Like many of us, Morgan Lindsay ’22 turned to books for comfort and clarity during the pandemic. Little did she know one of those books would go on to inspire her summer-long Schapiro Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project, form the basis of her senior thesis, and influence the direction of her career.

The book, Dr. Amy Lonetree’s Decolonizing Museums, investigates how museums grapple with the history of indigenous America. In it, Lonetree lays out a series of decolonization tactics museums can employ to make their exhibitions more open to indigenous communities, including the removal of implicit and explicit colonial perspectives. Lindsay was curious to see if museums have embraced Lonetree’s tactics in the 10 years since the book was originally published. Her subsequent project, titled “Decolonization, Indigenization, and the Representation of Narratives in Virginia Museums,” narrows Lonetree’s nationwide scope by exploring six Virginia museums, five of which she was able to visit in person this summer.

“I wanted to see if the trends Lonetree wrote about a decade ago were trickling down into some of the less well-funded museums,” Lindsay says. During her 9-week research project she traveled to the Pamunkey Indian Museum and Cultural Center, the Monacan Ancestral Museum, the Amherst County Historical Society Museum, Jamestown’s Archaearium, and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and plans to tour the temporarily closed King William County Historical Society Museum soon.

Bringing History to the People

“Public history is what I want to do with my life,” Lindsay says, describing the field as the bridge between tourism and academic scholarship. “It’s what brings history to the people.”

For Lindsay, the stories told in museums hold sway over public perceptions of historical ideas, events, and cultures. Whose stories are told, in what forms, and through which voices—these curatorial decisions can create as much harm as they do awareness. Lindsay embraces Lonetree’s position that combatting misperceptions in the museum space begins with acknowledging the historical centering of European-American perspectives. Only then can those misperceptions be corrected through the deliberate inclusion and prioritization of Native American viewpoints.

“We’re seeing a larger social trend toward analyzing the ways that our entire culture is structured around groups that traditionally have held a lot of power,” Lindsay says. “We want to make sure that we’re expanding that analysis outwards.”

Small Spaces, Big Ideas

Lindsay began her inquiry with two tribal museums, then expanded her view to the historical museums in counties surrounding those tribal museums before turning to the larger state museums that encompass them all. In each, Lindsay probed collections and exhibits for clues as to who was telling the story of indigenous America. She says she was excited to see that local tribes were involved in exhibits at all the museums she visited, specifically referencing an exhibit at the Amherst County Historical Society Museum created by an intern from the Monacan nation.

“It’s a really big deal to see the kind of collaborative partnership that Amy Lonetree was calling for 10 years ago,” Lindsay says.

Additionally, she notes that the indigenous perspectives emphasized at the Pamunkey Indian Museum and Cultural Center in New Kent, Virginia have been in place since the 1970s, even though many of the strategies used there have only recently been adopted by larger state museums. It’s the small museums where Lindsay sees decolonization trends appearing first.

“The trends are trickling upwards,” Lindsay says. “Small museums, interestingly, have less funding, but that possibly gives them some leeway that larger museums might not have.”

Expanding the Scope

At the end of her research, Lindsay saw varying degrees of Native American involvement at all six museums, with the lion’s share occurring at smaller institutions. Importantly, the larger museums not owned and operated by indigenous tribes still sought Native counsel during their exhibition design.

However, halfway through the SURF project, Lindsay realized there was more to be said than what could fit into her 25-page research paper. She has since decided to work with her SURF mentor, History Department Chair Dr. Mathias D. Bergmann, and History Professor Dr. Jill Horohoe on expanding her SURF project into her senior thesis. She hopes to explore the relationship between museum size, funding, and the stories they’re able to tell over time, eventually documenting the evolution of individual exhibits.

“Decolonization is a process,” she says. “It’s not something that happens once and then it’s over. You build a framework and then, because museums aren’t stagnant, you have to continue to focus on that framework.”

The Farmville native double-majoring in History and Archaeology says she appreciates the opportunity to take her research to the next level during SURF and in her senior thesis, and that it was one of the deciding factors of why she chose to be a Yellow Jacket.

“Randolph-Macon is one of those places where you get that one-on-one experience with faculty, mentors that you might not be able to have at a larger institution,” Lindsay says. “I’ve been lucky over my four years to have a number of different mentorship experiences.”

She notes how this experience and others at Randolph-Macon have helped her develop her own personal interests while giving her skills she can then use to market herself in graduate school and during future job opportunities.

“Through my previous internship at Richmond’s Agecroft Hall & Gardens, my SURF research, and continuing on in my senior thesis, I’ve been able to form connections and get out into the field,” she says. “There’s a lot of opportunity here, and in a field like public history, experience is something that you need to have.”