Compiled By Jodi Rhoden
Sept. 22 (AGR) — On Sept. 21, more than 20,000 Native Americans
marched on the National Mall in Washington DC. But, unlike 32 years
ago, during the Trail of Broken Treaties March (the last time so many
indigenous people marched together on Washington), the march was organized
to celebrate the history, culture, and identity of Native Americans,
rather than to deliver a manifesto. The Native Nations March commemorated
the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, the first
national museum of its kind, and for many Native Americans, it was a
bittersweet celebration.
The march included representatives of hundreds of tribes and nations
from the entire hemisphere, many in traditional ceremonial dress. Singing,
dancing and drumming puncutated the march, and the scent of burning
cedar and grasses filled the air.
A group of five White Mountain Apache Indians from White River, AZ,
painted in black and white, wore pine needles wrapped around their arms
and waists, and wooden headdresses reached two feet above their heads.
As they danced, metal balls around their shoes added to the sounds of
an accompanying drummer.
Nearby, Aztec Indians from San Francisco danced with headfeathers that
reached as high as six feet above their heads, and Nicole Soulier, 19,
an Ojibwa Indian from Bad River, WI, wore a blue dress with 365 metal
jingles -- one for each day of the year -- and an eagle’s feather
on her head.
“It’s very important to represent where I came from, to celebrate
with all the other nations,” she said.
Located directly west of the US Capitol Building, the National Museum
of the American Indian, one of the 18 museums operated by the Smithsonian
Institutition, is a complex of beige limestone curves, designed by Canadian
Indian architect Douglas Cardinal, that gives the impression of a desert
canyon. The museum grounds include an open-fire sacrificial pit, fields
of corn and squash, a wetlands preserve, and 40 grandfather rocks —
boulders blessed by native elders.
The museum’s permanent inaugural exhibits examine three themes:
the spiritual relationship between humans and the rest of the universe,
native people’s survival in the face of European colonization,
and how Native Americans maintain their communities in the modern world.
The museum possesses 800,000 items covering 10 millennia of Native American
history, of which just 8,000 or so will be on display at any one time.
Paintings and sculpture by modern Native American artists represent
the growing and changing culture of Native Americans, not just a snapshot,
under glass, of an exotic, dying culture.
The museum was 15 years in the making. The pattern for the east entrance
plaza plots the configuration of the planets on Nov. 28, 1989, when
the bill was introduced to Congress to create the museum. Inside, a
white, tiered atrium soars, lit entirely by natural light. The main
indoor lecture theater, with its dark blue ceiling twinkling with tiny
lights, deliberately recreates a forest clearing on a starry night.
The museum restaurant serves traditional Native American food.
Officials expect the museum to draw four million visitors a year.
While the museum marked, for many Native Americans, an important milestone
in the recongition of indigenous culture by the US government, some
also felt that the museum falls short of its potential to acknowledge
the genocide perpetrated against native peoples.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) issued a statement congratulating
the founders of the museum, but also chastizing them for not addressing
the tragic history of Native Americans:
“This magnificent institution connected to the Smithsonian Institution
will stand forever in displaying the beautiful culture of the Indigenous
peoples of what is now called the Americas with special focus on the
great cultures of the Indian people of North, Central and South America.
“We congratulate A. Richard West of the Cheyenne/Arapahoe, the
Museum’s founding Director, and Dwight Gourneau, Ojibwe, the Museum’s
Board Chairman, as well Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell-R.Colorado
and Daniel Inouye-D. Hawaii who authored the original legislation, and
the many others who made the National Museum of the American Indian
a reality.
“The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council, however,
feels that the Museum falls short in that it does not characterize or
does it display the sordid and tragic history of America’s holocaust
against the Native Nations and peoples of the Americas.
“It is estimated that as many as 15 million Native peoples in America
alone fell victim to the American holocaust since the pilgrims landed
on Plymouth Rock. They were victims of biological warfare by way of
smallpox infected blankets from Valley Forge, and distributed to the
Native people by Lord Jeffrey Amherst and George Washington, and by
military aggression, force, violence, and terrorism across the breadth
of our sacred lands.
“While the Museum displays the beautiful culture of Native Peoples,
it must also serve as an institution of education about America’s
holocaust on the American Indian. The fact that the Smithsonian Institution
still holds in its vaults thousands of skulls, skeletal remains, and
funerary objects of our ancestors, most of them victims of this holocaust,
could, as a beginning, be made a part of a memorial to this great crime
against humanity.”
The museum, to some, represents the ultimate last step of colonization:
objectification and commodification. As Tom Spanbauer writes in In the
City of Shy Hunters, the philosophy of European culture towards native
peoples is: “We came, we saw, we conquered, we put it in a museum.”
Despite this criticism, many native Americans see the Museum as an important
step towards recognizing the accomplishments and culture of indigenous
people now. As Glen Canday, a retired bus driver and Chickahominy elder
from Virginia, says, “This is not a payback. There can never be
a payback.” Nevertheless, it can be a point of hope.
“It will give people a beginning place to discover who they are,”
says Tammy Cooper-Woodrich of the Nooksack tribe of Washington State.
For Wadiyah Nelson-Shimabukuro, who is African-American and Eastern
Band Cherokee, the museum makes a simple declaration to Indians and
non-Indians alike:
“We survived colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.”
And, that, perhaps, is a beginning.
Sources: AIM, AP, The Olympian, Independent
(UK), Phillyburbs.com
AGR staff contributed to this article.
