The National Museum of the American Indian is part of the Smithsonian Institute as well as being the first national museum to focus on exploring the culture, language, and all other aspects of Native American or American Indian life. At present, the museum features more over 800,000 artefacts and works of art that are of historical, religious, and aesthetic significance. Also included are items of utilitarian use. Majority of the New York museum?s collection had been assembled by George Gustav Heye.

The collection had been gathered from all over the world and feature different tribes not just in the US but also those in Canada and a few tribes that had been based in South and Central America and even the Caribbean.

Another branch of the National Museum of the American Indian can be found in Washington, D.C.