https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/white-house-report-targets-smithsonians-treatment-of-native-history-criticizes-stolen-land-narrative/

White House Report Targets Smithsonian’s Treatment of Native History, Criticizes ‘Stolen Land’ Narrative

by Levi Rickert

WASHINGTON — As Americans marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, late Saturday night, the Trump White House quietly released a 162-page report accusing the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) of promoting what it calls a politically biased interpretation of the nation’s past.

The report, Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, was issued as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape how American history is presented in federally supported institutions.

The report stems from Trump’s March 27, 2025 executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which directed a review of Smithsonian exhibits, educational programs, and policies. The executive order named Vice President JD Vance to serve on the Smithsonian Board of Regents and charged administration officials with examining what the White House described as “divisive” and “ideological” historical narratives.

While the report focuses primarily on the National Museum of American History, it also takes aim at interpretations of Native American history presented across Smithsonian museums, including themes long associated with the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of the American Indian.

The report criticizes the National Museum of the American Indian’s Nation to Nation exhibition.

“For example, the exhibit’s introductory video begins by stating that the story of the U.S. and Native American Indian nations is a story about ‘the rise of a new great nation at the sacrifice of hundreds of others,’” the report states.

WASHINGTON — As Americans marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, late Saturday night, the Trump White House quietly released a 162-page report accusing the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) of promoting what it calls a politically biased interpretation of the nation’s past.

The report, Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, was issued as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape how American history is presented in federally supported institutions.

The report stems from Trump’s March 27, 2025 executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which directed a review of Smithsonian exhibits, educational programs, and policies. The executive order named Vice President JD Vance to serve on the Smithsonian Board of Regents and charged administration officials with examining what the White House described as “divisive” and “ideological” historical narratives.

While the report focuses primarily on the National Museum of American History, it also takes aim at interpretations of Native American history presented across Smithsonian museums, including themes long associated with the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of the American Indian.

The report criticizes the National Museum of the American Indian’s Nation to Nation exhibition.

“For example, the exhibit’s introductory video begins by stating that the story of the U.S. and Native American Indian nations is a story about ‘the rise of a new great nation at the sacrifice of hundreds of others,’” the report states.

The report also takes issue with Suzan Shown Harjo’s video, The ‘Indian Problem’. In the video, Harjo—Cheyenne and Muscogee (Creek), one of the exhibit’s curators and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama—states:

“When you wrench people from their homelands, wasn’t that genocide? We don’t make the case that there was genocide. We know there was.”

Another of the report’s central criticisms is the use of “land acknowledgements” and exhibits that describe the United States as having been built on land taken from Indigenous peoples. A chapter titled “NMAH’s Repeated Claim that America Rests on Stolen Land” argues that such interpretations frame American history primarily as a story of oppression rather than achievement.

The report criticizes Smithsonian Under Secretary for Education Monique Chism and NMAH Director Anthea Hartig for beginning official museum events with land acknowledgements recognizing Indigenous peoples as the original inhabitants of the land.

The report also challenges content in the museum’s Many Voices, One Nation exhibit, which states that the U.S. government “forcibly pushed Indians from their ancestral lands” to make way for Euro-American settlement, distributed land taken from Native peoples through the Homestead Act, and pursued war with Mexico in 1846 to acquire western territory.

According to the White House, these interpretations place too much emphasis on Indigenous dispossession, slavery, and racial injustice while downplaying the nation’s founding ideals and accomplishments.

The report’s release sets up a direct conflict between the Trump administration and many Native historians, tribal leaders, and scholars who view land dispossession and treaty violations as essential parts of the American story. Coming on the nation’s semiquincentennial, the report signals that debates over how U.S. history is told—and whose perspectives are included—are likely to intensify in the years ahead.