WINIKO: Life of an Object, First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Abstract

Stepping into the new First Americans Museum (FAM), one is immediately struck with a feeling of light, connection to the earth, and community. The glass atrium anchoring the museum invites you to stand in the sun, view the vast expanse of sky and the festival grounds outside, and feel that you’ve entered a gathering place. It’s a memorable and purposeful first impression for the museum, which opened in September 2021 after decades of development and collaboration among tribal nations and the Oklahoma state government to tell the stories of the state’s thirty-nine tribes. Through exhibits on Native history and contemporary issues created by an all-Native curatorial team, FAM offers a powerful perspective on cultural autonomy, silenced voices, and restorative justice while sharing stories of persistence, survival, and joy.1WINIKO: Life of an Object, one of the museum’s inaugural exhibits, is a groundbreaking and emotional examination of the relationship between Native peoples and American collectors and museums over time. Winiko is the Caddo word for “everything on earth, the universe, and beyond. This term reflects the Native belief that our cultural materials hold the spiritual essence of their makers and those who wore or used them.”2 In WINIKO, selections from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on a ten-year loan, representing items gathered by collectors and removed from the state in the early 1900s, stand alongside artifacts acquired directly by FAM and contemporary commissions. These artifacts serve as witness to how meaningful Indigenous objects were extracted from their cultures as non-Native museums sought to collect from “vanishing” peoples, and culture became a commodity for outsiders to buy and sell. The artifacts of WINIKO are held, cared for, and interpreted by Native people, whose culturally appropriate treatment of them enables Native voices to reclaim the narrative of their history in America and redefine what museums mean for their communities.The return to Oklahoma of these artifacts is one of the most moving points of the exhibit. An introductory video documents their journey from Washington, DC, to Oklahoma and the emotional object reunions FAM facilitated with descendants of their users/makers and tribes. In the video, descendants examine the artifacts with joy and pride, tearfully welcoming home cultural treasures that embody tradition, craft, and heritage. Items that were collected and displayed in far-off cities as relics of “dying” cultures are embraced as living bearers of tradition and history. The very first moments in the exhibit set the tone for visitors, especially museum professionals, to reevaluate our assumptions about the purpose and utility of museums as colonial institutions: Does preserving the physical forms of objects really “save” them or their cultures? Does our drive to preserve objects come at the cost of destroying their cultural context through removal?Proceeding from the introductory video, visitors enter a dimmed exhibit space of long curved cases interspersed with panels and smaller cases, which allow viewing from all sides. Artifacts are displayed in a single layer with breathing space—both literal and figurative—in between, emphasizing both the importance of each item and their inherent vitality. Collections professionals and exhibit designers will appreciate the palpable care and respect shown in the exquisite custom mounts that hold and protect each piece. Garments, drums, ceremonial items, tools, and artifacts of everyday life are identified and described in labels that name their tribes of origin, users/makers, and circumstances of collection, if known. All object names are in their original Indigenous languages, provided by the tribes through consultation work, rather than the names from NMAI which reflect the superficial language of the non-Native collectors. First-person points of view in each label emphasize the collaboration and contribution of many tribes to share their own stories. Curators bring to the forefront the moment these items left Native communities and contexts and went into the hands of collectors. The choice to highlight these exchanges is both innovative and heartbreaking: some panels include prices paid by white collectors and the conditions that led to the necessity of Native communities having to sell cultural items. The labels also include an interpretive technique of breathtaking effectiveness in pairing photos of contemporary descendants with available photos of original users/makers and their stories. These portraits offer a powerful rebuke to the circumstances of collection of their ancestors’ items: these nations have not vanished, they have not forgotten the pieces of their culture that were lost, and they are reclaiming and telling their own stories at this museum.Another effective and thought-provoking interpretive technique employed in WINIKO is the comparison between the goals and mindsets of white collectors and those of the Native communities of origin. Showing prices paid for items, displaying notes made by collectors, and describing several collecting expeditions gives insight into what was important to these outsiders and cannot help but prompt questions about the history and nature of museum collecting as a whole. The exhibit contrasts Euro-American collecting history with the way Native communities valued these items in terms of deeper cultural significance. For example, a label for a young girl’s dress shares the monetary value a collector placed on it, but also the Native cultural meaning of its design and decoration and the personal significance of a mother making a garment for a beloved child. Artifacts described in oversimplified terms such as “fan” or “game” by collectors are here given their full due by detailing the social significance of religious items and artifacts of social interaction.As the first exhibit visitors encounter at the First Americans Museum, WINIKO provides a vital framework for taking in the rest of the museum, learning about tribes’ journeys to Oklahoma, the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and representation, Native Americans in the military, and other topics. This exhibit particularly challenges visitors’ understandings of material culture, how we respect the past and its artifacts, and the value of museums. Museums are colonial institutions and reflect the Western belief that saving history is about preserving the physical forms of artifacts and documents by removing them from public circulation and encasing them in Plexiglass. Native perspectives shared here value tradition bearing and cultural transmission through historic artifacts, adding to their stories through continued use and appreciation, and view collection and encasement as potentially suffocating these living items and artificially cutting short their cultural lives. It’s a powerful counterpoint to contemporary discussions of decolonizing museums: Is such a thing even possible, especially by predominantly white institutions? Can we as non-Native professionals present decolonized collections and interpretation when our basic guidelines of best practices and care may be counter to many Native traditions and goals? Wouldn’t true decolonization be returning all Native artifacts to their people, to use as they see fit and to tell their own stories?WINIKO and the entire First Americans Museum beautifully presents the stories of Oklahoma’s tribes in their own words and on their own terms and is worth visiting for that fact alone. It’s a welcoming, inspiring, and healing space for Native and non-Native visitors alike. But for museum professionals and public historians, it’s also a site that prompts us to acknowledge our role in the oppression and erasure of Native Americans telling their own stories and to question our field’s deeply held and imperfectly formed values: Who has the right to steward Native American material culture? How do different groups define respect and care for artifacts? How is our instinct to save and preserve culture by putting objects in museums based on Eurocentric assumptions and biases? FAM is a space to learn about Native history and resilience and to celebrate cultural survival and vibrancy. It is also a space that prompts soul-searching about the past and future of our field and is thus highly recommended.