{"id":38544,"date":"2025-03-14T12:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/trumps-firings-reach-into-a-rapid-city-museum-and-derail-an-experts-career\/"},"modified":"2025-03-14T12:22:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:22:15","slug":"trumps-firings-reach-into-a-rapid-city-museum-and-derail-an-experts-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/trumps-firings-reach-into-a-rapid-city-museum-and-derail-an-experts-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s firings reach into a Rapid City museum and derail an expert\u2019s career"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Angela Watts started a Rapid City-based job as senior curator for the U.S. Department of Interior\u2019s Indian Arts and Crafts Board in December. She was one of the thousands of federal employees abruptly fired by the Trump administration in February. (Seth Tupper\/South Dakota Searchlight)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There aren\u2019t many people in the U.S. who do what Angela Watts does.<\/p>\n

There were fewer than 13,000 who worked in museum curation in 2023, according\u00a0to the most recent data<\/a>\u00a0from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 330 of them were federal, state or local government employees.<\/p>\n

From mid-December until Feb. 14 \u2014 a day of\u00a0mass firings<\/a>\u00a0across the federal workforce \u2014 Watts was one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DOGE cuts in SD<\/p>\n

This is part of a series on the impact of mass federal firings and funding freezes in South Dakota. For future and prior reporting, see Searchlight\u2019s\u00a0DOGE in SD<\/a>\u00a0page.<\/p>\n

Watts\u2019 expertise is in a specific type of curation: Native American art. That background helped her earn the job of senior curator for the U.S. Department of Interior\u2019s\u00a0Indian Arts and Crafts Board<\/a>, a little-known division that promotes Native American art and artists, preserves that art and its cultural heritage for the public, and\u00a0polices counterfeit Indigenous artwork<\/a>\u00a0presented as authentic.<\/p>\n

The board operates the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, as well as the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Montana, and Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Watts\u2019 job was in Rapid City, which is geographically centered among the three locations, has the biggest population, and has the\u00a0Journey Museum<\/a>, which houses the Sioux Indian Museum. Watts \u201cmoved to South Dakota in the middle of winter,\u201d she said, to start a job that felt perfect for someone with a specialty in tribal art curation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go into museum work to serve communities, and so to be able to contribute to work that\u2019s helping communities in Browning and Anadarko and Rapid City, and helping support Native American artists, all of that was really exciting,\u201d Watts said. \u201cI cared about the mission, but it was also a really good move for me career-wise. And so it kind of felt like a win-win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal job cuts<\/p>\n

The winning feeling didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n

On Valentine\u2019s Day, Watts was among the thousands of probationary (newly hired) federal employees across the U.S. dismissed from duty, ostensibly for performance issues or their relative inexperience in public service.<\/p>\n

Those firings and thousands of others since the start of the second Trump administration came by way of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an entity created through an executive order and led by the world\u2019s richest person, Elon Musk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many federal employees in South Dakota were impacted by the administration\u2019s moves to shrink the federal government\u2019s 2.3 million-strong workforce.<\/p>\n

Around 10,000 federal employees lost their jobs nationwide in the Feb. 14 purge, and around\u00a030,000 have lost them so far<\/a>. The administration sent buyout offers to federal employees before then, and later said\u00a075,000 people took them<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board and its three museums are a blip on Interior\u2019s budgetary radar compared to the\u00a020,000 employees<\/a>\u00a0working in some capacity on the 85 million acres of land managed by its National Park Service.\u00a0The park service lost around 1,000 employees in the Feb. 14 downsizing.<\/p>\n

Journey Museum Executive Director Conor McMahon formerly held the job Watts was hired for.\u00a0At its largest, McMahon said, he had around two dozen coworkers nationwide with the Arts and Crafts Board. It\u2019s \u201ca really unique\u201d federal agency, he said, and one that fills an important role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do work that is not duplicated by any other government agency, and is not done in the private sector,\u201d McMahon said. \u201cThe easiest way to think of it is that they are an economic development agency for Native American artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Probationary, but not inexperienced<\/p>\n

Watts hadn\u2019t been with the government long enough to have an official performance review.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t actually have any bad feedback on my progress to that point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Watts may have been new to the position, but a case for inexperience would be difficult to make.<\/p>\n

Her first high school job was in a museum in Salt Lake City, where she grew up. She has a graduate degree in museum anthropology and an undergraduate minor in Native American art history. Before taking the job in Rapid City, she spent 17 years at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her specialty there? The preservation, cataloging and, when necessary, repatriation of Native American arts and artifacts.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople hear the word \u2018probationary\u2019 and they think that it\u2019s some kid who just finished school as their first job or something like that,\u201d Watts said. \u201cBut this was a job I had been working toward for literally my entire career.\u201d<\/p>\n

She applied in August, accepted in October and moved to Rapid City from Lawrence, Kansas, to start the job shortly before Christmas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Museum getting by on less<\/p>\n

Another board employee, Travis Braveheart, whose duties included leading tours for school children, was also let go by Interior on Feb. 14. While McMahon was chief curator, he hired Braveheart as an intern for the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Braveheart did well, especially in his outreach role, and had recently secured a full-time position as a museum technician. He was the only Lakota employee of the Sioux Indian Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watts, meanwhile, came to a long-open position with what McMahon called a strong and needed skill set.<\/p>\n

\u201cLosing them, losing her, is a real loss to both the Indian Arts and Crafts Board as well as the Sioux Indian Museum, and for the Journey Museum,\u201d McMahon said.<\/p>\n

Just one of the board\u2019s three employees at the Rapid City location remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear what the losses mean for the Journey Museum long-term. Without Braveheart, McMahon said, it will be a lot more difficult to get Native American kids through the door for tours, during which they\u2019d learn about their own history. In the near term, it will mean longer hours for the employees who remain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s saddened that the federal job cuts have sliced into part of Rapid City\u2019s cultural history.\u00a0The Sioux Indian Museum\u2019s first exhibitions highlighting living Native American artists\u00a0opened in the 1960s and \u201970s and featured the work of artists including Oscar Howe, Arthur Amiotte and Don Montileaux.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would go on to become probably the three most famous Native American artists in South Dakota,\u201d McMahon said. \u201cAnd so I think that just shows the importance of these federal programs, these federal museums, and federal investments in our local arts, culture and economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Trump\u2019s firings reach into a Rapid City museum and derail an expert\u2019s career<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Angela Watts started a Rapid City-based job as senior curator for the U.S. Department of Interior\u2019s Indian Arts and Crafts Board in December. She was one of the thousands of federal employees abruptly fired by the Trump administration in February. (Seth Tupper\/South Dakota Searchlight) There aren\u2019t many people in the <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> March 14, 2025<\/p>\n

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