Where we visit museums at BYU

We visited two museums during our field trip last Friday. The first was the BYU Dinosaur Museum, which we learned was established by Jim Jensen, a self-taught paleontologist who personally discovered most of the specimens on display. It was fascinating to read that Jensen collected so many fossils that bins of them (or at least they used to be) were stored under the stadium. Michael and Nova enjoyed the silhouette activity and drew pictures, but the boys lost interest after about 10 minutes.

Next, we drove to the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, though not without a bit of excitement — we found ourselves briefly stopped in the middle of a turning lane while Nova frantically searched for her phone, fearing she might have left it at the first museum. Luckily it was found in her bag.

The museum's special exhibit on Petra was well done, but I must admit that archaeology as a topic doesn't captivate me much. I'd rather visit sites in person than view artifacts behind glass, and I suspect the kids feel the same. I need to start taking them to more "real" places.

However, what stood out to me most was a small and easy-to-miss plaque that detailed the history of the peoples who have lived in this area. It began with the "Ancients," who inhabited the region from 7000 B.C. to A.D. 1750 (the use of A.D. dates the plaque itself, as historians today mostly use C.E.). The Fremont culture followed from A.D. 750 to 1300, providing a wealth of archaeological evidence. These people were named after the Fremont River, along which artifacts were discovered in the 1920s. The river was named for John C. Frémont, an explorer in the 1840s.

The "Late Historic" period, from A.D. 1400 to 1750, described the indigenous groups present as European settlers began arriving in the Americas, with many documented sites from that time. The plaque then referenced the "Historic Peoples," naming the Utes as the native inhabitants along the shores of Utah Lake. However, historical evidence contradicts this simplified narrative. Around 70,000 members of related tribes, collectively recognized as the Snake-Shoshone, lived throughout Utah and parts of Idaho. These groups are now identified as the Timpanogos Nation, a non-federally recognized tribe with about 1,000 members.

In 1881, the U.S. government forced the Timpanogos onto the same reservation as the Ute Tribe, a group originally from Colorado. Despite submitting over 10,000 documents to the federal government proving their distinct identity, the Timpanogos Tribe remains without federal recognition. Although Congress acknowledged them in 1865, the Department of the Interior never placed them on the registry. This lack of status has led to second-class treatment, with accusations of mistreatment by the Utes, including being assigned the least desirable land on the reservation and being excluded from critical funds, such as COVID-19 relief.

It’s time for Utah's museums and historians to correct the record and recognize the Timpanogos Nation as the true indigenous people of this land.