From Paris to Oklahoma (March 2024)

We arrived in New Orleans on a warm and humid Friday evening. We chose to begin our journey in this key city of Native American and French history — founded in 1718, it became the capital of French Louisiana in 1722. Naturally, we wanted to see the Mississippi River with our own eyes, along with the surviving traces of the city’s colonial past: Jackson Square, the French Quarter, and the Ursuline Convent, the only remaining building from the French colonial era.

More importantly, we hoped to better understand how Indigenous presence in the region is represented in local historical narratives and cultural institutions. After visiting sites such as the Cabildo and the Historic New Orleans Collection, we were struck by how little space was given to Native American history and participation. Museum narratives tended instead to focus on the Civil War or, more predictably, on the celebrated history of jazz in New Orleans.

To continue reflecting on the place of Indigenous history and heritage in American museums, we travelled through Mississippi and Alabama to visit the archaeological site of Moundville, near Tuscaloosa. Unlike New Orleans, where French heritage has become highly commercialized, Moundville is a vast, quiet landscape surrounded by forest, and during our visit we found ourselves almost alone there.

For our partners, especially the Choctaw, however, Moundville is a place of profound importance. Between the 12th and 16th centuries, it was a large city inhabited by several thousand people. Like other “Mississippian” urban centers of the period, it featured monumental earthen mounds topped with temples and elite residences. The remains of these structures can still be seen today.

The Jones Archaeological Museum (University of Alabama) at the site presents artifacts discovered at Moundville and introduces visitors to the deep history of North America before European colonization. Yet when we visited, the museum looked very different from how it had been conceived when it opened in 2010.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990, had recently been strengthened by new regulations that came into effect on January 12, 2024. Under these rules, federally funded institutions such as the Moundville museum must now consult with potentially affiliated Indigenous nations before permitting the study or display of certain objects to non-Indigenous audiences.

The impact of these changes was immediately visible. Only a small number of replicas and contemporary works remained on display, including a ceremonial outfit (regalia) recently created by a Choctaw artist. This situation shaped many of our later discussions, prompting us to reflect both on our partners’ relationships to material heritage considered sacred and on our own approach to the objects held in French collections.

After these contrasting experiences in New Orleans and Moundville, we continued to Arkansas to meet our colleague Everett Bandy, Executive Director of Culture for the Quapaw Nation, on Quapaw ancestral lands. In a State where public history often centers on the plantation economy and the Civil War, Everett guided us through the history of the Quapaw and French alliance at Arkansas Post.

Founded by Henri de Tonty in 1686, this modest French outpost remained occupied by generations of settlers and soldiers until France lost its North American colonies in 1763. Although the exact location of the original post is no longer known, we were able, with the help of Ron Fields, Superintendent of Arkansas Post National Memorial, and archaeologist John House, to better understand both the history of the site and the environmental changes that have reshaped the region since the 17th century.

The visit also helped us better understand the enduring relationship Quapaw people maintain with this territory, from which they were forcibly removed beginning in 1826 during their deportation to what became Oklahoma. Today, they continue to return regularly and maintain strong connections to specific places there.

After travelling through sites central to both Indigenous history and the history of relations between Native nations and the French in North America, we finally reached Oklahoma, where the four nations we were visiting have been established since the 19th century. The trip included reunions with colleagues we had already come to know well, as well as meetings with representatives from each nation on their reservations.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this part of the journey. In every community, we were welcomed with remarkable warmth — not only as research partners, but also, in some sense, as representatives of France, in a context where the memory of historical alliances with the French remains deeply meaningful.

During communal meals and giveaways — ceremonies centered on the distribution of gifts that play an important role in many Native North American communities — people repeatedly emphasized both the importance of these alliances and the significance of the objects preserved in the collections of the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac.

Many of the people we met see these belongings as diplomatic gifts presented by their ancestors to French allies in the 18th century, and therefore as material expressions of their nations’ political sovereignty. They also preserve knowledge of artistic techniques and visual traditions that later became largely dormant within communities profoundly affected by epidemics, forced removals, and boarding-school policies.

Today, artists and cultural practitioners in each of these nations are working to revitalize these techniques and visual traditions by studying artifacts preserved in France. The importance of these collections becomes immediately apparent when visiting Oklahoma: reproductions and photographs appear in official buildings and even in tribally owned casinos.

Throughout the trip, beyond the questions raised by our visits to museums and cultural institutions, we came to understand how strongly the historical collections preserved in France continue to shape the contemporary cultural practices of our partners. We also saw that “cultural revitalization” is far more than a marginal or recreational activity: for many communities in Oklahoma, it represents a broader social and cultural project, deeply embedded in everyday life.

This experience, both personal and intellectual, profoundly changed the way we think about research, museum work, and the sharing of knowledge.