Native Agency, NAGPRA, and Museums

In this episode, Rose Campbell, Assistant Director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy, welcomes guests Stephen Aron and Joe Horse Capture of the Autry Museum of the American West to discuss the historical power imbalance between Native American tribes and museums. Historically, museums collected Native objects, and even human remains, through coercive or unethical means, reflecting a colonial mindset that prioritized research and display over Indigenous rights. Recent updates to Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act regulations in 2025 aim to strengthen tribal authority by incorporating Native knowledge and oral traditions when determining cultural significance. 

Stephen Aron is the Calvin and Marilyn Gross Director and President and CEO of the Autry Museum after a three-decade career as a professor of history, first at Princeton University and then at UCLA. He is the author of How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay, The American West: A Very Short Introduction, and Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West. 

Joe Horse Capture is the Vice President of Native Collections and Ahmanson Curator of Native History and Culture at the Autry Museum and a member of the A’aniiih tribe, from Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north central Montana. He co-authored the collection book titled Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection with David W. Penney. A second-generation museum professional, Horse Capture was the first director of Native A

Transcript

Narrator 0:11

Welcome to the History Politics Podcast, putting the past to work from UCLA's Luskin Center for History and Policy. We study change in order to make change, linking knowledge of the past to the quest for a better future. Every other week we examine the most pressing issues of the day through a historical lens, helping us understand what happened then and what that means for us now.

Rose Campbell 0:39

Welcome to the History Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work. I'm Rose Campbell, Assistant Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, which hosts this podcast. The relationship between Native Americans and museums has historically been characterized by an imbalance of power and a colonial desire to keep and collect items for study and display in museums. Particularly in the early days of American anthropology, it was common practice to obtain these cultural items and even human remains through dubious, if not outright illegal and certainly immoral methods. And many institutions felt that they had the right to retain and study these remains. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which has become some of the most influential legislation surrounding Native peoples of the U.S. The law allowed Native American tribes to file claims for human remains, grave goods, sacred objects, and important cultural items from any institution receiving federal funds. At the same time, these institutions were required to assess their collections and make a good faith effort to identify and return these remains. An update to NAGPRA, which took effect in early 2025, required institutions to obtain consent before exhibiting cultural items or human remains, strengthening the authority of tribal knowledge in repatriation claims, and implementing stricter deadlines to expediate repatriation when possible. Joining us today to discuss repatriation and the relationship between Native tribes and museums are Stephen Aron and Joe Horse Capture. Steve is the Calvin and Marilyn Gross director, president, and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West. In this role, he has led the Autry and its exhibitions toward more critical considerations of how we conceptualize the history of the West and the role of Native communities. He is also currently considering how museums can rethink repatriation and their relationships with Native communities to promote healing and collaboration moving forward. Joe is the Vice President of Native Collections and Engagement, Amundsen Curator, and the Chief Curator at the Autry. Joe recently organized and curated an exhibition at the Autry titled Creative Continuities: Family, Pride, and Community in Native Art, which features reflections from three contemporary Plains Indian artists on Native works created by their ancestors and displayed in the exhibition. Welcome to both of you.

Stephen Aron 3:24

It's a pleasure to be here.

Joe Horse Capture 3:26

It's great to be here. Thank you.

Rose Campbell 3:28

So let's start with a little bit of background. Steve, could you talk a little bit about your background and how you ended up at the Autry?

Stephen Aron 3:36

Well, as I think you know, Rose, and some people may be listening to this podcast, I spent most of my career uh as a professor of Western history, uh history of the American West at UCLA. Um, and I guess my one of the proudest legacies I left when I retired from UCLA to take the position at the Autry was the role I played in helping to establish the Luskin Center for History and Policy, of which this podcast is a part. Um I was fortunate during my time at UCLA to be able to, for a number of years, to split my appointment uh between UCLA and the Autry Museum. Uh, and that's how I became involved back in about 2002 or so with the Autry as the founding executive director of what was then the Institute for the Study of the American West, which oversaw the libraries, research, publications, programs, and education uh departments at the Autry. Uh so that's how I've sort of came through and have now found my way into the museum world.

Rose Campbell 4:39

Well, a huge thank you again for your pivotal role in the foundation of LCHP. We're so glad that not only you contributed to that, but that you can join us again here today. And Joe, how about you? What is your background and how did you end up at the Autry?

Joe Horse Capture 4:52

Uh so I'm Joel Horse Capture. I am a member of the A’aniiih tribe, um, located in Fort Belnap Reservation in north central Montana. Um, I am a second-generation curator. My father, George Horse Capture Sr., was one of the first Native American curators in the country in 1979 at the uh Plains Indian Museum in Cody, Wyoming. Whenever your parents that tell you that they want you to do something and follow in your footsteps, a natural natural way of thinking, particularly um, you know, as a young person, is no way I'm never gonna do that. So, of course, my father encouraged me to be in the museum business, and I was like, no way I'm not gonna do that until I got an internship at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1990, working under um Dr. Evan Maurer. And I was there as an intern, and I realized dang it, I'm really enjoying this. So I was I worked with Evan for a couple of years, um, ended up going back to Montana and went to college. I went back to the Minneapolis Institute of Art where I was a curator there for 15 years. Then I went to the National Museum of the American Indian for a couple of years in DC, back to Minnesota for the Minnesota Historical Society for a few years. Um had different gigs in Europe, and then I've been here at the Autry since uh 2020.

Rose Campbell 6:26

So you've worked all over not just the country but the world, then that sounds like well, just Europe.

Joe Horse Capture 6:31

I wouldn't say the world, but just Europe. It's been I've been I've been very, very lucky in in the work that I've been doing.

Rose Campbell 6:38

Well, so given this broad experience, I would love to hear a little bit more about the history of Native art and collections in museums, how those have been handled, how tribes have interacted with museums, um, and how that relationship has gone.

Joe Horse Capture 6:52

Sure. So the you know, the the terms are always a bit loaded. You know, the term you know Native art really is a reasonably new thing. You know, the first one of the first times that museums, as though they're the they imposed themselves as the authority, had really organized a Native art show wasn't until you know the 1930s. But prior to that, Native works, Native objects were just things, a part of the ethnographic part of the world. And they get put in with all the other non-Western cultures, Africa, Oceanic, and Native America. So that has been happening for um a very long time, you know, originally a cabinet of curiosities. Everybody sort of got on board to collect the other, the exotic. Even uh at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, he has his sort of his grand hall, which actually isn't that grand, where he collected many Native American objects as well from his different travels. But I think the the interesting part about it, which um I think probably happened to a lot of many of these cultures, Africa, Oceanic, and Native and Native America, is when these works were collected, they were often collected without the consent or certainly under questionable circumstances from the cultures where the works came from. So that creates a number of problems. It creates a problem for the culture, excuse me, obviously, because they're losing these items, which are very, very important to their um to their cultural well-being. And they end up in museums where you know they're only handled, you know, I always say tongue in cheek, you know, they're they're handled, you know, in climate control. You can only have certain kind of humidity and temperature and light. God forbid you actually touch them with your hand. But you know, these works were actually um, you know, they were loved. You know, they were in the community, they were being used, they were maybe sold, um under duress, sometimes they're outright stolen. Um these, you know, the these works now sit in multiple facilities all over the world, including us. And they were taking from the from the culture, and you know, oftentimes the culture still, the tribes still wants to continue these ways, or maybe they have these these items that certainly help them fulfill their um, you know, whether they're ceremonies or cultural building or whatever the case may be. So it's a it is sort of quite the challenge to try to figure out how to rebuild and make these connections again.

Rose Campbell 9:43

Well, and if I can follow up briefly on that, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of museums used to also house Native American remains and objects in their natural history section, right? Absolutely.

Joe Horse Capture 10:02

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Human remains, funerary objects. Yeah. All the all the bad aspects of that type of collecting.

Rose Campbell 10:13

Yeah, definitely a fraught history. So I'd like to move now to Steve for a moment and talk about NAGPRA legislation, which was a huge step forward in this relationship between Native tribes and museums. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the history of NAGPRA and historically how museums have interacted with Native individuals and tribes through the lens of NAGPRA.

Stephen Aron 10:39

So I often, and I realize this is an audio-only podcast, but here is one moment that I wish it were visual, because I've learned to sort of explain this more with my hands, talk with my hands. Uh, so you're gonna have to sort of maybe describe what I'm doing. But in the show version of this, as opposed to the merely tell, I sort of often say that the historical relationship, and this echoes most of what Joe was just saying, um, the historical relationship was museums here, and I'm holding one hand above my head, um, and Native communities here, and then I'm holding one hand at my waist, or actually now I'm switching that hand behind my back to suggest that certainly prior to NAGPRA, and for the long history that Joe was describing and the relationship between museums and Native communities, uh, museums held all the power essentially, and Native communities were not only just down here, but they were often completely out of the picture, forgotten when it came to making decisions about how objects should be handled or conserved, how they should be interpreted, how they should be exhibited, to whom they might be loaned, et cetera, et cetera. NAGPRA tried emerging in the 19 in 1990, that act tried to reframe that relationship. It was at least a first attempt within the United States, and it only applied within the United States, to try to bring Native communities into the picture again and to allow them to have a voice in a say, starting with um reclaiming and repatriating objects into their collections. I think, though, that whatever the intentions were, uh and Joe can speak to this, I think, in more depth because he has more uh historical experience with it, whatever the intentions were behind the original iteration of NAGPRA in 1990, it didn't always work out the way it was supposed to. And that in fact, a lot of museums, I would argue, filibustered or simply didn't really put the resources into play to try to um activate repatriation efforts. Um and so I think a lot of although certain things move forward, I think there was an awful lot of stalling and um institutions that really did very little in terms of sending um things back to their sending thing, sending objects and human remains and funerary objects back to their home communities.

Rose Campbell 13:05

So let's follow up on that for a minute then, because it sounds like one of the original shortcomings of NAGPRA was that there weren't necessarily consequences for these institutions that might have dragged their feet a little bit, if I'm understanding you correctly. So, what were some of the shortcomings of NAGPRA in its original form?

Stephen Aron 13:23

Well, I think Joe, you want to speak a little bit to this? Because you actually dealt with it much more than I did.

Joe Horse Capture 13:28

Yeah, so they as Steve mentioned, you know, 1990 version of NAGPRA is certainly well intended, but it gave a lot of power to museums to determine where um items came from, and they would make the final determination of what returned. And I think for many Native communities, and of course I can't speak for all Native communities, I can only discuss my experience, you know, their number one priority is going to be um their ancestors, getting their ancestors back and and putting them putting them back in their community and laying them to rest. Then following that is um um funerary objects and sacred objects and objects of cateral cultural patrimony, often um referred to as cultural items. But as Stephen mentioned, a lot of the museums they had dragged their feet. You know, they wouldn't necessarily turn in the paperwork on time. There was some consequences, but I'm not sure they were enforced very well at all. And so having the putting the museum to have all the power, right? So at some point, some anthropologist somewhere did all the collecting that ends up in the museum. Native tribe says, hey, you know, you have our ancestors there, um, and we'd like them back, and museums make determination whether that's a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So it really weighs heavy on cult uh museum museums to make this determination, which was shown as uh in tribes expressed, and I think both Steve and I would agree that having museums have all that type of power is extremely problematic when you're working with a living culture and um you know have um human remains and items that probably should not be housed in a museum.

Rose Campbell 15:22

Yeah, quite the power imbalance there. Who gets to decide who owns history and a lot?

Stephen Aron 15:27

So, in some sense, then to anticipate um the what happens then, I think obviously you referenced the the revisions or the reframing uh of NAGPRA in the 2025 uh the new regs put out there. I would say that some museums also began to change. And I'd like to think that the Autry was one of those museums that tried to instigate some of that change, even apart from the federal legislation, that in 2022 we put in place um our management of Native collections policy, which in many ways anticipated what was to come with the 2025 uh revision to the Federal Act or to the uh to the to the NACRA regulations. Uh in our case, we mandated that the Autry would uh collaborate with, consult with, gain the consent of Native community source communities before we would exhibit or uh material, how we would display it, what we would display, to who we might loan it, um, how we would work and conserve it. Um so we began, I think, with that internal policy, um not alone, other museums I think were doing similar things, to shift the balance already. Um, and then I think uh the new regs uh put in place to mandate many of those things, um, as well as, and this is the critical um I think distinction between that and the 1990s, as well as to shift, as Joe put it, the balance of power uh more towards Native knowledge, to empower Native knowledge, to give, I would argue, primacy to it in the absence of other compelling evidence, certainly, so that Native testimony about the um about the about the what these objects were would carry greater weight than whatever some anthropologist might have said from you know 80 or 100 years ago or 150 years ago, whenever the materials were collected.

Rose Campbell 17:29

So let's actually talk about that for a moment. What are these new additions to NAGPRA? What do they mean for museums and how do they change the game?

Joe Horse Capture 17:37

Well, a couple of things. First, it shortens the timeline where museums need to respond to repatriation requests and also when they need to post it and work more with tribes. Secondly, it you know, the you know, human remains and you know, funerary objects, you know, those are, for lack of a better way of putting it, almost no-brainers that that that they need to be returned. Right. I mean, I think in this day and age it's very challenging to find a museum that um disagrees with having the ancestors go back to their home community. So the next section, of course, is sacred objects that are housed in museum collections and then cultural items. And the new repatriation law or the addendum to NAGPRA really puts a lot of power with Native knowledge. Because before, in order to sort of prove something was sacred, it needed to be documented. So which means a non-Native anthropologist deems what is sacred. So it's you know, I can find this in Brill American Ethnology, volume 42, page 126. It says this, therefore it's okay. Where with a new re with a with a reconfigured law, it says that Native knowledge, aka oral tradition, has takes primacy over deeming what the item is. So that which is really, really important because it's sort of it well not sort of, it definitely sort of changes the the the power to go more with Native communities, which is great. Also in the previous version, it really sort of spells out what is qualified. You know, what is a you know, you have to prove what a sacred object is, you have to prove what an item of cultural patrimony is. And I'd mentioned that that um that designation comes from the tribes, but also in the new set in the new regulations, it uses a term cultural items. And in the new legislation, if you look at what cultural items are and how one defines that, it does not say that the museum defines it and says that what cultural items are are defined by the tribe. So it really changes the dynamic to put a lot more power in the tribe, um, to deem what is important to them, and at the end of the day, what they would like to claim under repatriation. So I think those are really, really transformational uh points that really change the law in favor of Native tribes having many of their items. And I've said before, you know, human remains and funerary objects are sort of no-brainers, um, but items return back to um their home communities.

Rose Campbell 20:38

Steve, would you like to add anything about how museums have worked with repatriation? You already talked a little bit about the Autry specifically, but with these new NAGPRA regulations.

Stephen Aron 20:47

Well, one thing is, and I think it's important to make this distinction, and this is what I worry about too. Um we sometimes blur here by talking about new legislation. And it's not new legislation because obviously um uh you know that would require an act of Congress. And this was not the 2025 regs, that the original 1990 is from an act of Congress. It's it's the law. The 2025 is a reinterpretation of how the law should work. Um and my concern is um, I worry from the from the in the grander scheme that one the Trump administration might overturn the new regs as they do other Biden-era initiatives. Um, or the courts might um uh see this as administrative overreach in the way that some of the decisions by um U.S. courts have, uh, especially by conservative courts, have have turned uh different kinds of administrative uh rulings aside, turned different kinds of administrative rulings aside. Um so my own issue is I think to and I've I sometimes argue that we need to think of NAGPRA. Not as the ceiling, which I think too often it has been thought of by many museums, but as the floor upon which to build a very different kind of relationship between museums and Native communities, one based on uh mutual respect and one based on, I would argue, um shared stewardship. Um and so from my point of view at the Autry, I hope the direction we're moving in and the Native collections policy that we put in place in 2022 certainly sets that direction is towards one in which we maybe explore different forms of who owns what, even. Um and maybe we sort of cede ownership, but we continue to sort of uh conserve, you know, to conserve and hold at the tribe's behest in some cases, but again, only displaying it uh or what we do with it, again, requiring the tr the consent of the uh source community. Um so I hope that where we're moving in terms of museums' relationship with Native communities and the larger scheme of repatriation is one that, as I say, goes beyond where NAGPRA goes and really um I think creates something uh different and I hope uh better for both museums and Native communities.

Joe Horse Capture 23:20

Yeah, if I if I can just follow up on what Steve said, I think this is really an important point, is many museums, including ours, you know, ours is telling the story of the West. And if you're not working with the folks who you are presenting or featuring in your museum, are you really telling that story properly? So I think with a Native American collection policy, at least for us on the Autry side, first and then the modification of NAGRA, um it really sets it really sort of sets an example that if we're gonna tell stories in the gallery and in our museum, our education materials, programming, whatever the case may be, you have to work with the people of where these items come from. Otherwise, you're sort of you're you're telling a story without their consent. And of course, one would argue, is that really a story? So I think our Native collections policy, as well as uh NAGPRA, really forces museums. And for us, we you know, we we we certainly embrace embrace this change to ensure that we work with um these communities when we tell their stories, when people come and research, um, whatever the case may be. Really, really important.

Stephen Aron 24:45

So I think actually this would be a good opportunity in terms of giving a concrete example. Um, Joe, if you would talk a little bit about how the exhibit that's currently on display at the Autry, and I'm nothing as a director, if not one who's going to put shameless plugs forward for the Autry Museum, um, if you would talk a little bit about how creative continuities came together as a model of how this kind of exhibition making works.

Joe Horse Capture 25:12

So in 2022, um, I reached out to three Native American artists, John Pepion from Blackfeet, Brocade Stops Black Eagle from Crow, as well as Jessa Rae Growing Thunder from Fort Peck, with the idea of creating an exhibition in a way through their eyes. And it was really important to me um to find folks who are reasonably well versed with their cultural ways. Um, secondly, it was important to me to find younger people as opposed to this, you know, ancient Native American elder who bestows this knowledge. You know, I I wanted to avoid that. I really wanted to show that these um these narratives are really embedded within um within their tribe. And of course, the best way to demonstrate that is to younger people. So I worked with all three of them. Um they came out a few times um together as old as well as individually, and we pulled the works from their communities, um, which we have in our in our collection. And you know, we worked together um to make a selection of items. And then from there we sort of broke it down into different themes. And as we were talking about these items, I uh recorded everything with their you know, with their consent. And um through that recording, I made transcripts for all three of them, but 70 pages each. And I really wanted the visitor not to get sort of the strange heavenly voice of the curatorial bestowed upon them in the gallery. Instead, I wanted the narrative to come from real people, real Native folks who's who are related to these items because it came from their ancestors. So the show I think is I haven't done the numbers, um, it's probably maybe 90% first-person voice, so it's in their voice, which I think adds a real nice tangibility to it. And then so I started that in um 2022, and when the repatriation law um was modified, I had to double back and reach out to the THPOs, Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, who are the official government, uh, tribal government arm that takes care of these, takes care of these type of issues. I reached out to them and you know told them what we're doing and who we're working with, um and what items we're gonna use. Some of them were like, yeah, that's fine. Some of them were I like to see the text before it goes to the gallery, which is all fine. So we you know got that blessing to go forward. Um, but I think it for for me it really demonstrates a number of things that first person voices, particularly in the museum setting, I think is critical not only for the understanding of the work, but also um I would argue that I think the visitor connects better with a first-person voice. Secondly, is these items in the gallery are not only um consented for the curatorial consultant we work with, but also from uh from the tribe. So it's really, you know, it's very fortunate to have really good folks to work with. The THPOs were great to work with, and I think it's certainly a model that we will continue to use in the future.

Stephen Aron 28:46

I mean, I would say compare that approach and the resulting exhibition with, I guess, the kind of natural history museum uh exhibition that you probably saw as a child. Uh I think fewer and fewer of those, now many of the natural history museums have abandoned that older style. But compare the exhibition that Joe described with the kind of exhibition that you used to see in natural history museums presenting this material, again, um, as dead things from a distant past, with an omniscient anthropological curatorial voice, um, sort of providing whatever commentary and expertise uh was was deemed required or deemed necessary.

Joe Horse Capture 29:33

No dioramas, no little tiny Indians in the in the museum, you know, pushing buffalo up a cliff or you know, spearing mammoths. That's something that's off the table.

Stephen Aron 29:45

Well, I think actually one of the other things to emphasize about creative continuities, I would argue, is it's very much an art exhibition, um, both contemporary work and historical work, in dialogue with one another. Uh, and the contemporary artists providing the commentary that creates the conversation between the work by ancestors and the work by present-day um artists.

Rose Campbell 30:15

Wonderful. So as we wrap up here, I'd like to get each of your thoughts on the future, things that you hope to see for relationships between Native tribes and museums, and this idea of repatriation, we've been throwing around this term a lot. Is that the term we should be using? Is there some other term that we should use instead to symbolize this hopefully more collaborative and equal relationship with tribes? What what do you hope for going forward?

Stephen Aron 30:43

So um because I'm a slave to alliteration, I don't know that I can get out, get beyond our words, but ones that have been suggested, look, repatriation up until relatively recently, um, as I did a study of this, repatriation until the really the 1980s almost always referred to the returning of people to their to their countries from which they had been expelled. And that certainly has important meaning in Native America, where removal and relocation were uh uh were the were the were the common denominator of most Native American experiences. Um have suggested that restitution might be a better word, reparation, restoration. Somewhere I'm gonna get beyond our words here, but I do think um there's, as I say, a variety in play. To me, what's most important, as I said, um, is to try to move beyond that historical, the problematic historical relationship, uh, and to really pioneer uh new approaches. I think we have models, for example, in other countries, Canada, comes to mind, where they eschewed the legalistic framework that NAGPRA and moved towards uh trying to create relations based on, as I say, mutual understandings and uh conversations between museums and Native communities. Sometimes that's worked, sometimes less so. But I'd as I say I'd like to move beyond where everything is uh hamped out by lawyers. Um nothing against lawyers, but um I'd rather move to a system where, as I said, uh we built our relationship on other foundations. Um and I think Joe and I have had some conversations, including about some objects that are now under consideration for accession into the archery's collection, about really steering them in a different direction uh to open up uh this, I think, uh different future uh and and different uh way of uh thinking about who owns uh the past and who owns or who might control these objects.

Joe Horse Capture 32:59

So, Steve, if I can add another word to your R-word salad, uh I would I I would I would add reclaim. It's Native tribes. Again, I can't speak for everybody, but it's been my experience, you know, Native tribes, you know, they want to reclaim, you know, they want to reclaim how their history is told. They want to reclaim works that were important to their ancestors, which reflectively uh are important to them. They want to reclaim their ancestors. It's pretty an easy, pretty straightforward one there. Want to reclaim their language, reclaim their food, reclaim their lifeways. To me, it's really about reclaiming. Now, with the relationship between museums and tribes, you know, as we mentioned earlier, it has always historically been a very hostile one. And of course, that and understandably so, and many tribes are challenged by museums today, again, understandably so. Um but I hope that there is a opportunity where museums, of course, are experts in taking care of items, telling stories, you know, these, you know, these type of things, where we can work collaboratively with tribes. And not everybody is gonna want to do that. It's completely understandable. Where we can work collaboratively on presentation of items, um, obviously returning items as they see fit, but really a partnership, I guess one would say, to ensure that the stories that they want to tell can be told in a proper way. And as Steve mentioned, that may mean co-ownership, which is great. But we need to really sit down together and redefine those who want to sit down and redefine what this relationship looks like. I think it's very, very important.

Stephen Aron 35:09

So, if I may also again uh put on my plugging hat, um, and that is to say, just think about the immediate future. Um, Joe has already touted and I hope convinced um all in your audience, Rose, to come to see Creative Continuities and come visit the Autry. But here I want him to now tease um his upcoming exhibition on which he's been working for several years. Um and uh this one I think will certainly attract you all to the Autry in the starting in the fall of 2027. Joe.

Joe Horse Capture 35:48

So I've been working for a few years on this exhibition. Um it's about Native American skateboarding. It opens up here September 2027, and I'm working with five Native American communities. I'm working with Blackfeet, Pine Ridge, Um, Fort Belknap, Bolivia. There's a skate community down there, as well as Warm Springs, Oregon. And as one surprising to many folks, is there's a lot of skate parks in Native communities, either on the reservation or close to them. And the show is really about it's several, sort of has several different themes to them. One of them is how Native artists use skateboard decks as a form artistically as a form of cultural expression. The other aspect is how skateboarding, particularly in the homeland, uh impacts them and their culture and a way how's how does it rebuild it or how does it fortify it? And how do these small communities really help youth? Um, also, some of the decks reference um have designs related to historical objects. So there's a conversation between the decks and kind of what they do, as was items that were created by their ancestors. So um we did our homework with our planning. The show opens up here at the Autry um on September 2027, and it'll be up for a year and a half, which means it'll be here for the Olympics. And as we know, skateboarding, which is a Southern California invention, although surfing is a Native invention. Um we'll make sure that the show is up for um the Olympics. And I look forward to everybody coming to the Autry, of course, signing up for the membership first, and then coming to the Autry for uh exclusive previews of the exhibition.

Rose Campbell 37:51

Well, on that note, I will add to the list and say do go to the Autry, it is exceptional, and I have seen the Creative Continuities exhibition. It was wonderful, and now I'm really excited about this skateboarding one, which also sounds amazing. So thank you both so much for joining us today, for sharing your perspectives, and we appreciate your time and all of your unique insights.

Stephen Aron 38:12

You're very welcome. Pleasure.

Joe Horse Capture 38:14

Thank you, Rose.

Narrator 38:24

Thank you for listening to the History Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work from UCLA's Luskin Center for History and Policy. You can learn more about our work or share your thoughts with us at our website, luskincenter@history.ucla.edu. Our show is produced by David Myers and Roselyn Campbell with original music by Daniel Reichman. Special thanks to the UCLA History Department for its support, and thanks to you for listening.