Museums need new ways to deal with Indigenous art that sits at the crossroads of commerce and repatriation.

The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990 marked a turning point in museum practice. For the first time, federal law required institutions to return Indigenous human remains, funerary objects, sacred items, and objects of cultural patrimony to affiliated tribes.

Yet, despite its strengths, NAGPRA contains a significant omission. It excludes objects created for commercial sale. This legal silence has led many institutions to adopt a default position: that if an item was produced for the market, it is not culturally significant. This assumption is deeply problematic.

Consider, for example, an Iñupiaq mask once catalogued simply as an “[Inuit ceremonial mask],” circa the late 19th century. Subsequent research, however, suggests that the mask was created not for ceremonial use but for sale within the burgeoning Arctic tourist market. While it may have been produced for commercial purposes, such an object cannot be reduced to the status of a mere souvenir. Its form, materials, and iconography point to cultural meanings that transcend transactional value.

This scenario raises critical questions at the heart of contemporary museum practice: How should such an object be classified and cared for? What protocols should guide its interpretation and potential repatriation? And most importantly, how do source communities understand and value these works within their own cultural frameworks?

Learning from the Collection

Indigenous communities do not necessarily separate the sacred from the commercial in the same ways that Western institutions do. Items made for sale may still be imbued with ceremonial importance, carry deep cultural knowledge, and retain spiritual power. The categories set forth by NAGPRA, while foundational, cannot fully account for this complexity. At the Syracuse University Art Museum, three groups of objects in our collection—Akimel O’odham baskets, Catawba pottery, and an Iñupiaq mask—have been particularly instructive in revealing the nuances of cultural significance within the context of market engagement.

Akimel O’odham basketry traditions are intimately tied to their desert environment in what is now southern Arizona. Coiled baskets made from willow shoot and devil’s claw often display geometric designs rich in cultural meaning. However, after the Gila River was diverted in the late 19th century, undermining traditional agriculture, many Akimel O’odham women turned to basket-making as a means of economic survival. This shift gave rise to new forms: decorative pieces, miniatures, and baskets featuring nontraditional motifs. To outside observers, this transformation might seem like cultural erosion. However, conversations with community members revealed that essential cultural knowledge, seasonal harvesting, ceremonial protocols, and design symbology remained intact. Rather than eroding tradition, the market enabled its continuity.

The history of Catawba pottery offers another compelling case. Catawba women preserved hand-building techniques across centuries of colonization, land loss, and assimilation policies. As traditional livelihoods became untenable, potters adapted their work to market demands, selling door-to-door, creating miniatures for tourists, and producing replicas for collectors. To some, these adaptations may seem to be a cultural compromise. Yet they allowed for the uninterrupted transmission of knowledge regarding clay sourcing, preparation, firing, and form. When a pottery revival occurred in the 1960s, this deep reservoir of knowledge remained accessible because potters had never ceased working, even amid adversity.

Iñupiaq masks, traditionally used in ceremonies such as the Kivgiq (Messenger Feast), once played critical roles in spiritual and communal life. Missionary suppression of these practices led to the decline of ceremonial usage, but some artisans continued making masks for anthropologists, collectors, and art markets. This history raises critical questions. At what point does a mask cease to be sacred? Can an object created for sale still hold spiritual power if it follows ceremonial protocols or incorporates traditional materials? My experience suggests there is no universal answer. Each mask embodies its own history and relationship to cultural and spiritual practice. Understanding these nuances requires centering the voices of originating communities rather than imposing external classifications.

These encounters have challenged my understanding of how museums conceptualize Indigenous art. Western institutions tend to rely on binaries such as sacred versus commercial, authentic versus inauthentic, and traditional versus contemporary. Yet Indigenous material culture often resists these reductive categories.

A more useful framework is a spectrum. At one end are objects used exclusively in ceremony; at the other are items produced to market specifications. Most objects fall somewhere in between. A Catawba pot might be simultaneously utilitarian, ceremonial, and decorative. An Iñupiaq mask can be both a commercial product and a sacred artifact. A basket may hold spiritual meaning even when sold to outsiders.

Improving Our Museum Practice

A transformative realization for me has been the recognition of Indigenous agency within these market dynamics. Museums often interpret commercial production as cultural dilution. Yet many Indigenous artists have made strategic, culturally informed decisions about what to share, how to produce, and whom to sell to. They have preserved ceremonial protocols even in market-oriented work, actively navigating the intersection of tradition and adaptation.

These shifts in perspective have led to substantive changes in museum practice at Syracuse. In our cataloguing efforts, we have revised object records to better reflect Indigenous worldviews and knowledge systems. We now ask new questions: How was the object made? What does it mean to its community of origin? Does it retain ceremonial value?

Most significantly, we have expanded consultation practices to include objects previously excluded from NAGPRA processes. We now consult with communities about market objects, recognizing their potential cultural significance.

In our interpretation, we avoid dismissive terminology. Rather than using the phrase “tourist pottery,” we opt for more nuanced descriptors such as “pottery made during the tourist period, reflecting traditional knowledge and economic adaptation.”

The future of ethical museum practice with Indigenous collections does not lie in reinforcing legal definitions or institutional binaries. Rather, it lies in sustained listening and relationship-building. Market production should not be assumed to signal cultural loss. In many cases, it represents resilience and continuity.

Museums have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, to support cultural survivance by recognizing the layered meanings embedded in objects that cross ceremonial and commercial domains. This work is not always simple, but it is essential. These objects are not merely artifacts in our care; they are living expressions of cultures that have endured profound disruption. Our responsibility is to steward them with integrity and respect

Best Practices for Museum Professionals

When rethinking market objects, start with questions rather than assumptions. Investigate who made an object, how it was made, and what it means to its community.

Expand consultation beyond NAGPRA requirements. Legal mandates should serve as the foundation of engagement, not the ceiling.

Revise problematic language, replacing reductive terms like “tourist art” with more nuanced, contextual descriptors. If the meaning of an object is unclear, document that uncertainty rather than making assumptions.

Replace “unknown” artist attributions with labels that recognize the tribal communities from which the object originated and acknowledge the historical erasure of Indigenous artists and makers.

Consider adopting a spectrum model that acknowledges how many objects occupy multiple interpretive categories.

In building better relationships with Indigenous groups, it is essential to listen first and allow community voices to guide curatorial decisions.

Support contemporary makers and artists by connecting historical collections to living artistic practices.

Share authority through collaborative cataloguing and exhibition planning.

Be patient. Relationship-building takes time, especially given the harms inflicted by institutions in the past.

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Maeve R. Donnelly is a collections assistant at the Syracuse University Art Museum in New York.