The American Museum of Natural History apparently plans to wall off the exhibit halls which once housed 10,000 square feet of Native American relics, The Post has learned.
A day after the famed museum abruptly stripped its spaces dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains tribes, rolling walls were in place to block the once thriving part of the facility.
“The artifacts in this case have been removed from view because the Museum does not have consent to display them,” according to a sign posted near the restricted area.
The changes come in the wake of new federal regulations under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which requires the museum to ship artifacts back to the tribes they came from as part of a process in which the tribes will give consent to what can be displayed.
“These big institutions that are shutting down this many square feet could have taken preemptive steps to try to reconcile and work with tribes and it took a change in NAGPRA regulations to take them down,” noted Sunshine Bear-Thomas, the cultural preservation director and tribal historic preservation officer for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
Small tribal repatriation teams like hers will be busy as institutions reach out for consultation but it’s a “problem they welcome,” Bear-Thomas told The Post.
She is not aware of any Winnebago artifacts at the AMNH, but said she “wants to bring our items home.”
“It should always be up to the tribe what they want to do as sovereign nations,” she added.
The changes were made quickly Friday, hours after museum director Sean Decatur announced the news.
The law applies to human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony, according to Decatur.
NAGPRA was passed in 1990 but implementation of the law lagged. The Biden administration has pushed to speed up the process, which led to new rules finalized in December.
An immediate effect of the closures will be the suspension of school field trips to the Eastern Woodlands hall, Decatur said.
“I think New Yorkers should have had a chance to say goodbye,” said one museum-goer Saturday, disappointed that there wasn’t an earlier warning.
People flooded the halls on Friday to get their last peek at the exhibits, which featured items like an Iroquois longhouse, a Menominee birchbark canoe and clothing from Cree, Cheyenne, Assiniboine and Crow tribes.
In addition to entirely closing its halls dedicated to Native Americans, the museum will also be covering three cases just outside of the Eastern Woodlands Hall and two cases in the Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples.
Glass cases near the entrance to the halls will be covered with brown paper and walls will go up near the third-floor staircase, the staffer said.
The artifacts are expected to return once tribes have been consulted, giving visitors “proper context,” the staffer said, adding, “These communities still exist … [we] might as well show how vibrant they were, how vibrant they are.”
The museum did not immediately respond to questions from The Post.