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When visitors arrive Monday at the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum in Evanston for Indigenous Peoples’ Day — its most visited day of the year — they will be greeted by freshly installed exhibitions on its ground and second floor.

The museum reopened Oct. 1 after being closed since late July. Its new anchor exhibition, “Indigenous Chicago,” is adapted from a recent Newberry Library exhibition of the same name, with additions specific to the Gichigamiin’s version: canoes from the museum collection, and a model of Jigzibik (Potawatomi for “at the river’s edge”), a Native American-focused affordable housing project underway in the Irving Park neighborhood.

Upstairs is a new interactive children’s exhibition, “Gifts of Our World,” and “Chicago’s Legacy Hula,” itself derived from a recent Field Museum exhibition. (The Aloha Center Chicago, a community hub for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, is sharing space with the Gichigamiin Museum while it renovates its own space.)

But the new exhibits are just the most visible outgrowth of major changes at the Gichigamiin Museum in recent years, starting with its name. After being founded as the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in 1977, it was renamed in 2024 for the Anishinaabemowin word meaning “Great Lakes.”

“I called up three very accomplished Native people that I knew in the area and asked them to join the board,” Executive Director Kim Vigue said. “The first one I asked said, ‘I’ll join if you work on changing the name.’”

Gichigamiin’s board is now majority Indigenous, and the museum is now Indigenous-led: Vigue, an Oneida Nation citizen and Menominee descendant with deep experience in federal tribal health programs, joined the museum in 2021. And she had a clear vision about how the museum should evolve in the coming years.

“I came here with my children a couple of years earlier and thought, ‘There’s a lot of objects. But where’s the stories, and the people?’” she said.

To refocus its narrative, the Gichigamiin Museum has narrowed its scope to the Great Lakes region rather than all of the United States and Canada. As a result, it hired dedicated staff to oversee the complex process of object repatriation, which requires special sensitivity when it pertains to Native artifacts.

The museum is poring through the 10,000 items in its collection to determine whether each item should be kept, repatriated or released — and how — in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Vigue said she and her colleagues endeavor to “go a step beyond that.”

“Since we’ve become an Indigenous-led museum, we have this philosophy that none of these belong to us,” she says. “NAGPRA (applies to) things that are culturally significant or spiritually significant, but that’s subjective. We’re looking to repatriate or to return items that don’t necessarily fall within the law.”

As it continues to transform, the Gichigamiin Museum is leaning into other shifts in curation. In community feedback surveys, Native and non-Native audiences alike demonstrated keen interest in questions of environmental stewardship.

That’s reflected in the museum’s lush native plant garden, as well as “Gifts of Our World,” which Vigue said  “focuses on caring for all living things.”

In the former play space, birch branches that once propped up an inaccurate representation of a historical Native dwelling have been reassembled as a decorative installation in the entryway.

“We followed this true Indigenous philosophy of repurposing and reusing everything,” Vigue said.

Its library and learning space on the first floor has also been repainted and reimagined, swapping academic texts for books by Indigenous authors and adorned with a ceiling mural designed and painted by Kyle Malott (Pokagon Band Potawatomi) and Sergio Ceron (Otomi-Pame).

Coming early next year is a teaching kitchen in an adjacent building, a project close to Vigue’s heart due to her years of working in Native health initiatives. She envisions it as “part of a larger seed-to-table initiative, with the museum’s gardens serving as the centerpiece.”

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“We also see it as a community resource that can support family programs, visiting presenters, partnerships and Indigenous food entrepreneurs who may not have access to their own commercial kitchen space,” she said.

In the meantime, the museum’s people-centered work continues, internally and externally. Michael Lamble, visitor services and program manager, said one of his favorite pieces is “Shemaginish” (“warrior” in Anishinaabemowin), a birch-bark re-creation of the Mandalorian armor from “Star Wars” by artist Christal Ratt.

“People would say, ‘I had no idea George Lucas stole Boba Fett from Native Americans,’” Lamble said. “No. Native Americans have also seen ‘Star Wars.’ Living, modern people are engaging with media.”

The Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum, 3001 Central St., Evanston, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is free Monday, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and free year-round for tribal citizens. General admission is $8 and $6 for youths and seniors. For more information, visit gichigamiin-museum.org.

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.