Out of Harm's Way
Consider the dangers of ignorance.
Rosita Worl, a Tlingit and museum trustee who teaches anthropology at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, recalls curating an exhibit that included shamanic objects from other Tlingit clans. She asked her clan leader how to deal with these, and he advised her not to touch them at all. Handling them, he said, could put her at the mercy of potentially harmful spirits.
George Horse Capture, a senior curator at the American Indian museum, with a painting of the God of Thunder from a chief's house on Vancouver Island.
(Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
|
|
In 1994, Jim Volkert was curating the inaugural exhibition for the Indian Museum's New York branch, the George Gustav Heye Center. He had three Crow shields that he wanted to show, and he asked a Crow elder if there was any reason they couldn't be displayed in public.
"He said, 'Not a problem,' " remembers Volkert, now an associate NMAI director. Then the elder paused and added, "But the shields really can't see each other." The shields' powers had to be kept from "colliding," as Volkert understood it. He built dividers between them.
The Indian Museum is filled with artifacts whose power is not known. Most of its more than 800,000 objects were collected by a wealthy eccentric named George Gustav Heye during the first half of the 20th century. So now there are items that have been separated from their original owners for decades. There are medicine bundles -- collections of objects of deep personal importance to individuals and tribes -- whose stories and associations are mysterious. Some objects in the collection have been repatriated to the tribes. For the rest, the museum consults with tribes on how best to care for them, how best to respect their power.
Most of the museum's objects, including its most sensitive ones, are housed at its Cultural Resources Center in Suitland. It has artifacts that cannot be handled by men because they were created for women alone, and artifacts that cannot be handled by women. There are artifacts that shouldn't be near water, so they are housed away from pipes. Artifacts that shouldn't be stepped on or walked over are housed in open areas instead of under a ceiling, to avoid the footfalls of people one floor above.
There are sacred kachina masks, worn in ceremonies. These are vastly more potent than kachina dolls, which some consider child's play. Hopis believe the masks are living spirits. They are stored behind muslin screens so they can breathe, and are ritually "fed" corn pollen. They are not displayed in the museum, and indeed, few Hopis wish to discuss them for publication. They are considered sacrosanct.
Most objects in the Suitland facility have a mount of some sort that they rest upon, because being handled too much could affect not only their physical integrity but their metaphysical integrity, says Jim Pepper Henry, who as assistant director for community services helps oversee the Suitland facility's more sensitive collections.
"They're dormant, they're asleep, and what we don't want to do is wake them up inadvertently," he says.
That's why many of Suitland's sacred medicine bundles are kept high up, out of the way of anyone passing by, because "there's still a life force with those bundles, and there may be spirits" that shouldn't be meddled with, Pepper Henry says. There is a bundle in the collection that belonged to his great-grandfather, but he's never opened it to find out what items are inside.
"I don't have all the knowledge it would take," he says, "to open it properly or close it properly."
The Power of Symbols
Those who work for the new museum, many of whom are American Indian, use language that reflects the conviction that they are temporary caretakers of artifacts with lives of their own.
"We try to make the objects as comfortable as possible while they're in our possession," says Pepper Henry, a Kaw and Muscogee. He says museum staffers don't consider themselves owners of the collection, but its "stewards."
"We consider the Cultural Resources Center to be the home for our collections," West says. "It is not a warehouse. We don't even like that term, because that sort of connotes dead storage."
