This article identifies the principal characteristics and meanings of the architecture in three important museums that exhibit pre-Columbian collections side by side with the present situation of native peoples in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The three analyzed museums are the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, projected by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (1964); the Canadian Museum of Civilization of Ottawa-Gatineau, build by Douglas Cardinal (1989), and the National Museum of the American Indian of Washington, D.C., also projected by Cardinal (2004). A comparison relates the architectonic, curatorial, and museographic aspects of these museums to national identity and cultural diversity. At the end, the risks in the construction of different concepts of “indigenous heritage” will be discussed.