A Unbiased Education of Native American History and Culture

• October 18, 2009
• Rated 4 of 5 by stvchin from Tustin, California

The National Museum of the American Indian is the newest of the Smithsonian Museums, opened in September of 2004. It’s located on the south side of the National Mall, just east of the National Air and Space Museum. As with the other Smithsonian Museums, admission is free.

The museum building itself is an exhibit. It features a curvy exterior of tan colored limestone, with simulated surrounding wetlands and waterfalls. There are some plants indigenous to various tribes planted in the wetlands amidst various monuments to the tribes, such as totem poles. Once we entered the museum, we found ourselves in a large lobby with a rotunda featuring a large dome with a glass top. The glass dome top and the large windows let in an abundance of natural light, giving the place a warm feel to it. The lobby featured several displays of tools used by Native Americans in the past, as well as several hand crafted canoes built with the tools.

We were told that the best experience was to start on the fourth floor at the "Who We Are" exhibit. We took the elevator up to the exhibit, which is a permanent exhibit in the Lelawi Theater, a circular planetarium-like room with a faux firepit and projection screens in the middle of the room. When the exhibit session started, it showed different constellations and celestial bodies on the planetarium above and how they shaped the lives of different Native American peoples. They highlighted many different groups, including the Pueblo and Lakota, as well as groups we usually don’t really associate with Native Americans, such as the Guatemalan Maya, and the Mapuche of Chile. As the various Native American peoples were featured, different displays of Native American artifacts throughout the room were lighted in concert. The entire exhibit was very moving and well done.

We left the Lelawi Theater proceeded down a flight of stairs to the "Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World" exhibit. The exhibit is divided into different sections, each featuring a different Native American group, such as the Alaskan Yupik, Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes region, and the Hupu of California, to name a few. The front of each exhibit section identifies the area the tribes call home, highlights the lives of some notable members of the groups and how they currently live. Inside the individual exhibits, there are various daily artifacts that were historically used and some items that are currently used. Interactive video exhibits also show different events and celebrations of the Native Americans, such as Denver’s Pow Wow and Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

We visited the "Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories" exhibit. This exhibit aims to accurately portray the history of Native American people as they interacted with newcomers in the New World to present day. The exhibit features groups such as the Kiowa of Oklahoma, Seminoles of Florida, Cherokee of the Carolinas, Wixaritari of Mexico, and Ka’Por of Brazil, to name a few. The exhibit deals with seizure of Native American land and their natural resources, smallpox, efforts to eradicate Native Americans, and legislation against them. There is also a large display of weaponry used by and against Native Americans. The end of the exhibit stresses that this isn’t a display about the oppression of the Native American people, but a testament to how they managed to keep their culture alive.

On the second floor, we visited a temporary exhibit about Native Americans and skateboarding. Skateboarding has become a huge sport and cultural phenomenon among many Native Americans and Native Hawaiians. The exhibit showcased different Native American skateboarding competitors, different skateboards, and how skateboarding has inspired Native American youth. We also visited an exhibit about how various Native Americans have contributed to American society, yet struggle to maintain their cultural identities.

National Museum of the American Indian is a very good learning experience, as many of us have only learned about Native American in textbooks when we were schoolchildren, and even then, it seems that Native American history and cultural education is minimized. This Smithsonian Museum serves to give us a good education about Native American peoples, their history, their cultures, struggles, and how they actively contribute. Even the gorgeous building itself highlights building materials indigenous to some Native American areas. I wouldn’t overlook this attraction.

• Cheer
• Flag

• Email
• Print
• Link to This Review

Creating "A Native Place" on the National Mall

• August 11, 2009
• Rated 5 of 5 by BawBaw from Small Town, West Virginia

In September 2004, the Smithsonian threw a grand party to honor the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). As charter members of the new museum, Himself and Yours Truly were invited to an after-hours reception held as part of the inaugural festivities. The reception included well-stocked food and drink stations on three levels of the museum, including both hard and soft beverages (which one might decently argue against, given the tribes’ experience with alcohol). Menu selections endeavored to present "authentic" foods native to the New World. It was a rare occasion to hobnob Washington-style with lots of folks unaccustomed to such hobnobbery, and we’ll remember the experience fondly. Five years and several visits later, without the hoopla, NMAI still steals the show.

Structure and Landscaping

As everything about NMAI tries to emphasize, this museum has avoided pitfalls that have befallen other programs devoted to the native peoples of the New World. Constructed on the last remaining museum site along the National Mall in conjunction with representatives of native groups, the realization of this strategy began with the structure itself, and with the surrounding landscape. NMAI was always intended to serve as "A Native Place," and its planners spared no effort to meet the challenge.

The museum is built of a warm golden stone that sparkles in the sunlight, like the adobe of a Southwestern pueblo. The stone has been worked into soft curves to resemble the windswept walls of a canyon. Indeed, like the contrast provided by unexpected streams of water in the desert, the museum’s fountain (featuring both worked and natural stone) provides visual and acoustic drama. More like a small river with waterfall than a traditional fountain, the rushing water pulls visitors more completely into the illusion of being in a remote Western canyon. Even the poles intended for banners to advertise museum events look like the vigas of a pueblo.

In front of the museum, facing the Capitol, landscape architects have restored a small patch of the wetlands that once dominated the National Mall. Here one can sit on the retaining wall that both invites and restricts access, and view the Capitol dome above a natural oasis of water and vegetation. The air is punctuated with the calls of birds that have been absent from the Mall for over a century. Overall, the landscaping approximates the natural diversity of the Chesapeake region, with representative areas featuring forest and meadow as well as wetland. This return of "a native place" embodies precisely the symbolism envisioned for NMAI.

Other landscape elements around the museum have sometimes served as garden plots, showcasing crops and agricultural techniques common to native peoples. Designers also included a number of "Grandfather Stones" and an alcove featuring a cardinal marker, which together symbolize the enduring reverence for the environment embodied within Native culture and the remarkable astronomical achievements of pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas.

Inside NMAI

Visitors enter NMAI through double doors of translucent glass etched with pictographs, going through the inevitable security screen, past the information desk with its greetings in many native languages, and into the Potomac chamber. This large circular space dominates the museum. Under a soaring dome with a skylight intended to resemble a smoke hole in an oversized hogan or roundhouse, the designers have created a backdrop for ceremonial performances. Infused with natural light from above and through glass prisms serving as windows, the ceremonial chamber is like no other anywhere--indoors or out. Steps slopping downward provide space for seating, and the slight descent into the Potomac, which is largely encircled by a high screen of woven copper, reproduces much of the symbolism of a kiva (the ceremonial chamber found in Southwestern pueblos). Finally, a circle of burnished stone near the center of the space suggests a fire ring, placed directly under the skylight in the museum’s four-stories-high dome. It could as easily symbolize "sipapu," the umbilical connecting Earth's children to their mother's womb, a concept taken from the creation mythology of the pueblo peoples.

NMAI’s exhibit spaces resemble those of an art museum more than those of a traditional anthropological museum. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this, the most important being the designers’ determination to avoid old sins against native communities. In the past--and indeed in the present--the history and culture of Native American peoples have often been presented in a vacuum that disregarded their continuing evolution and diversity. Their secular and religious artifacts, and even their bones, came to be studied and exhibited in a highly offensive manner.

Thousands of wonderful artifacts are on exhibit at NMAI, but this time the "mission" is defined as an effect to celebrate "the lifeways, languages, literature, history, and art of Native Americans." This mission is realized in three permanent exhibit areas: "Our Universes," "Our Peoples," and "Our Lives." Many exhibits use multimedia techniques, including narratives displayed on monitors located throughout these areas, to depict Native culture within a thoroughly modern context that accounts for the unique heritage of dynamic communities. As a result, the sterile delving into native cultures has been replaced by something more akin to what I’ve experienced in small museums created and managed by tribal curators on reservations lands. Touring these exhibits is much like sharing a neighbor’s family mementoes--personal and informative, but based on a mutually accepted right to privacy.

Other exhibit spaces have been devoted to the work of talented native artists. As with artists from other cultures, the contemporary of these artists demonstrate the ability to blend, borrow, and adapt themes and techniques from their own tradition with other influences. The result is spectacular art that is sometimes primitive, sometimes extremely sophisticated, and always exciting.

NMAI’s "Window on Collections" also deserve a quick mention. These spaces are literally windowed walls that feature some aspect of native craft or history, and they are found in the stairway lobbies on the third and fourth levels. For example, the pottery collection features a range of clay pieces from various tribes. Each item can be viewed at close range behind its protective window, with touchscreen monitors provided to access detailed information on its origin and function.

NMAI’s facilities include two theaters, a resource center, a conference center, two workshop areas, and the patrons’ lounge. Two museum shops offer a wide range of choices to visitors: The Chesapeake Museum Store on the ground level has an outstanding collection of fine Native arts and crafts. Prices are high, generally ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The Roanoke Museum Store on the second level offers books, posters, music, less expensive craft items, and a variety of other merchandise.

Hungry visitors will be pleasantly surprised by the museum’s unique cafeteria. Like the foods served at the NMAI’s inaugural party, menu items served at the Mitsitam ("let’s eat") Café are largely indigenous to the Americas and inspired by Native American tradition. Hence, one can visit Mitsitam and indulge in a pulled buffalo barbeque sandwich, glazed salmon seasoned with juniper, tamales, cornbread made with blue cornmeal, or pumpkin soup. Inspiration may come from anywhere in the New World, and the quality is generally very good, especially when measured against the uninspired burgers and sandwiches offered at most Smithsonian cafeterias.

On "Native American" Versus "American Indian"

One issue that should receive a bit more attention than it does at NMAI is the political correctness of such terms "Native American" and "American Indian." As a child in the Southwest, my Indian (then the accepted term) classmates counted themselves first as members of a particular tribe--Navajo, Sandia, or Apache--and then as Indians, an identity that embraced very nearly all the Native peoples of the New World. (Still, the terms Native Americans, Indigenous peoples, or Aboriginal peoples are slightly more inclusive--since American Indian does not really apply to natives of Alaska and Hawaii.)

The years of my youth extend back beyond the current debate over terminology, but regular trips "home" from the East have underscored that most of the Native Americans/American Indians from the regions I know best still prefer being known by their tribal designations--so much so that a few groups have altered spellings to reflect the pronunciation of their own language (e.g., the Yakima of the Pacific Northwest are now officially the Yakama). Others maintain one identity toward the outside world and a more private group identity. For example, the Navajo proudly identify themselves as Navajo to outsiders, but among themselves, they are the D’ineh--or "the People."

In my experience, this sense of peoplehood and the respect applied thereto are key to dealing responsibly with how to address native peoples. Each "tribe" is in fact a separate sovereign nation with all the requisite trappings of a separate identity. My friends and acquaintances from among these sovereign peoples recognize respect when they encounter it--and in the final analysis, that respect is all they really require.

• Cheer
• Flag

• Email
• Print
• Link to This Review

National Museum of the American Indian

• November 29, 2008
• Rated 5 of 5 by Travel'in Gal from Mantua, Ohio

The National Museum of the American Museum was an awesome museum. Wandering around the halls of this museum was not only an educational experience but it was also a visual feast. It is the only national museum dedicated to the Native people of the Americas, and it is also the eighteenth museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

From journal July 4th Holiday in Washington D.C.

• Cheer
• Flag

• Email
• Print
• Link to This Review

National Museum of the American Indian

• November 28, 2007
• Rated 5 of 5 by two cruisers from Ames, Iowa

This not your usual Smithsonian museum building. No red stone turrets, or Beaux Arts architectural frills. This building looks to me, like the cliff dwelling villages in the American Southwest. Designed by a team of Native American architects/designers the buildings details are filled with significance. The grand entrance is fronted by a plaza and pond. More that 25 native tree species and 150 indigenous plants make up the landscaping. That includes cropland plants such as corn, beans, squash and tobacco.

The Potomac atrium is the entry point. Look up to the dome and see the light enter the building through prisms that dance rainbow colors over the walls and floor. Look down and notice the floor tiles represent moving water. We follow the water to our first stop the Mitsitam Café. After our lunch and upon the advise of the brochure and a helpful fellow tourist we took the elevator to the fourth floor and worked our way back to the ground floor, gallery by gallery.

There are two major exhibits on the fourth floor. The first deals with Native Beliefs. The second one covers Native History. Each gallery is broken into several cultures from the Arctic Circle to furthest tip of South America. That was a big surprise to us. We thought the museum would only cover the tribes in the area we call the United States. Before entering each mini-gallery a map located the culture that was featured. Portraits of present day inhabitants and their quotes were feature in the introductory phase. Inside the mini-gallery several display cases showed us tableaus or displays of artifacts.
The third floor also had two main galleries: Our Lives (contemporary native life) and a changing exhibit. Currently a terrific exhibit on clothing, Identity by Design, was featured. What a variety of garments, we saw plain buckskins, jingle dresses, painted garments, and beaded. In fact the beaded items in the most contemporary pieces rivaled the showiness of Elvis in Las Vegas.

The second floor had the Roanoke Museum Store. It sold lots of books, prints, children’s souvenirs, a few postcards and the t-shirt/sweat shirt market.
Also on this floor was the only display we saw that featured the Indians of this area. Unfortunately it was very limited. One of the reasons we came here was in hopes of learning more about the culture of the “East Coast” Indians. We have several good museums throughout the country that emphasize the Southwestern and Northwestern and Plains Indians.

The ground floor had a small but classy Chesapeake Museum Store. It featured Native American artists work in jewelry, textiles and other media. These things aren’t cheap, but they are quality.

I wish I had taken careful notes of the things I saw. The important message I got was that each culture adapted to the climate and the times to create a stable civilization. And that, humans when given a utilitarian item to work with, evolve that into a beautiful design by use of materials, design or ornament.

From journal Greater DC Weekend

• Cheer
• Flag

• Email
• Print
• Link to This Review

The National Museum of the American Indian

• September 28, 2006
• Rated 3 of 5 by Gracielou22 from Lewisbourough, Maryland

From journal Our Nation's Capital

• Cheer
• Flag

• Email
• Print
• Link to This Review