The Architectural Design Process
Beginning in the early 1990s, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened dialogues with Native communities and individuals across the Western Hemisphere. These early meetings resulted in the museum's landmark document The Way of the People (1993), which reached beyond the basic requirements of the building to incorporate Native sensibilities throughout the museum building.

A series of themes emerged from the dialogues. One involved the intuitive nature of the building: it needed to be a living museum, neither formal nor quiet, located in close proximity to nature. Another was that the building's design should make specific celestial references, such as an east-facing main entrance and a dome that opens to the sky. Many comments expressed the desire to bring Native stories forward through the representation and interpretation of Indian cultures as living phenomena throughout the hemisphere. Some basic parameters for the building structure were dictated by the 4.25-acre trapezoidal site, the building restrictions for the National Mall, and an active creek bed flowing below the site. These challenges were addressed initially by the design team of GBQC and Douglas Cardinal, Ltd., which included consultants Douglas Cardinal (Blackfoot), Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw), Donna House (Diné/Oneida), and Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi).

The building’s distinctive curvilinear form, evoking a wind-sculpted rock formation, grew out of this early work, forming the basis for the architecture. Following this conceptual design work, the project was further developed by Jones, House, and Sakiestewa, along with the architecture firms Jones & Jones, SmithGroup in collaboration with Lou Weller (Caddo) and the Native American Design Collaborative, and Polshek Partnership Architects. This extended collaboration resulted in a building and site rich with imagery, connections to the earth, and layers of meaning. The building is aligned perfectly to the cardinal directions and the center point of the Capitol dome, and filled with details, colors, and textures that reflect the Native universe.

Landscape and Architecture Audio Tour
The landscape and architecture of the National Museum of the American Indian are unique to the Smithsonian Institution and to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Understanding Native people’s connection to the land is essential to understanding the Native way of life.

The “Spirit of a Native Place” audio walking tour of the NMAI museum site, available for download, highlights aspects of the museum’s architecture and other components of the site’s landscape. (A second audio tour, available in Spring 2010, will include information on the site’s seasonal plant life.) Each 30-minute tour provides listeners with an orientation to the museum’s landscape and architecture and an introduction to Native philosophy and culture.

To listen to the tour at the NMAI site, please begin the audio program near the intersection of Fourth and Jefferson Streets, at the top of the stairs, with the trees to your right, facing the museum building.

Landscape and architecture audio tours have been made possible through the generosity and support of the Smithsonian Women's Committee.

Audio walking tour narrator, Evan Adams, of the Sliammon First Nation (Powell River, BC, Canada), is an actor and physician whose numerous performances include a starring role in the Emmy-winning television movie Lost in the Barrens and, most memorably, as Thomas Builds-The-Fire in the Miramax feature film Smoke Signals, which won him many awards, including an Independent Spirit Award for performance. Dr. Adams completed his M.D. at the University of Calgary and his Aboriginal Family Practice residency (as chief resident) at St. Paul’s Hospital/UBC. He is currently the Aboriginal Health Physician Advisor, Office of the Provincial Health Officer, Ministry of Healthy Living & Sport, and the Director of the Division of Aboriginal People’s Health, UBC Faculty of Medicine.

Others featured in the audio tour include:

W. Richard West, Jr. (Southern Cheyenne and member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma), founding director of the NMAI. Retired from the NMAI in 2007, West’s professional life has been devoted to serving the American Indian community on cultural, artistic, educational, legal, and governmental issues.

Donna House (Diné/Oneida), ethnobotanist on the landscaping project design team for the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.

Gabrielle Tayac (Piscataway), NMAI historian and researcher. Tayac, who holds a doctoral degree from Harvard University, is author of Meet Naiche: A Native Boy from the Chesapeake Bay Area, and served as curator of an exhibition on the history of the indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake Bay.

JohnPaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw), founding partner of Jones & Jones, Architects and Landscape Architects, Seattle, Washington. Jones is the recipient of many awards, including the 2006 American Institute of Architects Seattle Honors Medal.

John B. Zoe, member of the Dogrib Treaty 11 Council, from Rae-Edzo, Northwest Territories, Canada. Zoe has served as a cultural consultant to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.

José Montaño (Aymara), NMAI cultural interpreter, writer, educator, and musician. Montaño was born in the small highland village of Incalacaya, Bolivia, and served as the director of Bolivia’s premier folk music group, Grupo Aymara.

Duane Blue Spruce (Laguna/San Juan Pueblo), architect, who served for ten years as the primary liaison between the NMAI and the museum’s architectural design and construction team.

Karenne Wood (Monacan), director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Wood, who serves on the Monacan Tribal Council, is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia, working to reclaim indigenous languages and revitalize cultural practices.

Andrés Bianchi, Chile’s ambassador to the United States since 2000.

Renée Gokey (Eastern Shawnee/Sac and Fox), NMAI student services coordinator. Gokey holds a B.A. in anthropology, with an emphasis in Native American studies, from the University of New Mexico.

The Land Has Memory
In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region’s original peoples might have known it. Unlike most landscapes that surround other museums on the National Mall, the natural environment around the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is itself a living exhibit, carefully created to reflect indigenous ways of thinking about the land and its uses. The Land Has Memory offers a rich introduction to the NMAI landscape and its meanings. This volume serves not only as an attractive and informative keepsake for museum visitors, but also as a thoughtful representation of how traditional indigenous ways of knowing can be put into practice.

The Native Landscape
Native people believe that the earth remembers the experiences of past generations. The National Museum of the American Indian recognizes the importance of indigenous peoples’ connection to the land; the grounds surrounding the building are considered an extension of the building and a vital part of the museum as a whole. By recalling the natural environment that existed prior to European contact, the museum’s landscape design embodies a theme that runs central to the NMAI—that of returning to a Native place. Four hundred years ago, the Chesapeake Bay region abounded in forests, wetlands, meadows, and Algonquian peoples’ croplands. The NMAI restores these environments and is home to more than 27,000 trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants representing 145 species.

Hardwood Forest
The grouping of trees, plants, and shrubs on the museum’s north side is known as an upland hardwood forest. The more than 30 species of trees reflect the dense forests that exist in the Blue Ridge Mountains along the Potomac River, and elsewhere. Forests have provided Native communities with important materials for shelter, food, and medicine, among other purposes, including Eastern red cedar, staghorn sumac, and white oak.

Wetlands
Culturally significant to many tribes, wetlands are rich, biologically diverse environments. The museum’s diverse wetlands area—and the ducks, squirrels, and dragonflies that make it their home—represent the original Chesapeake Bay environment prior to European settlement. Chesapeake means “Great Shellfish Bay” in the Algonquian language. River birch, swamp milkweed, pond lilies, silky willow, and wild rice abounded in the dense marshes, as they do in the museum’s natural habitat.

Meadow
The museum’s meadow environment consists of abundant grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs, including buttercups, fall panic grass, and black-eyed Susans. Meadows are important sources of medicinal plants used by traditional healers, who give thanks for plants through an offering of tobacco, song, and prayer. Plants are considered by some tribes to be the hairs of Mother Earth, and one must express appreciation when taking them from the soil.

Traditional Croplands
About 60 percent of the world’s diet today is derived from Native American foods, such as potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, and even chocolate. The museum’s traditional croplands incorporate the irrigation and planting techniques of Native peoples that revolutionized agriculture around the world. The “Three Sisters” (or tres hermanas) plants—corn, beans, and squash—flourish in NMAI’s croplands, alongside lush tobacco plants. A popular museum event for all ages, the release of ladybugs throughout the summer provides a natural form of pest control. 

Grandfather Rocks
Forty large uncarved rocks and boulders, called Grandfather Rocks, welcome visitors to the museum grounds and serve as reminders of the longevity of Native peoples’ relationships to the environment. The Grandfather Rocks, hewn by wind and water for millions of years, were selected from a quarry in Alma, Canada. The boulders were blessed in a special ceremony by the Montagnais First Nations group prior to their relocation to ensure that they would have a safe journey and carry the message and cultural memory of past generations to future generations. Upon arriving in Washington, the boulders were welcomed in a blessing led by Karenne Wood (Monacan).

Cardinal Direction Markers
A subtle yet significant design concept, the museum’s Cardinal Direction Markers are four special stones placed on the museum grounds along the north-south and east-west axes. Those axes intersect at the center of the Potomac area of the museum building, linking the four directions to the circle of sandstone that marks the figurative heart of the museum. The four stones also honor the Native cultures of the north, south, east, and west. The stones have traveled from the far reaches of the hemisphere in collaboration with their Native source communities: Hawai’i (western stone); Northwest Territories, Canada (northern stone); Monocacy Valley, Maryland (eastern stone); and Puerto Williams, Chile (southern stone).