“Twice Removed”: Indigenous Siberian Ethnographic Collections in U.S. Museums

ABSTRACT This paper explores the status of Indigenous ethnographic collections from Siberia—objects, photographic, and other heritage records—that were moved outside Russia to museums in the United States (North America). The collections now held at seven American museums are treated here as “twice removed,” that is, both geographically and intellectually, from their original homelands. This study is a response to the growing interest in the status of Siberian collections by museum and heritage professionals, and primarily by Siberian diaspora experts and cultural activists. Such collections are now viewed as a new resource that can help sustain heritage preservation in both home and diaspora communities and advance transnational collaboration. Sharing knowledge about Siberian ethnographic collections in Western museums is a rapidly growing activity aimed at co‐creating knowledge with Indigenous experts and at building ways to reconnect the collections, via online access and other means, with home communities and other audiences when international connections, broken since 2022, resume.