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Both archaeology and ethnology materials are strongly represented in the MPM collections.

Currently there are approximately 57,000 catalogued items or lots in archaeology, with approximately 36,000 catalogued items in ethnology.

Our virtual resources provide teachers and students with the opportunity to enrich their perspectives on many of the traditions, material culture, and belief systems of various North American Indian tribes.

Video Resources

Compare & Contrast Tour 

In this series of five videos, we’ll discuss the resources Native Americans used to survive in their environments.

This exhibit's centerpiece, titled Indian Country, features a contemporary powwow grand entry scene with 37 life-sized figures dressed in colorful dance attire.

These figures are on an enormous turntable around singers at a drum and pass through areas of theatrical lighting accompanied by the sounds of American Indian music.

3 Rivers Powwow  

Presented by Milwaukee Public Museum with support from Potawatomi Casino Hotel

Join us as we kick off Native American Heritage Month with a powwow celebrating Indigenous cultures through song and dance!

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Ames, Michael
1991 Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver, B.C.: UBC Press.

Bancroft-Hunt, Norman, and Forman, Werner
1979 People of the Totem: The Indians of the Pacific Northwest. London: Orbis Publishing.

Barnett, H.G.
1938 The Nature of the Potlatch in American Anthropologist 40(3): 349-358.

Enjoy the delicious Indigenous cuisine of Ketapanen Kitchen, Chicago's first Native American pop-up kitchen and catering company.

North America was colonized by several European powers and these various nations brought a wide assortment of goods to the continent to be traded with native groups.

Many ordinary objects from Europe had a powerful market value for American Indian tribes. These items and their associated purpose were often adopted and adapted by native peoples. Such is the case with silk ribbons, which were used by Woodland Indians to create a form of appliqué decoration not seen before in Europe.

Beginnings in the Great Lakes

Though scholars find language the most efficient way to classify American Indian groups, many tribes would fall under broad language groups. The Kickapoo, meaning “those who walk the earth” or “he who moves here and there,” are grouped with other tribes in the Algonquian linguistic lineage, and were situated in what A. M. Gibson refers to as the “Algonquian heartland” (1963:3).

Dawn Scher Thomae

Curator of Collections/Senior Collection Manager

Thomae@mpm.edu or 414-278-6157

The Milwaukee Public Museum's Anthropology department collections comprise over 400,000 objects.

Ethnographic material includes artifacts from indigenous North and South American groups, African and Pacific aboriginal peoples, and some Southeast Asian tribal groups. The archaeological collection includes artifacts from the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.