to your class? What do those histories look like? What does the compensation look like? How much time do you need to include in this? And a lot of times, it’s significant. You are talking to an institution that has a schedule of programs and exhibits, and everything is on a timeline, and we needed people to understand when you are co-creating an exhibit with descendant communities, whether it’s Native communities or other descendant communities, you need to take into account the community themselves. And that’s one of the things that Desiree and Cindi were alluding to. Everybody has families, everybody has communities, everybody has other jobs. Desiree’s president of a company, Cindi’s a professor at a university. They, a lot of times, if they’re working with us, are taking time out of their jobs, out of their family, out of working with their communities, and graciously giving their time to us.

And I think that one of the big things we had to understand is how do you compensate for that? Not only from a money perspective, certainly that’s kind of basic, but also from a community-building experience, from a relationship-building experience. What does that look like? And so these are all things that we had to grapple with internally. And we invited individuals, leaders from the communities, from different Native communities, to come in and talk to our staff of over 400 people. We would have webinars that they would talk to them about their histories, about LA, about the thousands and thousands and thousands of years of Native… 13,000 years, at least we know of archeologically at this point, of Natives caring for the land in the space that we work in.

And that is so significant, and that’s something that we needed to make our entire staff understand, because as a curator, and in working with Native communities, Milena working with our community engagement person, we don’t, a lot of times, have the ability to interface with the public. We do in certain programs, but our docents, our staff, our guest relations who are getting some of these questions, they will get questions. “How are you working with the Native communities? What are you doing?” We wanted to make sure that they understood what the institution was doing, where we were at in the process, and also provided them information about where they can take those questions to as well.

And so I think that that internal work was extremely meaningful for us first, kind of taking that approach, understanding how we can do this internally, making sure that all of the different departments we have, we’re a large institution, lots of different departments, our programs, our education department, our community engagement department, our community science departments, getting everybody together and saying, “Let’s start to have meetings internally about how we’re working with communities, and what that looks like.”

And then I think from that point, once we do start to develop these relationships, personally, as an anthropologist, providing that access, that, to me, at least personally, and I think as an institution, was providing access to the cultural belongings, providing access to the ancestors, providing that access, I think, was so significant for myself and, I hope, for my colleagues and friends here as well. And to me, that was such a basic thing. How has this not happened so far? And that’s one way that, ideally, in a small way, that we can actually try to provide something back for the community as well.

And then as we started to move forward and working with the communities, understanding when also to back off, I think, is something that’s important as well. Understanding the health of the community, understanding the health of the people that you’re working with, mentally, physically, whatever that may be. As an example, we were working with some tribes from the Southwest on an exhibit when the pandemic hit. We had progressed quite a bit into this exhibit and co-creating this with them. And the pandemic hit, and as everybody knows, Native communities across this country were hit very disproportionately hard by the pandemic. So we made a decision, certainly a very basic decision, to delay the exhibit, rather than to move forward without our community partners, rather than to continue burdening them with this exhibit in Los Angeles, when they’re worrying about their communities and sickness and death in their communities. We stopped and said, “We are waiting until you’re ready.” Because that’s what you do. If you’re developing something with someone, you don’t move forward without them. They’re your partners, they’re your co-creators, they’re integral to the process.

And I think that that was something that’s important. Museums, a lot of times, think like, “Oh, okay, well, we’re going to talk to the Native people. Pat yourself on the back. We’re going to talk to the Native people. We have this whole thing developed, and we’re going to bring them in, and they’re going to review the text, make sure it sounds good.” That is certainly the approach that we’ve taken in the past, I’m certainly not going to lie, a lot of museums have. But moving forward, we realize that that’s not the way to move forward. We need to provide the budget, the time, the energy to co-create with our Native consultants. They’re consultants, you can look at them, if you prefer, as a consultant; you would never move forward, you would never not pay a consultant, you would never move forward in a project without a consultant.

And that was something that our entire staff needed to understand. And so that was where we started out, with this understanding internally, and internal education, which I think was very, very beneficial, because it also lessened the stress, I’m going to say, of some of our staff, like, “Why don’t we have this land acknowledgement? Aren’t we doing anything?” And it’s like, “Yes, let us tell you what we’re doing. Let us let you know why we’re making these decisions.” We made a very specific decision to be extremely transparent with our staff about this, with everybody, full access for our staff to understand what we’re doing. We have policies up online that the entire public can look at about this. And that was very important to us, to be as transparent as possible with our public, with our visitors, with our Native partners.

Milena Acosta:

Thanks, Amy. And actually, that internal working piece is where the regional approach came up in our first interaction in… We know Sarah from the Autry for many, many years. But as we were talking to each other about compensation, about that budget piece, slowly started to realize that departments were doing completely different things. And in that information moment is when we reached out to Sarah and we’re like, “What’s happening over here?” Because as you said, Desiree, you copied everybody in like, “This happened.” There’s no reason why we couldn’t take an approach of understanding what is the pulse, what’s happening in the field. So I just wanted to bring that moment in, Sarah, and hoping we could talk about it. But the Autry has had this type of intentional, meaningful relationships with the community for a while, and has grown and changed, and still in process. So, what have been those key elements at the Autry for collaborative engagement, and addressing the challenges that have come up, as you have a pulse on the field?

Sarah Wilson:

I think there are two key elements to keep in mind as you start this work. And one Amy has alluded to and others, and that is this is going to require a significant investment on your institution’s part, and that includes staff time. And you can’t just add this onto someone’s plate. You need to make room for this. And on multiple people’s plates, you need to make room for this work on an annual basis. This is not just, “We’re going to do this in August. We’re going to do this in November, because that’s Native American Heritage month!” It is all year, it is every year. And with room, then, to build.

But it’s also budget. And building in budgets on an annual basis. And we all know that moment when we get to re-forecasting and you have an exhibition that maybe is about some other topic and scope creep, it’s getting more expensive, it’s getting more expensive. It can feel very easy for a CEO or senior leadership to say, “Well, that’s for the public. This program you’re doing with the Tongva, is that benefiting the public? It feels easy to take that money away.” But you keep that money there. That’s the significant investment that you have to put forward. As Desiree said, it’s like putting your money where your mouth is, and walking the walk and talking the talk.

But the other thing that is key is knowing that you will mess this up. We have an archive of letters from Desiree, and we’ll get more. And I don’t look forward to the next letter that I get from Desiree, because we’ll mess it up at some point. We’ll do something wrong. And I could see how some institutions… Because her letters, they pack a wallop. And I could see how someone might get one of those letters and say, “We’re not going to do this. We’ve got other things to do. We can spend our money other ways. We’ll just walk away.” But that’s the moment, then, when you reach out to Desiree and you say, “Okay, yep, we messed up. What can we learn from this? How can we do better?” So knowing that, at some point, you’ll do the wrong thing, but taking that as an opportunity to grow.

And then your question about challenges, I’ll give a couple of concrete examples. One being that we have a hands-on cart that’s open in the museum, and kids and visitors can go and have this very haptic, hands-on experience. And we had one about a different Southern California tribal nation that was not created with the community. And we took that offline so that we could create one with members from the Tongva community. But we built into that cart this rule that people who are going to be staffing the cart had to be trained, and then retrained on an annual basis by members from the community. And if, for whatever reason, we can’t find time to schedule that, that cart goes offline. And you have to be ready to say, “This thing that we made, that we invested this money and time into, if we can’t get it together and find time to schedule this training, the cart goes offline.” And you have to be ready to say to your visitors and your trustees and your staff, “This is what it takes.”

Another example, I think, of a project that does walk this walk, and the two of you can jump in because you’ve practiced and participated in it, is, as Cindi noted, the Autry has an immense collection of basketry, many of which are Tongva. And rather than think about, “Okay, an amazing exhibition, an idea for a program…” Was, “Can we open up the basketry collection to members of the community? How might we actually make that collection accessible to the community, so that they can use these baskets, learn from them, hold workshops?” Which is another one of these budgetary examples, that’s not free, that’s not cheap for the museum to do. And a trustee might say, “Well, shouldn’t we be putting money towards an exhibition, or to an education program?” No. This is reciprocity. This is something that actually truly does benefit the community. And, in turn, for staff who are also participating in listening and learning, it benefits the institution as well.

And then one other example I’ll do, we recently hosted a symposium for K-12 educators, and Cindi blessed us with her participation in that. And we had other members from tribal nations participating. And the funding for it, and kind of the logistics and everything, was covered by a very large bureaucratic institution that oversees instructional development in Los Angeles County. And it turned out they wanted final say over what each of our presenters were going to say. And we were ready to walk away and say no, even though this would put the Autry on a platform for K-12 educators who had never heard of us before, who didn’t even know that we existed. Had to be able to walk away from that if they weren’t willing to uphold what is written in our MOU with the Tongva, what is written in our collections practices, and actually runs against the ethos of the symposium that we were hosting in the first place.

So we were all really excited to do this work, but you also have to be ready to walk away, as Amy pointed out, stop and give time and space. As she said, our timelines don’t fit nice and neatly on other people’s timelines and other communities’ timelines. And so if those two don’t jive, you need to be ready to say, “We’ll stop.”

Milena Acosta:

Thank you, Sarah. I’m going to piggyback on that, and pitch it over to Germonique. As a brand new institution, one that’s still being built, how have you approached relationship-building? We’re building the Lucas Museum still, right? And with descendant communities, you’re coming into Exposition Park, there’s other institutions that are, we are neighbors, and have been there for a while. What are your unique challenges, or maybe opportunities, with being brand new in the field, and getting out there?

Germonique Ulmer:

So, this has been a real education, sitting here listening, and I’m taking notes and I’m seeing my colleagues taking notes. And I think that, at the very top of it, is the opportunity, because we can learn so much from what’s already happening, even before we open our doors. And that’s truly what we’ve been doing. I think we started, really, in a place of humility, and not really knowing a lot. And the first thing that we did was we’ve got to say that we have to do our research. We can’t start to do the community engagement, we can’t even think about a land acknowledgement until we start to do the research, and understand what the politics are, and what’s happening in the landscape.

And so that’s what we did. We spent months internally drawing from the UCLA research that we know had been in partnership with the Native community, and taking that as the basis of doing some of our own research, to really understand. And then also educating our staff. And I think one of the challenges, as a new institution, is one, that we’re growing so quickly that it’s continual education of the staff. Because in one month, we’re going to have five more people joining the staff. So when you’re rapidly growing, that’s another thing that you’ve got to think about. To your point, Amy, about the education of the staff, we have the challenge of rapid growth, because we’re in a period of building, that we think about… There’s a lot of listening happening right now at the Lucas Museum. We are constantly listening. We are going out there, and just wanting to hear and understand and learn. We’re listening to our partners within cultural institutions.

And that really speaks to the regional approach conversation that I want to bring us back to. We knew that our partners at the Natural History Museum had done so much work, and it didn’t make sense for us to start from scratch, because that work had already happened within the campus of museums that we’re located in. And so we started having these meetings as a collective, to begin to talk together with the Lucas Museum, California African American Museum, the Natural History Museum, and start to have these conversations together, so that we weren’t going to the Native community and asking the exact same questions that had already been asked, and asking for the exact same resources and tools that had already been acquired. We knew that we didn’t want to overburden the Native American community in that way.

And so the regional approach that we are here to talk about has really been such a benefit for an institution like ours, and I feel like we have been very fortunate to be able to come into this space, and be two years away from our opening, to spend these next two years to do the work that we need to do. And I really appreciate the comment that Sarah made about you’re going to make mistakes. You cannot be afraid of making those mistakes. And I have to say that there is a little bit of that, because we’ve seen already what that looks like for institutions, but we know we’ve got to continue to go, we’ve to continue to go forward. And so we’ve done the research, we’ve done the listening, we’ve done the inquiry with other institutions, and we’ve started to very slowly have the conversations that we need to have with Native communities.

And I want to share an example of how we have the support within the cultural institutions in Los Angeles. We wanted to bring on a teaching artist for an activity, a Native teaching artist for an activity that was coming up for us. And the Lucas Museum is out everywhere. We’re at festivals all over the county of Los Angeles, we’re just trying to meet people at this point. And so we were going to show up at an event that it was a Native-focus event, and we wanted to bring on a teaching artist that we would pay because we absolutely believe in paying for that time. And had started to ask our friends and partners who might be interested in that. And I got a very kind and helpful reply from Sarah, when she was like, “We’re not comfortable with sharing anyone with you all, because the Native community that we work with would really want to spend that time to create and co-create that opportunity, whatever that art making project is that you want to do, to spend that time together.”

And I’m just saying this to Sarah, right now, breaking news. I really appreciated her response to me, because it allowed us to take that step back that we needed to do, to say, “You know what? We’re going to take a different route for this particular event.” And we’re going to do that, we’re going to spend the next several months building that relationship with the teaching artist, bring somebody on board, and co-create an opportunity together. And so I only share that to say that I encourage the opportunity for institutions, when you can, to think about how you can rely on one another to be able to lessen that burden, to be able to start to think about building those resources, and not being afraid.

And I think we’ll talk a little bit more, but I think the other thing I’ll say, just about being a new institution coming into the space of learning, is that the expectations are really high. We feel like the expectations on us are really high. We feel that deeply, that, “Okay, you’ve seen what everybody else has done, y’all need to come out A+, 100, y’all better get it right.” And we feel that. And so we want to make sure that we are doing what we need to do, recognizing that we’re still going to make mistakes, we’re still going to not do the right thing, but being very intentional and thoughtful and collaborative in our process as we learn and start to build out the work that we need to do to start to create those relationships. So yeah, that’s what I would say.

Desiree Martinez:

So I’m going to actually piggyback on what you said.

Germonique Ulmer:

Yeah.

Desiree Martinez:

One of the big movements right now is decolonization. One, we’re in a colonized society, it’s never going to happen. However, people are still trying to decolonize museums, institutions, et cetera, and part of the decolonization process is a lot of institutions and people from settler communities look to Indigenous people to help you decolonize. It ain’t our problem. You need to do the work as individuals, as institutions. And it’s great that Sarah did that education, because that is the burden of having to educate institutions over and over again about the harm. It causes harm, it continues to create trauma for us to keep having these conversations over and over again, to make you guys feel better so you can pat yourselves on the back because you’re going to be decolonized. One, it’s never going to happen, but keep going, keep working with the communities and stuff like that.

But that’s one of the big things, I think, from outside of us of not engaging, is they’re having the conversation behind the scenes so that when they do come to the communities, they’re well-informed already, they’ve trained each other on possible ways. And, of course, we’re difficult and we’re mercurial, so we might be nice to you over here, but I haven’t heard from her at all. So I have to write my irate letter, but it’s one less irate letter I have to write, because somebody else has already done it, even though she did it really diplomatically. And not me, I’m in your face.

But I think that’s one of the big things, is if the institutions who have had relationships can communicate together, and share those experiences and best practices. And yes, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s just never going to happen. But you can’t let fear and mistakes stop you, because that’s part of a relationship. We always fight with each other. How many of you have a fight with your family, and then a couple of years later, at least in my family, you finally get together like, “Oh, okay, let’s go to party together, whatever.” It just happens. And it is growing pains, as well. It’s something that’s been on the move for 30 years, 50 years, et cetera, and it is changing, something that was talked about in the plenary session this morning, but we’re still learning. And we are humans.

And that’s one of the big things that Cindi always talks about. We have to see each other as humans, and if we see each other as humans first, and understand that human life and that person in front of you is also a human too, you’ll not want to make them cry when you’re mad at them. But you can work together to build that relationship, so you can move forward and obtain the goals that you want to.

Milena Acosta:

That’s great. That’s good.

Amy Gusick:

Can I ask to jump in real quick?

Milena Acosta:

Yeah.

Amy Gusick:

Just real quick.

Milena Acosta:

Yeah.

Amy Gusick:

And I wanted to say one thing too, in thinking about, as we’re talking about institutions working together and talking together, your process in your institution is going to look different. So, we’re three very different institutions, different histories, different histories with Native communities, but we can still work together. We can provide, “Hey, this has worked for us, this is what hasn’t worked for us.” And your process is going to look different than ours, but at least understanding that history of the community, understanding how we went about it, how the Autry went about it, how the Lucas is going to go about it, even though we’re very different, just having that sharing was very important for us. For all of us as well, as the Natural History Museum. And so it’s going to look different.

So don’t feel afraid to reach out to other institutions that may not look at all like yours. Even other community organizations that can provide best practices that have worked for them. They may not look like you, they may not look like your organization, have the same structure, but the relationships, you’re talking about relationships with people, and that’s universal.

Milena Acosta:

That’s great, yeah. That was my last whip around question for these folks. And we have a couple minutes for questions, just actionable tips, the thing that that’s the takeaway. And Cindi, I don’t know if you had, because Desiree answered lovely about what people can do, but just top of mind, the three Rs, or is there anything like, “Do this and you’re on the way”?

Cindi Alvitre:

Yeah, I think the three R’s, definitely. But there’s some other things. Don’t limit yourself on what can be accomplished. And I have to say with the Autry, leadership is very important within museum institutions. Having Native people as part of your staff. The Autry, without the leadership of Rick West, he really forged and opened and represented, in many different ways. To the point that we have an MOU, we have a memorandum of understanding with the Autry, having representation there. Also, don’t limit yourself as far as what you can accomplish with the communities too. Always keep those doors open.

What you don’t want to do, and I will say this, don’t be afraid. Just because it’s a difficult ground, don’t be afraid to even open up to the types of exhibition space that can be. And I will say, back in the day, the UCLA Fowler Museum, when we proposed to do a museum exhibition about the history, and we wanted to reconstruct the girls’ dormitories, which were essentially death camps. And the Fowler just totally resisted, and their curator told us, “We can’t do that, that’s too depressing.” And I said, “Well, you think it’s depressing for you to hear, you should have been there with the people who suffered through that.” So keep that in mind, if that’s part of your motivation, if that’s part of the force that keeps us grounded in what the realities of what we’re talking about, so it doesn’t get lost in the institutionalization, the agency, or anything. Yeah, back in the day, no, I was kicking some serious ass. I’m nearing 70 years old now, so I would say I’m politically mature.

Speaker 1:

My question is mostly for Desiree and Sarah. Say one wanted to go about writing an irate letter. What advice would you give them? And then Sarah, having been on the receiving end of the irate letter, what would you say really caught your attention? What was done well to help push things forward?

Desiree Martinez:

Oh, irate letters. Everybody keeps telling me… I post mine on social, so if you want to be my friend, I have to meet you, and then you can be on my Facebook, because I always post all my irate letters on Facebook, and my community’s like, “You have to list them everywhere.” For me, I go to the mission of the organization and quote back their mission to them, and say, “You said that you’re going to be doing X, Y, and Z. However, you did not do this.”

So I’m going to use the Autry as an example. My irate letter in 2002, they have American Indian marketplace where they have artists come in. And I took my niece, and they were having the cart that was there that talked about musical instruments from tribes in Southern California. And when I go, I’ve been doing this since I was little, I go to museums, and if they’re talking about my community, I pretend I don’t know nothing. I’m just a general public person. And I ask leading questions, of course. And so the woman that was doing this cart was talking about these rattles and all the different musical instruments. And I was like, “Oh, what community is it from?” “Oh, it’s from the Cahuilla, from the original lands, the people who live on this land.” I’m like, “No.” And then I said, “Actually, it’s the Gabrieleno Tongva. We’re part of the community.”

So then I went and tried to find the person in charge of the education so I could make a complaint, I couldn’t find them, and then I wrote my irate letter. But it was one of those things where you put it back into their face, and you have to put it in their words, right? It’s kind of one of the good things of being educated, is that you’re able to translate in their words, particularly if it’s a museum, of like, “Here, you want to do X, Y, and Z. You say these are your goals, this is your mission, this is your vision, and you have missed the mark by doing X, Y, and Z.” And so that was my first in.

Then we created, and we’re talking about this MOU, and three years later, I go to another woman right after this meeting with Rick West and all of our community members, and she’s there talking about one of the sticks that we use for the hot rocks. So you heat up the rock, you have a stick, you put the rock in there, and you put it in a basket to boil the food that’s in the basket. Well, she wasn’t even using the right rock, she wasn’t using the right basket.

And I was like, “Here again, you have a docent that’s talking about our community and our practices, and you’re not even using the right materials to talk about this. We just came out of a great… I was so energized after that conversation, we’re finally going to get this MOU signed, and yet you’re still providing inaccurate information.” And immediately at the time, the director of education pulled all the carts off. After a half hour, all the carts got shoved into wherever they shove them into, because they were going to reevaluate. And so that was, yeah, I had my irate letter, but they understood now how important it was to do that. So then you can, how did the Autry respond to my irate letters?

Sarah Wilson:

I think that the question was what is it about the letter that catches our attention or makes us respond? I guess I was really lucky when I started working at the Autry. I started working in the curatorial department, and I spent, I think, the first six months I was there every Wednesday afternoon with Cindi and Craig Torres and other members of the community, just learning from them and saw them as co-creators of whatever we were working on. And so by that point, any letter from Desiree, or any letter from… I take it seriously. She could be saying nonsense, which she never does, but it could be something else entirely different; I’m going to take it seriously, because we work together, we’re partners.

Desiree Martinez:

Yeah. One of the things I think hasn’t been brought up though is if you co-create content with tribes, that doesn’t mean you can then take that content and make something new without then reconsulting with the tribes. That was another irate letter I made with the Autry, was that they had been working with two of our elders on some wording and some curriculum, and then they went and took that information, created something, and then put it on the internet. And of course Desiree finds everything. I’m very good at Google, I’m always googling, I’m always Googling myself, but also the Gabrieleno Tongva. I come across stuff. And there was something on their website, it was a brand new thing that I had never seen before. And I said, “What is this?”

And then even a member, the current Native American curator, was like, “I’ve never seen this before.” And then it turns out they’re like, “Well, this is based on the information that your elders gave us.” I’m like, “But that doesn’t matter. This is something totally new. And who gave you permission? Yes, we consulted with you and have given you information, but that doesn’t give you the right to then repackage it in something that may not be in line with how we want to educate the public about our community.” So just because you consulted once and engaged us once, doesn’t mean that you can then… Which is typical academia, museum; you mine the information from our community, and go off and do what you want. And that’s not what it is about working with the community. It’s a continual relationship, where you’re working together, collaborating together, in order to create that content.

Milena Acosta:

And I think we have a couple more questions, yeah. And recognizing that we’re at time, so if anybody needs to go, that’s perfectly fine.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Sarah, you mentioned a really important part about staff time, and so this is actually for the museum staff, about your internal structures for staff working on this work. I co-founded a Indigenous solidarity committee within our institution, and it was really grassroots, from passionate, very dedicated staff who wanted to work on this, and have better and right relations with local tribes in the Bay Area of California. But now we’re at a point where we’re doing so much work as staff, I feel like I’m doing a whole extra job on top of my job. And I’m happy to, I want to work with tribes, I want to work with people, I really believe in this work. But I also think that, especially BIPOC staff, who are working on this, shouldn’t be the only voices, and we’re trying to really do similar work of educating our staff. But I really want to know about what structures, and how do you advocate for staff getting compensation, and for them getting this part of their job description, and properly being compensated for doing this type of work in an institution.

Milena Acosta:

Do you want to answer? I don’t have my microphone to speak.

Sarah Wilson:

So we have, at the Autry, our structure includes an entire department that covers, with a Vice President of Native American collections, and covers engagement with Native American communities. And they really are the point people for anything; whether it is an exhibition, or a lesson, or a public program. And so we work directly with those folks. But you’re right, it is, you get to the point where you want to do, especially in California, you want to work with all of the tribes. And that’s a lot of work. And you get to the point where the staff are overburdened, too.

Milena Acosta:

And I’ll piggyback with that. It’s Amy and I share this role, and then I have a community engagement team that supports with the execution programmatically on what happens. But the entire museum staff know that most engagement, or you want to reach out to somebody, it comes through us. But Amy has a whole other job and it’s part of my job. And so I think as these relationships grow, and we get better at the work, which is probably what you’re saying, right? You’re getting better at it. And so because of that, more is coming back to you. I think we’re at that point too, where we’re looking at how do we work within these two departments to support the greater work? Right now, I’m the Senior Manager of Community Engagement, and I have three staff that support. And so we share it there, and I think it’s just going to keep going as we go. So I know there was a couple of other hand over here. I’m fast. I can run a mile in these. That’s fine.

Donna Chrisjohn:

Hi, my name is Donna Chrisjohn, I’m from the Denver Metro Area, and I’m piggybacking off of this compensation and leadership role. So, these two fantastic ladies up here should be considered curators, and should be elevated as experts in all of your spaces. They should have their faces and their work memorialized forever for the amount of knowledge and time that they have imparted upon you. So there is not enough money that could give them that type of elevation, not enough. So you have to honor them. So go back to your three Rs, honor them, respect them, be responsible for your extractive policies by taking the thousands of years of knowledge that they are giving to you freely. And it’s really sad to listen to these conversations and to continually hear, “We’re going to compensate you.” You’re going to compensate me for an hour of my time by giving me $300, when I’ve spent a lifetime in my community receiving this knowledge. So I just want to point that out. So as your organizations are building and learning, please give them, give us, our due respect and honor for the knowledge that we impart to you.

Speaker 3:

Hello, I just want to thank you all for your time and sharing your insight, this was a really great session. I was curious, so in my personal experience working within museums, a lot of this community engagement tends to happen just within cultural departments, like anthropology, ethnology, departments like that. And I’m curious if you have worked with other departments like biology, paleontology, geology, and encouraging them how important it is for their departments as well?

Milena Acosta:

Yeah, Amy, do you want to-

Cindi Alvitre:

I want to just comment on that too, because we’re going back to acknowledgement of the people. Because I think oftentimes, Native people within museums are just inserted into history or anthropology. We’re not just history and anthropology, we are everything and all that there is in this creation, right? And yes. So then I’ll just turn it over to Amy.

Amy Gusick:

Yep. Yeah, I think that that’s a great question, and I can discuss that specifically in terms of, for instance, our research and collections division, because that’s where our different departments are housed. And I’m actually going to give a recent example of this work that we’ve been working with our other departments. We had a mountain lion within Los Angeles, P-22, who recently, unfortunately, has passed. Mountain lions, to the local communities, is an ancestor. So we worked with our biology department, with mammalogy, with our community science departments, to better understand what happens in these cases when you have an animal that is an ancestor of the peoples that have been in this space for thousands of years, what does that look like? What does that relationship look like? What do you do there?

And we engaged the communities we had with us, and other federal institutions as well that were involved in this, CDFW, et cetera, some other institutions certainly. And we had long conversations with the Native community, and we did not typically do what an institution would do, in terms of biology and accession and animal. We were able to repatriate the animal along with the agreement of, certainly, the federal agencies, back to the tribes themselves. And that was, at their request, we honored, we did not take samples from P-22 at the request of the Native community. So we listened, and I was involved in the conversations because, as you know, Milena mentioned, we manage these relationships, or friends of mine and colleagues. And we brought the biology departments, specifically the mammalogy department and other folks, into the conversation. And we’re having broader conversations about that now.

I think you’re right, everybody does focus on access to cultural, the cultural material that we care for at the museum. But that’s not all that the Native descendant communities are. They’re part of the land, their ancestors are of the land. And so being involved in decisions that are broader than simply just the anthropology department is something that, I think, is important to the Native community, and something that we’re now, because we have these relationships, that we’re actually looking towards understanding what does that look like, moving forward? And the first step in that was this situation with P-22, with the tukuurot, the mountain lion.

Milena Acosta:

And I’ll just say, real quick, and then to Germonique, one of the reasons we hosted, I moderated the intertribal conversation, which was very difficult, but I do feel that the relationships that Amy fosters, and being in that room together with people we know, helped, I think, serve as the convener for this conversation, because we held the permit, but also there was trust already built that we were going to do right by the community, and hear them, and honor them, and move us through this difficult conversation of what to do.

Germonique Ulmer:

Just one other note, just thinking about departments within the institutions. So, one of the conversations that we’ve had is around art as well. And that oftentimes, Native people in Los Angeles are being approached to hear about what their political and cultural… We ask them to come to us from that lens. “What’s the history, what’s the culture?” And I had someone tell me, “We are artists, and we would love it if you approached us as an artist sometimes, and ask us from that perspective and that lens to influence the work. You’re an art museum. We don’t want to just tell you about our history. Ask us about our practice and the work we do.” And so that was information that we’ve taken back, and now we’re bringing together Native American artists into a round table to have conversations about that piece too. So I think there’s lots of ways that we need to start to relate as people, and not just look at one way and one lens in which we engage.

Milena Acosta:

I love that. Just contemporary. It’s this combating that invisibility, but also saying this is an active and thriving community now. We’re well over time, but I don’t know if anybody has a burning question. I’ll just do one more and then we’ll end it.

Felicia Alvarez:

Hello, my name is Felicia Alvarez, and I’m an employee at the Denver Art Museum. I’m a facility supervisor, and I’ve been there 26 years. I just wanted to address something. I do serve on our Indigenous, our advisory committee as well, as well as other sustainability efforts and whatnot. But my question, and this is what I address with our advisory committee, when we were in the process of opening the Martin facility, part of our responsibility as the advisory committee was to come up with some labeling to speak about some of the pieces that may represent us as our tribal nations. I am enrolled Eastern Shoshone. So for me, when I was asked to do that, for me, I didn’t feel it was my responsibility, it was an elder’s responsibility, okay? So my question to you, what are you doing to involve your elders of your communities, of your tribal nations in California?

So also, my other question, part of our ancestral belongings, they’re alive, they’re still here, they’re a part of who we are. But the other part of that is what are we doing to preserve the languages of those communities? Because part of who we are is our language. So I would hope and pray to see, in all of our museums, that we’re going to be conserving our languages that go with all of these belongings of our ancestors. So I just wanted to ask those questions.

Cindi Alvitre:

Let me just respond to the elders, and I think I said it before that I don’t represent my entire community. I can’t. I resist the term elder. When I’m 80? Maybe. But part of my action, and I think the conversations that we engage in with all of them, is to acknowledge who are those elders? And who are the people who don’t get a voice? There’s a difference between cultural scholarship and academic scholarship. Without the cultural scholarship, that’s the elders, that’s everybody, anthropology would not exist. So I think we make a very special effort, Desiree does, to acknowledge everybody and to bring everybody into the conversation. You’re absolutely right, because as we’re back to institutions want to choose one person to take the responsibility, you can’t do it. I can’t do it. And I resist that. I resist that. That’s part of my resistance. And as action too, is to always draw in the people, the people, the people. The young, the old, but especially our elders. And we know that. Yeah, I’m on that list, where that elder list is getting shorter and shorter. So thanks for the question. That’s a great question.

Milena Acosta:

All right. I think we’re going to end it there. Thank you so much everyone, for being here and for staying all the way through. Appreciate you. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.