The National Museum of the American Indian

by David Severn

For months I had planned to attend the grand opening of the National Museum of the American Indian on Tuesday September 21. I sent in my 20 bucks to become a charter member, got reserve tickets for entry on opening day, and made reservations at the hostel I like to stay at in Washington DC because it only costs $18 a day. Then along came the AVA and a commitment I felt obligated to honor of getting the darned thing put together every week on Tuesdays for Wednesday publication. So it wasn't until almost 7:00 Tuesday evening with the paste-up soundly in the box for Mark to take to the printer that I finally jumped in my car and headed off to the grand celebration.

I caught a 7:50 flight out of SFO Wednesday morning non-stop to Dulles International and was shoving my bag under my bed at the hostel about 6 that evening, two days behind the preferred schedule. In fact, though, except for the Grand Procession of Native Peoples Tuesday morning, I missed very little, festivities were going on all week through Sunday and there was still plenty to see and do on the two days I was allotting myself for the adventure.

Thursday morning, because I am now the publisher of a newspaper, the gracious public relations folks with the NMAI gave me a contractor's pass and a personally escorted tour of the museum. Not being used to the attention and still possessing residual feelings of crashing the party, I soon asked to be cut loose and allowed to roam at my own pace. The pass allowed me to exit and re-enter the museum at will and thereby take in some of the various events taking place on the grass covered strip known as The Mall that runs from the U.S. Capitol on the East to the Lincoln Memorial on the West.

Tuesday's grand Native Nations Procession was made up of thousands of traditionally dressed Native Americans from all directions of the Western Hemisphere. Alaska, Hawaii, Peru, United States, Brazil, Panama, Mexico all were there. 20,000 people I am told made up the procession with 80,000 more watching from the sidelines. The dedication ceremony at the end was artfully and respectfully held to not much over an hour. "This is a monument to a people who were here....before the Greek poet Homer wrote 'The Iliad'....and before Christ walked the Sea of Galilee," Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Colorado Republican and member of the Cheyenne tribe, told the crowd. W. Richard West Jr., the museum director and himself a Southern Cheyenne said, "We have felt the cruel edge of colonialism. We have survived. ...This is a symbol of the hope that the hearts and minds of all Americans would open and accept the first people of America." Moses Starr, a Cheyenne/Arapaho citizen was Camp Crier and called to the Spirits for their presence and requested their blessings on the museum and those gathered for its opening.

The National Museum of the American Indian is enclosed in a five story curved wall of tan limestone suggestive of the windswept and water worn shapes one might find along the Grand Canyon or on the sides of Arizona mesas. Its smooth modernity is in striking contrast to the rest of urban and historic Washington DC. It's just a guess, but I'd say the massive circular and domed rotunda at the entrance with curved open staircases quite possibly takes up one-fourth to one-third of the total enclosed museum space. The dividers between the stalls in the bathrooms present the only flat surfaces beyond doors I can remember.

In keeping with many Native traditions the building faces east toward the rising sun and is questionably architecturally tweaked so that the center of the rotunda lines up perfectly through the doors with the Capitol. The four directions are honored both in building format and outside landscaping design.

The dominant features of the first two floors are a cafeteria and art-for-sale display cases below and souvenir shop above. All of the art was quite expensive. A large Acoma seed pot was priced at $16,500, jewelry ranged up to $10,000 and I saw a sculpture, if I remember correctly, for $165,000. Most of the Indians present though seemed to agree with Paula Elm from the Onondaga Reservation in New York when she said, "I think we've offered enough trinkets throughout our lifetimes. It is time we are recognized as real artists."

Though I saw and heard only buoyant and prideful attitudes from the Native peoples I met, I suspect there will be some controversy around the museum. It is modern to the max. Computer and video often used as a tool to present material, giving the viewer the ability to interactively move about the presentation. Unique, but with a loss of presence, an electronic separation, from the reality of the objects the patrons are viewing.

An example would be the arrow and spear point display. Museum tradition would place the artifacts in glass covered cases that one could lean over and scrutinize. NMAI has swirled a river of points mounted on vertical panels in a very artful way, but you can't put your nose up against the case for the intimacy one can get through a pane of glass. Instead, touch screen computer monitors allow you to select from the replicated display and then with your finger move a magnifying glass over your selection. Resolution, though probably very high, is infinitely lower than real life and one's sense of presence tends to be violated. Heck, I could be sitting at home on my computer and receive the same images over the internet.

The theme of the entire museum is of contemporary, living people. Little if anything is depicted of life before 1900. In the section titled "Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identity," a handful of Native communities are described in multi-font and multi-colored writing on curving panels with accompanying presentations on video screens. To my tired eyes at times it tended to be as disturbing as the multi-imaged assaults of modern television.

Other sections titled, "Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories" and "Our Universe: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World" were both presented with the same aggressive modernistic technique and I find as I sit and write this I have actually retained vary little of the presented material. Depending on what source you read either 8,000 or 3,500 objects of native life were presented. My sense is that much of it gets lost in the sparkle and flash. I will admit this just might be me, others more tolerant of new age imagery most likely will be more receptive.

Two modern Native American artists were featured, George Morrison (1919-2000, Grand Portage Band of the Chippewa) and Allan Houser (1914-1994, Chiracahua Apache). Both of these artists' work runs the gamut from traditional native themes to a modernism beyond any apparent identification with traditional native imagery. Both worked in a variety of mediums and artistically the show is quite impressive. Still, I have reservations. Houser's realistic bronze nude Indian women as wall plaques and stand-alone sculptures complete with pubic hair which seemed to violate a modesty I find inherent in native culture across the nation.

The festivity areas on the Mall included several performance stages, a dance circle, an instrument arts and regalia arts pavilion, a workshop area and a First Americans Festival marketplace. Performers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joanne Shenandoah who brought tears to my eyes by the depth of message, were presented on the large outdoor Four Directions Stage. The Raven Stage featured storytelling with different speakers every half-hour and it was here that I spent as much time as I could. A variety of musical performances such as flute music and throat singing were presented on the Harvest Stage. The Potomac Stage was a large covered pavilion showcasing both traditional and contemporary styles of music including blues, rock, hip-hop and folk. The Dance Circle had performances every hour from groups like Los Nativos de la Isla Taquile from Peru and the Git-Hoan Dancers who trace their ancestry to the village of Metlakatla, Alaska.

My phone call to Helene Chalsin of Albion, Thursday evening, who was there for the opening went unanswered, but when I called Susan Billy of Bead Fever in Ukiah at her hotel she told me she had an invitation for me to that evening's private reception for the performers. As a charter member, I had been offered an invitation a few months earlier but turned it down as it requested "business attire" and I didn't know what in the heck I would wear. In discussing this situation with Susan a couple of weeks ago she chided me with, "Come on David, show some respect for the Native community." So I had bought a new pair of dark green Ben Davis jeans and took along a nice looking sport coat that showed up in my closet. Within 15 minutes I was dressed for the ball and on the metro heading back to the museum.

It wasn't a sit down dinner but the "hors d'oeuvres" served at stand up tables were abundant and varied and anyone who ate before they came made a big mistake. It was a good party. I tend to be shy and quiet but I did get to rub shoulders with the likes of the above mentioned Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) and Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida) as well as Santee Smith (Mohawk) who was cover girl on the special commemorative issue of the National Museum of the American Indian magazine. Some of the California Indian people who I ran into and talked with at the reception included Susan Billy, of course, my friend and benefactress, Dugan Aguilar, the photographer often seen at California Indian Storytelling conferences and other local events and Lavina Brooks of the Yurok Tribe who I recognized by the woven basket hat that she wore on her head.

It was a good time that I had at the whole affair. It is a fitting and appropriate endeavor to honor the original inhabitants of a hemisphere that was so brutally, deceptively and remorselessly taken from them. The attempt to tell their stories from their perspective is evident throughout the museum. That many, many Native peoples were called to work on this project speaks to the goodness at the heart of the undertaking. Yet I find that there is much important history that is missing and can only trust that it will come with time.

In the mid 1900s a process of "termination" was adopted by the US federal government in an attempt to solve the Indian "problem" by forcing them to dissolve into mainstream contemporary culture. The ultra-modern, new age tack that the NMAI takes bothers me in the face of a potential for the slick and modern to gloss and blur deep and sometimes obscure traditions and meanings. Modern American culture for all of its science and microscopic vision tends to subvert reality to an intellectually manipulated phenomenon that gives little regard to the longing for continuity that flows in human veins or the wisdom that can be found by simply listening to the wind or the water or the fire that kindles our human passions.

"Why the name 'Indians'?" Richard West Jr. the director of NMAI confides, "It's because that's the name congress has given us."

Some of you might be pleased to note that on Friday morning I did find the time while in Washington to scurry around congressional office buildings to present Senators Feinstein, and Boxer and Congressman Thompson as well as Congresswomen Pelosi and Woolsey copies of the AVA and request that they get off their butts and impeach the bum in the Whitehouse.

Museum comes under fire from AIM

by Sam Lewin

While applauding the idea behind the National Museum of the American Indian, the American Indian Movement says there is not enough information about abuses inflicted by the US government.

"I visited the museum on Tuesday and there wasn't much and there is so much to be told," AIM National Executive Director Clyde H. Bellecourt told the Native American Times. "They should have a wall to speak about the holocaust of the tribes who disappeared. They don't say who was responsible for it. Our history is not being told."

AIM is calling for the museum to be renamed the National Holocaust Museum of the American Indian.

"It is estimated that as many as 15 million Native peoples in America alone fell victim to the American holocaust since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. They were victims of biological warfare by way of smallpox infected blankets from Valley Forge, and distributed to the Native people by Lord Jeffrey Amherst and George Washington, and by military aggression, force, violence, and terrorism across the breadth of our sacred lands," AIM said in a statement. "While the Museum displays the beautiful culture of Native Peoples, it must also serve as an institution of education about America's holocaust on the American Indian."

Bellecourt, Ojibwa, also takes issue with another aspect of the museum, saying that the history of rich tribes is featured more prominently compared to poorer ones.

"Tribes that don't have much money don't have a display. My tribe doesn't have that much money so we get virtually nothing in the museum," he said.

Those negative comments may seem jarring to many Native Americans who regard the museum to be a crowning achievement. Bellecourt counters that AIM, with its decades-long history of social activism, is just doing what it set out to do: raise awareness.

"We are continuing to do the work that no one else will do," he said.

The Massacre at Needle Rock

The Sinkyone were one of several Athapaskan-speaking people who inhabited southern Humboldt County and the extreme northwestern part of Mendocino County. Some fifty Sinkyone villages were spread along the Eel and South Fork of the Eel Rivers, and nearly twenty others dotted the coastal area near present-day Shelter Cove. Before goldrush days the Sinkyone numbered over 4,000 people. By the end of the 1860s they were almost totally wiped out.

Disease contributed to the annihilation. So did starvation, as native people were displaced from their villages, salmon creeks were choked with logging and mining debris, and as fences and property "rights" of white settlers kept native people from hunting, fishing, and gathering in their accustomed places. But a large part of the destruction of the Sinkyone was the result of murder. Supported by a community fearful of the "Indian menace" and greedy for Indian land, legitimized by newspapers that extolled the "manifest destiny" of the white race, groups of men throughout northwestern California formed "volunteer armies" that swooped down upon Indian villages, killing men, women and children indiscriminately. After such raids the men — often a ragtag troupe of unemployed miners — would present expense vouchers to the state and federal governments for actions against "hostile Indians." In 1851 and 1852 California authorized over $1 million for such excursions. It was nothing short of subsidized murder.

— Malcolm Margolin, The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories and Songs

* * *

My grandfather and all of my family — my mother, my father , and me — were around the house and not hurting anyone. Soon, about ten o'clock in the morning, some white men came. They killed my grandfather and my mother and my father. I saw them do it. I was a big girl at that time. Then they killed my baby sister and cut her heart out and threw it in the brush where I ran and hid. My little sister was a baby, just crawling around. I didn't know what to do. I was so scared that I guess I just hid there a long time with my little sister's heart in my hands. I felt so bad and I was so scared that I just couldn't do anything else. Then I ran into the woods and hid there for a long time. I lived there a long time with a few other people who had got away. We lived on berries and roots and we didn't dare build a fire because the white men might come back after us. So we ate anything we could get. We didn't have clothes after a while, and we had to sleep under logs and in hollow trees because we didn't have anything to cover ourselves with, and it was cold then — in the spring. After a long time, maybe two or three months, I don't know just how long, but sometime in the summer my brother found me and took me to some white folks who kept me until I was grown and married.

— Sally Bell, Sinkyone