A traveling exhibition exploring the deep and often overlooked role Native Americans have played in shaping the nation’s history and culture is headed to Florida this month. “Americans,” produced by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and brought to the state through the Museum on Main Street program in partnership with Florida Humanities, kicks off a nearly year-long tour that will stop in five Florida communities between August 2026 and June 2027.
Smithsonian Museum on Main Street
The exhibition opens at the Amelia Island Museum of History in Fernandina Beach on Aug. 21 and runs through Oct. 10, 2026. Florida Humanities selected Amelia Island, along with four other communities, to host the show as part of a national, state, and local partnership aimed at bringing high-quality exhibitions and public programming to rural cultural institutions that don’t typically have access to major traveling shows.
After Fernandina Beach, the exhibition will then travel to the Okeechobee Historical Society from Oct. 17 through Dec. 4, then to Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers from Dec. 12, 2026 through Feb. 6, 2027. From there, it heads to Sacred Lands Preservation and Education from Feb. 13 through Apr. 10, 2027, followed by a final stop at the Historic St. Andrew Waterfront Partnership in Panama City from Apr. 17 through June 5, 2027.
“This exhibition is not just an exploration of who the original inhabitants of these lands are, but how we as a nation have chosen to tell their stories, amid both promise and uncertainty,” said Nashid Madyun, executive director of Florida Humanities. “In a year in which we have been able to reflect on 250 years of American history, this exhibit asks visitors to look beyond those borders and understand that the history of the American Indian is part of our shared history.”
At the heart of the exhibit is a striking contradiction. Natives make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, Native imagery turns up almost everywhere you look, in advertising, sports team logos, film and television, place names, even the name of a U.S. missile system. That gap between how present Natives are in the country’s imagination and how absent they often are from its everyday awareness is exactly what the exhibit sets out to unpack.
Adapted from the original show developed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, “Americans” builds much of its narrative around four moments that make up the bulk of what most non-Natives learn about Native histories: Thanksgiving, the life of Pocahontas, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn. Each one shows up again and again in American culture, in classrooms, on screen, in casual conversation, yet the exhibit argues that what gets remembered, what gets left out, and what still gets fought over says as much about the present as it does about the past. The objects and images on display are designed to catch visitors off guard, revealing misconceptions about Native peoples that most people don’t realize they’re carrying.
Using photographs, interactive displays, and video alongside those historical artifacts, the exhibit pushes visitors to reconsider a country that has always been fascinated by, conflicted about, and fundamentally shaped by its relationship with Natives. Even the title plays on language, borrowing from the term Europeans first used for the continent’s Indigenous peoples. It’s a nod to how central Indigenous people have always been to this land, woven into its identity long before the country existed, and a reminder of just how tangled the relationship has been between Native peoples and the people who now call themselves Americans.
Each host venue will build its own complementary programming around the exhibit, thanks to grant funding from Florida Humanities. That includes public events, educational outreach, and locally curated additions meant to dig into the specifics of Native American identity and representation within each community.
The Florida tour is funded by Florida Humanities with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the State of Florida’s Division of Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Florida State University’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Center is providing programmatic support, with additional funding coming from the Jacarlene Foundation.
The tour also falls under the Smithsonian’s Our Shared Future: 250 initiative, a broader effort marking the nation’s 250th anniversary. Lilly Endowment Inc. is the signature supporter of that initiative, with additional contributions from Target.
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