Contributed by Marla Taylor
For the past 5 years I have been co-facilitating the development of the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide. The ICC Guide is now nearly complete and I wanted to share some updates.
The inspiration for the ICC Guide grew out of email exchanges I had with ICC co-facilitator Laura Byrant (Director of Repatriation for the Gilcrease Museum) about how to best to steward collections that were awaiting physical repatriation. We realized there was often a tension between museum practices and tribal priorities for cultural collections. Conversations with colleagues revealed that there was little or no established guidance on how to incorporate Indigenous cultural care needs into collections stewardship practices. We created a working group to discuss the issue and the seeds of the ICC Guide were sewn.
With an IMLS National Leadership Grant for Museums in 2023 and a strategic partnership with the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, the ICC Guide was collaboratively written and covers every aspect of collections stewardship. It provides frameworks to recenter collections stewardship practices in ways that respect the needs and knowledge of Indigenous community members. It serves as a bridge between Indigenous community perspectives and traditional museum collections management—on the individual, community, and institutional level—helping those involved in all aspects of collections to engage in a meaningful conversation about culturally appropriate care.
The approach outlined in the ICC Guide is grounded in meaningful consultation with communities whose cultural materials can be found in institutional collections. In fact, the guide has been reviewed by approximately 120 individuals, including over 70 Tribal representatives.
My co-facilitator and I regularly speak about the development and content of the ICC Guide – at conferences, to classes, and as part of a speaker series we developed. The Rethinking Collections Stewardship Speaker Series is hosted by the Gilcrease Museum in collaboration with SAR. We planned for four panels that center on the key content areas within the guide – Intellectual Care of collections, Physical Care of collections, Relationship Building and Consultation, Use and Access of collections.
So far, registration and attendance at these webinars has been fantastic. The panelists have done a tremendous job of sharing their expertise and engaging the audience. We are so grateful for their time and efforts.
Of course, the culmination of all of this will be when the ICC Guide is ready to be shared with the museum field and the public. When will that be? We are in the final editing stages and soliciting one more round of feedback. We don’t have a date set quite yet but I can say that it will be in the Fall of 2026. You can sign-up on our website to be notified when the ICC Guide is available.
Please email me (mtaylor@andover.edu) with any questions you may have. I am so excited to share this work with the broader museum/repatriation/tribal community!
The Peabody 