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American Indians weave their dreams into museum - Elizabeth Olson, NY Times, August 21, 2004
Washington -- A century ago, George Gustav Heye, a New Yorker, traveled across the United States, gathering up Indian objects by the boxcar. All told, he amassed 800,000 artifacts of Indian art and life, which will have a new home at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which opens in the nation's capital on Sept. 21.
Unlike the impoverished Indians who happily sold Heye, a wealthy oil heir, their tribal treasures and sometimes their dregs, today's Indians see these same objects as an opportunity to tell their story -- their way. Long before construction began on the museum's curvy, buff-colored limestone-clad building on the National Mall, W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who has steered the museum's plans since 1990, began asking Indian tribes what they wanted in such a museum.
What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture that was represented in Heye's collection. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible. "This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture," said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, "not something in museums or in history books."
So the new museum will mark its presence not only with a bumpy-looking facade at odds with those of its stately, white-marble neighbors, but also with a distinctly different operating philosophy that gives tribes continuing access to both the objects on display and those in storage at a suburban Maryland preservation center. "Every piece is considered a living being," said Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural resources. "These pieces are not seen just as specimens or artifacts."
So when the Mechoopda, of Central California, discovered that the museum's collection had a shirt used in a tribal dance that had not been performed since 1906, they asked to borrow it. Bernstein then carried the buckskin shirt, with a fringe of acorns, pine nut beads and feathers, across the country for tribal members to use as a model to make new shirts for a revival of the dance.
As part of its commitment to Indian tribes (dozens collaborated extensively on its exhibits), the museum is letting them commune with their objects. Bernstein said much of the access would be after-hours, but he added that spontaneous ceremonies or offerings to sacred objects would also be welcome and that the staff had been trained to deal with them.
The tribes' spiritual needs, including the blessings of objects in the museum and traditional offerings of braids of sweet grass, feathers or sagebrush, will be accommodated both at the building's opening and afterward, museum officials said. Tribes like the Santa Clara of New Mexico would also be able, for example, to sprinkle cornmeal around their objects to maintain their tribal custom of "feeding and nourishing" them, Bernstein said.
A century after Heye's forays, American Indians have the resources to ensure their vision of a national museum serving the estimated 30 million to 40 million American Indians in the Western Hemisphere. American tribes gave more than a third of the $100 million in private funds that Congress, which authorized the museum in 1989, required to be raised. Federal money paid for the rest of the $219 million project.
Three tribes that operate casinos donated $10 million each: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which operates the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut; the Mohegan Tribe, which operates another Connecticut gaming operation; and the Oneida in New York. Overall, nearly two dozen tribes and tribal corporations formed by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act contributed. (Four other tribes are now operating the only tribally owned enterprise in Washington: a Residence Inn, intended to cater to American Indian visitors, that they built a few blocks from the museum using gambling proceeds.)
Financing the museum is seen "as a huge accomplishment," said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest group representing the nearly 600 state- and federally recognized tribes. "Because a lot of tribes felt they were contributing for all of Indian country." The money also helps offset complaints about Indian casinos. Questions about tribal gaming "overshadow almost everything else about us," acknowledged Mankiller, who also served on the museum's advisory fund-raising committee. American Indians have a chance to move beyond such stereotypes, she said, because the museum "is about our culture and art, and where our future is."
To keep Indian traditions and culture more visible, the museum, with its smaller sister institution, the National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in lower Manhattan, plans traveling exhibitions that will circulate Indian art and cultural objects around the country. It is also training smaller museums' staff members to mount shows of Indian art and culture. The museum plans to have performances by Indian boat builders from Hawaii and Alaska as well as artisans, dancers and storytellers to help museum visitors (officials expect nearly 4 million annually) understand contemporary Indian life.
More than 12,000 Indians from tribes across the hemisphere are expected to attend the opening, which will be followed by a weeklong First Americans Festival.
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Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian Opens Sept. 21 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For more information, phone (202) 633-1000 or go to www.nmai.si.edu
Washington -- A century ago, George Gustav Heye, a New Yorker, traveled across the United States, gathering up Indian objects by the boxcar. All told, he amassed 800,000 artifacts of Indian art and life, which will have a new home at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which opens in the nation's capital on Sept. 21.
Unlike the impoverished Indians who happily sold Heye, a wealthy oil heir, their tribal treasures and sometimes their dregs, today's Indians see these same objects as an opportunity to tell their story -- their way. Long before construction began on the museum's curvy, buff-colored limestone-clad building on the National Mall, W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who has steered the museum's plans since 1990, began asking Indian tribes what they wanted in such a museum.
What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture that was represented in Heye's collection. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible. "This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture," said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, "not something in museums or in history books."
So the new museum will mark its presence not only with a bumpy-looking facade at odds with those of its stately, white-marble neighbors, but also with a distinctly different operating philosophy that gives tribes continuing access to both the objects on display and those in storage at a suburban Maryland preservation center. "Every piece is considered a living being," said Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural resources. "These pieces are not seen just as specimens or artifacts."
So when the Mechoopda, of Central California, discovered that the museum's collection had a shirt used in a tribal dance that had not been performed since 1906, they asked to borrow it. Bernstein then carried the buckskin shirt, with a fringe of acorns, pine nut beads and feathers, across the country for tribal members to use as a model to make new shirts for a revival of the dance.
As part of its commitment to Indian tribes (dozens collaborated extensively on its exhibits), the museum is letting them commune with their objects. Bernstein said much of the access would be after-hours, but he added that spontaneous ceremonies or offerings to sacred objects would also be welcome and that the staff had been trained to deal with them.
The tribes' spiritual needs, including the blessings of objects in the museum and traditional offerings of braids of sweet grass, feathers or sagebrush, will be accommodated both at the building's opening and afterward, museum officials said. Tribes like the Santa Clara of New Mexico would also be able, for example, to sprinkle cornmeal around their objects to maintain their tribal custom of "feeding and nourishing" them, Bernstein said.
A century after Heye's forays, American Indians have the resources to ensure their vision of a national museum serving the estimated 30 million to 40 million American Indians in the Western Hemisphere. American tribes gave more than a third of the $100 million in private funds that Congress, which authorized the museum in 1989, required to be raised. Federal money paid for the rest of the $219 million project.
Three tribes that operate casinos donated $10 million each: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which operates the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut; the Mohegan Tribe, which operates another Connecticut gaming operation; and the Oneida in New York. Overall, nearly two dozen tribes and tribal corporations formed by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act contributed. (Four other tribes are now operating the only tribally owned enterprise in Washington: a Residence Inn, intended to cater to American Indian visitors, that they built a few blocks from the museum using gambling proceeds.)
Financing the museum is seen "as a huge accomplishment," said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest group representing the nearly 600 state- and federally recognized tribes. "Because a lot of tribes felt they were contributing for all of Indian country." The money also helps offset complaints about Indian casinos. Questions about tribal gaming "overshadow almost everything else about us," acknowledged Mankiller, who also served on the museum's advisory fund-raising committee. American Indians have a chance to move beyond such stereotypes, she said, because the museum "is about our culture and art, and where our future is."
To keep Indian traditions and culture more visible, the museum, with its smaller sister institution, the National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in lower Manhattan, plans traveling exhibitions that will circulate Indian art and cultural objects around the country. It is also training smaller museums' staff members to mount shows of Indian art and culture. The museum plans to have performances by Indian boat builders from Hawaii and Alaska as well as artisans, dancers and storytellers to help museum visitors (officials expect nearly 4 million annually) understand contemporary Indian life.
More than 12,000 Indians from tribes across the hemisphere are expected to attend the opening, which will be followed by a weeklong First Americans Festival.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian Opens Sept. 21 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For more information, phone (202) 633-1000 or go to www.nmai.si.edu
to you both for posting those articles
