Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC

Abstract

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), the Smithsonian Institution’s new facility on the National Mall inWashington DC, challenges the very notion of what constitutes a museum. Probably the most theoretically informed museum in North America, this is no shrine to the past: it is a museum that claims both past and present to shape a decolonised future for Indigenous populations.