What's In Our Name ​

Open November 7, 2023 to Summer 2024​​

What’s In Our Name? celebrates the Museum’s name change from Pueblo Grande to S’edav Va’aki, a name chosen by our tribal partners, the O’Odham, whose ancestors previously inhabited the site. Names have power, both emotionally and spiritually through oral history. The City of Phoenix is continuing on its journey of healing with this renaming..

This exhibit also explores other ways in which the Museum has grown through an updated mission statement, new interpretation signs, programing, and a new interpretation plan. 

What's In Our Name? will be on display at S'edav Va'aki Museum from November 7, 2023 until Summer 2024​.​

Sending Their Ancestors Home

Open June 22, 2022 to May 2024

Sending Their Ancestors Home explores the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a federal legislation passed in 1990, and its effects on both Native American culture and museum ethics. Learn more about the history of this law as well as how museums have taken strides to comply, or dodge, the ramifications of legislation.

Where do museums and cultural institution stand 30 years later? What work is there still left to do? How has this Museum grown and taken accountability for past acts of injustice? Sending Their Ancestors Home, created in close consultation with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the Gila River Indian Community, attempts to answer these questions. This exhibit was generously funded by the S'eḏav Va'aki Museum Foundation.

Sending Their Ancestors Home will be on display at S'eḏav Va'aki Museum from June 22, 2023 through May 2023.

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