Institutions around the United States have, in recent years, grappled with questions about how to display Indigenous art and artifacts respectfully and with the appropriate cultural context while confronting the ways colonialism has shaped museum collections. What is often lost in discussions of, say, how to comply with the Department of the Interior’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or how to undo years of Euro-centric gatekeeping in major museums is how Indigenous people can take the lead on those and other related initiatives.

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Museums and cultural organizations are navigating these issues in various ways. Earlier this year, New York’s Forge Project, which oversees one of the first lending collections of contemporary Native art, transitioned into a non-profit model guided by a seven-person Indigenous Steering Council. Last month, Denver Art Museum (one of the first institutions in the U.S. to collect Native American art) undertook a complete rehanging of its Indigenous works, planned in close collaboration with local Native communities and overseen by the museum’s Indigenous Community Advisory Council.

“Interwoven Power: Native Knowledge / Native Art,” a long-term exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, reimagines the presentation of pieces from the museum’s renowned collection more than 4,000 works of Indigenous art from North America. Right now, there are fifty historical, modern and contemporary works (including new commissions) by artists from more than forty Native nations on display in two newly restored galleries. The show, which features works by Rose B. Simpson, Nicholas Galanin, Sarah Sense and Cara Romero and includes a major site-specific installation by Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation), was curated by Laura Allen in collaboration with an advisory council of Native American artists, scholars, writers, educators and colleagues.

By presenting these works through a contemporary,........

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