USA: Native Americans Finally Acquire a Museum of Their Own

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Feb 5 1995 (IPS) - It took almost 400 years after the arrival of the first Europeans in the New World, but native Americans finally have a museum of their own in the United States.

Created by an act of Congress in 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian — part of the vast state-owned Smithsonian Institute — spans more than 10,000 years of Indian history and has a collection available of more than a million objects.

But, after the long wait for Congress to recognise the Indian’s role in American life, it took another five years for the museum to open in New York. Finally, last October, New York’s George Gustav Heye Centre became home to a branch of the museum.

At long last, the museum — designed in consultation with the various native peoples whose art and artifacts it offers — is available, free of charge, for viewers to glimpse both the rich past and vibrant present of the American Indian.

Showing (until March) at New York’s Heye Centre is an exhibition entitled , ‘All Roads Are Good’ which places Indian tradition in perspective. Another exhibit, ‘This Path We Travel’, (open through July) displays contemporary Indian art.

‘All Roads Are Good’ is essentially a selection of the rich store of artifacts in the Smithsonian’s Indian archives, chosen by 23 Indian artists and leaders who explain the importance of the objects they picked.

It makes a powerful argument about the continuing impact of seemingly ordinary objects to sustain the memory and vitality of peoples whose very existence was kept in doubt during the massacres and destruction of the past four centuries.

“My grandparents were very traditional people, and when I look at these objects from the museum’s collection, I see my grandmother and grandfather in them,” explained Apache artist and dancer Edgar Perry. “It’s like they have left these behind.”

Other contributors to the exhibit were touched by the sadness of their task: to take away more of the possessions of peoples who lost everything, simply to be viewed by the citizens of the nations that did the taking.

“I was very sad when I first saw these objects, because many of them have left their homes and are no longer with the people,” said Gerald McMaster, the museum’s curator and a Plains Cree. “This made me see immediately the ruptures in Native American history, including our art history.”