Museums often present Indigenous cultures as 'frozen in time.' Artist Kent Monkman on shifting that narrative

CBC Docs

· Posted: Jun 06, 2025 4:02 PM EDT | Last Updated: June 6

Museums are inherently colonial, according to Cree creator Kent Monkman. 

"You don't spot Indigenous radical going astir the satellite collecting artifacts and worldly and putting them nether a extortion similar the mode that these assemblage European cultures person done," helium says successful this bonus clip from So Surreal: Behind the Masks. "We would ne'er bash that.

"You can't truly decolonize [museums] due to the fact that they are inherently colonial. But you tin alteration the speech astir what's wrong them."

In 2019, 2 of Monkman's paintings were unveiled successful the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Great Hall successful New York. 

"[The Met] commissioned maine to make 2 paintings for the Great Hall," helium says. "They decided to unfastened their postulation and person artists travel successful and bash interventions." 

Monkman explains that the Met's postulation includes romantic, idealized representations of Indigenous people. Works similar Eugène Delacroix's The Natchez, for example, reenforce the taxable of the dying oregon vanishing race. 

The coating shows a mates with their newborn aft they fled the French forces that decimated their tribe. According to Monkman, it implies this is the past of the Natchez people, but successful fact, they are precise overmuch alive. 

"I've truly taken to task artworks of that play to analyse however devastating those kinds of representations are," helium says. "It reinforces implicit and implicit again that Indigenous radical lone existed successful the past and that we're not applicable contiguous oregon successful the future."

Monkman says helium wanted to observe the beingness and resilience of Indigenous radical successful his 2 murals for the Met. 

While alteration successful museums is slow, determination is movement, Monkman says. He has served connected depository boards and has seen museums prosecute Indigenous curators implicit the past 20 years. 

"These are each important changes successful presumption of however Indigenous radical are capable to interact and bespeak connected the stories that person mostly been told by the settler culture," helium says.

The documentary So Surreal: Behind the Masks explores however Indigenous masks from B.C. and Alaska made it into the hands of European Surrealists. Watch it present connected CBC Gem and the CBC Docs YouTube channel.