The Changing Presentation of the American Indian
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| Museums—along with books, newspapers, and Wild West shows
in the 19th century, movies and television in the 20th—have
shaped our perceptions of American Indians. How have museums'
representations of Indians influenced society's understanding
of them? How are Indians presented in exhibitions and programs
today? What new directions will museums take in the 21st century?
The Changing Presentation of the American Indian is
the result of a symposium of the same name organized by the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
The book brings together the views of six prominent museum professionals—Native
and non-Native—to examine ways in which Indians and their
cultures have been represented by museums in North America and
to present new directions museums are already taking. Traditional
museum exhibitions of Native American art and culture often
represented only the past, ignoring the living Native voice.
Today, museums have begun to incorporate the Native perspective
in their displays. Even more dramatic is the increasing number
of Indian-run museums. These essays explore the relationships
being forged between museums and Native communities to create
new techniques for presenting Native American culture. |
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Introduction
A New Idea of Ourselves: The Changing Presentation of
the American Indian
On 8 October 1995, a group of Canadian and American scholars,
Native and non-Native, gathered at the National Museum of the
American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York
City for a symposium called “The Changing Presentation
of the American Indian.” The purpose of the symposium
was to explore the ways in which Indians and their cultures
have been represented by museums in North America. The papers
presented that day, and the discussions that framed them, brought
enormous collective insight to bear on a challenging subject
that, as far as I know, had never before been so penetratingly
examined. This book has its roots in that day’s lively
discussions, specifically in the papers that were presented.
I can say with confidence that this volume is the first to tackle
seriously an important multidimensional issue in our cultural
life. Nor is the robust discourse you will find herein of significance
only to Native Americans—in truth, a collaborative dialogue
is conducted in this book whose conclusions matter to the entire
museum community and, by extension, to anyone concerned about
the inner workings of our cultural life and its institutions.
The papers in this book examine the ways museums have presented
Native Americans and their cultures, and how these dynamics
are changing. It is, of course, particularly appropriate that
this project should emanate from the National Museum of the
American Indian (NMAI), of which I have the honor to be director.
The museum, established in 1989 when an Act of Congress made
us the newest Smithsonian museum, is founded on the vast collections
of the former Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.
From the start, our new museum has been dedicated to a fresh
and, some would say, radically different approach to museum
exhibitions. To put it in the most basic way, we insist that
the authentic Native voice and perspective guide all our policies,
including, of course, our exhibition philosophy. How Native
cultures have been presented by museums in the past thus has
crucial relevance to us as an institution.
We do not feel that our goals are necessarily iconoclastic;
we believe, rather, that our incorporation of the Native voice
restores real meaning and spiritual resonance to the artifacts
we are privileged to care for and put on public display. We
are, in many ways, more a hemispheric institution of living
cultures than we are a museum in the traditional sense, because
our view of Native cultures is as prospective as it is retrospective;
it is as focused on a cultural present and future as it is on
a cultural past. We see native cultures as dynamic and changing,
indeed, often brilliantly adaptive, rather than static, which
is a status I normally associate only with dead cultures. We
believe that the voices of Native people themselves are an invaluable,
essential, and authentic component of interpreting the past,
present, and future cultural experience that has been and will
continue to be ours in Native America. And we certainly do not
believe that there is any inherent conflict between our use
of the Native voice and the standards of traditional scholarship.
Museums in this country have become more and more responsive
to the communities they serve and the cultures they represent.
Changes in museum sensibilities have come about very much as
the result of a vigorous ongoing debate, strong echoes of which
you will detect in this book. While museums increasingly support
cultural self-determination by the ethnic groups whose artifacts
and materials they exhibit, conflicts still arise when it comes
to deciding how cultures are presented. Such authority once
rested solely with museum curators. Notwithstanding the winds
of change, most exhibitions of Native American art and culture
continue to rely on past models—such as the use of dioramas—for
presenting materials, thereby influencing visitors to view Native
Americans as “frozen in the past.” As museums evolve,
however, they have the potential to guide society in more positive
ways. As Steven D. Lavine and Ivan Karp write in their introduction
to Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum
Display, “If the museum community continues to explore
this multicultural and intercultural terrain consciously and
deliberately, in spite of the snares that may await, it can
play a role in reflecting and mediating the claims of various
groups, and perhaps help construct a new idea of ourselves as
a nation.”
Each of the symposium papers in this book touches upon a facet
of the ongoing debate about the curatorship of Native American
exhibitions and the changing role of museums in presenting Indian
cultural life. As we survey this terrain, it becomes clear that
the landscape is shifting dramatically. The most radical departure
from traditional museum practice is perhaps best represented
by the growth of Indian-run institutions, which have a considerably
different perspective from that of traditional museums. Joycelyn
Wedll, director of the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota,
gives us an Indian insider’s view of the creation of this
new kind of cultural institution, the tribal museum. Replete
with pitfalls, obstacles, and triumphs, Wedll’s story
describes how the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation advisory committee,
outside consultants, and the Minnesota Historical Society planned
and built a new museum whose presentation of Indian objects
would convey to visitors the message that the “Mille Lacs
Band of Ojibwe has retained its culture, traditions, and its
home for more than two centuries—often against great odds.”
One of the exhibition themes is to stress the Ojibwe language,
and to show how Mille Lacs children learn their Native language
and traditions at school. In a listening booth, visitors can
hear Mille Lacs community members speaking about what their
language means to them. The entire exhibition features bilingual
text.
As with other contemporary exhibits of Native American art,
the Mille Lacs museum demonstrates cultural continuity by displaying
traditional artifacts alongside contemporary crafts or artwork,
with the artists commenting on their creations. The annual powwow,
a traditional dance celebration, also supports cultural continuity,
Wedll writes, by becoming “a community festival and reunion
during which members gather for speeches given by tribal elders
on such themes as dignity, community identity, and self-determination.”
Another objective of the museum’s exhibition program is
to help strengthen tribal identity by documenting the history
of the Mille Lacs Band’s resistance to force relocation
by the United States government. “Through the incorporation
of first-person narratives, live interpretations, and local
examples of national trends,” Wedll writes, “exhibitions
can create an immediacy that compels visitors to remember and
perhaps learn more about the subjects presented.” It is
difficult to remain unconvinced by the Mille Lacs' new and challenging
approach, which restores community knowledge and tribal validity
to the presentation of Indian culture.
“America does not know how to think or talk about Indians,”
asserts David W. Penney, curator of Native American art at the
Detroit Institute of Arts. Penney gives us a dynamic and provocative
essay that takes a close look at the ways in which the “different
narratives” of museum presentation can come into conflict,
with “the narrative of art history” sometimes clashing
with a narrative of the “cultural present.” He applies
the idea of “master tropes"—metaphor, metonym, synecdoche,
and irony—to an understanding of how “American Indian
art developed in museum consciousness,” and traces this
development through very specific historical examples. He recounts
the story, for example, of the bitter, and influential, conflict
between Franz Boas and Otis Mason in the 1880s. In opposition
to the standard practice of the time, Boas took issue with the
tendency to depict Native cultures according to an evolutionary
narrative that perceived those cultures as progressing from
savagery to civilization—“Boas rejected as racist
the evolutionary emplotment of human culture.”
Penney’s discussion of past and present exhibition techniques
includes NMAI’s 1994 exhibition Creation’s Journey:
Masterworks of Native American Identity and Belief, which,
he writes, “demonstrates a plurality of Native perspectives
by eliciting interpretive statements from a wide range of participants,
both Native and non-Native.” His analysis includes a discussion
of how multiple voices and multiple curators characterize many
of today’s American Indian exhibitions. Penney calls for
museums to abandon past ways of defining Native cultures, but
acknowledges that “the reconciliation of the many Native
perspectives with museum practices is not always easy.”
Museums and other educational venues should change the way Indian
people are represented but, he cautions, “we should not
be surprised at resistance when we challenge those attitudes
with different representations.”
Michael M. Ames, director of the Museum of Anthropology at the
University of British Columbia, addresses in his paper the sometimes
thorny collaboration between museum curators and Native peoples.
Canada’s 1992 Task Force Report on Museums and First
Peoples, which called for “new relationships with
museums based on progressive principles and policy,” prompted
curators in Canadian museums to share their exhibition authority
with representative communities. First Peoples were to become
equal partners in museum exhibitions or programs “dealing
with Aboriginal heritage, history, or culture.” Ames examines
museum responses to the Task Force recommendations and judges
them to be modest. “There has been no lack of goodwill
and intent on the part of museum individuals and First Nation
communities, but there are structural factors that inhibit change.”
These include the complex social organization of museums (which
are often in conflict with the priorities and obligations of
First Nations), the traditionally conservative nature of museums
(which makes them hesitant to initiate change), and lack of
funding.
In his essay, Evan M. Maurer, director of the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts, provides us with a panoramic overview that outlines
how American museums and their European predecessors have presented
Native peoples of the Americas from the 1500s to the present
day. From the earliest depictions of Indians as cannibals in
1505, through Theodore de Bry’s illustrations in his 1591
book America, to the popular “cabinets of curiosities”
of the seventeenth century and the world’s fairs of the
nineteenth century, the story is a distressing but compelling
saga.
Maurer argues that the mainstream attitudes reflected in this
long history did not start to change until the 1960s, when “Americans
tested and reassessed their political and social attitudes.”
Not until the 1990s, however, did genuine substantive change
take place. The enactment of the Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act in 1990, in particular, “signaled
a substantial change in attitude toward the cultural rights
and responsibilities of non-Indians and Indian peoples alike.”
He argues that museum professionals have changed accordingly,
and now demonstrate a “growing sense of responsibility
and respect for American Indian communities . . . in the process
of . . . cultural representation.” As a result, more Native
Americans hold professional museum appointments or serve as
consultants to institutions presenting American Indian art and
culture. I am especially pleased that he sees two of the exhibitions
(Creation’s Journey and All Roads Are Good)
with which we opened our George Gustav Heye Center in New York
in 1994 as “milestones in the changing process of presentation
that force us to evaluate Native American art and culture on
their own terms.”
James D. Nason, director of the American Indian Studies Center
at the University of Washington in Seattle, contemplates the
nature of indigenous artifacts and concludes that the question
of how to convey “the fabric of social and historical
meanings that encase objects” remains largely unanswered.
With many exhibitions, he writes, “Indian culture is seen
as a relic of the past. This disassociation between the community’s
past and present…‘disembodies’ the reality
of a continuing Indian presence by…denying it.”
His insightful discussion of contemporary museums, especially
local history museums, focuses on their influential and misguided
message that “real” Indians and Indian culture have
vanished, that today’s Indians are nothing more than obstacles
to progress. To remedy this, Nason calls for a new paradigm
that stresses a multidimensional “collaboration between
the curatorial view and the community view” to ensure
that “connections between past and present” are
made.
Nason acknowledges that it will often be difficult for museum
professionals to surrender control, but argues that without
Native collaboration the deepest and most complex meanings of
Indian artifacts will be lost. Without benefit of “the
subtleties of lived experience” that Native involvement
provides, exhibitions of Indian cultural accomplishments shed
most of their significance. In one impassioned passage, Nason
evokes several “key words” that I sometimes think
should be writ large over the entrances to all our museums:
consensus, accommodation, trust, and common purpose.
In her brief but engrossing essay, Janice Clements, board member
of the Museum at Warm Springs in Oregon, describes the admirable
and remarkable initiative taken by the Indians living on the
reservation to build their own museum. Starting in 1968, members
of the three tribes (the Wascos, the Northern Paiute, and the
Warm Springs Tribe), who share the Confederated Tribes of the
Warm Springs Reservation, began collecting artifacts and photographs
and raising money to build the museum, which finally opened
its doors in 1993. Their mission was “to help preserve
and strengthen our cultural traditions” so that their
children could “go to the museum, learn about themselves,
and follow in the ways of their people.” Their dedication
and perseverance, “the product of community support and
commitment,” resulted in a grass-roots, community-based
institution that stresses Native spirituality and creativity.
Along with its artifact collection, the museum’s permanent
interactive exhibition offers traditional songs, tribal histories,
and Native languages. Clements reports that “visitors
are invited to learn simple phrases in the Sahaptin, Chinookian,
and Wasco dialects.”
I am confident that as long as places like the Warm Springs
Museum exist, Native cultural life will thrive, and its presentation
will encompass the authentic realities of contemporary Indian
people. The Warm Springs Museum is the kind of institution that
inspires us all.
This book is neither an exhaustive treatment of, nor the final
word on, its subject. Our hope is that the ideas recounted and
debated herein will stimulate further analyses of the ways museums
interpret and exhibit Native American art and culture. I think
it is fair to say that the contributors' perspectives in this
volume allow for a full view of a complex, multilayered subject.
Consensus emerges over the need for museums to involve Native
communities in exhibition preparation, and for the creation
of new techniques best suited to presenting Native American
culture. The essays show that in the past decade many hurdles
have been surmounted to bring about partnerships and collaborations
between museums and Natives. Though many obstacles remain, we
in the museum community realize and accept these new paths and
new directions.
In an essay entitled “Rewriting History,” the late
Michael Dorris asked: “How do we plumb a plundered past
without condescending, romanticizing, or fabricating? How do
we revivify and make provocative in its own right a legacy relegated
to the nooks and crannies of museums?” This book is one
fragment of the effort to answer these questions.
—W. Richard West
(Southern Cheyenne and member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes
of Oklahoma)
Director, National Museum of the American Indian
© 2000 Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.
The Integration of Traditional Indian Beliefs into the
Museum at Warm Springs
Janice Clements (Warm Springs Tribe of Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs)
The Museum at Warm Springs, located on the Confederated Tribes
of the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon, opened in March 1993
and represents a special history in several ways. Three tribes—the
Sahaptin-speaking Warm Springs Tribe, the Upper Chinook-speaking
Wascos, and the Northern Paiute—have shared this Northwest
territory for eight thousand years, and the reservation since
its establishment with the Treaty of 1855. The artifacts and
other presentations in the new museum, including the building’s
novel architecture, attest to a cultural continuity spanning
centuries. In traditional Native American cultures, art was
not a separated pursuit, and the Warm Springs museum exhibition
shows how beauty and utility uniquely combined in objects of
everyday use to reflect a way of life and an aesthetic that
respected the interrelationship between Earth and its inhabitants.
The museum is a conservatory for the ancient and honored traditions
of the thirty-five hundred Confederated Tribal members living
on the reservation. It is also an invitation to the public to
understand another dimension of American culture.
The history of the museum is also special. In 1968, tribal leaders
began setting aside $50,000 every year for the purchase of Native
artifacts—family heirlooms, items obtained from other tribes,
and gifts and keepsakes—from families in the Warm Springs
region. The museum also collected twenty-five hundred photographs
dating back to the 1850s, important tribal documents, and books
on Indian history, art, and culture. This collection initiative
began in response to outside dealers and institutions buying
up Native material culture. We needed to preserve a piece of
our heritage for future generations.
Since 1968, we have spent nearly one million dollars acquiring
these cultural heirlooms, making the Warm Springs museum one
of the most complete Native American collections owned by an
Indian tribe. Our efforts also represent the most aggressive
acquisitions program ever undertaken by an American Indian group.
We can look upon our success as the product of community support
and commitment.
After twenty years of collection these artifacts, the tribal
council members made building the museum their top priority.
They were concerned about the future of our young people, and
believed the museum could educate them about their heritage
and instill cultural values. Thus, the museum was really built
for our children, and bears this dedication to them: “To
our children, those of this lifetime and those of many generations
to follow, we leave this legacy: preservation of the past, the
birthright of your heritage; and the inheritance of our hopes
and dreams for the future.” Above the entrance to the
museum is a word from the Sahaptin language, twanat,
which means “I will follow for generations to come.”
Our young people can go to the museum, learn about themselves,
and follow in ways of their people.
Community members became more committed to the museum when they
realized that our mission was to help preserve and strengthen
our cultural traditions. In October 1988, tribal members appropriated
$2.5 million for a building, but our struggle had only begun.
We needed a museum director and millions more in funding to
construct the building, which we were able to raise through
the help of foundations, corporations, and private donors. In
all, the Confederated Tribes contributed over three million
dollars, the largest sum ever allocated for the building of
a museum by a Native American tribe. An additional $3.1 million
came from outside sources.
The Museum at Warm Springs is the first tribal museum in the
state of Oregon. The building is a monument to the three tribal
cultures living together on the Warm Springs Reservation. Its
design evokes a traditional desert encampment set among cottonwoods
next to the Shitike Creek. The roof lines of tule-mat lodge,
a curved ceiling plankhouse, and wickiup (reed hut) represent
the Warm Springs, the Wasco, and the Paiute tribes (fig. 9).
Historically, the Warm Springs and Paiute were semi-nomadic
and nomadic hunters and gatherers, and the Wasco were fishermen
and traders. The museum reflects the tribes' harmony with the
natural environment. The building’s creative use of natural
stone, heavy timber, and brick demonstrates our tradition of
incorporating art into everyday life. Tribal symbols such as
the drum and Klickitat basket patterns (fig. 10) also appear
in the museum’s architectural design. The front door’s
steel handles have their origins in the Indian dance bustle.
Visitors arrive at a reflective pool and follow a stream to
a circular stone drum, which is the museum entrance. To Indians,
the drum symbolizes the heartbeat of all living things. The
building was designed by Portland architects Donald Stastny
and Bryan Burke, who invited tribal members to participate in
the planning by sharing their stories, dreams, and ideas. Stastny
has said, “The Indians guided us along a spiritual path
toward the right solution.” Native spirituality has played
a continuous role in the museum’s development, as it does
in the daily life of the reservation community.
The museum’s permanent, interactive exhibition shows a
video called Songs of Our People, in which members
from the three tribes sing and drum traditional songs. In another
short film, According to the Earth, tribal elders speak
about the importance of preserving Native languages and traditions,
and about their hardship during the early years of reservation
life. Viewers also learn about the "legal land grab" caused
by the 1887 Dawes Act, which was successfully resisted by the
Confederated Tribes. All told, the museum devotes considerable
space to tribal history.
The permanent collection also features reproductions of traditional
dwellings, an extensive collection of storage containers, including
Klickitat baskets, Wasco Sally bags, Warm Springs cornhusk bags,
and a diorama depicting a Wasco wedding (fig.11). In this replica
of a cultural tradition, tribal families trade abundant supplies
of food, clothing, jewelry, a horse, and the like. In another
location, visitors are invited to learn simple phrases in the
Sahaptin, Chinookian, and Wasco dialects. These are a small
sampling of our materials and themes.
The museum also features a changing exhibition gallery, a library
and archives, a conservation lab, and classrooms for workshops
and living-history demonstrations. As visitors leave the permanent
exhibition, large photographic cutouts of reservation residents
bid them farewell, affirming a message of “respect for
fellow humans and for Mother Earth as the foundations of achievement
and the roots of true progress.”
Four tribal members and three non-Natives make up the museum’s
board of directors. This has been a positive combination because
the non-Native members help steer discussion back on course
when tribal politics threaten business proceedings. Chief Delvis
Heath, Sr., is president of the board. Our museum staff of twelve
handles everything from development to running the gift shop.
Our twenty-five-thousand-square-foot museum continues to grow
and evolve. We now have tribal members scheduled to engage in
some kind of cultural activity every weekend during the spring
and summer. Our volume of visitors assures future construction
of galleries and exhibition projects, including a children’s
museum and an outdoor “natural environment” exhibition.
We will use the Shitike Creek to show how water, the source
of all life, is vital and integral to our culture. At twice-yearly
food celebrations, we line up our foods and the water and sing
about them. Our young people, who are unfamiliar with these
religious songs, can now learn about them in the museum. If
our youth truly believe in our ways as Native Americans, they
can gain more wisdom from their own cultural heritage than from
outside sources telling them to live their lives.
When I went to boarding school, we learned about the cowboys
and the Indians and how the white people were the good people.
We yelled for the cavalry when it came time to kill the Indians.
This was how we thought in the 1940s, but today we realize the
wealth and value of our history. Many people come to the Museum
at Warm Springs to learn how it was started because they want
to build a museum for themselves and for their future.
© 2000 Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved. | | Back to top |
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