ADA The anticipation was perhaps a mixture of excitement and joy, but the anxious feeling in my stomach was something I just could not seem to shake. A rumbling, leaden weight had settled in, like eating five bowls of Charles Shield's pashofa at one sitting, mixing uncomfortably with the hundreds of hatalhposhik (butterflies) in my gut.1 I had known for some weeks that I was to attend a tribal archives training class in Washington DC concurrent with the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. As I prepared my bags the night prior to departure, my mind raced with expectations of and anxiety about the upcoming events. Perhaps it was the anticipation of going to such an enormous and foreign place like Washington DC with the inevitable wide-eyed, dumbly gazing, culture-shocked, deer-in-the-headlights tourist routine. Perhaps the primary reason for my excitement was simply the reality that I was actually going to attend, in its inaugural week, the opening of the NMAI. My parents, my wife, and I had spoken some few months before about the prospects of attending but had reluctantly ruled it out considering the costs involved. And yet I found myself preparing to leave in a few short hours. The story of the museum, of course, was one far older than a few months. A photograph in my tribal archive is of our governor, Bill Anoatubby, standing next to a model of the museum during President Clinton's inauguration in 1996. The small, delicate museum model had since outgrown the small glass enclosure in the photograph and had become a reality on the National Mall, awaiting the thousands of Indian people converging on the capital for its opening week. [End Page 491] What would this place say? What narratives would be put forth and in what voice? What were the messages and images awaiting my arrival at this Native place? Would this museum reflect my Chickasaw people, a strong and proud people in all our diversity—full-blood, thin-blood, involved culturally, never set foot on a stomp ground, Chickasaw-speaking, can't pronounce chinchokmatta without sounding like hattak naahollo (a white man), light-faced, dark-faced, eagle feather from the rear view mirror, freedmen descendents, genealogy Indians, fry bread and beer powered softball giants, refuse-to-be-photographed ancient Chickasaw women, beautiful Indian babies, young, old, and everything in the middle. I desired so much to see something of myself in this place, a confirmation of my identity as a Chickasaw, validation, confirmation, anything of ourselves, and of myself. I knew as a lay my head down on the pillow that night before the flight that sleep would not be coming easily. Oklahoma City The tribal genealogist Jason Reed and I stepped from the curb up to the Delta baggage check station at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City. The two losa baggage handlers gave us a good once over: "Ya'll Indians?"2 We replied, "Yes, Chickasaw, from Ada and Fittstown." The larger man made a comment about being Indian in some way or another, and I acknowledged him with a nod and a thanks for taking care of our bags. Jason tipped them both. As we walked into the airport terminal, I commented to the genealogist, "Must have been our baseball caps that clued them in," as the small bald eagle feathers attached to the crowns of our hats flickered to and fro in the warmish September breeze. Jason's uncle had given us some feathers from the eagle he got last year from the repository in Colorado, so it seemed fitting to fix them up and wear them to the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. It was a way to represent our people, to show our pride as Chickasaw, in some way to tell others, "I am Native." It certainly wouldn'...