The National Museum of the American Indian opens this week 15 years after it was authorized by Congress. Located on the National Mall, the museum focuses on the art, history and culture of Native Americans.
Washington Post staff writer Joel Achenbach discussed his article on the museum, Within These Walls, Science Yields to Stories (Post, Sept. 19), and how the museum's approach is a triumph for the Indian version of their story.
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Joel Achenbach: Good afternoon. Thanks for joining this talk about the new museum, and feel free to throw in anything else on your mind, though as much as possible perhaps we can stick to the issue at hand. The new museum is really a spectacular structure, definitely worth a visit. The approach to the subject is radically different from that of a typical museum -- far less didactic, linear, comprehensive, more like an immersion into native thought. How that will play out as an experience for a visitor, I dont know. The museum very consciously does not use a traditional anthropological approach to native Americans and my story goes into the reasons for that. If you havent' read the story, please take a few minutes to do so. thanks!
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Washington, D.C. (By Way of Indian Country):
Joel,
Your article--and, really, all the articles this past week in the Post--was excellent. It is heartening to see a focus on Native peoples and our cultures in the national press, by whom we are almost often ignored. I hope this type of coverage continues after NMAI festivities conclude.
The great stories notwithstanding, I'm struck by the juxtaposition of the stories and the willingness of the Post to use the term "Redskin." To use a term that is obviously racist and demeaning to Indian people, while extolling the strength and vibrancy of our cultures, is confusing. Has there been a discussion at the Post about not using "Redskin" in its daily coverage of the football team?
Joel Achenbach: I dont know about internal discussions at the Post about not using that term. Years ago I did a story (and this is dim in my mushy memory) about a movement by some locally based native groups to change the name, and obviously it did not succeed, but I think its interesting that one of the people involved in that movement, Suzan Harjo (sp?) will be one of the two native people welcoming people to the museum at the grand opening tomorrow. Let me note one thing about "Redskins": I dont associate that term with native americans when i see it in the paper. I know that native americans such as yourself find it very offensive, but it just doesn't trigger that connection in my brain when i hear it or read it.
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Anonymous:
At the end of your piece you discuss the possibility that the American History Museum's dioramas may find themselves the subject of a museum exhibit. Couldn't the same be said about most every museum or exhibit? Other than fine art I can see 100 different ways to tackle a subject. Aren't all museums and displays a product of their time and the society that is viewing them in a cultural/historic context? I am sure in 100 years people will look at the National American Indian museum and point out what was done "wrong."
Joel Achenbach: Thats exactly my point. That all museums and their exhibits are a product of a moment in time. I think (unless they chopped it without telling me) that my last graph says this more or less.
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Alexandria, Va.:
Are any Indians upset at their treatment -- or lack thereof -- in the new museum?
Joel Achenbach: I know of no Indians upset about their treatment in the museum, though that would be interesting to find out this week as more than 15,000 natives come into town, the largest gathering of native Americans in history so far as anyone knows (at least north of Mexico post-1492 in the historical record).
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Seattle, Wash.:
Does the museum expect that there will be a lot of political statements made by the Native American leaders coming to town? There are a lot of issues that tribes want addressed, especially when it comes to health care funding, and progress on the national apology resolution introduced by Senator Brownback (R-Kan.).
Joel Achenbach: There are some good questions like this in my queu that I fear I don't know the answer to, and instead of faking my way through it i will use my adult prerogative to say I dont know. But if 15,000 natives come to the united states capital without any political statements it will be very disappointing and unprecedented!
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Arlington, Va.:
Hi Joel,
Does this museum delve into specific tribes or is it a more general look into native american culture?
Thanks!
Joel Achenbach: Its very specific to individual tribes...In fact thats kind of the signature of the exhibits. They dont generalize. Instead, a tribe tells its own story. I was struck (and didnt get a chance to include this) by a tribe from the Amazon that has put together an exhibit on its struggle to protect its forest from loggers. The downside to the approach is that certain famous incidents or important events might not get included, and perhaps some tribes will feel like they should have had played more of a role. I also think its hard to treat older Indian cultures (moundbuilders) that existed a thousand years ago when the emphasis requires everything to be filtered through a current Indian tribe.
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Colorado Springs, Colo.:
My great-great grandfather somehow ended up with Osceola's ceremonial bead bag and belt I believe it was given to him for a small sum by a soldier handling the imprisonement of Osceola. Often these items were just tossed away, considered worthless(!) For more than a hundred and twenty years it remained in my family's safety deposit boxes--never really considered of any historical value, but beautiful nonetheless. Later my father learned of it's true history and loaned it to the U. of Florida museum for display for some 20 years. When I inherited them I had the artifacts fully authenticated and they sold at auction back to the Seminole Indians where I believe they were to display in Florida. I'm wondering now if they have it displayed at the new museum. While some may say my family should not have profited from the sale we did keep the artifacts in perfect condition and safely stored for nearly a century and a half and shared them with many in Florida museums before officially getting them back to the Seminole people.
Joel Achenbach: The Seminoles do have a display but i dont know if they have that specific item there, i think not, since the objects on display in general are from the collection amassed by this fellow named Heye early in this century. I think the way it worked was, the museum had 800,000 objects, the vast majority from Heye (maybe all?), and invited tribes to come and identify objects and develop a presentation about them.
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Washington, D.C.:
Joel: Are you a Native American?
Joel Achenbach: Nope. But I have native americans fyi in my ancestry, a couple of women back in the 1800s, Potawatomi i have always been told. But I'm not a member of any tribe and am just your basic mongrel american.
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Virginia:
This may seem like a side note, but since you discuss the role of the indigenous peoples in today's America… Has there been a linguistic shift away from "Native Americans" to "American Indians?"
Joel Achenbach: Good question and my impression is that either term is fine and in use. Native American is sort of confusing in that anyone born here could claim to be so. Indian is of course a historical misnomer but is commonly used.
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Alexandria, Va.:
Will there no longer be ANY mention of Native Americans in the American History Museum? I hope not.
Joel Achenbach: Natural History. They have closed their native cultures of the americas exhibit and, no, if you want to find the scientific, anthropological, archeological version of indigenous americans you have to go somewhere other than the Smithsonian Institution. I think this is potentially controversial for the Smithsonian but who knows, maybe I'm too scientistic. Eventually Natural History will open new galleries, but the museum hasn't had the money in the past decade or so, and their old exhibits were hopelessly outdated and old fashioned and would have been embarrassing in contrast to the new Indian museum. I was told that in 3 to 5 years there may be new exhibits on native americans at the Natural History museum.
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Harrisonburg, Va.:
There are hundreds of tribes scattered throughout North America. Who decided which stories got told? Who spoke for those tribes that have disappeared from the continent?
Joel Achenbach: The museum officials at NMAI spent years talking to people, going to Indian Country, listening to the tribes, figuring out how to present their story. Obviously with all the hundreds of tribes it was impossible to let every one participate (and some were not interested in doing so, i was told) but I dont know how, in the end, the decision was made. I do think the museum tried harder than perhaps any museum ever has to be sensitive to and inclusive of the people whose story was being told.
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Anonymous:
What do you believe is the role of a museum? I know this is a general question, but I really feel like it is the underlying question from your piece.
Joel Achenbach: That's a great question. I would say that a museum is supposed to be informative, thought-provoking, honest, and present not only what is known about a topic but also what is not known and what the debates are and what is in contention. I like dilemma boards that tell you that what an exhibit displays is not necessarily the objective truth. I also think a museum with a research staff should share what those researchers have found. The new Indian museum takes a different approach: Essentially it is there to present a set of stories that have not been heard. It gives voice to a people who have never had the power or money or the building to present themselves as they see themselves in Washington. I wrote that its more like a cathedral than a museum.
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Laurel, Md.:
Does the museum have an exhibit on King
Philip's War (1675-76)?
Joel Achenbach: That is precisely the kind of topic that the museum probably wouldn't deal with -- unless it has a display from the new england tribes associated with that war (and so i dont know if the museum has that or not).
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Virginia:
Why would you call "Indian" a common misnomer? Can you think of a better term to group indigenous people? Yes, Columbus was wrong in thinking that there were people from India, but does that make the term any less valid? Guinea pigs are neither, but the word still works.
Joel Achenbach: Maybe I am using misnomer wrong. Maybe my use of misnomer is a misnomer. I think the readers understand my point however. And since I used the word Indian many times in my piece they know that I do not have a problem with using it.
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Frederick, Md.:
Any idea how long it will be until people can just go to the museum and get in without having to possess a "free pass"?
Joel Achenbach: Years.
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Arlington, Va. :
Hey Joel, love your stuff!;
Not having seen the museum I can only speak from what you have written, and if what you have written is true, than I think this museum may very well fall into the same trap as the displays from the American History Museum did. The key is not to swing the pendulum from one side to the other, but to find a balance. I can't learn about Virginia history by just walking around Clarendon or Roanoke or Richmond and observing how people live. Likewise I would be doing a disservice by just focusing on the Civil War or Colonial Williamsburg. We need both the history and the present to get a fuller picture of a society.
Joel Achenbach: Good point. I would like to see more traditionally presented history in the Indian museum, just because its all so interesting, there's so much that could be dealt with, and the current presentation is in some ways narratively restrictive, it seems to me, even as it expands the conversation to include voices of native people. I assume the museum will evolve over time.
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Long Beach, Calif.:
I'd like to propose a group show at your
museum featuring Indian related art by Contemporary American artists who are in
museums, meaning top-notch "emerged" artists. How would I go about making that
proposal?
Joel Achenbach: Are these artists native american? Because unless they are native american their art will not be in this museum, so far as I know. There ARE two native artists in a revolving exhibition space, and their work is much more modern and less "Indian" than many visitors might expect.
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Anonymous:
Dear Joel,
Thank you so much for your piece on the new American Indian museum. It looks like it's going to be a beautiful, meditative place and I look forward to spending a great deal of time there.
I was saddened, reading your piece, with the reading of what anthropologists are and what they do. I myself am an anthropologist (working on a part of the world that is free of the burdens of being "post-colonial") and I know rather well the spotty history of my field with regards to revealing and respecting the dignity of other peoples.
And yet, I feel I should say that anthropology -- particularly the American anthropological tradition -- has a special role in the history of ideas in terms of it's humanity to "the other." Rather than seeing other peoples as lodged into a universal chain of being that "evolves" from the primitive to the civilized; simple to complex; emotional to rational; etc., etc. (where a "culture" wasn't important outside of being a part of this chain)... Franz Boas (the "father" of American anthropology) re-thought culture as a kind of gestalt whole where nothing made sense out of its context, and he created a kind of fieldwork research where people were actively listened to, rather than being only imagined (and the capacity to imagine the "other" as something romantic or primitive or immoral etc. was tremendous in the last century).
There is a great deal to this history, but the short of it is that for its time, Boas' anthropology was remarkably humane and respectful of the other. Boas and his students were the first to see languages of the world as equally complex and rich and, yes, sublime (rather than being seen as primitive "grunts" by primitive others).
I do believe that the greatest science of the other will never be as true (as "really real") as the greatest art of the other, but I also believe that anthropology is the one scientific field out there that has, as it's core methodology, to listen. And it struggles with that. And, for that reason if for no other, it is worthy.
Joel Achenbach: Thats certainly a fine post. I spent a bit of last week hanging out with anthropologists (see a story i did on "race" last week in Style) and I agree that they make a great contribution to human knowledge. But they've had a bad track record, especially in the 19th century and early 20th century, with Indians. I think Boas is a fascinating figure and our readers should find out more about him. (bibliographical note: Skull Wars by david hurst thomas strikes me as a fair account of how anthropology dealt with native cultures, and i also read some of Ishi's Brain and also a much older, famous book called Ishi in Two Worlds.)
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Washington, D.C.:
Just want to recommend the Indian exhibit inside the museum in Cody, Wyo. It is a fantastic display of both the history and current state of the local tribes. Then again, they are only dealing with a few - so I imagine it is easier.
Do you think the sheer number of tribes have made the museum's job impossible?
Joel Achenbach: The number of tribes is not a problem for the museum. Maybe a larger problem is that it has 800,000 objects and doesnt want to just set them out on tables and in display cases decontextualized, and the museum's own standards for how to present an object are so high. You have to understand that these objects are in many cases considered sacred and even alive, and thus the museum makes clear that it doesn't "store" objects.
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Arlington, Va.:
Joel, please describe "Indian Country" a little better. Surely you are not referring to a geographic area?
Thanks.
Joel Achenbach: I think Indian Country is closer to a state of mind than a physical location. It would surely include parts of Oklahoma and Montana and New Mexico but also some places in New York City and Connecticut and Washington Dc.
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Alexandria, Va. (again):
Ahhh… my apologies. Natural History does seem an odd place to have an exhibit of Indians (next to exhibits on wildlife and the insect zoo). That said, I hope they are represented in American History since they shaped the history of the continent to a great extent.
Thanks much.
Joel Achenbach: Well, you raise a good point: Should native americans be in Natural History at all? The simple answer is that the Natural History museum takes as its charge all of nature, including human beings. Thus there's an anthropology department that is quite large and deals with cultures around the world. I dont think that means that these cultures are the same as gems and minerals and dinosaurs, but certainly that's been interpreted that way, and in the case of Indians is particularly sensitive since they have long battled the notion that they went extinct or exist only as a tiny remnant of their former culture.
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Anchorage, Alaska:
Are the Native Alaskans reppresented in the museum?
Joel Achenbach: yes they are though I didnt get a chance to see that part of the exhibit, other than a film in which they appeared.
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Washington, D.C. Area:
How successful do you think the museum concept is at conveying the distinction between sacred and profane -- seems a lot of the Native American world view ascribes "sacred" attributes to things Westerners don't or possibly can't. Also, in the long run can it avoid being disney-fied?
Joel Achenbach: This museum is not going to have a roller coaster. As for sacredness, yes I think this museum is very good at showing that concept.
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Chicago, Ill.:
Greetings,
Most of my re-introduction to First Nations has been through looking at the theology that has developed as people groups look at Western religions through the eyes of Native American thinking.
Is the introduction of Christianity seen as always bad and always will be bad, or is there a sense in at least some of the approaches that non-Native American religions can have a positive role?
If you have time to include an answer... how does the exhibit interact with the problems of alcoholism and drug abuse in the current Native American cultures?
Joel Achenbach: I saw only 2 of the 3 main exhibits (they were all under construction the times i visited) and if there's anything on health risks it may be in the exhibit i missed. My impression is that the experience with missionaries is portrayed as a destructive force in native culture but, again, the text of those exhibits (for example showing a wall of bibles) hadn't been put up when I was there and so I cant answer authoritatively. I dunno.
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Anonymous:
Expanding on the point made earlier… is the new museum now considered a sacred site by some tribes?
Joel Achenbach: Maybe after this week! anyway thats all for now, thanks for joining in...cheers, Joel
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