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Stolen culture: a discussion on decolonization and repatriation of Indigenous artifacts

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Content Stolen Culture:
A Discussion on Decolonization and Repatriation of Indigenous Artifacts
by
Ashley Michelle Ascencio
A Thesis presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirement for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
May 2024
Copyright 2024 Ashley Michelle Ascencio

To Mary Davis. Nana, this is for you. I love you to the moon and back!
ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMNTS
Many wonderful humans contributed to this thesis; however, I would like to take this
time to thank some specific ones who are very special to me. First, Dr. Amelia Jones, thank you
for being the best guide and the best giver of pep talks. Dr. Andy Campbell, thank you for being
our fearless leader and showing me that art can and will be found anywhere, not just in galleries
and art museums. That is the greatest gift I have gotten from this program. Dr. Jenny Lin, thank
you for your endless support and your ready smile. You all are three of the best humans I have
ever had the privilege and honor to work with and I hope we never lose touch. This program, this
university, is better for having you.
Thank you to Hattie Schultz for being a rock and an ally on this journey. Your friendship
means more than you will ever know. Thank you to Linda and Jeremy Smith and their children
Kyla and Marlei for being a constant source of inspiration and laughs. To Donald and Rowena
Davis for countless hours of babysitting and unwavering support. Thank you to Krysten,
Destinee, and Donald Jr. for always believing I’m making the right choices for me (even if I
waver). Thank you to Mark, Jordan, and Grace for being people who I can trust with my siblings
and bringing your unique voices to our family. Thank you to Hailey, Chloe, Autumn, Lily, Julian,
and Finn for being my biggest cheering section and my most loyal baking buddies. Finally, thank
you to Ramiro Ascencio for always having my back, always being up for another adventure, and
never losing faith in me. I love you.
iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication........................................................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................iii
List of Figures..................................................................................................................................v
List of Abbreviations......................................................................................................................vi
Abstact...........................................................................................................................................vii
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: San Diego Museum of Us..............................................................................................3
Chapter 2: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, the William S. Hart Museum, and the
La Brea Tar Pits................................................................................................................................8
Chapter 3: Anna Tsing, Assemblages, and Precarity......................................................................12
Chapter 4: Repatriation and the Museum Industrial Complex......................................................18
Chapter 5: Bruno Latour: Actor-Network Theory..........................................................................21
Chapter 6: Timothy Ingold: Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied
Responsiveness (SPIDER).............................................................................................................24
Chapter 7: Victor Turner: Anti-Structure and the Liminal Space..................................................27
Chapter 8: Conclusions and Tuck and Yang..................................................................................29
Endnotes.........................................................................................................................................33
References......................................................................................................................................41
iv

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 – SDMoU Exhibit Timeline..............................................................................................3
Figure 2 – SDMoU Land Acknowledgement..................................................................................4
Figure 3 – SDMoU Colonial Pathways Policy Title Page...............................................................5
Figure 4 – SDMoU Colonial Pathways Policy Table of Contents...................................................5
Figure 5 – SDMoU List of Departments..........................................................................................6
Figure 6 – NHMoLA Land Acknowledgement...............................................................................9
Figure 7 – Quil Work Vest.............................................................................................................10
Figure 8 – La Brea Tar Pits Ancestral Remains Claim..................................................................11
Figure 9 – SDMoU Exhibits..........................................................................................................13
Figure 10 – La Brea Tar Pits Exhibits............................................................................................13
Figure 11 – NHMoLA Exhibits.....................................................................................................13
Figure 12 – William S. Hart Museum Exhibits..............................................................................13
v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ANT Actor-Network Theory
NAGPRA Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act
NHMoLA Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
SDMoU San Diego Museum of Us
SPIDER Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness
vi

ABSTRACT
Ashley Ascencio: Stolen Culture: A Discussion on Decolonization and Repatriation of
Indigenous Artifacts
Under the direction of Amelia Jones
This thesis seeks to explore the tension in the discussion surrounding decolonization and
the repatriation if Indigenous artifacts by cultural institutions. The museums examined are the
San Diego Museum of Us, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits,
and the William S. Hart Museum. I examine these cultural institutions through the theoretical
lenses of Anna Tsing, Bruno Latour, Timothy Ingold, and Victor Turner. I end with exposition on
the impossibility of decolonization and the need to decolonize the internal thought process as the
first step towards a truly anti-colonial approach.
vii

1
Introduction
On December 6, 2023, President Biden signed into practice an executive order that,
among other things, updated the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
(NAGPRA).
1 This executive order prompted New York’s American Natural History Museum,
among any other institutions, to close two halls that house Indigenous artifacts.
2 The president of
the museum is quoted as saying:
While the actions we are taking this week may seem sudden, they reflect a growing
urgency among all museums to change their relationships to, and representation of,
Indigenous cultures…The Halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when
museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared
humanity of Indigenous peoples.
3
This executive order was penned as part of the 2023 Progress Report for Tribal Nations, which
documents the progress the Biden-Harris Administration has made in addressing the concerns of
Tribal nations and was presented at the third annual White House Tribal Nations Summit4
.
I will focus in on the lexicon of this summit for a moment. The White House states that
since he took office, “President Biden has prioritized strengthening Nation-to-Nation
relationships with Tribal Nations and advancing Tribal sovereignty and self-determination”.
5
This description of the Tribal Nations as a separate entity, a nation state apart from the United
States, sends the message that the Indigenous are not citizens of the United States. Further, it
sends the message the Tribal nations have something to barter with, something to offer in
exchange for a “stronger treaty” with the United State when, in fact, the founding government
stripped away all their power, killed their people, and stole their land. The Tribal Nations are
more the occupied territory of the United States, if they were a separate nation, the violence done

2
to them, their women, and children, by the United States would constitute an act of war and the
United Nations would be defending their right for self-defense.
This effort by the Biden-Harris Administration, begs the question: is it possible to fully
decolonize a space? I will argue in this thesis that it is not. To fully decolonize, it is necessary to
tear down the institution, whatever, the institution may be, and return it to the original form,
however, is it possible to return the institution to its original form? For example, if the institution
in question was an anthropology museum, what would the arguments be for decolonization?
What would the arguments be against decolonization and how would decolonization even look
and what would it mean for the institution? These may seem like simple questions with
straightforward answers, however, there is nuance within the solutions and, as ever, power
relations are at play. This makes the solutions messy and convoluted and turn decolonization and
repatriation into buzzwords without meaning, merely spoken to ease the colonizer’s guilt. This
paper will explore the tensions in the dialogue surrounding decolonization and repatriation
through the theoretical lenses of various thinkers throughout history and analyze my observations
of the efforts to repatriate Indigenous artifacts by the San Diego Museum of Us (SDMoU) as
well as the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHMoLA).

3
Chapter 1: The San Diego Museum of Us
The San Diego Museum of Us was originally the San Diego Museum (1915-1942) and
then the San Diego Museum of Man (1942-2020).
6 The inaugural exhibition of this anthropology
museum was entitled Man Throughout the Ages The SDMoU, then the San Diego Museum of
Man, adopted a three-year initiative in January of 2012 and changing their mission to “Inspiring
human connections by exploring the human experience”
7. They were very transparent and
forthcoming about their colonial past, breaking the timeline of their exhibitions into pre-2012,
the colonial years, and post-2012, the years where they began the decolonization process as can
be seen below in figure 1.
8
Figure 19
The SDMoU instated a land acknowledgment, acknowledging that Balboa Park, the
museum sits on, is unceded land belonging to the Kumeyaay Nation.
10 The SDMoU claims that
this land acknowledgment “can be found in exhibitions and museum signage; on the website; in
staff email signatures; at the beginning of tours; during media interviews and fundraising events;
and before consultations and our Board of Trustee meetings.”
11 The land acknowledgement that
is posted online is below in figure 2.
12

4
Figure 213
Along with the transparency and admission of their colonial history, the SDMoU has also
made certain internal linguistic changes such as discontinuing the use of the term “collections” to
refer to their artifacts, instead referring to them as “cultural resources” in an effort to honor the
cultural providence of these items.
14 The museum is in possession of “75,000 documented
ethnographic cultural resources; 350,000 archaeological cultural resources; 50,000 photographic
images; 300 linear feet of archival materials; and approximately 7,000 Ancestors from a global
community.”
15 Most of these “cultural resources” are Indigenous in nature with over 200
representing Indigenous communities being from within the United States and over 200 from
Indigenous communities globally.
16
In January of 2020, the SDMoU enacted what they called their Colonial Pathways
Policy.
17 This policy lays out the SDMoU’s decolonization initiatives and answers any frequently
asked question people may have as seen below in figures 3 and 4.

5
Figure 318 Figure 419
It is that is also important to note that all of the Decolonization Initiative staff at the
SDMoU also hold the titles of education staff (two Education Coordinators and Education
Manager).
20 Additionally, the Cultural Resources staff is separate from the Decolonization
Initiative department (Figure 5). I believe that these departments should not be separate but
intertwined. These departments are incredibly important to the decolonization mission stated by
SDMoU.

6
Figure 521
My final observation of the SDMoU is that they have adopted what they define as
Guiding Principles which include truth telling and accountability, rethinking ownership,
organizational culture shift supported by systems and policy, and Indigenous representation.
22 I
am unsure, even skeptical, on whether or not the SDMoU has made many strides when adhering
to their own policies, however, one can find the land acknowledgement, the documents I have
included above, as well as many more sources of information on their website alone.
The public has the means to keep the SDMoU accountable to their pledge to repatriate
Indigenous objects, adhere to NAGPRA, remain transparent in their practices; however, will the
public keep them accountable for their lofty claims? One can make the argument that
anthropology museums have done much work to keep the public ignorant and unaware of the
plight of the Indigenous Nations in requesting that their sacred objects and, sometimes, their
ancestors’ remains be returned. From Alfred Kroeber at the beginning stages of anthropology to
Napoleon Chagnon and Bronislaw Malinowski in more recent time, Indigenous Peoples have

7
been exploited and then denied justice by cultural institutions claiming to only have the
preservation of culture at the core of their intentions.

8
Chapter 2: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, The William S. Hart Museum, and The
La Brea Tar Pits
To the above point, we have the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHMoLA). In
contrast to the SDMoU, the NHMoLA does not have a land acknowledgment easily accessible
on their website, I had to enter “land acknowledgement” into the search bar in order to access the
information. Further, the NHMoLA is part of a family of three museums: the Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits (also in Los Angeles), and the William S. Hart
Museum (in Santa Clarita) with the La Brea Tar Pits dealing in mostly animal remains.
23 The
land acknowledgement on the website for these three museums listed all of the Indigenous
Nations to which the land where they sit belong, but it did not name the Indigenous land specific
to each museum (Figure 6). The NHMoLA is located in Exposition Park, the La Brea Tar Pits are
located near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the William S. Hart Museum is located
in Santa Clarita, CA. This acknowledgement would be better if it indicated on which Indigenous
land the each museum is located.

9
Figure 624
Additionally, the William S. Hart Museum has in its collection many objects of
Indigenous provenance. William Hart was a top film start from 1914-1925 and bequeathed his
home to the city upon his death in 1946.
25 The website for his museum describes Hart as “proud
of his friendships with Native Americans, although like most filmmakers of his era, he did not
portray them kindly on screen. Nonetheless, Hart filled his home with Native American rugs,
beadwork, and baskets.”
26 For example, on the website for the William S. Hart Museum, one
finds a picture of what is described as a Quil Work Vest (Figure 7) that is from the 1880s and
likely made by a member of the Sioux.
27 This description of who made this vest leaves
something to be desired. There may be more description in the physical location of the museum,
however, it remains closed to the public.

10
Figure 728
The NHMoLA in Exposition Park is the repository of part of the William S. Hart
Museum’s collection, but it also has a vast collection of artifacts at its disposal. And yet, the land
acknowledgement is buried deep within their website. The NHMoLA states that their
archaeology collection:
includes approximately 100,000 ancient artifacts. The majority of the collection is
from the Americas, with an emphasis on the western United States and Latin
America. Tools, decorative and utilitarian objects are included in the vast
assemblage of materials in addition to samples of shell, animal bone, soil, and plant
remains that can be used to study past human adaptations.
29
They also state that their ethnology collection is made up of:
over 35,000 cultural objects from North, Middle, and South America, Pacific,
Australia, Asia, and Africa. The collection documents the changes in material
culture of indigenous societies caused by the dynamic global interactions of recent
centuries and the inherent vitality and continuing diversity of traditional cultures
around the world.
30

11
The La Brea Tar Pits, the one museum in this family of three museums that
focuses on animal remains, is the only one with a readily accessible note admitting to
having human remains in their collection and admitting to obtaining these remains in a
less than ethical manner (Figure 8).
31 This disclaimer is easily found and will take one to
their policy on displaying remains with a simple click of a link within the paragraph.
Figure 832

12
Chapter 3: Anna Tsing: Collections, Assemblages, and Precarity
In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins,
Anna Tsing introduces the concept of assemblages. According to Tsing, “Assemblages are open
ended gatherings.”33 This description is quite vague, however, in this case I will compare
assemblages with collections of artifacts. Tsing refers to the matsutake mushroom throughout her
book.34 The matsutake mushroom grows in the shade of certain pine trees in a symbiotic
relationship.
35 These two organisms must grow in proximity to one another in order to survive.
36
This, according to Tsing, is an example of an assemblage.
37 Not only does the mushroom require
the tree to survive and thrive, but each requires the environment around them in order to survive
on their own. There is a complex web of interactions that are required simply for the mushroom
to deign to show itself. This complex web is what Tsing refers to as an assemblage.
38
According to Tsing, assemblages are made up of lifeways39. Lifeways can constitute both
human and nonhuman entities.
40 Tsing says that: “Assemblages don’t just gather lifeways; they
make them.”
41 If one considers the collector and the collection as an assemblage themselves, this
makes sense. The collector acquires pieces, or lifeways, to add to their collection and also creates
a lifeway between themselves and the piece. This also creates a lifeway between them, the piece
and a cultural museum if the item is displayed.
In each of the museums mentioned above, this connection is evident. As a matter of fact,
in each museum there can be seen an assemblage of assemblages. In each museum, no matter
what the focus of study, there are exhibits, but there would be no museum if there was only a
single exhibit; in order for the museum to exist, there must be multiple exhibitions. The museum
then, is a collection of collections.

13
As can be seen below in figures 9 through 12, each of these museums is made up of many
collections under one roof, however, both the William S. Hart Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits
are the only ones that includes the outdoors as a major part of the assemblage. Both the SDMoU
and the NHMoLA belong to an assemblage of other museums and, in the case of the SDMoU, a
vast outdoor space in the form of Balboa Park, however, the William S. Hart Museum and the La
Brea Tar Pits integrate the outdoor space as an integral part of their assemblage. The La Brea Tar
Pits have their excavation pits happening just outside their doors and the William S. Hart
Museum encompasses an entire home which includes the grounds on which it sits.
Figure 9 San Diego Museum of Us42 Figure 10 La Brea Tar Pits43
Figure 11 Natural History Museum of LA44 Figure 12 William S. Hart Museum45

14
Additionally, the SDMoU, the NHMoLA, and the La Brea Tar Pits extend their
assemblages out into the places where research happens. This includes their own studies that
keep the museum afloat and progressing, but also students and researchers from academic
institutions. These researchers go on into different fields and bring their research with them. The
museums cannot survive without funding and part of the way to receive funding is through
relevance and progress in their respective fields. It is ironic then that in order to progress and
remain relevant, the museum assemblage must paint the picture of their collections being an
absolute picture of the cultures they represent.
To this point, Tsing also mentions that “[a]s long as we imagine that humans are made
through progress, nonhumans are stuck within this imaginative framework too.”
46 Here, if we
replace assemblages with collectors and their collections, one must acknowledge the human
component in the collector. The human will change and adapt, however, the pieces within the
collection are forever frozen. This stasis gives the population from which it is taken an air of
being frozen in the time. Tsing also asks, “[i]f history without progress is indeterminate and
multidirectional, might assemblages show us possibilities?”47
Indigenous artist James Luna’s Artifact Piece (1987), first produced at the San Diego
Museum of us when it was called the Museum of Man speaks to this question and denies the
notion. In this hybrid installation/performance art piece Luna, a Luiseño artist, dresses in a loin
cloth and lies down in a display case next to a vitrine holding “artifacts” from his life in his “first
staged insubordinate critique of archival logic, a subaltern epistemology.”
48 In this piece “Luna
lay in a museum display case, wearing only a breechcloth, next to a vitrine filled with his ‘native
artifacts,’such as his college diploma, a picture of Jimi Hendrix, divorce papers, and ceremonial
rattles. This…was complete with didactic labels that identified the source of various scars on

15
Luna’s body as if he himself was a cultural artifact.”
49 The collection, which reifies Luna’s
identity as a series of attributes, does not represent progress nor does it represent the society from
which it was taken. The addition of Luna’s living body in this “exhibit” would make museum
visitors distinctly aware of Luna as a living being with human needs, bringing into stark relief his
humanness and status as “alive” amongst all the dead artifacts surrounding him in the museum.
Luna seems to be reminding us that societies and humans, progress in more ways than mere
objects cannot exemplify.
This point brings to mind the work of Franz Boas, known widely as the father of
American Anthropology, and his concept of diffusion. This concept claims that development of
different culture happens through contact with one another. Boas opposed the “armchair
anthropologists” that came before him and their belief that civilization happens along a
predictable timeline citing diffusion as the answer to this established belief. In his manuscript,
Race, Language, and Culture, Boas writes, “a purely inductive study of ethnic phenomena leads
to the conclusion that mixed cultural types that are geographically or historically intermediate
between two extremes, give evidence of diffusion.”
50 Boas is reinforcing diffusion by examining
the center point between two societies that are located a great distance from one another either
physically or temporally. One can see diffusion at work when one imagines any period in the
United States time after the Industrial Revolution. It can also be seen in the presence of certain
cultural traditions in any society today. Other than very minimal exceptions, every society has
adopted and adapted traditions from other communities. Assemblages overlap by nature and this
overlap is where diffusion occurs and thrives.
I argue that collections, assemblages, are the answer to combat precarity, which Tsing
describes as “the condition of being vulnerable to others.”51 The narrative of the colonizer is no

16
longer fully dominant, there are many voices that are now being amplified and the “story told by
the winner” is in danger of being proven false, at least partially undone. Tsing claims that
assemblages are “…defined by the strength of what they gather as much as their always-possible
dissipation. They make history.”
52 Collections make history. They tell the story that the collector
wants to be told they hold other humans, such as Indigenous populations in a stasis from which
they cannot escape.
In addition, the presence of certain artifacts in multiple collections, even similar artifacts
in multiple collections, support Boas’ concept of diffusion. The human element in the collection
is not only the collector; however, without the collector the collection would not exist. The
human element is also represented by the objects within the collection especially if these objects
come from a society of fellow humans and not simply animal remains.
Tsing goes further to state that we are “[u]nable to rely on a stable structure of
community, we are thrown into shifting assemblages, which remake us as well as our others.”
53
Collections truly remake the narratives of many societies according to the colonizer. In defining
the economic and commodification of assemblages as collections, Tsing writes “The further we
stray into the peripheries of capitalist production, the more coordination between polyphonic
assemblages and industrial processes becomes central to making a profit.”
54 Her formulation
equates to the museum itself as a repository of multiple assemblages from multiple collectors,
but one that in today’s world has to justify and support itself economically. In this way, the
assemblage can be commodified and, as a result, reified as an entity all on its own. When
multiple collections are on display in a building such as a museum, there they can be assembled
into a greater narrative that can encompass a wider sphere and create a narrative of history while
being commodified and used to make a profit in the form of ticket sales, museum merchandise,

17
and food sales. All of this occurs beyond the dynamic of collectors who trade and sell pieces of
their assemblages amongst one another.
Tsing brings in political complexity regarding assemblages by claiming that
“Assemblages drag political economy inside them, and not just for humans.”
55 This very evident
in the way collections have been regulated more and more closely as the time goes on. This
regulation is most evident, at least when it comes to Indigenous artifacts, in the introduction of
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This was enacted in
1990 and demanded “…the return of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred
objects, and objects of cultural patrimony”56 and helped to spark the decolonization initiative.

18
Chapter 4: Repatriation and the Museum Industrial Complex
What I term as museum culture, comes into play when discussing the repatriation of
certain artifacts. I argue that museum culture encompasses both the decision of the institution to
collect and keep indigenous artifacts as well as the general public’s desire to be part of the “elite”
that frequent the museum industrial complex.
I describe cultural institutions as being part of a museum industrial complex, because
anthropology, as well as art, museums hit many, if not all, of the requirements that define an
industrial complex. Liz Scarfe, a psychotherapist and a scholar studying medical anthropology,
defines an industrial complex as “…a socio-economic concept that describes a conflict of interest
embedded in what are traditionally and supposedly, benevolent state-run services/systems.”
57
Western cultural museums, claim to act as repositories of the cultures of the world, keeping these
collections safe and preserved from harm. They claim to merely desire to keep these artifacts,
ergo the accompanying culture, from disappearing into the ether, however, in holding these
artifacts hostage, the institutions are arguably doing more harm than good.
This brings us to Scarfe’s next claim: “The essential conflict of interest in an industrial
complex is that the service makes more money by doing a bad job at its stated goals. The reason
for its existence is also usually dependent on it doing a bad job.”
58 In the case of art and natural
history museums, merely placing an acknowledgment that the land on which the institution is built
is unceded is not enough. Does the institution collaborate with the Indigenous people who were
stewards of the land before colonization happened? Has the institution given back sacred artifacts
and not kept them for institutional gain?

19
Scarfe goes further in her definition of an industrial complex, stating that, in order for an
institution to be part of an industrial complex it needs to posses the following characteristics:
• A stated benevolent goal of doing some kind of good
• If the goal was achieved, the complex wouldn’t be needed
• Money is made by at best being ineffective or inefficient at achieving the goal, at
worst by doing more harm (which in turn generates more business)
• Usually, the state no longer operates components of the complex (although it does
set policy that impacts the complex); the complex is mostly run by a network of
outsourced private providers
• There is more than one type of industry/business benefiting
• The complex wields significant political power through lobbying relations and
large contributions to the state economy.59
The benevolent goal of many, if not all, art and natural history museums is to prevent
cultures from disappearing and ensuring the preservation of artifacts for the use of future
generations, however, they also promise to honor the previous stewards of the land. Honoring the
Indigenous Peoples of the land includes returning, repatriating, any artifacts that this population
requests. If the goal of honoring the original stewards of the land is achieved, as claimed, there
would be no need for many cultural institutions as all artifacts would be repatriated.
Museums are, at their core, a business. In anthropology or natural history museums,
money is exchanged by visitors for admission to specifically look at Indigenous artifacts. This is
reason enough to avoid repatriation and make token efforts to assuage the guilt of their
benefactors and guests by including land acknowledgements on their websites. Further, cultural
museums have a host of private donors that keep the institution running outside of state funding,
however, the state still oversees the function of the institution through a set of rules and
regulations. For example, as noted, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,
established in 1990.
60 This act states that “Federal law has provided for the protection and return

20
of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural
patrimony.”
61
The businesses that benefit from the existence of natural history and art museums are
many and varied. Many cultural institutions are associated with academic institutions, and/or
have private donors that use their donation as a tax write off. This is not to say that these
businesses do not have strong feelings about the museum, simply that the added benefit of
donating comes during tax season. The large contributions to the state economy given by
museums comes in the form of both the collections of artifacts held by the museum as well as the
influx of monetary value from private donors lobbying to keep museums open and collections
intact. Additionally, the powerful donors of the museum entity can lobby the state on behalf of
the institution. As I stated above, natural history and art museums have all the hallmarks of an
industrial complex. It is time we call it like it is and refer to them as a museum industrial
complex.

21
Chapter 5: Bruno Latour: Actor Network Theory
According to Latour, the social landscape is not limited to human actors (Latour 2005).
Non-human actors, or actants, have as much control over the decisions of human actants as other
humans. This influence is incredibly subtle along the lines of Michel Foucault’s
institutionalization, Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony, or even, if we want to go further into the past,
Émile Durkheim’s social fact. All of these concepts refer to the idea of outside forces coercing
humans into acting according to dominant social mores; however, there is very little attention, if
any, paid to the non-human actants that must be present in order for any of these concepts to
have an effect on the human actors. Latour refers to this as actor-network theory (ANT).
62
Latour states that, “[a]s soon as you believe social aggregates can hold their own being
propped up by ‘social forces’, then objects vanish from view and the magical and tautological
force of society is enough to hold every thing with literally no thing.”
63 Here I see Latour making
the argument for museums, and their contents, having agency given to them by us as consumers
both of knowledge, social status, and commodities. He may not be speaking directly about
museums, but the argument can be productively applied to museums. Cultural institutions such
as natural history and anthropology museums, cannot exist without the objects in the collections
that they either own or are the stewards of. Whether they deserve to steward them or not is
irrelevant at this stage, we are merely discussing their existence.
Latour goes on to say that “ANT is not the empty claim that objects do things ‘instead’ of
human actors: it simply says that no science of the social can even begin if the question of who
and what participates in the action is not first of all thoroughly explored, even though it might
mean letting elements in which, for lack of a better term, we would call non-humans.”
64 Latour

22
is saying that any analysis of a social action or structure, in this case the museum structure, is
incomplete unless one considers the non-human actors as well. In the museum for example,
many decisions and actions are based solely on what each object is, where it belongs, the
provenance, etc. Curatorial decisions are made in order to construct a narrative. Where to hang
and place pieces are decisions dictated, in part, by the piece itself as well as the story the curator
desires to tell with the exhibition. Pieces are taken down based on their provenance and the laws
regarding such things. Latour claims that these objects, non-human may they be, have as much
agency as any human actor.
My final point regarding Latour is regarding this quote: “it does make a difference under
trials and so these implements, according to our definition, are actors, or more precisely,
participants in the course of action waiting to be given a figuration.”
65 I argue that this is
relevant to the natural history museums we are discussing, as well as any museum, in that each
object is merely a participant until it is labeled and given a job. For example, with the artifacts in
the collection at the SDMoU, each was donated to, or found by, the museum and added to one of
the collections, or assemblages, within the museum. The NAGPRA officer then assessed it and
decided whether or not it was fit to display or if it needed to be returned, and so on. This
theoretical object, whatever it may be, has been catalogued and labeled, however, it also had the
agency to tell what it was and where it belonged. The object did not change, but the
interpretations of all involved were built on its own figuration. My question is, did we define it
or did it define itself according to our classification systems?
Bruno Latour’s concept of actor-network theory is powerful because it adds another
dimension to human behavior. It gives a “chicken or the egg” argument. For example, it
encourages us to ask the question: was that artifact placed in that space because the curator

23
wanted it there or was it placed there because that is where it belonged according to its own
form? Are human categorical systems defined by us or are they dictated to us by objects, with us
simply following to label them according to our language.

24
Chapter 6: Timothy Ingold: Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied
Responsiveness (SPIDER)
In contrast to Bruno Latour, archaeologist and theorist Timothy Ingold introduces the
concept of meshwork in the chapter: “When ANT Meets SPIDER: Social Theory for
Arthropods” in his 2011 book, Being Alive. Ingold, in this rather entertaining chapter, claims that
the only entity that can enact agency is one that is aware of its actions,
66 and that this agency is
only held by the live being in response to a disturbance in the meshwork. “Every ‘relation’ in the
network, then, is a connection between one thing and another.”
67 Here, Ingold argues that the
network is more of a web that connects the various actors to objects and the actors are responding
to the, non-agentic, movements of various items. This is a very post-structuralist argument.
Ingold claims that “the lines of [the meshwork]…are already threaded…and set up
through their material presence the condition of entrapment under which such a connection can
potentially be established.”
68 Here I imagine the museum industrial complex comes into play.
There is a superstructure in place to welcome collectors and their collections where the
meshwork is waiting to ensnare unsuspecting possessors of agency. The curatorial staff, visitors,
exhibit technicians, all are subject to be caught in the meshwork. Additionally, “…it is not a
closed-in, self-contained object that is set over against other objects with which it may then be
juxtaposed or conjoined. It is rather a bundle or tissue of strands, tightly drawn together here but
trailing loose ends there, which tangle with other strands from other bundles.”
69 The museum
industrial complex reaches farther than merely the structure in which the museum is housed. The
web reaches, combines, and overlaps with many other webs such as local, state, and national
government entities in how they are funded. The web ensnares artists and gallerists as well as

25
universities and theme parks. One can imagine the complex interplay of different meshwork
intertwined with one another.
For example, both the SDMoU and the NHMoLA are part of a larger gathering of
museums, the SDMoU in Balboa Park and the NHMoLA in Exposition Park. The collections
within these museums are part of the meshwork of the exhibits in the museums, the exhibitions
are part of the museum, and the building containing these museums are part of the larger
meshwork of the “parks.” If we extend our reach, the parks are part of the cities, the cities are
part of the counties, the counties are part of the state, and so on. Even deeper, however, the
concept of the museums is deeply embedded in the psyches of the museum guests who are part
of their own communities, and members of those communities overlap with other communities,
and so on.
Ingold’s point on meshwork, or webs is an unintentional commentary on the need to
repatriate Indigenous artifacts. These objects, be they ancestral remains, sacred items, or mere
everyday objects, have an effect on the communities from which they are stolen. Many societies
believe that their dead cannot rest until every part of them is put to rest and sacred traditions
cannot be performed without sacred objects. Confiscating an object and sequestering it in a
collection does not only affect the object but has far reaching consequences.
Further, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, in their article “Decolonization is not a
Metaphor”, make the statement that “[s]ettlers are diverse, not just of white European descent,
and include people of color, even from other colonial contexts. This tightly wound set of
conditions and racialized, globalized relations exponentially complicates what is meant by
decolonization, and by solidarity against global forces.”
70 This description of colonialism is a

26
web, meshwork and untangling that web is almost impossible and I am not sure if it is even
advisable or wanted. The only way, that I can see is to move forward in a different direction with
a different framework in mind.
The concept of meshwork is more powerful than actor-network theory and is very
relevant to the museum industrial complex and museum culture as a whole, because it casts a
wider net, or web. I can visualize better the web the museums cast. It may be because I grew up
going to the NHMoLA and I discovered the SDMoU as an adult and they both are part of a
complex park system including other museums, outdoor spaces, sports fields, even a zoo in the
case of Balboa Park and the SDMoU. This web is less visible in art spaces and galleries;
however, I will argue that even though it is not visible, the conceptual framework remains.

27
Chapter 7: Victor Turner: Anti-structure and the Liminal Space
What I am calling museum culture stems from Victor Turner’s concept of communitas.
71
According to Turner, “[c]ommunitas is most evident in ‘liminality,’ which is a term he borrowed
from Arnold Van Gennep.
72 In our case, the liminal space, the threshold, is the museum space
and in Turner’s terms thus a ritual space. In this space, “…the state of the ritual
subject…becomes ambiguous, neither here nor there, betwixt and between all fixed points of
classification; he passes through a symbolic domain that has few or none of the attributes of his
past or coming state.”73 When entering the museum, the visitor becomes something “other” than
when they entered and when they will leave. They are now “museum visitor” just the same as
everyone else visiting the museum that day. In this space, the initiand, or the museum visitor,
becomes part of the communitas, or the anti-structure. Turner argues that those in the liminal
space, in this case, the museum industrial complex, have been: “…divested of the outward
attributes of structural position, set aside from the main arenas of social life…and reduced to an
equality with [their] fellow initiands regardless of their preritual status.”74 It is in this space that
they can reinvent themselves as anything they want, including part of the intellectually “elite”.
I argue that the general public is unaware of the plights of the indigenous communities
attempting to reclaim their sacred artifacts and remains of their dead; however, the vast majority
enjoy being part of this elite, liminal space. In what other arena can people of all walks of life,
theoretically, intermingle? There are few other places one can enter where nothing matters, but
their love of art, history, imagery, and visual play. Turner argues “…that it is in liminality that
communitas emerges, if not as a spontaneous expression of sociability, at least in a cultural and
normative form—stressing equality and comradeship norms rather than generating spontaneous

28
and existential communitas, though of course spontaneous communitas may and does arise in
most cases of protracted initiation ritual.”
75 Here, Turner seems to back up my claim that the
public revels in belonging to this communitas, especially communitas that feels exclusive.
Turner also claims that: “The people who share a certain set of interconnected
systems…may be more or less conscious of this fact, and more or less willing to influence one
another for the benefit of their common civilization and to influence this civilization for their
mutual benefit.”
76 This seems to be a direct argument against “rocking the boat”. People have
found in museums a space where they can belong to the “elite”, even for a short while and they
are protective of this space.
In regard to the natural history museums I discuss here, I divide them into two theoretical
groups: one group is strives to the best of their ability to be transparent, responsible, and
respectful of those that have been wronged by colonial practices and one group makes a minimal
effort. In both of these instances, the public is largely unaware of the plight of the Indigenous
populations that are suffering due to the institution residing on what was originally their land as
well as keeping artifacts that belonged to them in their collections. The SDMoU has made strides
towards reconciling this, but the key question is: do their actions match their overtures?
Similarly, while the La Brea Tar Pits have an acknowledgement on their website, the NHMoLA
and the William S. Hart Museum do not.

29
Chapter 8: Conclusions and Tuck and Yang
To conclude, I have discussed the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and her sister
museums, the William S. Hart Museum, and the La Brea Tar Pits, as well as the San Diego
Museum of Us through the lenses of Anna Tsing, Bruno Latour, Timothy Ingold, and Victor
Turner. I have discussed the assemblages and precarity from Tsing, actor-network theory from
Latour, meshwork from Ingold, as well as anti-structure and the liminal space from Turner. All of
these concepts add to an understanding of tension that resides within the dialogue of
decolonization and repatriation of Indigenous artifacts.
I would assert here after developing these arguments that decolonization, as is most
commonly understood (in terms of literal repatriation and returning of land), is not possible, that
repatriation and decolonization are most often buzzwords thrown about by cultural institutions to
gain prestige and brownie points for considering diversity and transparency. In Tuck and Yang’s
article they state that “settler scholars may gain professional kudos or a boost in their reputations
for being so sensitive or self-aware.”
77 This assertion immediately brought to mind the SDMoU
and their efforts at transparency in their efforts to decolonize, in particular their use of the term
“cultural resources” rather than referring their artifacts “collections” in order to honor and
reinforce that they came from actual cultures.
78 I put “cultural resources” in quotations because
this is merely a rebrand, much like they attempted to rebrand themselves from the San Diego
Museum of Man to the San Diego Museum of Us and before that from the San Diego Museum.
“Cultural resources” is a paltry change that represents a token effort at admitting wrongdoing.
Tuck and Yang go on to define several ways in which settler colonists attempt to gain
cultural status by aligning themselves with a weak notion of decoloniality, including claiming

30
Indigenous ancestry and colonial equivocation. Colonial equivocation, they claim is “describing
all struggles against imperialism as ‘decolonizing’[and] creates a convenient ambiguity between
decolonization and social justice work, especially among people of color, queer people, and other
groups minoritized by the settler nation-state.”
79 Again, decolonization is being used as a
buzzword to encompass all social justice work.
If we think, once again, in assemblages, let us think of “social justice” as an assemblage.
Each focus of the social justice movement is an assemblage: womxn’s rights, Black rights,
Indigenous rights, immigration reform, etc., and each of these movements overlaps and
interrelated with others. But these movements, however, are not decolonialization. For example,
decolonization in the case of immigration reform becomes complicated. As Tuck and Yang argue,
“[p]eople of color who enter/are brought into the settler colonial nation-state also enter the triad
of relations between settler-native-slave.”
80 They go on to make the claim that “how the
refugee/immigrant is invited to be a settler on some scenarios, given the appropriate investments
to whiteness, or is made an illegal, criminal presence in other scenarios.”
81 In the case of
immigration, is decolonization truly applicable? And where, applicable, does it appear? This is
the type of equivocation that lends itself to the fallacy of settler innocence.
Further, Tuck and Yang also position Frantz Fanon and Paolo Freire as sort of diametric
opposites. They claim that “Fanon posits decolonization as chaotic, and unclean break from a
colonial condition that is already overdetermined by the violence of the colonizer and unresolved
in its possible future…[while] Freire positions liberation as redemption, a freeing of both
oppressor and oppressed through their humanity.”
82 I tend to agree with Fanon in that
decolonization is messy and, at times, violent and leaves a jagged edge in the colonized state no
matter how cleanly one tries effect it. The act of returning land, giving back artifacts that were

31
taken unethically, leaves a scar in an institution whose current iteration may be innocent of past
wrongs. More to the point of this thesis, it does not heal the wound torn in Indigenous
communities from which these were stolen.
In the case of the anecdote at the beginning of this paper, President Biden’s executive
order regarding Indigenous artifacts had ramifications for several museums and the fallout with
the public was great. Part of the meshwork, the assemblage, of which museums are part of
involves humans and these humans have agency just as much as the objects have agency.
Arguably, this faction of humans, the museum visitor and to a greater extent the museum director
and curators, express their agency much louder than other factions.
To this point, Fanon’s assertion that decolonization begins in the mind is compelling.83
Believing that other people have the right to exist and the right to agency is foundational to the
process of decolonization. I agree with Fanon and would go so far as to say that decolonizing the
thought process is imperative. I use this concept to argue that truly believing that Indigenous
communities have the right to decide when, where, and if the object that represents their society
will be displayed in a cultural institution is foundational. Believing that these communities have
the right to do with these objects what they desire is foundational. Believing in the humanity of
others is a foundational part of decolonization and it starts with decolonizing one’s mind.
Decolonizing the thought process is the beginning; however, backing this paradigm shift
up with action is imperative to achieving even a semblance of decolonization. Tuck and Yang ask
the question of “whether another settler move to innocence is to focus on decolonizing the mind,
or the cultivation of critical consciousness, as if it were the sole activity of decolonization; to
allow conscientization to stand in for the more uncomfortable task of relinquishing stolen
land.”
84 So this challenge to one’s thoughts must extend to action. I believe that, if there is no

32
development on the land, then it should be given back to the original stewards; if there is
development, there must be financial reparations, and, above all, sacred land must be respected.
Indigenous land rights need to be established and upheld.
To make a full and exact definition of decolonization is not possible. Even if we all
decided to give everything in the museums and all the land back before the end of this year,
where would the artifacts go? Who would get the land? Giving land back would cause untold
chaos, but we are not off the hook. To fully decolonize is impossible, but we cannot stop trying.
We cannot give up on fighting for the repatriation of Indigenous objects and we cannot stop
fighting for an anti-colonial framework moving forward. We cannot turn the clock back, but we
can add our voices to the discussions surrounding repatriation and decolonization. Every society
moves forward in their own version of progress, ebbing and flowing and adapting to the
changing world around us. We cannot allow museums to claim to be repositories, keepers of
culture by taking culture from the very people they claim to want to preserve. As the president of
the New York City’s American Museum of Natural History said when discussing the exhibit
closures in the wake of President Biden’s executive order: “What might seem out of alignment
for some people is because of a notion that museums affix in amber descriptions of the
world…But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”
85

33
Endnotes
1. “The White House,” December 6, 2023, whitehouse.gov.
2 “NBC News,” January 26, 2024, nbcnews.com.
3. Ibid.
4. “The White House,” December, 6, 2023, whitehouse.gov.
5. Ibid.
6. “Museum of Us,” 2023, museumofus.org.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.

34
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. “Natural History Museum of Los Angeles,” February 4, 2024. Nhm.org

35
24. Ibid.
25 “William S. Hart Museum,” February 7, 2024, hartmuseum.org.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. “Natural History Museum of Los Angeles,” February 4, 2024, nhm.org.
30. Ibid.
31. “La Brea Tar Pits and Museum,” February 7, 2024, tarpits.org.
32. Ibid.
33. Anna, Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, (Princeton: Princeton University press,
2015) 23.
34. Ibid.

36
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid, 23.
42. “Museum of Us,” 2023, museumofus.org.
43. “La Brea Tar Pits and Museum,” February 7, 2024, tarpits.org.
44. “Natural History Museum of Los Angeles,” February 4, 2024, nhm.org.
45. “William S. Hart Museum,” February 7, 2024, hartmuseum.org.

37
46. Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2015) 21.
47. Ibid, 23.
48. Jane Blocker, “Ambivalent Entertainments: James Luna, Performance, and the Archive,”
Grey Room, 2009.
49. Ibid.
50. Franz Boas, Race, Language, and Culture, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1940) 291.
51. Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2015) 20.
52. Ibid, 43.
53. Ibid, 20.
54. Ibid, 24.
55. Ibid, 23.

38
56. “National Park Service,” January, 25, 2024, nps.gov.
57. Liz Scarfe, February 23, 2023, lizscarfe.net.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. “National Parks Service,” January 25, 2024, nps.gov.
61. Ibid.
62. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
63. Ibid, 71.
64. Ibid, 72.
65. Ibid, 71.
66. Timothy Ingold, Being Alive, (New York: Routledge, 2022).

39
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 7.
71. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1974).
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid, 232.
74. Ibid, 232.
75. Ibid, 232.
76. Ibid, 45.

40
77. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 10.
78. “Museum of Us,” 2023, museumofus.org.
79. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 17.
80. Ibid, 17.
81. Ibid, 17.
82. Ibid, 20.
83. Ibid, 19.
84. Ibid, 19.
85. “NBC News,” January 26, 2024, nbcnews.com.

41
Bibliography
Blocker, Jane. "Ambivalent Entertainments: James Luna, Performance, and the Archive." Grey
Room (2009): 52-77.
Boas, Franz. Race Language and Culture . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
1940.
Eve Tuck and Yang, Wayne K. "Decolonization is Not a Metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity,
Education, and Society (2012): 1-40.
Ingold, Timothy. Being Alive. New York: Routledge, 2022.
n.d. La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. Accessed February 7, 2024. Tarpits.org.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York:
Oxford University Press. 2005.
n.d. Museum of Us. Accessed 2023. https://museumofus.org/exhibits.
n.d. National Park Service. Accessed January 25, 2024. nps.gov.
n.d. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Accessed February 4, 2024. https://nhm.org.
NBC News. January 26. Accessed February 4, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com
Scarfe, Liz. 2023. February 23. Accessed January 2024. https://lizscarfe.net/whats-an-industrialcomplex/.
2023. The White House. December 6. Accessed February 4, 2024.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/06/fact-sheetbiden-%E2%81%A0harris-administration-announces-new-actions-and-historic-progresssupporting-tribal-nations-and-native-communities-ahead-of-third-annual-white-housetribal-n.
Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist
Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2015.
Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press. 1974.
n.d. William S. Hart Museum. Accessed February 7, 2024. https://hartmuseum.org

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis seeks to explore the tension in the discussion surrounding decolonization and the repatriation if Indigenous artifacts by cultural institutions. The museums examined are the San Diego Museum of Us, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits, and the William S. Hart Museum. I examine these cultural institutions through the theoretical lenses of Anna Tsing, Bruno Latour, Timothy Ingold, and Victor Turner. I end with exposition on the impossibility of decolonization and the need to decolonize the internal thought process as the first step towards a truly anti-colonial approach.

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Creator Ascencio, Ashley Michelle (author)

Core Title Stolen culture: a discussion on decolonization and repatriation of Indigenous artifacts

School Roski School of Art and Design

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Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 04/17/2024

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