From Actors to Directors: New Voices at the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa

Abstract

This article focuses on the changing voices of descendent communities at the C.H. Nash Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Since its inception in the 1950s, the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa has been the destination for local residents and others who wish to learn about contemporary Native American cultures and the prehistoric inhabitants of the Chucalissa site, a temple mound complex built and occupied from 1000 to 1500 C.E. For the first several decades of the Museum's operation, visitors viewed exposed human burials, hypothesized replicas of prehistoric houses, and the American Indians who acted as guides and demonstrators and effectively became a living part of the site exhibit.