Professional Documents
Culture Documents
elizabeth archuleta
For the September 2004 First Americans Festival, Washington Post journalists attempted to convey what they observed when thousands of Indigenous peoples converged on the nations capital to celebrate the National Museum of the American Indians grand opening. Newspaper
articles on the First Americans Festival tended to be positive, undoubtedly because reporters saw real Indians in bright colors, beads, buckskin, and feathers; nevertheless, items seemingly out of place puzzled
them. One reporter expressed his surprise at seeing Indians in full regalia
with cell phones, describing the image as almost anachronistic. He expressed astonishment at seeing Indian families pushing high-end
strollers, Indians drinking Pepsi, and Indians not looking classically Indian, never explaining what classically Indian means.1 While reports
on the First Americans Festival tended to be congenial, coverage of the
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museum was mixed. Surprisingly, some journalists even expressed annoyance. For example, Marc Fisher proclaims, The museum feels like a
trade show in which each group of Indians gets space to sell its founding
myth and favorite anecdotes of survival. Fisher appears to admonish the
Smithsonian for let[ting] the Indians present themselves as they wish to
be seen, hinting at the irresponsibility of a decision that led to the museums failure to provide its visitors with the tools they need to judge the
Indians version of their story. 2
In similar fashion, Paul Richards museum review begins with a critique of curators for exhibits that he describes as confusing and unclearly
marked.3 He compares his failure to understand the exhibits with the Puritans failure to make sense of the Indians they had encountered nearly
four hundred years ago. He notes that just as the Puritans felt stymied,
confused, and unable to explain or account for the Indians, so too does
he feel confused and unable to explain the Indians he encounters in the
museum. His confession demonstrates how little some have learned
about the peoples whose lands they now occupy. As a result of his bewilderment, Richard cautions potential visitors that the new museum . . . is
better from the outside than it is from the in, a statement that clearly indicates the way he knows Indianssupercially. From this appraisal,
his review moves beyond a mere evaluation; his annoyance and confusion evolve into an attack. Richards apparent rage puzzled me and left me
wondering how my perception of the museum would differ. When I attended the museum later that day, I attempted to make sense of his review
by contrasting his descriptions and questions with my own observations.
Many of the exhibits do resist easy classication, but these displays
contribute to the museums strength as well as to its subversive characteristics. Annoyed that the museums Indians remain beyond classication, at least in his estimation, Richard charges curators with creating
an anomalous claim: Indians are all different; overarching Indianness
makes them all alike. Exasperated at this perceived claims presumed inconsistency, which disrupts his notion of what an Indian is, he angrily
asks and then replies: Well, which is it? The museum cant make up its
mind. Richard dismisses Indigenous peoples belief that their shared experiences connect them historically, cognitively, and spiritually in ways
that resist uncomplicated classication or codication by appearance,
blood quantum, or cdib number.
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the larger picture. This method of organization means that visitors have
to set aside notions they previously held about museums and Indians,
listen to the stories being told in the exhibits, and trust that meaning
will be made if they become involved in the storytelling process.
Indigenous peoples throughout the world are connected through
shared histories and understandings, so instead of creating objective
models of reality displayed for the publics edication, many more twentieth-century museums are creating space as forums for debating the
past and giving voice to the historically silenced. Nevertheless, having
grown accustomed to museums authoritative role in dening perception, Fisher and Richard expect to remain passive observers at the nmai
rather than active participants in the narration process. Fisher criticizes
the museum for failing to offer any science or sociological theories that
would clarify what he saw. In similar fashion, Richard proclaims the exhibits to be disheartening due to unbalanced installations that lack explanation or theories similar to those that Fisher had desired. Moreover,
Richard encounters and describes exhibits that sound chaotic and space
that is either too sparse or too cramped and lled with a mixture of
totem poles and T-shirts, headdresses and masks, toys and woven baskets, projectile points and gym shoes, which he describes as all stirred
decoratively together in no important order that the viewer can discern.
In this description of individual items, it becomes clear that Richard fails
to appreciate that the key to comprehending the larger story contained
within this seemingly random collection lies in the visitors ability to
connect the individual stories in each display by understanding their relationship across all of the exhibits.
As forums for storytelling, the nmai exhibits initiate and even encourage dialogue, a relationship that Western museums avoided before the
repatriation movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Before the appearance of
tribal museums or the nmai, Indigenous peoples only museum appearances came at the expense of their communities after government-sponsored exhibitions and private collectors robbed many tribal nations of
their cultural patrimony.4 The colonial nature of earlier museums led to
displays that were narrowly dened before the passage of the National
Museum of the American Indian Act (nmaia) and the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (nagpra).5 After the enactment
of nmaia and nagpra, however, museums trust obligations shifted,
forcing them to form relationships and engage in dialogue. Historically,
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tives. The narrator in Betty Louise Bells novel Faces in the Moon describes the process of meaning making in Indigenous cultures: They
heard, and they taught me to hear, the truth in things not said. They listened, and they taught me to listen in the space between words. 10 The
narrator learns how to listen for the unspoken, the unarticulated. She
does not expect anyone to explain the story; she must make meaning for
herself. By saying less rather than more, the museums exhibits require
the same kind of active participation or response-ability of their audience. Finally, they require patience in order to understand things not
said. They require the listener to pull meaning out of blank spaces.
Space is never neutral, nor is it ever merely a backdrop in which
people live out their lives; space is literally lled with ideologies and politics. For example, the District of Columbia is a city dominated by
marble and granite and neo-classical styles that are reminiscent of the
United States transplanted European heritage and reminders of a government that has tried desperately to assimilate Indians, transforming
them into white Americans. The nmais presence in space largely occupied by the federal government challenges this heritage and history and
asserts Indigenous peoples survival. Although it was built in the last
available space on the National Mall, the museum now occupies the rst
place on the Mall facing the National Capitol building. For Richard,
however, the politics of unnamed space is unobservable and therefore
meaningless, even after an nmai placard claims and politicizes space by
naming and dening it:
Native space is landand something more. Native space is a way of
feeling, thinking, and acting. Even away from our ancestral lands,
we carry our Native space with us. All of the Americas is Native
space, but in the course of 500 years most of us have been displaced.
Even today, indigenous people continue to be uprooted from ancestral homelands.11
The placard identies the Americas not as American, Canadian, or Mexican but as Native. Jolene Rickards and Gabrielle Tayacs inscription of
space is double-edged. They inscribe Native space as land that contains
emotion and thought and action. But more important, they present a
truth that remains unspoken: All of the Americas is Native space. By
reading and identifying space as Native and space as land, Rickards
and Tayacs placard embodies an historical claim. It asserts territorial
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panies the map places in a historical and global context what museum
goers seethe ongoing colonization of the worlds Indigenous peoples.
nmai curators share with museum-goers some of the numerous threats
that the Kunas and their homelands now face because they do not possess documents proving their ownership. 12 These threats include the
invasion of Kuna Yala by loggers, cattle ranchers, land developers, and
landless settlers from overcrowded and already developed provinces.
The Pan-American Highways scheduled completion represents another
threat. In Central America, the Kunas occupy Panamas Darin region,
which contains the largest section of intact rainforest. Although the region became a designated buffer zone in the 1970s, protecting the U.S.
cattle industry from the hoof-and-mouth disease endemic to Colombia,
it also remains the only uncompleted section of the Pan-American Highway.13 Due to the ever-present cloud cover, maps of this region are based
only on approximations.14 Therefore, it is highly likely that engineers
would have to thoroughly explore and map the region before construction can begin. The absences contained in Western maps are the histories of colonization, and outsider attempts to map the Kuna Yala would
create and expand these silences.
Like space, maps are not neutral documents that contain facts and
gures. In the past, colonial regimes named, organized, constructed,
and controlled space and place through the imperialistic practice of
mapmaking. Maps are virtual realities that represent for the colonizers
permanent and visible markers of conquest, domination, the triumph
of civilization, and the subjugation of nature. Maps are also myths designed to conceal Indigenous ways of knowing and connecting with their
homelands.
When the Kunas began the project of mapping their homeland, they
were, at the same time, unmapping colonial space by removing the visible markers that colonial societies have used to dene themselves and legitimate their ongoing occupation. These markers have concealed for
colonizers Kuna ways of knowing and identifying Comarca Kuna Yala. In
Race, Space, and the Law, Sherene Razack claims that although mapping
enabled colonizers to legally claim and possess lands they came upon,
unmapping undermines the idea of white settler innocence (the notion
that European settlers merely settled and developed the land) and to uncover the ideologies and practices of conquest and domination. 15 The
Kunas map includes sites important to their traditional way of life. Their
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mapping project ensures that the real names and land use patterns for
the geographical landscape include those places where they hunt, sh,
cut rewood, gather medicinal plants, and pick fruit.16 The Kunas names
replace those that have only been given recently, after colonization. The
maps accuracy and detail has even encouraged the Instituto Geogrco
to use it in order to update ofcial Republic of Panama maps.
The Kunas combined Western mapmaking techniques with their
own complex cultural cartographies signify a conscious reclamation of
space in the creation of a political document that blends the traditional
(their accumulated geographical knowledge) with the contemporary
(the science of mapping and the legalities of ownership). The map embodies both a historical claim as well as a geographic assertion, transforming it into something resembling Rickards and Tayacs placard: the
map asserts territorial possession. Moreover, it makes a property claim
by formally delineating and authenticating Comarca Kuna Yala. In an interview, Marc Chapin from the Center for the Support of Native Lands
observes that the Kunas map represents their effort to work within the
political system and through the courts of law to legitimize their land
claim.17 This was their reason for creating the map in the rst place,
so the Kunas inclusion in the nmai retells a story of ongoing struggles
to protect Indigenous lands. Their inclusion also signals an awareness
among Indigenous peoples that struggles at the local level also occur at
the global level.
The shared experience of land struggles that help dene Indianness
connects many of the museums narratives. Other stories that echo
threats to the Kunas land include tales of the Central American Diaspora, Clause 231, and the Yakamas Closed Area. The museum denes
diaspora as displacement from ones ancestral homeland, the space
where ones identity formed (gure 4). Even though 1980s civil wars displaced close to one million Indigenous people in Central America, these
groups transplanted their traditions to their new homes, taking their Native spaces with them. Many of these displaced groups have ended up in
the United States, but most still long to return home. While diaspora displaces some from their lands, Western legal systems render others incapable of making decisions about lands they still occupy. Brazil is one
such example. Since 1934 Brazils Constitution presumably protects and
preserves for Indigenous peoples the lands they occupy. Clause 231, paragraph 1 of Brazils 1988 constitution denes occupation as
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and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and
their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall each travel the
river together, side by side, but in our boat. Neither of us will make
compulsory laws or interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Neither of us will try to steer the others vessel. The agreement has been
kept by the Iroquois to this date. Passports are formal documents
issued by national governments to their citizens, which allow for
travel abroad as well as exit and reentry into the country.25
The Mohawks refusal to defer to a border diminishes the legal status of
an objective boundary or imaginary line dened and enforced by the
United States and Canada. It is the Gayanashagowa and the Guswentah
that dene and embody the boundaries of Haudenosaunee culture,
lands, and identity, and this claim extends both historically and geographically.
As a legal document, the passport also challenges Canadian and U.S.
legal claims that would attempt to diminish the sovereign status of nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1794 the Jay Treaty recognized the Haudenosaunee peoples right to move freely across Canadian and U.S. borders. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century the United
States challenged this right when they arrested Paul Kanento Diabo for
working in the United States. The Mohawks nmai exhibit includes a
statement about this event, asserting that Diabo sued the U.S., claiming
his arrest violated his rights as a citizen of the Mohawk Nation under the
Jay Treaty, and concludes with the statement, In Diabo v. McCandless
(1927), a U.S. court ruled in his favor. The Mohawk Nation occupies a
space that refuses to become American or Canadian, that refuses to
cross over into a status other than Mohawk. In 2001 the Mohawks pride
in maintaining and protecting their sovereign status for almost fourhundred years was expressed through Laura Norton, a community
member quoted in the exhibit: In this community, weve never recognized the border. Were here because weve always been here, and we will
always be here. These countries developed around us, and we kept moving back and forth across the border. Like Greevess beaded sneakers
and the Kunas map, the Haudenosaunee passport evolves out of an oral
tradition, this one contained within a wampum belt; the passport is an
extension of that tradition.
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digenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The nmais stories attempt to initiate dialogue and reinforce a sense of community even when the issues
and items community curators have chosen to exhibit appear divisive,
chaotic, or complex. Stories maintain a history, and the nmais exhibits
capture histories that include the United States as one frame of reference
in a more complex reality that encompasses Indigenous peoples lives.
notes
1. Hank Stuever, A Family Reunion: Opening Day on the Mall Brings Traditions into the Light of Today, Washington Post, Wednesday, September 22, 2004.
2. Marc Fisher, Indian Museums Appeal, Sadly, Only Skin-Deep, Washington Post, December 6, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/.
3. Paul Richard, Shards of Many Untold Stories: In Place of Unity, a
Melange of Unconnected Objects, Washington Post, December 6, 2004,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.
4. They also came at the expense of individuals who became live exhibits,
including Ishi, Minik, and others.
5. The nmaia was enacted on November 28, 1989, and nagpra was enacted
on November 16, 1990.
6. Teri Greeves: Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native American Artist Fellow,
2003, School of American Research Web site, http://www.sarweb.org/iarc/
dobkin/greeves03.htm.
7. Laura Addison, Traditions/ Technologies: Contemporary Art Practices in
New Mexico, Capital City Arts Initiative Web site, http://www.arts-initiative
.org/live/neighbors/essays/laura_addison.html.
8. Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1981).
9. Kimberly M. Blaeser, Writing Voices Speaking: Native Authors and an
Oral Aesthetic, in Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts, ed. Laura
J. Murray and Keren Rice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 64.
10. Betty Louise Bell, Faces in the Moon (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994), 56 57.
11. Jolene Rickard, guest curator, and Gabrielle Tayac, Our Lives, nmai, 2004.
12. nmai, Kuna Yala exhibit.
13. Mac Chapin, Indigenous Land Use Mapping in Central American, Yale
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Web site, Bulletin 98 : 19798,
December 6, 2004, http://www.yale.edu/environment/publications/bulletin/
098pdfs/98chapin.pdf.
14. Chapin, Indigenous Land Use, 200.
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