Joslyn Art Museum is committed to fostering positive relationships with Native American tribes and organizations. To guide this work, we collaborated with our Native American Art Advisory Committee to draft four key commitments to Indigenous communities:

1. Creating a welcoming environment for Indigenous visitors and community partners.

2. Supporting community-led educational and cultural revitalization initiatives.

3. Acknowledging past and present injustices against Indigenous people.

4. Celebrating the creativity and resilience of Indigenous communities.

In this spirit, the Museum is developing a Ceremony Circle in our garden to acknowledge Umóⁿhoⁿ ancestral homelands and provide a welcoming area for Indigenous traditional care practices and cultural use of the collections. We are honored by the Omaha Tribal Council’s generous offer to donate a red stone for this purpose, which is key to fostering future collaborations between the Museum and the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. The Ceremony Circle is surrounded by sage, sweetgrass, and cedar plantings for Indigenous people to use.

For the first time in the Museum’s history, we have integrated Native art across our American art galleries, and Native art can be found in all three of the Museum’s buildings.

All best,

Annika