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“Your Hands Can Heal” (Haliwa-Saponi) by Senora Lynch

Through Our Eyes, In Our Hands: Prioritizing Indigenous Knowledge in Museums

March 5 - June 27, 2026

Image above: Senora Lynch (Haliwa-Saponi), Your Hands Can Heal, 2024.
Gregg Museum purchase made possible by the Windgate Foundation. 2024.007.002

About this Exhibition

Through Our Eyes, In Our Hands: Prioritizing Indigenous Knowledge in Museums foregrounds Native perspectives on the stewardship of cultural belongings and the history and future of repatriation. This exhibition transforms the museum into a site of learning, self-examination, and responsibility.

Visitors are guided through the intertwined histories of museum collecting, cultural consultation, and the journey to repatriation. Archival materials, personal accounts, and community-based narratives offer insight into the significance of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the ongoing work beyond its legal requirements. Rather than presenting repatriation as a transactional process, this exhibition emphasizes its cultural, spiritual, emotional, and relational dimensions—its power to restore connections and honor ancestors and communities.

Through Indigenous voices and frameworks, the exhibition reframes long-held museum practices, asking visitors to consider questions of authority, ownership, knowledge, and care.

  • What does it mean to care for objects tied to ancestors of living communities?
  • How does one honor the care—spoken and unspoken—that accompanies the belongings of a people?
  • What growth becomes possible when museums prioritize Indigenous leadership and traditional knowledge? 
“NAGPRA is more than just a federal law, it is a step towards sovereignty for Indigenous people. It is a way to take our stories in our own hands, through our own eyes. NAGPRA doesn’t mean the disappearance of objects in a museum. It means helping to heal historic wounds for us, as Native people.”
– Co-curator Lee Chavis-Tartaglia (Lumbee)

Through Our Eyes, In Our Hands extends that legacy into the present, offering an honest and reflective space where dialogue, education, and cultural knowledge intersect.

About Student Co-Curator

Lee Chavis-Tartaglia is an enrolled citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the NAGPRA Collections Assistant for the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. They are a public historian who has interned and worked within museums and cultural institutions for several years. Lee graduated from NC State University with their B.A. in History and Anthropology in 2024. They are currently working on their M.A. in Public History with a concentration in Museum Studies at NC State. Their research focuses on incorporating Indigenous knowledge into museums and cultural institutions, as well as on developing repatriation processes to bring ancestors and objects home.

NC State Native American Student Association

COLLABORATIVE CURATORIAL TEAM

This exhibition series is co-curated by  Lee Chavis-Tartaglia (Lumbee),  Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Collections Assistant; Meredith Osborne, Curatorial Assistant; and Sara Segerlin, Director of the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. This exhibition and public programming were developed in collaboration with Nancy Chavis (Lumbee), Curatorial and Education Consultant, NC State Ph.D. alumna, and Director of the Museum of the Southeastern American Indian at UNC Pembroke; the NC State American Indian Advisory Council; and the Native American Student Association. Together, they bring museum expertise, community insight, and Indigenous knowledge to the heart of the 2026 exhibition season.