By Michelle Tirado

It took about five years plus a whole lot of introspection and some big changes, but the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum has received its national accreditation from the American Association of Museums.

Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki, with its main branch located on the tribe’s Big Cypress Reservation and a smaller facility in Okalee, became the first tribally operated museum to earn accreditation this spring. The National Museum of the American Indian, operated by the Smithsonian Institute, was accredited this spring as well.

The main facility, which opened in 1997, is the steward of more than 11,000 artifacts and archives that the tribe started collecting more than 20 years. The campus, visited by people from all over the world, is made up of three buildings, totaling over 5,000 square feet of space, and includes four galleries.

The tribe decided to pursue accreditation not only to ensure that its museum is operating under the best possible standards but also to break down some barriers.

“We have always been the exhibit. As Indian people, we have been the artifacts. Now, we are the curators; we are the directors; we are the trustees; we are dictating how the stories are interpreted,” said Tina Osceola, Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki’s executive director.

The AAM accreditation process is not easy, which may explain why out of some 17,000 museums across the country fewer than 800 are accredited.

The process includes several steps. The first is preparation, when the museum familiarizes itself with the application process and assesses its readiness. Second, it completes and submits the 15-page application, and there is a deadline and a fee ($400, due upon approval).

The applicant next receives notification to begin a one-year self-study process, which requires completing a questionnaire that covers things like the museum’s mission, planning, governance, accountability, financial stability and the scope of its collections. The self-study questionnaire is then reviewed by an AAM commission. Once the museum receives interim approval, two AAM peer reviewers visit the facility, and that is followed by another commission review.

The Seminole embarked on the accreditation journey in the fall of 2004. Osceola said the application process alone took 46 months. But as she and anyone else with the museum or tribe will say, it was well worth the time and effort — it made the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki better equipped to fulfill its mission of preserving the tribe’s culture and history forever.

It had to make some major changes, and increasing its staff was one of the biggest. Anne McCudden, Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki’s director, said one of the parameters it had to meet before applying was having professional museum staff on board, people with prior museum experience and advanced degrees. While it had a few, including McCudden, the museum decided to hire more because it was poised for growth. It was strengthening its policies and procedures and increasing its programming. It was getting ready to meet the best possible standards in the museum industry.

“You need to do that with as many professional-level museum staff as you can,” McCudden said.

Since beginning the process, its staff has increased from 25 to 56 full-time employees. Around 20 are museum professionals.

The museum also had to develop and implement some of its core documents. There were those related to the facility, such as the landscape plan, physical maintenance plan and emergency preparedness plan. Before applying for accreditation, it had these documents in draft form only and they were not adhered to sufficiently.

“We have really instituted these across the board; implemented them with every single staff member that they are applicable to. And they — especially the emergency preparedness plan — have become second nature for everybody,” McCudden said.

The process called for putting together an organizational chart that reflected the museum’s goals and objectives and developing policies and procedures that are in line with the latest best practices. Then a usable strategic plan had to be formulated.

“That really set the course for accreditation, where we determine where we wanted to go, what kind of talent we needed on board and how many. Once we had that talent on board, the strategic plan started to really take shape,” Osceola said.

Just as important to the operations and staffing changes was the museum’s need to reach out more to its primary community: the Seminole tribe. Moving toward accreditation and growth, it needed buy-in from tribal members and the tribal council.

“We have increased our participation — the back and forth, if you will — between the museum staff with everything we do and the tribal community. That was absolutely a necessary component of accreditation,” McCudden said.