The National Museum of the American Indian: Sharing the Gift

Abstract

The American Indian Quarterly 29.3 & 4 (2005) 361-383 [Access article in PDF] The National Museum of the American Indian Sharing the Gift Amanda J. Cobb We have lived in these lands and sacred places for thousands of years. We thus are the original part of the cultural heritage of every person hearing these words today, whether you are Native or non-Native. We have felt the cruel and destructive edge of the colonialism that followed contact and lasted for hundreds of years. But, in our minds and in history, we are not its victims. As the Mohawks have counseled us, "It is hard to see the future with tears in your eyes." W. Richard West, NMAI Opening Ceremony Beginnings Over twenty-five thousand American Indians from over five hundred Indigenous nations journeyed from their homes to the National Mall in Washington dc to witness the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on September 25, 2005. They journeyed to participate in the largest gathering of Native peoples in modern history, to celebrate a symbolic moment in the long, long histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and to honor their own survivance. As a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, I too traveled from my current home in New Mexico to Washington dc—a place Native Americans have journeyed to often, a place we have come to know a little too well, a place we had almost forgotten was Indian Country once, is Indian Country still. But at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, a Native place, we were reminded. [End Page 361] It was a day for acknowledging and considering journeys. Indigenous Americans from as far north as Alaska and as far south as Chile traveled to Washington dc, reminding us that Native Americans have long journeyed to places up and down the Western hemisphere and that the current boundaries of nation-states have never been our cultural boundaries. The words of NMAI director W. Richard West (Southern Cheyenne), quoted above, reminded us of our journey from pre-contact through colonization to cultural revitalization—a journey of cultural continuance and survivance. Finally, on the day of the NMAI opening, the participants of the Native Nations Procession made another journey, walking past the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum to the National Museum of the American Indian—a very short journey a very long time in coming. Click for larger view Figure 1 Native Nations Procession Aerial View. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall, Washington DC, September 21, 2005. The Journey to a Native Place The significance of the path of the procession was not lost. After all, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is the museum, the paragon of all that museums have meant to Native peoples and to those [End Page 362] people who have collected, named, studied, and displayed Native Americans and their cultures. For Native people there is nothing natural about natural history museums. Museums have long been understood as buildings that house collections—collections of art, scientific specimens, or other artifacts or objects considered to be of permanent value because of their rarity, uniqueness, and so on—for display. Because Native Americans have long been understood by collectors as scientific specimens, as objects of permanent value because of their rarity, uniqueness, and so on, Native remains and artifacts have been housed in museums, frequently in natural history museums, and displayed—dinosaurs to the left, Indians to the right. As colonizing forces in the Americas, museums cannot be underestimated. Historically, through the research, study, and systematic collection of Native remains and artifacts, museums have objectified Native Americans, believing them to be a vanishing race of primitive people. This practice, which developed and continued in the United States during through the formative years of the new republic, has deeply impacted both Native and non-Native Americans in several significant ways. Museological systems contributed to the establishment of strict boundaries between Native and non-Native cultures, which resulted in a hierarchical relationship...