Museum Anthropology Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 17–30, ISSN 0892-8339, online ISSN 1548-1379. Copyright ©2005 AmericanAnthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce articlecontent through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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“Indian Country” on Washington’s Mall—TheNational Museum of the American Indian:A Review Essay

Janet Catherine Berlo and Aldona Jonaitis

The National Museum of the American Indian(NMAI) opened on September 21, 2004. Onthat brilliant and warm Washington day,

about 25,000 Native people from Alaska, Hawaii,Chile and many places in between, marched in fullregalia on the Mall. They celebrated the enduranceof their diverse cultures and the opening of the long-awaited national museum dedicated to, and for themost part, curated and directed by, Native peoplesthemselves.That same day, both The New York Timesand The Washington Post ran reviews that were over-whelmingly negative, conveying a sense of disap-pointment, and even outrage. The contrast betweenthe joy clearly manifested by the hemisphere’s FirstNations and the sometimes vituperative reactions totheir museum by two of the most important news-papers in the country could not have been morestriking.

The New York Times decried the “studiousavoidance of scholarship,” behind the exhibits, theemphasis on a “warm earthy mysticism with com-forting homilies behind every façade,” and pro-nounced it “a self-celebratory romance” (Rothstein2004).The Washington Post pronounced its exhibits“disheartening,” lacking “the glue of thought,” “ablur” (Richard 2004a). One of the first rules of writ-ing a book review is to address the book that waswritten, and not the book one thinks the authorshould have written. As one of us (Berlo), who hadnot attended the opening, commented after spend-ing just two hours in NMAI, “this is not the museumthat I read about in the newspapers.”1 We wonderedwhy the reviewers seemed unwilling actually toevaluate the museum that was presented to them,

choosing instead to bemoan that the museum theywanted to attend was not in evidence. In this essay,we shall review the museum’s design and openingexhibits, as well as the solipsistic reviews it receivedin the national press.

The Museum BuildingThe museum itself is architecturally striking.

(Figure 1) The original design was by the Canadianarchitect Douglas Cardinal (of Blackfoot, Metis andGerman heritage). It shares many features with hisdesign for Canada’s Museum of Civilization in Hull,Quebec, which opened in 1989. Cardinal was appar-ently fired from the NMAI project in 1998; the bestway to express the difficult gestation of the build-ing’s design is simply to quote from the museum’sown press release, for surely this statement was ascarefully negotiated as the opening credits of aHollywood movie:

The museum’s conceptual designers areCanadian architect Douglas Cardinal (Blackfoot)with GBQC Architects of Philadelphia andarchitect Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Chocktaw);Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi) and Donna House(Navajo/Oneida) also served as design consult-ants. Following the conceptual design work, theproject was further developed by the architec-tural firm of Jones and Jones of Seattle andSmithGroup of Washington, D.C. in associationwith Lou Weller (Caddo) and the Native AmericanDesign Collaborative; Polshek PartnershipArchitects of New York City; and EDAW Inc.,landscape architects in Alexandria, Virginia.2

Whew!

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The structure is curvilinear, its entrance facingeast (toward the capitol building).The pressed glassdoors are etched with petroglyph-like sun symbols.The stone block construction (made of Kasota lime-stone from Minnesota) will remind some visitors ofthe fine sandstone masonry of Ancestral Puebloanarchitecture at Chaco Canyon. It also recalls thegreat canyons and mesas shaped naturally by windand rain in the American west. On the east side,the wetlands that originally graced this site havebeen invoked by a 6,000 square foot marshy areaplanted with yellow pond-lily, silky willow and wildrice. On the north side, facing the mall, a long curv-ing water feature hugs the building. On a windyday, the water ripples and eddies like a liquid ver-sion of the rippling limestone above. And nestledagainst the warm south façade are traditionalNative crops—corn, beans, squash and other foodand medicinal plants from the Americas.

The organic curves of the museum are a visualdelight, and a welcome interruption of the resolutelyEuclidean geometry of most of the buildings on theMall. Yet the undulating walls work surprisinglywell with the sternly modernist East Wing of theNational Gallery across the Mall and the adjacentNational Air and Space Museum.

From the exterior, what impresses the most isthe view as one walks from the L’Enfant Plaza metrostation: the NMAI building begins to take form, andas it does, it gradually reveals the U.S. Capitol build-ing on the hill beyond. (Figure 2). The juxtapositionof these two buildings calls to mind the vexed andoften cruel relationship between the federal gov-ernment and Native American tribes.The buildingsappear to be in conversation about their past rela-tionships and their present one. The power and ele-gance of the National Museum of the AmericanIndian hints at a more egalitarian future—a meet-ing of equals.

As one enters the museum, on the left is a“Welcome Desk” and a 20-foot-long screen aboveit upon which are projected scores of words mean-ing “welcome” in the indigenous languages of theAmericas. But on a day with large crowds queu-ing for the bag search and the walk through themetal detectors (a feature of all Smithsonianmuseums now), one simply does not notice theWelcome Wall.3

To enter the vast, open lobby, the visitor mustwalk around a curving woven copper fence that par-tially encloses and demarcates a wooden-flooreddance circle. (Figure 3) The screen, which at its great-est height is over six feet tall, recalls indigenous barkand wood splint architecture and basketry. Thelarge-scale interlacing of sheets of copper (evocativeof interlaced wooden slats) is sometimes interruptedby a delicate detail of spun copper and brass wire(evocative of twined basketry techniques). Wesearched in vain for a placard offering the artist’sname. There was none. It was a collaborative effortof the design team, though museum director RickWest credits Hopi weaver Ramona Sakiestewa forartistic leadership here.4 It is one of the most elegantaspects of the museum’s interior and, like manyother features of the museum, a poetic merging ofthe contemporary with the traditional.

One can imagine the circular wooden-flooreddance circle, or “Potomac” as it is called, resoundingwith drums, and the circular movement of Native

1. East Façade. East Facade of the National Museum ofthe American Indian. Photo by Robert C. Lautman.

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2. West Façade. West Facade of the National Museum of the American Indian. Photo by Robert C. Lautman.

dancers. In early November 2004, this gatheringplace was the site for hands-on displays of a NativeHawaiian canoe and a Central Arctic kayak. Namedwith an Algonquian/Powhatan word for “where thegoods are brought in,” this space is conceptualizedas “the very heart of the museum building, the sunof its universe” (Volkert, et al., 2004:34). In thecenter of the wooden dance floor is inset a small diskof red pipestone cut in an abstract fire design.Around the perimeter are low curved walls made ofpolished granite that serve as seating areas. Thisspace was buzzing with activity the Sunday we werethere. Nonetheless, it was a calm space, providing apoint for restful contemplation.

The large open atrium (more than 100 feet indiameter and soaring more than 120 feet to the topof the dome) alludes to other structures—therotunda of the capitol building, the soaring heightof a cathedral, the impressive lobby spaces of manyother contemporary museums. The interior is aninterplay of vast open spaces and intimate exhibi-tion rooms. One can stand next to railings on levelstwo, three and four to enjoy the spatial experienceand also observe performances and demonstrationson the lobby floor. This recalls Frank Lloyd Wright’sGuggenheim Museum, where the visitor spiralsaround, ever able to view the lobby below.

The ExhibitionsThe best way to experience the museum is from

the top floor down. One emerges from the elevatorsinto a spacious hallway. At some hours, museumstaff members are giving small hands-on demon-strations of techniques such as quillwork. Theseactivities take place near wall cases filled withobjects. These small surveys of the museum’s vastholdings are called “Windows on the Collection.”Appearing on every floor in the halls that overlookthe rotunda, these display cases serve as a kind ofvisible storage, presenting a panoply of objects andmaterials. Their arrangements are artistic, andtheir contents perhaps intentionally designed to jarthe visitor. For example, the largest case on thefourth floor displays animal imagery of all sorts.Older sculptures of birds, mammals and sea crea-tures appear alongside witty contemporary workssuch as Larry Beck’s version of a Yup’ik mask madeof rubber tire treads and metal tools, and JimSchoppert’s “Walrus Loves Baby Clams” mask.Recently-made ivory carvings challenge thecommon distinction between so-called “authenticfine art” and commodity (a distinction which maybe passé in the academic world, but which stillholds strong among much of the general public).These objects are not themselves labeled, but before

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each case is a touch screen with small images which,when touched, provided access to detailed images ofsmaller pieces, as well as brief labels. It would bevaluable for the museum to include more interpre-tive information on the touch screens for those seek-ing in-depth understanding of the pieces.5

In another case, an array of peace medals isaccompanied by informative text about how theirmeaning changed with settlement. Medals appearin cases underneath a collage of medal-wearingIndians from several centuries. Even the museum’sdirector is pictured.As in all the text in the museum,the author is identified. We applaud this strategy ofidentifying individual curatorial voices. It is animportant step in dispelling the ponderouslyauthoritative yet anonymous voice of history thatstill presides in most museums.

After viewing the “Windows on the Collections”cases, the visitor is advised to watch a short filmintroducing contemporary Native life in the LelawiTheater, an intimate circular space with banks ofplatform seating.With its central fire pit and domedceiling, this space (seating 125) recalls many indige-nous collective spaces, from the kivas of the PuebloSouthwest to the qasgiq of the CentralYup’ik. Thismulti-media experience prefigures and encapsu-lates many aspects of the museum as a whole: thewarm welcome by a Native host, the intimacy of thespace, and most especially the sophisticated use oftechnology to convey traditional cultural mores.Above the central fire pit are video screens facingthe four directions. Each is covered with a wovenfabric onto which the video is projected. Imageryon the main screens is augmented by imagery

3. Lobby space. Potomac, National Museum of the American Indian. Photo by R.A. Whiteside, National Museum of theAmerican Indian.

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projected onto the sky dome. This is done veryeffectively-whether it is a panorama of the flags ofmany Indian nations or the shadowy images ofNative dancers.

The video opens with a prayer, as do most eventswhere Native people convene. It seamlessly andimpressionistically moves through short clips of con-temporary Native cultural experience on theNorthwest Coast, in the Pueblos, among the Nahuaof Central Mexico and the Aymara of Bolivia, as wellas the Lakota, Inupiat and Muscogee. Especiallynoteworthy are the scenes of Inupiat whaling inBarrow, Alaska: a whaling team motoring out ontothe icy ocean, a surfacing bowhead whale, the com-munity pulling the huge animal to shore, thebutchering of its muktuk (blubber). Although thefilm does not show the actual kill, the butcheringscene is quite bloody. We applaud the museum’scourage in highlighting this subsistence activity, onethat many people are squeamish about and thatraises the hackles of animal rights groups.Yet thosewho reflexively support animal rights are some-times unmindful of basic human needs in a harshsubsistence economy.

A few small cases of objects are scatteredthroughout the seating areas and recessed into thewalls of the Lelawi Theater.While waiting for the filmto begin, one can examine Mexican stone masks, aPlains beaded vest, catlinite pipes, and other objects.Each case lights up at the appropriate time in thevideo. For example, when Arctic people are huntingseals for a skin boat in the video, the small casecontaining a miniature skin boat is illuminated.

The film ends with the familiar rousing refrain“This Is Indian Country,” from “Stomp Dance(Unity),6 while a cavalcade of images of contempo-rary Native people from all walks of life—athletes,scientists, dancers, artists—are projected.We foundthis film and its multi-media environment botheffective as well as affecting. Batwin and RobinProductions deserves a great deal of credit for thisremarkable installation.7

The exit from the theater leads to “OurUniverses,” one of two major long-term displayson this floor. Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala)curated this exhibit with a team of communitycurators. From the night sky of the LelawiTheater’s dome, one moves into a central areawhere the domed ceiling is painted dark blue—another night sky with a panoply of stars. The cen-

tral introductory area presents Native stories ofcreation and cosmology, as well as art objects withcosmological imagery. This is expanded by eight“pods” or small community-curated galleries whichpresent the distinctive artifacts and cosmologicalideas of eight Native groups: Santa Clara Pueblo,Anishinaabe, Lakota, Quechua (Peru), Hupa,Q’eq’chi’ Maya (Guatemala), Mapuche (Chile), andYup’ik. These spaces are too small for the vastcrowds that were at the museum on the Sunday wevisited; their aims were easier to understand on asubsequent visit with fewer patrons in attendance.These sections vary considerably in their substanceand information, which is not surprising, consid-ering each one was curated by a community group.On entering the pod, photographs and biographiesof community curators contribute to the personalexperience, and to the understanding that infor-mation does not exist in a vacuum, but is presentedby particular people with particular points of view,be they museum curators or community members.As in the “Windows on the Collections,” good use ismade of touch screens that offer further informa-tion on artifacts.

The other gallery on the top floor, “Our Peoples:Giving Voice to Our Histories” (Figure 4) is in someways the most successful exhibit. It combines artis-tic presentation of objects that tell a compellingstory along with the more intimate first-personaccounts, again of eight chosen communities. Thecentral open space is dedicated to telling a Nativeversion of contact. It was curated by Paul ChaatSmith (Comanche writer and critic), Ann McMullen(NMAI staff member), and Jolene Rickard (Tuscaroraartist and scholar). As Smith so cogently wrote in arecent lecture on the museum:

Awarding Indians the last open space on theNational Mall was a profound act that showedthe American government and its people wantedIndians to be part of a national conversation, tofinally talk, seriously, and at the highest levels,about things we had never really talked aboutbefore. Let’s be clear: you don’t get a new museumright next to the Capitol itself for making excel-lent jewelry, or for having stories and songs, orreligious beliefs you wish to share with the world.You get the last open space on the National Mallbecause the country’s decided, in the mysteriousways nations decide such matters, that it’s timeat last to speak about the hard things, the painfulthings, the unspeakable things.8

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This is the exhibit that focuses principally onthe painful things, and it does so with considerablevisual and textual eloquence.Amid seventeen imagesof 19th century Indian portraits by Catlin—the PlainsCree playwright Floyd Favel is himself a “talkinghead” within a frame narrating a video entitled“Making History.” This provides an effective andstartling merging of past and present, old media andnew. He reminds us “all histories have a historythemselves, and one is incomplete without theother.” This exhibit introduces Native counter-nar-ratives to the Euro-centric versions of history thatwe have all been taught. It offers a powerful visualexperience, more like an artist’s installation than atypical didactic display. And indeed, artist JoleneRickard was responsible for the concept behind itsvisual eloquence. A long sinuous plexiglass wallcurves its way through the gallery.The viewer walksalong it, confronted by hundreds of objects; the expe-rience is like being hit by a tidal wave of objectsembodying the changes wrought by contact.

The time before Columbus is represented by alarge installation of ceramic and stone figures thatoffer the myriad human faces of the pre-contactworld. The late pre-historic and initial contactperiod is represented by scores and scores of indige-nous gold objects. Both were drawn from the HeyeFoundation’s vast holdings of nearly a millionobjects. To us, this installation seems a better use ofthem than yet another display of “Costa Rican Gold”or “Tlatilco Figurines” ordered by the tired stan-dards of 19th century anthropological classification(region, tribe, artifact type, etc.). Idea and artistryare the motivating factors here, not Linnaean clas-sificatory schemes that Indian people have foundso fossilizing.

The overwhelming military might of the con-querors is suggested by swords and daggers, whichbegin to intersperse with the gold, followed by a cav-alcade of more than 100 examples of firearms fromearly arquebusses to Colt revolvers, Remingtonrifles, and even semi-automatic weapons like those

4. View of the guns and bibles that appear in the “Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories” exhibition at theNational Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Photo by Katherine Fogden, NMAI.

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We find it significant that so many of NorthAmerica’s most distinguished Native artists werecrucial to the shaping of this museum as a visualexperience, a topic we shall return to in the finalsection of this essay.

On a small video screen near the entrance tothis exhibit, a mesmerizing Caribbean beach withlapping waves provides the backdrop for shortstatements on how Native American items havelong functioned within a global system. In “Cornchanges the world,” the well-known origin of maizein the western hemisphere is supplemented withan interesting idea—that corn fed Africans, thusincreasing population to feed the slave trade.“Tobacco changes the world” points out that thisplant made many Europeans wealthy. Indian prod-ucts had, and continue to have, world-wide influ-ence on events completely separate from theiroriginal meaning and usage.

Further encouragement for viewers to considerhistory “not as a single definitive immutable work,but as a collection of subjective tellings” (Volkert, etal., 2004:50) is found in the eight community gal-leries in “Our Peoples.” They include the Seminoleof Florida, the Tapirapé of Brazil, the Kiowa ofOklahoma, the Tohono O’odham of Arizona, theEastern Band of the Cherokee of North Carolina,the Nahua of central Mexico, the Ka’apor of Braziland the Huichol of west Mexico (here called theWixarika).

Another intellectually compelling, yet complexgallery is “Our Lives: Contemporary Life andIdentities,” which takes up half of the third floor.Thegallery focuses on how Native people not only live ina land where they are minorities, but also function ina globalized world. In some ways this gallery’s designblends that of the two upstairs exhibits. The centralarea of “Our Lives,” curated by Jolene Rickard andGabrielle Tayac, is devoted to the complexities ofNative identities and how they can be maintainedtoday. It asks the ever-compelling question—who isNative? Ways of “measuring” Indianness—bloodquantum, appearance, federal recognition, and doc-umentation—challenge the visitor. The wall textasks, “What is Native?”, then responds, “It’s not justyour blood”—but in your head, heart, thoughts.“HardChoices” also brings the visitor’s attention to thekinds of internal tribal disputes that occur whenincome sources conflict with traditional values, suchas disagreements on the value of casinos to Native

used against native peoples of El Salvador andGuatemala in recent decades.A large panel entitled“Invasion” offers compelling quotes from North andSouth America about the consequences of the dis-eases that decimated the indigenous peoples. “God’sWork: Churches as Instruments of Dispossessionand Resilience” presents a visually stunning wallof bibles—over one hundred of them in English,French, German, and a host of indigenous lan-guages. Hand-bound and hand-tooled bibles vie withbibles with quilled, beaded, and feathered covers,vivid examples of the incorporation of these textsinto Native worldviews. Having just recovered fromthe weight of all those swords and firearms, the vis-itor is assaulted by the weapons of a spiritual andideological invasion whose consequences were per-haps even graver than the military invasion. To us,this was the eloquent, elegant and elegiac core ofthe museum experience, and we won’t soon forgetits impact.

Jolene Rickard’s aim was to provide an experi-ential engagement with history through themuseum’s substantial collections. “The objects aremore powerful than anything we can say,” sheobserved, in answer to our questions about the gen-esis of this installation.9

I referenced Richard Serra’s curvilinear torquedsculptures as having the appropriate sensibil-ity. [The wall] is reminiscent of land formations,grand in scale, and would create a modestlydestabilizing experience for the visitor. I feelthat the meta-narrative of how America imaginesNatives is so entrenched that the mere presen-tation of any object or thought needed to be care-fully articulated through a de-romanticized andvery contemporary lens.

Rickard worked closely with designers Lynn EmiKawaratani and Verena Pierik to achieve her aims,which included, in her words, “boldly working withthe collections as if they were the colors on anartist’s palette.” Moreover, she related,

It wasn’t about the history of each one of theseobjects individually, rather it is about theoverall history told by their assemblage. Thisinstallation created for me an indigenous con-text. We can not go in and tease out their mul-tiple histories, but wasn’t the objective thepresentation of this material from a Nativeperspective? I tried to reframe the content tomake that point.

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communities. This, more than any other exhibit,would benefit from a clear introductory label that suc-cinctly states what this interesting gallery is allabout, for one needs to spend considerable time fig-uring out the connecting threads of these variousexhibits. The typical museum visitor, unaware ofmany of the issues this gallery raises, would find anorientation of considerable value.

Surrounding this central core are smaller dis-plays on eight tribes and Native communities. Thissection challenges the visitor’s preconceptions aboutIndians by presenting a variety of groups, somewell-known such as the Inuit and Iroquois, some lesswell known, at least in the U.S.. One section on theMetis of Canada introduces this hybrid yet state-recognized group, another the Carib Kalinago—atiny group who survived in the Caribbean, and an“all tribes nation”: Chicago’s thousands of urbanIndians. This gallery successfully carries out one ofthe NMAI’s goals—to convey the variety of NativeAmerican peoples, from those living a subsistencelifestyle to urban dwellers.The reality and diversityof contemporary Indian life is vibrantly transmittedin these displays, community-curated under theguidance of Cynthia Chavez and Ann McMullen.They complement similar community exhibits in“Our Peoples” and “Our Universes.”

“Our Lives” contains several nice designtouches. A large tank-like vehicle sits in the middleof the Metis exhibit. It probably surprises mostvisitors to encounter this artifact, a bombardierused for ice fishing, in an Indian museum. On theintroductory panel to the Igloolik Eskimos is anarrangement of stacked glass blocks that allude tothe inuksuk, a pile of stones in abstract humanshape that marks trails, or direction, or the site ofa food cache. In the Kanawake section are some realsteel girders of the type erected by the famedMohawk “high steel” ironworkers.

Before the museum opened, we wondered howthe Heye Museum’s collections of Latin Americanmaterial would be incorporated into what seemedlike it would be a Native North American museum.In fact, the material has been seamlessly incorpo-rated into all exhibits, from “Our Universes,” “OurPeoples,” and “Our Lives” community galleries, tothe elegant curving wall of gold and figurines men-tioned above.Yet the understandable lack of expert-ise of the curatorial team in all aspects of thethousands of indigenous cultures of the Americas

sometimes comes to the fore: One example shall suf-fice: The Q’eq’chi (more often known in the litera-ture as Kekchi) Maya gallery sadly misses thechance to make some excellent links betweenancient and modern Maya histories and cosmolo-gies. Elsewhere, a wall label’s assertion of “the lossof 200,000 Maya and the destruction of 800 villages”during Guatemala’s state—sponsored war of terroragainst Maya communities in the 1980s seemsoverstated. (The United Nations fact-finding com-mission in 1999 said 448 villages were substantiallydestroyed. See www.soaw.org.)

The fourth floor has rooms that can be config-ured to make gallery spaces, meeting rooms, orclassrooms of different sizes.Two of these were usedto house a traveling exhibit, “The Jewelry of BenNighthorse,” organized by the Center ofSouthwestern Studies at Fort Lewis College inDurango, Colorado. Neither of us was aware thatBen Nighthorse Campbell, the U. S. Senator fromColorado is an award-winning jewelry designer. Hiswork was most impressive. Campbell (a NorthernCheyenne, whose work is marketed under thename Ben Nighthorse) initiated and helped passlegislation to establish NMAI as part of theSmithsonian. Many people know him as an inde-pendent-minded advocate for Indian rights; it wasa pleasure to see his fluency and his stature in thisartistic medium.10

On the third floor, an expansive exhibition spacewas given over to “Native Modernism,” a first-rateart historical examination of the work of GeorgeMorrison (Chippewa, 1919-2000) and Allan Houser(Apache, 1914–1994), two of the most importantNative artists of the mid- to late 20th century(Figure 5). In its elegant design and spacious layout,this gallery was a welcomed visual relief from thepermanent installations, all of which were denselypacked with texts and objects. Curated by TrumanLowe (Ho-chunk, himself a well-known artist whoserves as Curator of Contemporary Art at NMAI),the exhibit carefully chronicles the history of thework of these two key figures in 20th century Nativeart. It amply surveys Morrison’s abstract expres-sionist paintings of the 1950s and ‘60s, and hismeticulous wood collages of the 1970s and ‘80s, aswell as Houser’s naturalistic drawings of nudes andother Indian subjects and his monumental sculp-tural works that distill those naturalistic figuresinto semi-abstract forms.

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In terms of both its style and substance, thisexhibit could have been at home in any art museumin the country. We enjoyed watching the encountersthat many museum-goers had with this exhibit, forsome who might eagerly visit an “Indian Museum”might not necessarily venture into a modern artmuseum and seek out large marble nudes orabstract assemblages. This perhaps unexpectedencounter with classically modern art added to thepedagogical aims of the museum, with its implicitendorsement that this, too is Indian experience:abstract art, Fulbright and Guggenheim grants, aprofessorship at Rhode Island School of Design, orthe awarding of the National Medal of Arts. Theaccompanying catalogue, edited by Lowe, and includ-ing essays by N. Scott Momaday, Gail Tremblay, andGerald Vizenor, is a beautifully produced volume. Ittakes its place with other recent and forthcomingworks that consider the variety of indigenous mod-ernisms, most of them still unrecognized by canon-ical modernism (Lowe 2004).11

The spaces currently devoted to the BenNighthorse and Native Modernism exhibits pre-sumably will be used for other changing exhibits inthe future. If subsequent exhibits are as interest-ing and successful as these two, we have a great dealto look forward to.

NMAI offers the “total” museum experience,with a café and two gift shops. The Mitsitam Café isan experience in its own right—we can think of noother museum in which the cuisine supports thedidactic program of the museum! Different stationsprovide Native-themed food from different regions.Examples include cedar planked salmon from theNorthwest coast, quinoa salad and peanut soupfrom South America, buffalo chili from the GreatPlains, pork pibil and chicken mole from Mexico,maple roasted turkey and wild rice salad from theNorthern Woodlands. (For the resolutely unadven-turesome or the infantile, there are also french friesand chicken tenders.) Near the cashiers there werewonderful, and for the most part, healthful snacks:

5. View of “Native Modernism”, photograph courtesy of NMAI.

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fruit salad, dried cranberries and apples, trail mix,fresh fruit, and baked goods. The food we had wasexcellent, and the other dishes we saw looked tasty.On both a Sunday and a Monday in November, thecafé was full. It will surely become one of the mostpopular places to dine in the Mall area.

All museums today depend on their gift shopsfor income, and NMAI is no exception—two giftshops offer different kinds of goods. (Indeed, theGrand Opening Press Release boasted that themuseum set a Smithsonian record with more than$1 Million in sales at the two museum stores duringthe first week.).12 On the second floor, the RoanokeStore sells the teeshirts, carrying bags, cards, toys,and books that most museum stores carry. An inter-esting touch is the Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch figurestanding in the corner, next to shelves with woolenblankets. Here, store morphs into museum exhibit,but not inappropriately. Photographs of late 19th andearly twentieth century potlatches illustrate thepiles of woolen trade blankets chiefs distributed totheir guests; here, reminiscent of such photos, thekind of figural sculpture often presented in a pot-latch context stands next to piles of woolen blanketsready to be distributed to the buying public. On theground floor, the Chesapeake is an expensive finearts gallery featuring original artworks. Theserange from Yup’ik baskets and Dorothy Grant-designed clothing in Northwest Coast style to finePueblo pottery and jewelry. The hand-adzed cedarwalls add to the elegance and beauty of the shop.

On the days that we visited, the museum was ajoyful place of intercultural encounter. We watchedtourists of all ages and ethnicities avidly taking inevery visual, aural, spatial, and culinary messagethe museum offered.We heard people speaking var-ious European,Asian, and African languages to eachother and to their children as they examined every-thing on display. We also saw many more NativeAmerican faces than one usually sees in one placein the nation’s capital. Clearly people are comingfrom everywhere to see and hear what NativeAmericans have to say and show about their cul-tures. Almost everyone we eavesdropped on seemedabsorbed and delighted by their experience.

The ReviewsThis brings us back to the oddly dissonant com-

ments of the two major reviews. It would appear

that both the New York and Washington D.C. jour-nalists not only have strong opinions about what theNMAI should be, but also retain relatively simplis-tic and atavistic attitudes towards Native cultureand history and their public presentation. Rothsteinof The New York Times objects to what he sees asinadequate research, especially, in his words, “sinceAmerican Indians largely had no written languages,and since so much trauma had decimated the tribes,the need for scholarship and analysis of secondarysources is all the more critical.”True as such a seem-ingly-objective statement may be, it adheres to theprejudice, seen most clearly in some Canadian landclaims court decisions, that oral history is fictitious.He goes on to almost mockingly describe the tenmost crucial moments in Tohono O’odham history,which include the birds teaching humans to call forrain, and a 2000 “desert walk for health.” Rothsteinseems unaware that in their present circumstances,a group’s mythic beginnings are often just as impor-tant as addressing the serious health problems thatplague so many contemporary Native communities.

In the Washington Post, Paul Richard objects tothe fact that the museum has more places to shop,gather, and eat, than it has for art. First of all, thisis simply not true. Secondly, this is, as all themuseum publicity makes clear, not an art museum,although it contains and displays art. Instead of crit-icizing these choices made by the museum, one cancelebrate its references to living cultures whichprize their Native foods, cherish time spent in com-munity, and appreciate the opportunity to make anincome by selling their own creations. Richard alsodismisses the authenticity of pots made for gift shopsale, and the value of trading-post bracelets andbeaded purses, thus demonstrating his own igno-rance of the significance that so-called “tourist art”and inter-cultural commerce has long had forAmerican Indians. Richard clings to an outmodedparadigm of the authentic and the unsullied—a world in which commerce plays no part.

Oddly, this same reviewer, in a separate article,singled out the “Native Modernism” exhibit as theonly one worthy of praise. He calls it “the best-look-ing and the least amorphous” exhibit in the entiremuseum because, as he explains, “it shows youbeauty steadily evolving and skill expanding, andhistory in detail, which most of the others don’t”(Richard 2004b). Paul Richard seems not to appre-ciate that the curatorial staff has deliberately

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chosen to offer visitors multiple aesthetic, histori-cal, and cultural experiences. He authoritativelyproclaims,

Art is seldom comfortable in identity museums—this one for Jews, that one for women, this onefor Indians. All such institutions are inherentlyrestrictive, and by confining they mislead. Getinto its mood and this show’s spaciousMorrisons ought to take your thoughts not justto Lake Superior, but also to Cape Cod andAntibes, as Allan Houser’s heroes and madonnasshould send your mind to Florence, not just toSanta Fe.

What he conveniently forgets is that “identity muse-ums” were constituted, of necessity, because of thesilences and omissions in so-called mainstream artmuseums which, until the last two decades, showedscant interest in the arts of women and minorities,and in non-canonical forms. But more importantly,this reviewer misses the point: Yes, Indian art mayface Europe as much as it faces the Great Lakes orthe deserts of New Mexico.That it “sends your mindto Florence” does not nullify its Native identity, onlycomplicates and enriches that Native identity in theeyes of those viewers who had never before been pre-sented with the cosmopolitanism of Indian culturalexpression and experience.

By refusing to present its multi-valenced sto-ries in the expected fashion, NMAI has been subjectto reductive criticism in the nation’s newspapers ofrecord. Many of these criticisms are, as we havepointed out, unfair. Perhaps the museum made a tac-tical error in its pre-opening publicity; it positioneditself as the conveyor of indigenous knowledge thatstood in opposition to anthropological knowledge. Infact, much perfectly “legitimate” research informedmany of the exhibits, so this supposed opposition isnot, in fact, entirely accurate. It did however raisethe hackles of those ready to challenge the exhibitsas intellectually impoverished, perhaps withoutpausing to reflect that somewhat different intellec-tual paradigms were operative here.

The Mall as “Indian Country”: Native Autonomyand Interpretive Strategies

In his introduction to Creation’s Journey, the firstvolume to come out of NMAI’s Heye Center in lowerManhattan, Seneca scholar and museum profes-sional Tom Hill wrote about his own journey as one

who “yearned to penetrate the haze of past museumpractices and public attitudes that had accumulatedaround the objects over time, and to ask new ques-tions about them.” He pondered the ways in whichNative curators might “construct new cultural para-digms for the 21st century” (Hill 1994: 14, 19).

If there is anything we have learned from thelast twenty years worth of literature on museumrepresentation, it is that dissatisfaction with the oldparadigms has been pandemic among forward-thinking art historians, anthropologists, andmuseum professionals, as well as Native peoplesand others who have felt disenfranchised by the oldparadigms.13 Yet as Bruce Ferguson wrote in anow-classic essay, “Exhibition Rhetorics,”

The surprise, of course, given the multiplicityof forms of art, is how few genres of exhibitionsthere actually are and how few are animateddifferently from one another. The labyrinth ofpossible utterances from multiple voices andcomplex cultures seems to remain unsearchedand unresearched. Repetition of genres and fig-ures remain systematically patterned and struc-turally repetitious. But if other authentic classes,races, and formerly marginalized voices arecommittedly introduced, the exhibition formmay produce unexpected flourishes, new sub-genres, new sites of speech. New dimensions ofthe signifying field may expand the play ofexhibitions, and thus expand the possibility ofserious achievements (1996:184).

Oddly, the general public, rather than the journal-ists who chronicle museum exhibitions, seems opento the new utterances and new sites of speech thathave arisen on the Mall in Washington. And newutterances they are. This IS “Indian country,” as theprocessional song in the Lelawi Theatre proclaims.As Director Rick West has explained on numerousoccasions, “this is the museum different.”

It is useful to state what this museum is NOT.It does not present a linear history of NativeAmericans. It does not provide in-depth anthropo-logical displays about individual cultures, or evenbroad culture areas. It does not cover all the tribesof North and South America. It is not, as we havestated before, an art museum. It deliberately deniesthe grand narrative of Euro-American historicalrepresentation. In its place, the museum offers elo-quent fragments of various realities, leaving to thehistory and anthropology museums the tasks of

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more conventional interpretations of Indian culture.It also responds to the criticisms of museum repre-sentations of Native peoples. Instead of the objec-tive, anonymous third-person voice of the “expert,”individuals tell their stories, some more eloquentlythan others.We met a young university student whowas writing a paper on the museum for her anthro-pology class; when asked what she thought, shedescribed how other museums objectify their artifacts,whereas here, she really felt people were talking toher about themselves. She found this gratifyingand more appealing than the more familiar museo-logical mode.

In a now-classic essay written for MuseumAnthropology more than a decade ago, ChiricahuaApache anthropologist Nancy Mithlo astutely asked

Why are we always celebrating the survival ofNative American culture, instead of truly under-standing just how much we have lost and howwe have lost it? It is this type of representationI am interested in and as far as I know, no muse-ums are talking about my people truthfully inthis manner. Perhaps museums are not theright vehicle for this type of work. Perhaps it isup to our intellectuals, writers, and artists to tellthese stories (1995: 57).

We find these words deeply prophetic, for indeedit is the team of Native writers such as Paul ChaatSmith and artists who have been able to do this atNMAI. It is noteworthy that so many Native artistsof considerable stature were deeply involved in thedevelopment of these exhibits, among them GeraldMcMaster, Jolene Rickard, Ramona Sakiestewa, andTruman Lowe. Their artistry is evident throughoutthe museum, from the curving wall of figurines, gold,guns and bibles, to the woven copper fence in thelobby, to the grace of the Native Modernism instal-lation. This visual eloquence is sometimes muffledby the cacophony of the accompanying texts, butthis is a problem that will be worked out as themuseum refines and modifies its exhibits over thenext several years.

As scholars deeply invested in Native Americanart histories, we hope to see more exhibits of thequality of “Native Modernism” in order to con-tinue the balance between a more general publicorientation of the long-term galleries, and a morein-depth or scholarly look at one topic. We hopeto see more use of their astonishing and vast

collections, as exemplified in “Beauty, Honor, andTradition: The Legacy of Plains Indian Shirts,” anexhibit at the New York NMAI in 2001.14 Weassume that the staff is committed to continueworking with communities to expand and rotatethe number of groups represented in the small-scale exhibits. This not only increases the public’sunderstanding of the individuality of differentindigenous groups, but also contributes to thehands-on training in museology of community mem-bers who can then work in existent or new localcultural centers. It is also important to rememberthat NMAI consists of four components—The HeyeCenter in New York City, the Suitland researchfacility in suburban Maryland, the Museum on themall, and the outreach to tribal museums through-out the Americas. Joint projects between theNational Museum and local ones will help build aNative museological practice that has relevanceto local groups as well as intellectual and artisticsophistication.

In most senses, those inhabiting a multi-milliondollar museum built on the last space on the Mallin Washington can no longer be considered margin-alized. They have arrived at “the center.” Yet webelieve our colleagues at NMAI have proudlyembraced a particular sort of marginality, one artic-ulated by the “museum different,” by “IndianCountry.” The African-American cultural critic bellhooks has identified the power inherent in a mar-ginality that is deliberately chosen, that is aboutarticulation rather than exclusion:

I make a definite distinction between that mar-ginality which is imposed by oppressive struc-tures and that marginality one chooses as a siteof resistance—as a location of radical opennessand possibility. This site of resistance is contin-ually formed in that segregated culture of oppo-sition that is our critical response to domination.We come to this space through suffering andpain, through struggle. We know struggle to bethat which pleasures, delights, and fulfillsdesire. We are transformed, individually, collec-tively, as we make radical creative space whichaffirms and sustains our subjectivity, whichgives us a new location from which to articu-late our sense of the world (1990:153).

Hooks’ words are consonant with the aims of thenew NMAI . “This is an intervention,” she proclaims.“I am speaking from a place in the margin where I

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am different, where I see things differently. I amtalking about what I see” (1990:152).

“This is an intervention,” she reiterates. “A mes-sage from that space in the margin that is a site ofcreativity and power, that inclusive space where werecover ourselves, where we move in solidarity toerase the category colonizer/colonized. Marginalityis a site of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meetthere. Enter that space” (1990:153).

“This is Indian Country,” the extraordinarycurvilinear, limestone building on the mall inWashington proclaims, through its form as well asits contents. “Let us meet there. Enter that space.”

Should you do so, your views on what consti-tutes ‘Indian country’ will be transformed.

Notes

1. Our review is based on three visits to the museum:Jonaitis’ attendance at the opening, our joint visit onSunday afternoon November 7th, 2004, and Berlo’sreturn visit on Monday November 8th, as well as ourstudy of the press releases and publications put out tocoincide with the opening (see bibliography).

2. “NMAI Building Features Backgrounder,” PressRelease from the NMAI Office of Public Affairs,September 2004, p. 1.

3. Another feature that seems to have resulted from the fearof terrorist activity in Washington is that there is no coatroom or locker space in the museum. After the guardshave examined one’s bags, one is free to drag a large bag-or even a suitcase—throughout the museum, a practiceexpressly forbidden in most museums.

4. Personal communication, Rick West, November 7, 2004.We discovered the director, on a Sunday afternoon, under-cover in blue jeans and a work shirt rather than his usualimpeccable suit, strolling through the museum and lis-tening to the comments of the crowds, to learn first handthe effectiveness of the displays.

5. On the third floor a staffed Resource Center is equippedwith eighteen computers, reference materials, and aclassroom. It did not seem to be fully functional inNovember of 2004. We briefly tried to access informationon NMAI’s objects using tribal designations, but the com-puters did not seem to be set up for this yet. Presumably,an interested museum-goer could find more informationhere.

6. Familiar to some because of Bob Dylan’s group,The Band,this is by Robbie Robertson and his Red Road Ensemble.Its lyrics can be found at http://www.sing365.com.

7. Batwin and Robin Productions is a multi-media produc-tion company that works for museums and industry.Theydesigned the introductory exhibit “Creation’s Journey” atNMAI’s New York branch, and have done multi-mediainstallations for a host of museums and corporations,

including the Hayden Planetarium at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History and the Epcot Center. Seewww.batwinandrobin.com.

8. We are grateful to Paul Chaat Smith for providing us witha copy of this untitled lecture, which was delivered as partof the Monthly Curator Series at NMAI, Friday March 4,2005.

9. All quotes are from a personal communication fromRickard to J. C. Berlo, March 9, 2005.

10. Yet even this relatively straightforward and modest showwas not without critical controversy. A reviewer for Slate(the generally responsible and well-regarded on-line mag-azine) published an ignorant and contentious diatribeagainst every aspect of the new NMAI. At his most slan-derous when discussing this exhibit,Timothy Noah calledit an example of NMAI “selling gallery space to the high-est bidder” and called for the director’s resignation.(http://slate.msn.com,”The National Museum of BenNighthorse Campbell:The Smithsonian’s New Travesty,”Sept. 29, 2004.

11. Lowe,Truman, ed., Native Modernism:The Art of GeorgeMorrison and Allen Houser. Washington DC: TheSmithsonian Institution in association with the Universityof Washington Press, 2004; See also W. Jackson Rushing,Allan Houser: An American Master. New York: Harry N.Abrams, 2004, and Bill Anthes, Native Moderns. ChapelHill: Duke University Press, forthcoming, which featurescase studies of George Morrison and others.

12. “Facts and Figures from the Grand Opening of theSmithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian,”NMAI Office of Public Affairs, October, 2004, p. 1.

13. The literature on this topic is, of course, enormous; weassume familiarity with that literature on the part ofthe readers of this journal and will not reiterate itsfamiliar critiques here.

14. Joseph D. Horse-Capture and George P. Horse-Capture,Beauty, Honor, and Tradition: The Legacy of PlainsIndian Shirts, NMAI and the Minneapolis Institute ofArts, 2001.

References Cited

Ferguson, Bruce1996 Exhibition Rhetorics: Material Speech and Utter

Sense. In Thinking About Exhibitions. Reesa Greenberg,Bruce Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne, eds. P. 184. New Yorkand London: Routledge.

Hill, Tom2004 Introduction: A Backward Glimpse Through the

Museum Door. In Creation’s Journey: Native AmericanIdentity and Belief. Tom Hill and Richard W. Hill, eds.Pp. 14, 19. New York: National Museum of the AmericanIndian.

hooks, bell1990 Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical

Openness. In Yearning: Race, Gender, and CulturalPolitics. Boston: South End Press.

Mithlo, Nancy Marie1995 History is Dangerous. Museum Anthropology 19(2):

50–57.

Richard, Paul2004a Explorers of the New: Two Modernists Who are Also

Indian. Washington Post, September 19.2004b Shards of Many Untold Stories. In Place of Unity a

Melange of Unconnected Objects. The Washington Post,September 21, p. C1.

Rothstein, Richard2004 Museum with An American Indian Voice. The New

York Times. September 21, weekend pages 1 and 5.

Volkert, James, et al.,2004 National Museum of the American Indian. Map and

Guide. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.2005

Bibliography of New PublicationsAssociated with the Opening of NMAI

Blue Spruce, Duane2004 Spirit of a Native Place: Building the National

Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC: TheSmithsonian Institution in association with NationalGeographic.

Lowe, Truman, ed.2004 Native Modernism: the Art of George Morrison

and Allan Houser. Washington DC: The SmithsonianInstitution in association with the University ofWashington Press.

McMaster, Gerald and Clifford Trafzer, eds.2004 Native Universe: Voices of Indian America.

Washington DC: The Smithsonian Institution in associa-tion with National Geographic.

National Museum of the American Indian. Special com-memorative issue, Fall 2004 (quarterly publication of theSmithsonian Institution)

Volkert, James, Linda Martin, and Amy Pickworth.2004 National Museum of the American Indian: Map and

Guide. London: Scala Publishers in association with theNational Museum of the American Indian.

Janet Catherine Berlo is Professor of Art History andCo-Director of the Graduate Program in Visual andCultural Studies at the University of Rochester in NewYork.

Aldona Jonaitis is Director of the University of AlaskaMuseum of the North.

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