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Some Reflections on NAGPRA

ATADA Member Ron McCoy's view of a controversial and troublesome topic

Back in 1990, the U.S. Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Now, fourteen years later, it's possible to look back and reflect on the law, some of its effects and implications.  As the "Legal Briefs" columnist for American Indian Art Magazine for the past thirteen years, I've had an opportunity to become acquainted with NAGPRA.  (I need to make it clear at the outset that I'm not an attorney, and anyone in need of legal or financial advice should consult a professional.)   

NAGPRA frequently finds a place in the "Legal Briefs" columns because of the many ways it affects the American Indian art world's collectors, curators, and dealers.    After observing NAGPRA's implementation and enforcement for some time now I can report that while some of its provisions come across to me personally as long overdue, other features strike me as maddeningly confusing and bewildering illogical.

The basic thrust of NAGPRA concerns the repatriation to lineal descendants and "culturally affiliated" tribes (and Native Hawaiian organizations) of certain American Indian (and Hawaiian) objects held by museums or federal agencies.  To qualify for return to the tribal milieu, the item(s) in question must fall into one or more of the categories embraced by the general heading of "cultural items."  These categories are:  "human remains," "associated funerary objects," "unassociated funerary objects," "sacred objects," and "objects of cultural patrimony."

The NAGPRA repatriation process is outlined on the Internet at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM.  When repatriation is slated to take place, a notice of intent to repatriate is published in the Federal Register (accessible from 1994 to the present at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html).  The notice identifies the object or objects, specifies the applicable NAGPRA category or categories, indicates the intended recipient or recipients, and invites anyone with a competing claim to come forward. 

Between March 15, 1993 and September 14, 2004, no fewer than 295 notices of intent to repatriate appeared in the Federal Register.  Nearly all-with the exception of some minor corrections and a few Hawaiian claims-pertained to American Indian objects.

The National NAGPRA program of U.S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service maintains an extremely informative website on the Internet which can be accessed at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/INDEX.HTM.  Twice a year, the National NAGPRA program assembles statistics relating to the law's application as represented by the human remains and objects detailed in the repatriation notices that appear in the Federal Register.  The numbers, updated on April 1, 2004:

I think the repatriation of human remains to the tribes to which the individuals belonged is a good thing.  Nor do I see any problem inherent in the return of associated and unassociated funerary objects (the large number of items in these categories in the list above includes such relics as fragments of pottery and thousands of individual beads).  But problems do arise, at least in my mind, when the focus shifts to pieces that fall into two NAGPRA categories:  "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony."

I am not opposed to the repatriation of many of the pieces included in the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" categories.  In fact, I believe strong and persuasive cases can (and have) been made that many of the items described in the notices as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" were correctly categorized.  After all, some NAGPRA claims involve materials of American Indian origin which museums routinely categorize as "specimens," collectors typically view as "art," and tribal people see as a living part of their heritage.  As a result, the possibilities for unrelieved rancor seem endless, with repatriation claims ranging from fairly straightforward, open-and-shut affairs to wildly complicated, hotly disputed, and occasionally rancorous controversies.  (As ATADA members know, there is information floating around that some repatriated objects have reappeared in the Indian art marketplace until people come forward and set out the specifics, that information must remain anecdotal.)  I believe, for example, a compelling argument can be made for the return of such objects as Zuni  Ahayu:da, or War God carvings. 

But the arguments for repatriation in some instances do not strike me as particularly compelling. 

A May 24, 1996 NAGPRA notice dealt with "one hide pollen bag, three stone fetishes, one velvet fetish cover, two projectile points, one crystal, a fossilized shell, a pipe, two prayer stones, two polish stones, a pair of prayer sticks, two stone figures bundled with yarn and feathers attached, and a coiled basket."  These were used during a Navajo Nightway chant conducted in 1925 for Ramon Hubbell, son of pioneering trader Don Lorenzo Hubbell who set himself up at his now famous Ganado, Arizona trading post in 1878.  One is probably on safe ground in assuming that the Navajo singer, or medicine man, who conducted the ritual gave these objects to Ramon Hubbell.  Four decades later, Hubbell's estate donated these objects to the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site which the National Park Service manages at Ganado.  Another three decades went by, and then Sherwin Curley, Ramon Hubbell's grandson, "identified the items as necessary for the continued practice of traditional Navajo religion by present-day adherents"- close to three-quarters of a century after Hubbell's Nightway ceremony.  The Park Service agreed that the Hubbell donation qualified for inclusion in NAGPRA's "sacred objects" category and announced its intention to turn them over to Sherwin Curley.

A March 4, 1997 notice pertained to material housed at Harvard University's Fruitlands Museums.  Arvol Looking Horse of Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota, identified eleven pipes, nine wooden stems, six buckskin pipe bags, a pair of wooden pipe tampers, four rawhide rattles, two eagle bone whistles, and a shield (decorated with rawhide webbing, golden eagle feathers, locks of horsehair and gray fur) as "needed by traditional Lakota religious leaders for the practice of traditional Lakota religion by present-day adherents."  Looking Horse is described on the website of the Wolakota Foundation (http://www.wolakota.org/menu.html), for which he is a board member, as "the 19th Generation Keeper of the Tradition of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe" and "Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe for the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nations."  According to the repatriation notice, tribal representatives from Cheyenne River took the historically dubious position that all of the objects "were not and are not considered 'personal property' but belong to the Lakota People as a whole."  Then, too, Arvol Looking Horse explained that the objects "spoke to him and asked to be brought back to the Lakota Nation."  The museum believed "many of these items could have been made for sale."  However, "the spirit of [NAGPRA] takes precedence over concerns for title" and it was agreed that the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" should be repatriated.

Earlier that year (January 16, 1997) another NAGPRA repatriation notice mentioned Arvol Looking Horse.  This one pertained to a buffalo scrotum rattle with a wooden handle donated to the South Dakota State Historical Society in 1906 by Mary C. Collins, a Christian missionary who left Illinois in 1875 and began working at South Dakota's Oahe Mission near Cheyenne River Reservation ten years later, she moved to Standing Rock Reservation, where she remained for a quarter-century.  At some point, according to the notice, Collins "identified the rattle as having belonged to 'Elk Head, 9th keeper of the sacred pipe.'"  Nearly a century after Collins' donation, Arvol Looking Horse, Elk Head's great-great-great grandson, "identified this rattle as a specific ceremonial object needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religion by present-day adherents and has requested the rattle be returned to him as lineal descendent."  On March 6, 1997, according to information at a website maintained by the South Dakota State Historical Society (http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/mus_nagp.htm), the institution "carried out its first repatriation, returning a medicine man's rattle to Arvol Looking Horse of Green Grass, South Dakota.  Looking Horse believes that the rattle came from Elk Head's personal medicine bundle" (emphasis added).

In a NAGPRA repatriation notice that appeared in the Federal Register on January 12, 1998, the Oklahoma Historical Society agreed that a pipe should be turned over to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana because it qualified as "sacred object" and "object of cultural patrimony."  The notice described the pipe as consisting of an "unworked tubular L-shaped catlinite bowl and wooden stem.   The stem is carved in alternating spiral and disc shapes, and the spiral sections have yellow, blue, and red paints applied."  The pipe, donated to the historical society in either 1914 or 1928, enjoys (as is so often the case) a murky provenance, although it was apparently obtained from the Southern Cheyenne chief Burnt-All-Over (1837-1917) in 1911.  Cheyenne claimants maintained the pipe was removed from the tribe's Sacred Buffalo Hat bundle around 1870.  "No information is known by the Oklahoma Historical Society or has been presented by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana regarding the pipe's possession by Burnt-All-Over," the notice reported.  Instead, the repatriation was evidently based solely on oral tradition.

This is interesting, especially in light of the decision recently rendered in the Kennewick Man case.

"Kennewick Man" is the name bestowed upon the 9300 year-old skeleton of an adult male retrieved from the Columbia River at Kennewick, Washington in 1996.  (Readers may immerse themselves in Kennewick Man matters at the excellent website maintained by the Tri-City Herald, a newspaper that has covered the subject since the initial discovery, at http://www.kennewick-man.com/.)  Found on land under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man quickly emerged as bones of contention between scientists who wanted to study the remains and local Indian tribes that wanted the skeleton of the individual they called "Ancient One" repatriated under NAGPRA and reburied.  In the ensuing litigation, the scientists became plaintiffs, while the tribes and federal government took on the role of defendants. 

For nearly eight years, the case known as Bonnichsen v. United States worked it way through the federal court system.  Then, on February 4, 2004, the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in favor of the scientists which the tribes and federal government declined to pursue farther up the line to the U.S. Supreme Court.  (The Court's decision can be found at http://www.tri-cityherald.com/images/kennman/0235994.pdf or http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/.)   

The Kennewick Man case is unusual on a number of counts, one of the most important being the age of the bones and the Court of Appeals' skepticism about linking four-hundred-year-old remains to a present-day Indian tribe.  What is of interest within the context of the present essay is the Court's evaluation of the evidentiary value of oral tradition (the basis for many NAGPRA claims based on items' status as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony").  The Court did not dismiss tribal oral traditions out of hand.  It did, however, caution that they are linked to some inherent limitations.  Among these is their potential to "change relatively quickly." 

Along this line, consider a significant shift in oral tradition transmitted by Oglala Lakota visionary Black Elk (1860-1950), whose words are preserved in John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (first published 1932 and currently available from the University of Nebraska Press and at  http://faculty.smu.edu/twalker/blckelk4) and The Sacred Pipe (1953) edited by Joseph E. Brown. 

In December 1944, Black Elk spoke to Neihardt about the Lakota practice of victorious warriors painting their faces black.  The transcript of an interview he gave in December 1944 reads:  "I [would] like to know why they [warriors returning victorious] paint their faces black when they bring a scalp or stole some horses.  The relatives at home would paint their faces black and then dance.  When we whip Germany, we will all paint our faces."  (Source:  The Sixth Grandfather:  Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt [University of Nebraska Press, 1984], edited by Raymond J. DeMallie, page 317.)  Yet he would later tell Joseph E. Brown that Lakota warriors painted their faces black on coming home from war because "by going on the warpath, we know that we have done something bad, and we wish to hide our faces from Wakan Tanka [the Great Spirit]."  (Source:  The Sacred Pipe, page 92, note 4.)

I am not sure NAGPRA was intended to introduce an uncritical reliance on oral tradition into the repatriation process.  Nor am I persuaded that spiritual forces emanating from objects, communicating only to a claimant, are the stuff of adequate proof of ownership.  (Indeed, I'm not sure spectral evidence obtained from visions and dreams has been a feature of legal processes in this country since the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.) 

I believe dealers, collectors, and curators ought to steer clear of messing about with sacred material.  American Indian religions are alive and well, not artifacts of a forgotten past, and should be accorded the same degree of respect that should ideally be extended to all faiths.  That said, I also do not believe that every object ever obtained from the nation's tribal milieux is inherently a "sacred object" or "object of cultural patrimony."

Unfortunately, I can offer no solution to remedy the situation.  Although I suggest these positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that many of us-dealers, collectors, curators, historians, anthropologists, and the members of tribes-could do worse than attempt to wrap our minds around these concepts and engage in constructive dialogue.

Ron McCoy is a professor of history at Emporia State University in Kansas.  He does not offer legal advice, and anyone in need of such advice should consult a professional.

In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait

In a front page story in The New York Times on July 1, the headline for Kirk Johnson's story read "In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait."

Datelined Horse Canyon, Utah, the story began," Archaeologists pulled aside a curtain on Wednesday to reveal what can only be called a secret garden: the pristinely preserved ruins of an ancient civilization that was long ago lost to the mists of time in the remote cliffs of eastern Utah, then resolutely protected over the last 50 years by a stubborn local rancher who kept mum about what he knew.

"The ruins, called Range Creek, are spread over thousands of acres, much of it in inaccessible back country and reachable only through a single-track dirt road once owned by the rancher and recently bought by the State of Utah. Preliminary research dates the settlement from about A.D. 900 to 1100, during the period of the Fremont Indian culture.

"Researchers say the site's singularity is not its monumental architecture. The people who lived here were more apt to build humble single-family stone-walled pit houses, of which there are believed to be hundreds - no one even knows yet - rather than high-rise cliffside apartment complexes like Mesa Verde in Colorado.

"What mostly distinguishes Range Creek is that through quirk of fate and human will, it escaped both the ravages of looters and, until recently, the spades of archaeologists. Cliffside grain-storage vaults have been found here with their lids still intact, the corn and rye still inside. And while many sites in the West can still produce an old stone arrowhead or two, researchers found whole arrows here just a few weeks ago, apparently lying in the dust just where they were dropped 10 centuries ago at the time of William the Conqueror.

"'There are places with concentrations of this magnitude,' said Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist, who led a group of journalists to the site on Wednesday. 'The difference is that this place hasn't been wrecked.'

"Dr. Jones said that, so far, 225 sites at Range Creek have been documented, some as small as a single wall of pictographs, others as large as a village cluster of a half-dozen dugout pit houses. Twenty of the sites were documented in the 1930s  -- the only other scientific work here that anyone knows about -- by a team from Harvard University. After the initial examination, no further research was done at the site as far anyone knows, Dr. Jones said.

"'The other 200 sites have never been seen by anybody,' Dr. Jones said, adding that there are unquestionably thousands of sites, and that every time a team goes out, still more are found. The Fremont culture existed from about A.D. 500 to 1300.

"Two reasons account for Range Creek's existence and preservation, he and other researchers say. The first is geography. The land chosen by the ancient people who lived here is reachable only through a steep narrow walled canyon that could be easily defended from intruders. The Fremont people then built many of their homes and their granaries in the most remote parts of the remote canyon, on the summits of ridge lines and high on the sheer faces of cliffs, where they were not likely to be disturbed.

"The second and far more serendipitous reason for the site's preservation is that in 1951 a man named Waldo Wilcox bought the 4,200-acre ranch at the end of that canyon and prohibited anyone from entering.

"'I tried to keep people from knowing about it,' Mr. Wilcox, 74, said.

"Mr. Wilcox said he knew that the historical treasures that were underfoot and on the cliff walls above where his cattle grazed were important. Over the years, he became the valley's foremost expert.

"About 15 years ago, for example, he was chasing a mountain lion that had been bothering his cattle. The lion went up the mountainside and up went Mr. Wilcox in hot pursuit. Once at the top -- a spot he could not have seen from the valley floor -- he stumbled on one of the most perfectly preserved sites of all, a tiny cliff-top village that he has since pointed out to the researchers. He said he has no desire to climb to it again.

"'These places were secure because nobody in his right mind would go up there,' he said.

"The great debate about Range Creek is not the record of the past, however, but the great risk of the future, and what the breaking of the long secret will mean for the valley's preservation.

"Mr. Wilcox sold the ranch to the Trust for Public Land in 2001 for $2.5 million, but officials at the trust kept quiet. The Federal Bureau of Land Management then acquired the land from the trust and kept quiet. The State of Utah obtained title earlier this year and had been delaying an announcement until a management plan was in place to protect the grounds from looters. That strategy was shattered last week when a local paper in southern Utah broke the story, which was then picked up by The Associated Press. That led to the invitation to the news media from around the country for the valley's unveiling.

"'We're rolling with it,' Dr. Jones said.

"He said that the state wanted people to be able to experience Range Creek, but that he also had an obligation to protect it. Among the options under consideration, he said, include opening the site on only certain days of the year, or through prior permits, or only with a guide.

"Environmentalists are also looking closely at what might happen next to the lands around Range Creek, which include areas under consideration for federal wilderness designation.

"'It raises a complicated management issue, especially when you have a place like this that is so special, so unique and so vulnerable,' said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit conservation group in Salt Lake City. 'The best way to preserve these places is to preserve their remoteness.'

"Some people working at the site, however, are deeply pessimistic that it can be protected in the same way that nature and Mr. Wilcox preserved it.

"Hikers have been seen in the canyon in the last few days -- an extremely rare site out here -- and some artifacts that were on the ground, ready for cataloging, were later found missing. Looting and vandalism are common in many of the cliff dwellings on public lands east of here.

"'I'm unbelievably worried,' said Joel Boomgarden, a graduate student in archaeology at the University of Utah who began working at the site last year. 'I just feel it's going to happen here, too. It's inevitable.' "

Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins

In a follow-up to the July 1 story, Mindy Sink's New York Times story on July 4 was headlined, "Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins."

"As archaeologists study a long-secret site of ancient ruins in eastern Utah," the story began, "some tribal leaders are asking why they were not notified sooner and if their cultural and religious beliefs will be respected as the site is excavated and human remains are found.

"The Range Creek area was kept private and secret until recently, when a rancher sold his land to the State of Utah and a local newspaper ran an article about the ranch and its trove of artifacts, believed to have been left by the Fremont people hundreds to thousands of years ago.

"Included in news of the various arrows, pottery shards, cliff dwellings and pictographs discovered there were revelations about human remains - some slightly exposed by erosion. For some American Indians, an excavation of these remains can be considered a desecration of the graves of their ancestors.

" 'Out of respect for our ancestors, I think the tribes should be given a chance to go in and pray,' said Patty Timbimboo-Madsen, cultural resources manager for the Northwest Shoshone Tribe of Utah and chairwoman of the state's Native American Remains Review Committee.

"Lora E. Tom, a chairwoman of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah in Cedar City, said any skeletons and sacred or funerary objects found with them should be 'put back in the earth' or remain buried and untouched.

"Although Ms. Timbimboo-Madsen and other tribal officials said they only learned of the Range Creek area through the news media two weeks ago, an assistant state archaeologist, Ron Rood, said he was under the impression that his boss, Kevin Jones, the state archaeologist, had informed the Utah Division of Indian Affairs about the site 'over a year ago.' Dr. Jones could not be reached on Friday, nor could Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

"Duncan Metcalfe, the curator of archaeology at the Utah Museum of Natural History who is also working at the research site, also said it was his understanding that the information was presented to the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. 'I'm sure Native Americans will be involved in the management plan of the area,' Mr. Metcalfe said. 'We don't even know what we have here yet.'

"The ranch was first sold for $2.5 million in 2001 to the Trust for Public Land before being acquired by the Bureau of Land Management. The title for the land was transferred to the State of Utah this year, and work has been going on for months at Range Creek.

"Under state and federal laws, when human remains are disturbed or are being excavated, and if a tribe can prove an affiliation with the remains, it can decide if they should be studied or reburied.

"Mr. Rood said it was preferable to identify remains and leave them alone. 'Our preference is not to excavate human remains,' he said. 'I don't like the idea of having to disturb somebody's final resting place.'

"It is not known how many remains exist at Range Creek. It also is not clear if any link between the Fremont people and any modern tribes could be made with such old remains.

"'I think it's a matter of control over the remains as much as a control over religion,' said Keith Kintigh, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University. 'I think Indians have felt, and rightly so, that control over their ancestors and the places their ancestors lived were taken away from them.'

"Ms. Tom said it would have been better for the tribes to be involved at the site since its discovery, but now a ceremony was important. 'We want to pray for the area since they are disturbing it,' she said, 'and pray for who is there.' "

What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany

"What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany" was the headline of Tom l. Freundenheim's story in The Wall Street Journal on July 8. 

Datelined Berlin, the story began: "It's difficult not to catch the excitement surrounding September's opening of the Smithsonian's national Museum of the American Indian.  For one thing, the imposing building occupies the so-called "last spot on the Mall" - facing the Capitol and across from I. M. Pei's National Gallery East Building - in a way that is both felicitous (melding elegant sculptural forms that echo nearby buildings) and jarring (its warm, beige-colored stone contrasts with an excess of official cold, white marble elsewhere).  The new museum will be a monument for far more than its structural qualities, however, since it will house the world's largest collection of Native American artifacts, a collection that will essentially be interpreted by Native Americans themselves.

"At the same time, it's sobering to be reminded that some of the greatest holdings of Native American artifacts dwell, much admire, in European museums, especially those of Vienna and Berlin, and have for some time.  Vienna Museum of Ethnography (Museum fur Volkerkunde) collections, which range from the Northwest Coast and South America to Hawaii, trace their origins to 1806.  Some of the material was collected during Captain Cook's search for the Northwest Passage in 1778-79, and subsequently purchased at the London auction of Parkinson's Museum, thanks to the impetus of Emperor Franz I.  The expanding European fascination with ethnology reflected the waning Age of Enlightenment and its interest in the exotic peoples of far away lands (often colonies).  American Indian culture and its artifacts made a perfect fit.  But the Vienna museum recently closed for renovations, and will not open until 2006, at which time we can anticipate impressive new installations. 

"Those of Berlin's museums in suburban Dahlem have recently been reorganized - in line with the general reorganization of the reunited city over the past decade.  Reflecting recent intellectual shifts from exoticism to multiculturalism, Berlin's North American Indian exhibition may seem almost too politically correct yet it provides an excellent and concise review of topics that are likely to be handled in greater depth in Washington.

"Entitled 'From Myth to Modernity,' the exhibition at Berlin's Museum of Ethnology is not especially large (500 to 600 objects) and yet covers an enormous amount of important ground.  The display highlights some breathtaking objects, of which my favorite is a seductive buffalo-skin robe from about 1830 painted with hunting scenes that was brought back (with much else) by Prince Maximilian zu Wied from his 1832-34 research trip in northern Missouri territory, with the painter Karl Bodmer.  Many of these artifacts were subsequently acquired by the Prussian royal collections in 1844.  Here are splendid older Northwest Coast masks, as well as a majestic recent (1985) adaptation of a traditional Kwakiutl mask by Calvin Hunt.  The exhibition's thematic program also thoughtfully handles potentially awkward issues such as 'the Indian stereotype' and 'the White Man in Indian humor.'    The wall texts are fairly matter-of-fact (some, but not all, with English translations), reflecting the positive side of what can sometimes be overly detached dry German scholarship and avoiding much of the political rhetoric that often now infuses such texts in renovated American exhibitions.  And perhaps most impressively, the exhibition ends with a stunning display of contemporary Native American art, such as notable artist Allan Houser's poignant 'Medicine Man."   Lawrence Paul fuses the forms and colors of his Northwest Coast tradition to create an abstract painting that plays at the edges of Kandinsky's lyrical works of 1912-14.  Moreover, these many works have been acquired by the museum they are not some sort of symbolic loan collection.

"In this reinstallation of the Native American collection, there is a sense of commitment to address the objects for their beauty, for the stories they tell, and for their complex cultural readings from which our own museums could learn a bit.  That should come as no surprise to those who remember that the German writer Karl May (1942-1912) and his 60 Western novels have sold in the multiple millions over the years and prior to the advent of the Western in film had a significant influence on how all Europeans perceived and mythologized the American West.  Not surprisingly, May's depiction of the West wasn't all that different from the imaginary Cowboys-and-Indians world of Americans.  This, too, is intelligently reprised in the Berlin museum, along with wall texts giving historical overview of the collections.

"The North American Indian collection in Berlin was begun in 1819, and by 1940 numbered over 30,000 objects.  Before September, when we commence a season of self-congratulation on how we've finally gotten it right insofar as American Indians and their art are concerned, a visit to Berlin might make us feel less smug."

A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them

In an August 19 story, Elizabeth Olsen also wrote about the new museum in a New York Times story headlined "A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them."

Datelined Washington, the story began, "A century ago George Gustav Heye, a New Yorker, traveled across the United States, gathering up Indian objects by the boxcar. All told, he amassed 800,000 examples of Indian art and life, which will have a new home at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which opens here on Sept. 21.

"Unlike the impoverished Indians who happily sold Heye, a wealthy oil heir, their tribal treasures and sometimes their dregs, today's Indians see these same objects as an opportunity to tell their story - their way.

"Long before construction began on the museum's curvy, buff-colored limestone-clad building on the National Mall, W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who has steered the museum's plans since 1990, began asking native tribes what they wanted in a museum in the nation's capital.

"What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture that was represented in Heye's collection. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible.

"'This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture,' said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, 'not something in museums or in history books.'

"So the new museum will mark its presence not only with a bumpy-looking facade at odds with those of its stately white marble neighbors, but also with a distinctly different operating philosophy that allows tribes continuing access to both the objects on display and those in storage at a suburban Maryland preservation center.

"'Every piece is considered a living being,' explained Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural resources. 'These pieces are not seen just as specimens or artifacts.'

"So when the Mechoopda, of central California, discovered that the museum's collection had a shirt used in a tribal dance that had not been performed since 1906,l they asked to borrow it. Mr. Bernstein then carried the buckskin shirt, with a fringe of acorns, pine nut beads and feathers, across the country for tribal members to use as a model to make new shirts for a revival of the dance.

"As part of its commitment to Indian tribes (dozens collaborated extensively on its exhibits), the museum is allowing them to commune with their objects. Mr. Bernstein said much of the access would be after hours, but he added that spontaneous ceremonies or offerings to sacred objects would also be welcome and that the staff had been trained to deal with them.

"The tribes' spiritual needs, including the blessings of objects in the museum and traditional offerings of braids of sweet grass, feathers or sage brush, would be accommodated both at the building's inaugural and afterward, museum officials said. Tribes like the Santa Clara of New Mexico would also be able, for example, to sprinkle cornmeal around their objects to maintain their tribal custom of "feeding and nourishing" them, Mr. Bernstein said.

"A century after Heye's forays, American Indians have the resources to ensure their vision of a national museum serving the estimated 30 million to 40 million native peoples in the Western Hemisphere. American tribes gave more than one-third of the $100 million in private funds that Congress, which authorized the museum in 1989, required to be raised. Federal money paid for the rest of the $219 million project.

"Three tribes that operate casinos donated $10 million each: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which operates the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut the Mohegan Tribe, which operates another Connecticut gaming operation and the Oneida in New York. Over all, nearly two dozen tribes and tribal corporations formed by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act contributed.(Four other tribes are now operating the only tribally owned enterprise in Washington: a Residence Inn, intended to cater to American Indian visitors, that they built a few blocks from the museum, also using gambling proceeds.)

"Financing the museum is seen 'as a huge accomplishment,' said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest group representing the nearly 600 state and federally recognized tribes. 'Because a lot of tribes felt they were contributing for all of Indian country.'

"The money also helps offset complaints about Indian casinos. Questions about tribal gaming now 'overshadow almost everything else about us,' acknowledged Ms. Mankiller, who also served on the museum's advisory fund-raising committee.

"American Indians have a chance to move beyond such stereotypes, she said, because the museum 'is about our culture and art, and where our future is.'

"To keep Indian traditions and culture more visible, the museum, with its smaller sister institution, the National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in lower Manhattan, plans traveling exhibitions that will circulate Indian art and cultural objects around the country. It is also training smaller museums' staff to mount shows of Indian art and culture. The museum plans to have performances by Indian boat builders from Hawaii and Alaska as well as artisans, dancers and storytellers to help museumgoers (officials expect nearly four million annually) to understand contemporary Indian life.

"The efforts to accommodate tribal sensibilities are visible even before entering the museum, located on a four-acre tract next to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. With 150 species of American trees and shrubs, the museum's grounds include a wetlands area, a planting of native crops (with corn and tobacco) and huge boulders from Canada.

"Its entrance faces east, in deference to native tradition (it is desirable to face the rising sun) and is opposite the Capitol building. The five-story-high entrance has an electronic welcome board in hundreds of native languages, and a circular maple wood floor for dancing and other celebrations. A woven copper screen designed in a basket pattern rims the area, and sun symbols are etched on the doors. American woods, Canadian granite and Minnesota limestone are used both inside and outside.

"More than 12,000 Indians from tribes across the hemisphere are expected to attend the opening, which will be followed by a weeklong First Americans Festival to celebrate what Mr. West called "the most remarkable assemblage of cultural patrimony of the first citizens of the Americas."

"That patrimony will be displayed in three permanent exhibitions: 'Our Universes,' which examines how Indians thought and lived in the past, as well as now 'Our Peoples,' which features native histories and 'Our Lives,' which looks at tribal identities.

"Among the 7,000 objects in the museum, which has about 10 times the space of the Manhattan location, are beaded moccasins, feathered headdresses, pre-Columbian gold figures, pottery, woven baskets and even a miniature buffalo made 94 years ago for a Lakota child in South Dakota.

"But not only the sunny side of Indian history will be on display. Some of the knottiest topics will be addressed, Mr. West said. The museum, for instance, will include documents that show the habitual breaking of treaties with the Indians - "not one treaty was ever completely honored by the federal government," he said - as well as the efforts to eliminate Indians from this country.

"A major tribal complaint - that collected religious and sacred objects are often used improperly - was addressed by repatriating some 2,000 disputed pieces, Mr. West said. (Heye collected in an era when human remains and funereal objects were often taken along with other artifacts.)

"Heye began what many have described as his collecting mania at the turn of the 20th century, when Theodore Roosevelt was popularizing the American West. While Heye was working as an engineer in Arizona, he came across a Navajo woman chewing the seams of her husband's deerskin shirt to kill the lice. He promptly bought it, then a rattle, moccasins and other Navajo items and started reading about Indians - "rather intensely," as he wrote about it later.

"Heye accumulated his collection over 54 years, acquiring about two-thirds of it in North America. He traveled in Central and South America as well, to include tribes from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. He also crossed the Atlantic many times, returning with crates of American Indian materials that had been exported by European collectors.

"Mr. West said he hoped the museum would achieve 'cultural understanding and reconciliation that has eluded American history from its beginning.' Ms. Johnson, a Tlingit from Alaska, said she agreed. 'But does it resolve our political issues?' she asked. 'Of course not.' "

500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope

"500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope" was the headline for Catherine Elton's August 23 story in The New York Times.

Reporting from Guatemala City, Elton wrote, "Guatemala is known by most of the world for the soaring pyramids of the ancient Maya and the colorful weavings of their contemporary descendants. Folkloric images of the Maya Indians have been used to help attract tourism to a nation that was until eight years ago ravaged by a three-decade civil war. But within Guatemala, the Maya are often treated with no such respect.

"Many Mayan leaders say they are disappointed with the scarce improvements in opportunities for the Maya, who make up roughly half of Guatemala's population and who most keenly suffered the war's wrath.

"But now a traveling exhibition titled 'Why Are We the Way We Are?,' which opened in Guatemala's capital last week and will continue until June of next year, is trying to prompt a long-overdue national dialogue between the country's dominant nonindigenous population and the Maya. Created by the Guatemala-based Center for Mesoamerican Research with the collaboration of some top American museologists, the show has rallied support from business groups, media and government itself, elevating it to nothing less than a national event. At the exhibition's inauguration, Vice President Eduardo Stein of Guatemala hailed it as a 'watershed in history.'

"'The significance of most shows comes from superlatives: the most beautiful Fabergé eggs, the only intact tyrannosaurus rex, the most Monets in one place at a time,' said Jim Volkert, the associate director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, who was a consultant on the exhibition. 'This show isn't that at all. Its significance is that it has the ability to affect the culture of a country, and that is rare in a museum context,' he said.

"Some indigenous activists say the Maya are the victims of a de facto apartheid instigated by Guatemala's non-Maya, while other Guatemalans deny that racism exists. What is certain, however, is that Guatemala is the country with the second-greatest income disparity between rich and poor in Latin America, behind only Brazil, according to the World Bank. And on which side of the divide citizens here find themselves depends largely on whether they are Indian.

"United Nations statistics reveal that for every 10 Guatemalans who live in extreme poverty, seven are indigenous. Guatemala's version of a truth commission, the Historical Clarification Commission, concluded that during the country's armed conflict the vast majority of those who were killed, raped or tortured or who disappeared were Maya Indians. Some 200,000 were killed in the 36-year conflict. The commission also concluded that the military's scorched earth campaign amounted to genocide against the Mayas.

"The show material is based on scholarly research on inter-ethnic relations and feedback from focus groups, and it forms part of a larger educational campaign here devoted to diversity. But for Tani Adams, the show's executive director, an exhibition format was the most logical way to promote a profound reckoning with a social ill that 500 years of history has rendered acceptable and even invisible to much of the population, indigenous and nonindigenous alike.

"'Thousands of thousands of books have been written about this and are clearly not making a difference,' said Ms. Adams, who is also the director of the Center for Mesoamerican Research, which created the show. 'It's not like you read a book and say "I'm never going to be racist again." And I think a lot of training to deal with racism or ethnocentrism basically tells people, "It's bad that you are racist, do something different." But if you don't understand how you inherited these ideas you can't let them go. You need to go through a personal, transformative experience, a disorganizing experience, something that makes you question ideas you have always held unconsciously.'

"Claudio Tam Muro, an Argentine artist and designer, assumed the challenge of producing that experience in a 500-square-foot show that could be packed up on the back of a flatbed and taken to some of the most far-flung parts of the country after its six weeks in the capital. As a result, the show is almost devoid of the objects or artifacts that are the backbone of most museum shows. Rather, it relies on life-size photography (providing some visitors with their first experience of looking eye to eye with an indigenous person), graphics, video, audio, short texts and interactive tools.

"Mr. Muro set out to use different sensory media to communicate the show's message. The result is a roughly hourlong zigzagging circuit divided into two sections. The bulk of the first section addresses the historical construction of discrimination. It is careful not to omit mentions of the discrimination that existed in pre-Colombian societies, before moving on to the violence of the Spanish conquest, the segregated society of the colonial years, and the crusade for assimilation during the Republican era. This section is filled with tightly spaced areas whose walls are painted in rich, dark colors. It culminates in a small black space with a low ceiling that produces for the visitor the claustrophobia that Mr. Muro says is 'what discrimination feels like.'

"Afterward the visitor emerges into the second section, which addresses modern-day Guatemalan race relations. It explores stereotypes and their effects the staggering statistics of how the two Guatemalans live and it features testimonies about how many Guatemalans see their identity. In this section the spaces get progressively larger and the colors brighter, while the content becomes a more upbeat message about diversity.

"'The easiest thing to create is a polemic or an exhibit of anger, but that will only work for the committed,' said Elaine Heumann Gurian, former deputy director of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, who was a consultant on the show. 'This exhibit points no fingers,'' she said. 'It says we are all in this together and have to solve it together.'

"The text in the show is spare, understated, almost simple. But the the creators hope that conversations and debates will emerge from it. For instance, Juan Luis Hernandez left the exhibition recently with ideas he said he hadn't ever considered. The Maya Indians who crouch over the earth on his father's plantation and the servant who cleans his room are the only indigenous people this 17-year-old has ever talked to. And he admits, he's never even talked much to any of them.

"He said that what struck him most was a video in which an Indian woman 'says that indigenous people do want to be included in society and progress, but don't feel they are allowed to.'

"'I had always thought Indians were poor because they didn't want to get ahead in life,' Mr. Hernandez said, 'but the truth is, I've never asked them what they wanted.' "

Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to  Hawaiian group were offered to collectors

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 11:  "Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to  Hawaiian group were offered to collectors"

Sally Apgar's story began, "Federal agents are investigating the alleged black market trafficking of valuable Hawaiian artifacts that Bishop Museum had turned over to a native Hawaiian group, according to several sources close to the ongoing probe.

"Federal investigators said the artifacts, which include several water gourds, at least one priceless hand-carved bowl and pieces of burial kapa from the well-known J.S. Emerson collection, were secretly offered for sale within the past few weeks to private collectors and at least one antique dealer on the Big Island.

"Federal agents with the U.S. Department of the Interior declined to identify suspects to the Star-Bulletin.

"Over the past seven years, the allegedly stolen artifacts had been repatriated, or legally transfered, to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei. Hui Malama is a native Hawaiian organization founded in 1989 for the purpose of repatriating human remains and other artifacts and reburying them in burial caves in accordance with ancient ancestors.

"The objects from the Bishop Museum had been sold to the museum in the late 1880s by Emerson and repatriated to Hui Malama in 1997. The investigation also includes possible items linked to the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass., that were sold by Emerson in 1907, and repatriated to Hui Malama, with the help of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, in 2003.

"Edward Halealoha Ayau, spokesman for Hui Malama, did not return telephone calls yesterday for comment. In the past, Ayau has said that items repatriated from the museum were sealed and hidden in burial caves.

"The sale of such artifacts is illegal under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which was established so that native Americans and Hawaiians could have a procedure for recovering human remains and sacred objects on display in museums.

"'We are conducting an investigation into the trafficking of Hawaiian artifacts,' confirmed Michael Kingsley, an assistant special agent in charge of the regional office in Sacramento, Calif., for the Interior Department, the federal agency that oversees NAGPRA.

"Kingsley would not name suspects or describe the extent of the black market trafficking.

"'We are conducting an investigation, and we're going to the end of where this investigation takes us,' he said.

"Bishop Museum Director Bill Brown said yesterday, 'This is a critical moment to remember the great significance of Hawaiian cultural heritage and to reflect on what stewardship that heritage genuinely requires.'

"DeSoto Brown, a Hawaiian, scholar and collection manager of the museum's archives, was more blunt: 'This is why we have museums: to preserve, safeguard, and keep valuable artifacts. Additionally, when artifacts are in museums, others can see them and have access to appropriate levels and learn. It's unrealistic to say that it's in the cave where the ancient Hawaiians wanted and that therefore we've done right and it's all finished,' DeSoto Brown added. 'The items in cave are subject to natural deterioration, which I know is what Hui Malama said should be their fate. But people can get into those caves and take things and they are not safe. This case brings this point into the open the caves are not safe.'

"The investigation into black market trafficking comes at a time of bitter debate at the museum over who should be in charge of such remains and artifacts.

"In 1990, NAGPRA was passed so that human remains and artifacts that had shown up for centuries in museums' display cases would be handed back to native American tribes and native Hawaiians.

"DeSoto Brown, who is not related to the museum's director, said that even 50 years ago native Hawaiians did not openly question Bishop Museum's right to having human remains and sacred objects in its collection for safekeeping and study.

"The museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop as a memorial to his wife, Princess Pauahi Bishop, the last of the Kamehameha line of ruling chiefs. The princess and other alii wanted the museum to safeguard items so that future generations could know their heritage. The museum's core collections included items owned by Pauahi, Princess Ruth Keelikolani, Queen Emma and Queen Liliuokalani.

"DeSoto Brown said there's been such a re-emergence of pride among Hawaiians that the staff felt shame, not pride, in having preserved bones, artifacts and history. 'Acting in atonement,' the staff repatriated many items over the last 14 years, he said.

"But in 2004, museum Director Bill Brown said he determined that the museum had its own place in deciding what items would stay in the museum for the study of future generations and what would be hidden in burial caves.

"In a controversial decision last month, the museum's board announced an "interim guidance policy" that said it was a native Hawaiian organization, owing to its founding mission, just like Hui Malama or any other Native Hawaiian organization.

"Hui Malama has fought the museum's policy as an act of 'institutionalized racism' that says Hawaiians cannot take care of their own ancestors.

"Hui Malama has said that making the museum a native Hawaiian organization defeats the intent of NAGPRA and lays open many opportunities for abuse by the museum."

A New Museum in Paris Inches Toward Reality

Alan Riding's New York Times story, "A New Museum in Paris Inches Toward Reality" was published on September 6.

"Primitive art has not lacked admirers here," Riding's story, written in Paris, began.  "A century ago Picasso and Brancusi were inspired by African masks and statues. Thirty years later André Breton fell in love with tribal carvings from Oceania. Today dozens of Left Bank galleries specialize in the exotic creativity of distant lands. Yet in the museums of Paris, primitive art is still the poor relation of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities and European painting and sculpture.

"All this is about to change. A $265 million museum devoted to the indigenous art of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania is rising on the banks of the Seine beside the Eiffel Tower. Within a year the Musée du Quai Branly, as it is known, will begin receiving the 270,000 objects in its collection. And early in 2006 President Jacques Chirac is expected to inaugurate what is already considered the principal cultural monument to his 12 years in office.

"The project would never have occurred without Mr. Chirac's affection for African and Asian art or without his resolve to make a political gesture to the third world. He started planning it soon after he became president in 1995, and construction had only just begun when he was re-elected to a five-year term in 2002. That the museum will eventually take 11 years to be realized is a measure of both its complexity and the opposition it stirred.

"The first tiff stemmed from Mr. Chirac's conviction that primitive art should be treated on a par with Western art: he demanded that the Louvre Museum also display primitive art. Its director at the time, Pierre Rosenberg, objected strongly, arguing that the Louvre was not a universal museum. But Mr. Chirac had his way. Managed by the Musée du Quai Branly, four galleries in the Louvre now present 120 masterpieces of African, Asian, American and Oceanic art.

"'The history of the world is not just the history of the Mediterranean and Europe,' said Stéphane Martin, the director general of the Musée du Quai Branly. 'Our ultimate aim is to give non-Western art its place.'

"But finding a physical place for it proved difficult. Since the existing Museum of African and Oceanic Arts was deemed too small, the next idea was to evict the National Maritime Museum from the Palais de Chaillot. But the French Navy resisted until Mr. Chirac opted for the five-acre plot on the Quai Branly, where a convention center had been planned. Local residents then went to court to block the project, alarmed by the prospect of five years of noise and dust. They lost.

"Naming the museum posed other difficulties. The tag of primitive art was discounted because, today at least, 'primitive' sounds pejorative. The Museum of Early Arts was considered, but only pre-Hispanic works are truly ancient. A presidential commission suggested the Museum of Man, Arts and Civilizations, but that was a mouthful. Finally, the museum's address, the Quai Branly (pronounced kay bran-LEE) was picked. One day, though, it may well be called the Chirac Museum.

"There are precedents for both options. The Georges Pompidou Center and the François Mitterrand French National Library are named after former French presidents, while the Musée d'Orsay is on the Quai d'Orsay and the Louvre, well, is in the Louvre Palace. But in the case of the new museum, a nondescriptive name was also helpful. The Musée du Quai Branly wants to display what it has, rather than pretend to offer an encyclopedic vision of primitive art.

"Although it will have spent $28 million on new acquisitions by 2006, it will inherit the bulk of its objects from the former Museum of African and Oceanic Arts and the ethnographic department of the Museum of Mankind. Their collections, reflecting France's colonial history and the quirks of individual explorers, were not built systematically. Further, the Guimet Museum's separate collection of South-East Asian, Chinese and Japanese art will not be affected. But for the Musée du Quai Branly, the issue is less what to show, than how to show it. Most primitive art was created not as art, but for religious and ritualistic purposes. Thus, an art-versus-science debate has long divided experts, with the Museum of Mankind, for instance, unhappy to imagine its collection presented outside its ethnographic context. Yet increasingly European museums display works of primitive art principally on their aesthetic merit. Mr. Martin said that while the objects will be presented here with 'theatricality,' the new museum would also explore links between primitive art from different climes and different eras.

"'Ethnographic museums of the 1930s were created for people who did not travel,' he explained. 'The Museum of Mankind was based on the idea of showing the cultures of the world, of showing the interaction between man and the world. Today people do not seek a description of the world. They want more of a dialogue.'

"The challenge for Mr. Martin and his team is not just to move collections into a new building but to develop a new concept for a 21st-century primitive art museum, arguably the first of its kind in Europe since colonialism ended. Experts have been working since the late 1990s to define its artistic, research and educational functions and to plan exchanges with museums in both the West and the third world.

"The ultra-modern Quai Branly building, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, should further these aims. 'The project has changed very little since it was unveiled,' Mr. Martin said, 'because we worked for over two years defining our needs before the design competition was organized.'

"Mr. Nouvel's narrow 560-foot-long building, running parallel to the Quai Branly, will be set in a small forest with the idea of quickly transporting visitors to a different world. The building itself stands on two 'feet,' with a large ground-level passageway enabling the gardens to continue uninterrupted. From a small atrium, a long curving ramp leads to the main gallery, which will display some 4,000 objects divided into four geographical areas.

"The collection is particularly strong in works from African countries and Pacific islands that were long under French colonial administration. It includes stone, wooden, terra cotta, ivory and metal masks, figures and ceremonial instruments. From the Americas, the pre-Hispanic collection is smaller, but the museum does have significant works of Native American art. One question, which will not be answered until Mr. Chirac leaves office, is whether the treasures in the Louvre will eventually move to Quai Branly.

"The museum will also offer ample spaces for temporary exhibitions, which will form an important part of its program. Some will be thematic, like 'What Is a Body?' or 'D'un Regard à l'Autre,' which might be translated as 'Viewing the Other,' a sort of mirror game between first and third worlds. Others being planned, like the art of New Ireland and Paracas, will be organized with foreign institutions.

"Education and scientific work will not be overlooked, not least because half of the museum's $14.4 million annual budget will be covered by the Ministry of Research. (The Culture Ministry will pay the other half.) The main building and three annexes include not only an auditorium for lectures and performances as well as numerous classrooms but also space where researchers can handle and study objects from the museum's underground storage rooms. These objects, many of which have been locked away for decades, have now been cleaned, disinfected, repaired, photographed and cataloged.

"For the moment, with cranes and earthmovers and scores of construction workers occupying the site, the future must still be imagined. But Mr. Chirac's dream now seems certain to be fulfilled. And it is a dream that also involves using the museum as a symbol of France's openness to the third world. In fact, to science and art, Mr. Chirac has now added politics as one of the essential ingredients of primitive art."

A Native Spirit, Inside the Beltway

In another take on the new museum, Patricia Leigh Brown's September 9 New York Times story is titled "A Native Spirit, Inside the Beltway."

Datelined Alcalde, New Mexico, the story began: "More than the corn, the willows and the sunflowers stirring in the late summer wind, Donna House cultivates memory.

"When Ms. House, a Navajo ethnobotanist, steps gingerly through the barbed wire fence into her backyard - a former alfalfa field along the Rio Grande now brimming with native plants framed by a distant mesa - there is a sense of homecoming, of reunion, of land returning to its origins.

"So it is, too, on the Mall in Washington, where Ms. House is the guiding force behind a landscape of cornfields, meadows, forest and wetlands - complete with 3,500 specially introduced ladybugs - outside the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which is to open just west of the Capitol on Sept. 21.

"'Plants were here way before people,' she said, walking through rustling rows of corn behind her home where ancient pottery shards from the nearby San Juan Pueblo share dusty furrows with ants and grasshoppers. 'They know you, have a relationship with you. It's a sense of recognizing the plants, the animals, the insects as beings. They were here way before the five-finger people.'

"In her career as an ethnobotanist, Ms. House, 50, who grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, has served as a translator of sorts between 'the people' (or the Dineh, as the Navajos call themselves) and the outside world. A traditional 'old school' Indian, as she sometimes jokingly refers to herself, as well as an environmental scientist, she has worked for or consulted with the Nature Conservancy, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Navajo Nation and others, helping to protect rare and endangered plants that have cultural, as well as ecological, significance. 'Recognizing the diversity of plants is no different than recognizing the diversity of people,' she said.

"Along the way, she often bridges the gap between the native world view - in which human beings and nature are interrelated, and all plants, animals and mountains and other landforms are sacred - and the more scientific Anglo one, pollinating a deeper understanding between them. (Ethnobotany is the study of how plants are used in particular cultures.) Her home ground, or habitat - a word she prefers to landscape - stretches far into the horizon, to the cottonwoods along the river presided over by the steep, rocky mesa. 'A landscape is not dynamic,' she said, gathering fallen peaches from elderly trees. 'A habitat is a place where beings come to life - the damselflies, the dragonflies, the mallard ducks that eat the wild rice.'

"These fields were farmland until Ms. House, much to the consternation of some of her neighbors, dispensed with the alfalfa and roses, 'allowing the memory of the land to return.' The globe mallow, prized by the Navajos for its medicinal applications, came back. So did the sunflowers, used to treat prenatal infections for millenniums by the Navajos, who also fashioned their hollow stalks into bird snares and flutes and boiled the seed hulls for a dark-red dye. The seeds themselves are used for soup. 'I wouldn't rate it very highly,' she said of seed soup. 'But it's the most lovely flower ever.'

"Today, her adobe house is in a state of suspended remodeling, dozens of 'to do' lists taped to her torchiers. She has spent much of her time over the past 11 years in Washington, where she has been part of a core design team including Douglas Cardinal (a Blackfoot Indian) and Johnpaul Jones (a Cherokee-Choctaw), both architects Ramona Sakiestewa (a Hopi), an interior designer and weaver and a welter of collaborators, notably EDAW Inc., a landscape firm based in Alexandria, Va., and the Polshek Partnership, the New York architectural firm.

"Their collective work has been shaped by a four-year process that solicited ideas from nearly 1,000 tribal leaders who urged, among other things, that the museum be illuminated by natural, rather than artificial, light, and that the design include flowing water. That approach is described by W. Richard West Jr., director of the Indian museum, as 'design from the bottom up, outside in.'

"To the Mall's polite formality - its 'tulips all in a line,' in Ms. House's words - has come a contrasting renegade presence: a wetland visible from the Capitol sprouting cattails, wild rice and about 1,440 waterlilies. Visitors meander past a meadow of buttercups, panic grass and other Potomac Valley plants and a somewhat surreal field of corn, tobacco, squash and other crops. Massive boulders, shipped from as far away as the Northwest Territories, echo the curvaceous form of the building, its rough-hewn limestone surface meant to recall a cliff face sculptured by the wind.

"To acquaint herself with the Middle Atlantic region, Ms. House consulted fellow botanists, but also set out on the Potomac River in a canoe. In a sense, she has served both as a botanist and the conscience of the landscape, guiding the planting to reflect both the museum's collection - which includes artifacts like a 2,000-year-old Pauite duck decoy made of bulrushes - and Indian beliefs and values.

"'When you take a piece of a tree to use,' Ms. House said, 'you acknowledge them, thank them. You don't learn that in architecture school.'

"To Vine Deloria Jr., a leading scholar on the American Indian, Ms. House's understanding of the symbolic and ceremonial role of plants, in addition to their everyday uses as food and medicine, is itself an endangered species. 'She has a tremendous knowledge of place and what is being lost,' he said.

"It is a knowledge that Ms. House, who often measures plants according to the scale of her huge turquoise ring, has been acquiring since girlhood. She grew up in Oak Springs, Ariz., on the Navajo reservation, about a four-hour drive west of Albuquerque, a place so small that a larger town on the reservation, Shiprock, N.M. (pop. 8,156), 'seemed like New York to us,' she said. Fittingly perhaps, she was born in Washington, where her father was a guard at the Pentagon during the Korean War. In Navajo tradition, the place where a baby is born (and where the umbilical cord is usually buried) is the place the child is meant to come home to. When she landed the museum job, her mother said, 'Oh, you're building your home,' Ms. House recalled.

"The eldest of nine children, she learned the nuances of the land by climbing trees and joining family members who were healers as they gathered sacred plants. The timing of those walks varied with the time of day, the phases of the moon and the changes in the temperature, the winds and the orientation of the stars in the night sky. Ms. House said apologetically that she could not share stories about specific plants on this visit, because it was summertime. 'In Navajo tradition,' she said, 'you don't talk about plants in the summer, because they're up from the ground, and with you. So they hear the stories you're talking.' It is never polite to gossip.

"She campaigned against the placement of identifying labels alongside the plants outside the museum. 'That's not a native experience,' she said. 'It's putting a tag on beings.'

"Her parents practiced plant-based Dineh medicine - 'the alternative to penicillin, Valium, Viagra or whatever' - because it was more readily accessible than the nearest hospital, 100 miles away. Ms. House traveled to school on dirt roads, four hours round trip. Even then, she grew accustomed to bridging worlds: as she grew older, her family moved closer to her school, which was in the more modern electrified community of Fort Defiance, founded as an Army post to patrol Navajo country. When school wasn't in session, they returned home, a place of 'kerosene lamps and butchering sheep, where prairie dogs were a delicacy,' she said.

"Ms. House, who said her grandfather was forcibly taken from his home by federal authorities at age 8 to attend a faraway Bureau of Indian Affairs school, found herself drawn to school, especially to science. 'There was a sense that Western knowledge was a curiosity, like the curve in a canyon you're hiking,' she said.

Vowing to become 'a supercontemporary Navajo,' she enrolled in pre-med at the University of Utah, eventually becoming the first person from Oak Springs to graduate from college. But philosophically unable to dissect animals or insects, she changed course midstream, disappointing her family as well as the faculty, she said. She graduated with a degree in environmental science, focusing on botany. 'I respect the Dineh - I respect the knowledge,' she said. 'I want to keep that ethos and knowledge continuing.'

"Now she frequently receives calls at odd hours from tribes worried about endangered plants. During her eight years advising the Nature Conservancy about conservation on Indian lands, Ms. House worked with the Tohono O'odham (the Papago) in southern Arizona, on whose lands grows Kearney's blue star, a wildflower that federal botanists declared the rarest plant in Arizona in the late 1980s, believing that it was down to its last eight specimens.

"A few years later, Ms. House showed a picture of the plant to Jefford Francisco, now the tribe's natural resources technician, and he thought he recognized it from the days when his father took him deer hunting. Ms. House traveled with him to the shady canyon of his childhood memories, where they found scores of blue stars. 'They knew more about their ecosystem than I did, no matter how much I read,' she said of the tribe. 'Elders know the birds, the paths the animals take, the plants. A lot of knowledge you can't find in a library.'

"She is now involved with a coalition of local and national environmental groups, tribal governments and ranchers to restrict oil and gas development at El Huerfano Mesa in New Mexico, one of the Navajos' most sacred places, central to their accounts of origin. The mesa has natural springs, herbs still used in ceremonies and Navajo and Anasazi burial sites and artifacts.

"The Natural Resources Defense Council and Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit conservation law center, have filed suit in Federal District Court in Washington to try to limit the drilling. Ms. House recently spoke about the issue at a public meeting in Boulder, Colo., sponsored by a group of federal agencies. 'She's got a commanding presence and has the long native view,' said Michael Chiropolos, a director of the law center. 'She's got tight relationships with elders but can also communicate with those making decisions on how lands are managed.'

"She believes in operating within a given culture: in Española, a largely Hispanic community to the south of her home, she volunteers at the local community college helping students develop prototype solar-powered low-riders, street-hugging cars popular among Latinos.

"She is looking forward to returning full time from Washington to her chicken-wired adobe walls, finding city life, like the pavement, 'all hard.'

"Eventually, she plans to move back to Oak Springs on the reservation, where her parents still live. 'It is part of my genetics,' she said. But for now, she hopes to be back in New Mexico in time for the fall arrival of the sandhill cranes, who alight on her cornfields by the hundred on their migration from western Canada. 'My seasonal clock,' she calls them, 'bringing a sense of life and time.'

"She was overjoyed recently to discover that a great blue heron had arrived on the Mall and was perched on a dead cypress trunk in the museum wetland. Ducks were feasting on the wild rice, somewhat to her chagrin, and the dragonflies were soaring four stories high. It is a habitat - 'one little quark,' she said, 'in the huge galaxy of the native world' - coming to life."

At the Indian Museum, A Past Without Pedestals: A departure from antique museumology

From the Washington Post, September 13, Jacqueline Trescott's story the new museum was headlined, "At the Indian Museum, A Past Without Pedestals: A departure from antique museumology."

"More than 500 years ago a Chimu Indian living in Peru hammered a sheet of gold into a mask," Trescott's story began. "He gave it two eyes of turquoise.

"For centuries, few people have seen this object. But in eight days, visitors will see 8,000 such extraordinary artifacts -- from carved wood paddles to headdresses of macaw feathers -- when the National Museum of the American Indian opens on the Mall. Looking at objects, however, is far from the only experience the visitor will have as this museum dramatically illustrates 'a native authority' in its architecture, landscaping, exhibition text and even the food in the cafe.

"Perched between the Capitol and the National Air and Space Museum, NMAI is the newest of the Smithsonian Institution's system of 18 museums and the National Zoo. Its creators hope it will attract as many as 6 million visitors a year. It cost $219 million, almost half of which came from private donations.

Expect a departure from the antique museumology of fixed dates and heroes on pedestals. On a 4.5-acre plot, with almost three acres of garden, the Indian touch is everywhere. The skin of the building is Kasota dolomitic limestone from Minnesota. It purposely looks like a natural mass that has been hammered for years by wind and rain, a sign of native unity with nature. In some places the shelves of the two gift shops are inlaid with purple and white tiles crafted from quahog shells by the Wampanoag tribe of Martha's Vineyard.

"No other museum in the world has, on such a scale, devoted itself to this fresh and unusual approach to the story of Native Americans. Its planners have created what they call a 'museum different' that might make it very hard for museums on the drawing board ever again to tell a story about people from a detached, third-person point of view. The museum is built around native communities expressing their own authentic voices and their own interpretations of events -- part of its mission to change myths and stereotypes.

"It rings with 'the first-person voice,' says Director W. Richard West, a Southern Cheyenne and Stanford-educated Washington corporate lawyer. 'I see the National Museum of the American Indian as a symbol or metaphor for something far more fundamental that sort of transcends the fact that you are opening a museum,' West said in a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors. 'It is reflective of a turning point in American history where the United States is beginning to reckon with the history in various ways of the first citizens of the hemisphere.'

Objects of inquiry "That is a loaded quest for any museum. Every step of the way, the Native American community has been involved in curating the museum. This might be due to the Smithsonian's own history and bruises. The institution learned one lesson about extensive consultation on controversial topics in 1995 when it developed plans to display the Enola Gay on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Veterans and others objected vehemently to the text proposed to accompany the display.

Yet this ambitious undertaking also might be postmodern philosophy struggling with 10,000 years of culture. The museum deliberately rejected interpreting its materials from the anthropological point of view that is the basis of most museums' treatment of Native Americans.

"This is a direct slap at the National Museum of Natural History across the Mall, which has collected its extensive Indian materials through the anthropology department. Though the materials there have been striking, the presentations have sometimes treated Indians as objects of inquiry, like gems or elephants.

"For years Natural History displayed artifacts in old-fashioned dioramas with mannequins of Indians in sparse hunting gear. As part of its renovation, it has been tearing up those exhibitions. This summer it dismantled the hall in which they resided. It has also returned to tribes many items that had been collected and donated by scientists. One of the most famous was the brain of Ishi, who for years was believed to be the last Yahi-Yana of Northern California. His brain was sent to the Smithsonian by an anthropologist and remained in museum storage for 83 years. It was returned to his kin from other tribes in 2000.

"In trying to correct past museum practices, curators and designers of the new museum met with nearly 150 communities from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. 'It is a marker,' West says of the scale of involvement. 'We are evoking the authentic voices of native peoples themselves in having a look at their own cultures.'

What they created, in function and spirit, is a museum, a memorial, a clubhouse and a cathedral. Inside the atrium -- called the Potomac for its proximity to the original riverbed settlements of the Piscataway -- eight prisms reflect the light in surprising arrangements with the grace of a stained-glass window. Its impressive overhang at the front entrance is aimed directly at the U.S. Capitol. What is that message?

"West says cultural redemption and reconciliation. Indians, he says, 'are a present cultural phenomena, a set of communities, a set of peoples. We want people to understand that, because for much of American history, until rather recently, native communities were relatively invisible. We are still here and making vital contributions to contemporary American culture and art.'

Two creators "The displays don't wallow in the genocide, broken promises and bloody wars of the 19th century, West says. Planners didn't want Native Americans viewed as victims, but as fully dimensional people. Yes, there have been horrors, West says, but they are presented through native voices and treated as part of a long history.

"This history is presented from a distinctly native perspective. For example, there is no reference in the entire museum to the scientific hypothesis that Indians came to North America via a land bridge at the Bering Strait, says spokesman Thomas Sweeney. Instead, beliefs such as the ones of the Tohono O'odham of Arizona are expressed. In that view two creators, Earth Medicine Man and I'itoi, produced the world and everything needed for physical, mental and spiritual sustenance, and the Tohono O'odham have been here since the start of time.

In addition, current controversies are addressed, West says. In one gallery there is an examination of casino operations by the Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians in California. And yes, there is world-class craftsmanship. Another gallery is devoted to contemporary art. The first temporary exhibit there shows the work of George Morrison, of the Grand Portage Band of the Chippewa, and Allan Houser, a Chiricahua Apache. Along corridor walls are cases full of 3,500 objects, from dolls to baskets to ritual cups.

"To mark the opening on Sept. 21, the museum has invited Native Americans to a procession on the Mall. At least 15,000 Indians in ceremonial dress are expected to gather, as well as 600,000 other visitors over the first few days. A six-day festival similar to the Smithsonian's annual summer Folklife Festival will follow the dedication ceremony. The museum initially will remain open for nearly 30 hours straight to accommodate the expected crowds. After that, passes with specific entrance times will be distributed every day, with these free tickets reservable on the Internet. For the opening, however, museum officials have put aside 6,000 tickets for the opening all-nighter on a first-come, first-served basis.

"The museum's history dates to discussions that began in 1980 about the fate of a vast collection of Indian materials, the bulk of which was sitting in a cramped warehouse in an out-of-the-way area of the Bronx. The man behind the collection was George Gustav Heye, a rich financier who was a 'boxcar collector,' stopping at villages, buying up everything in sight and shipping it back to New York. He accumulated the largest private collection of Native American objects in the world. The artifacts include materials from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America to the Arctic Circle.

"In 1987, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) introduced a bill to establish a Smithsonian museum based on the Heye collection, but a lot of push and pull between New York and Washington interests ensued. In January 1989, the board of directors of the Heye collection and the Smithsonian regents agreed most of the materials should be transferred to Washington. In May, Inouye, joined shortly by then-Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), introduced legislation to build a National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. In November, President George H.W. Bush signed it into law. Groundbreaking took place in September 1999. To accommodate the size of the collection, the Smithsonian opened a vast research and study center in Suitland that year.

"'Without, hopefully, being accused of undue ethnocentrism, I think a case can be made that native America, as the originating element of American heritage, should have been among the first to be acknowledged with a museum on the National Mall -- and yet we arrived last,' West said earlier this year.

"The large undertaking also provided a model for fundraising, with the government setting goals for the private sector campaign. Three tribes -- the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut, the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut and the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, each operators of lucrative casinos -- donated $10 million apiece. Overall, the museum raised $100 million privately. The government contributed $119 million.

"Inside the building, the exhibitions cover less than 30 percent of the space. The rest is devoted to other functions, including two theaters, the ceremonial atrium and performance pit, a library center, the gift shops, and a food court serving primarily Indian fare. (If you want typical fast food, stop next door at the Air and Space Museum.) West says the space devoted to displays is similar to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has large areas for reflection. 'I think museums, including ours, have proceeded beyond the point of addressing their visitors as simply being displayers of objects,' he says.

"Some of the objects they are displaying, nonetheless, certainly are unusual for a Mall museum. Nearly 40 huge 'grandfather' rocks are set by a manufactured stream outside the building. These boulders were taken from a quarry in Alma, Quebec, and blessed by the Montagnais First Nations of Quebec before they were loaded on a tractor-trailer. They received a welcome from the Monacan Nation of Virginia when they arrived. Thousands of carefully considered plantings thrive at the site, forming a garden and a wetlands. A family of ducks migrated from the Potomac and settled in, eating the wild rice."

Museum With an American Indian Voice

A Dissenting View: In "Museum With an American Indian Voice," published in The New York Times on September 21 New York Times, Edward Rothstein expresses some doubts about the new museum..

Datelined Washington, D.C., the story began, "Early Tuesday morning, 20,000 members of more than 500 Indian tribes from all over the American hemisphere are expected to gather on the Mall to begin a ceremonial march toward the National Museum of the American Indian. But they will not just be celebrating the opening of the Smithsonian's new building. This Native Nations Procession, organized by the museum and forming, perhaps, the largest assembly of America's native peoples in modern times, will also be a self-celebration.

"That will be perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the museum. The celebration is echoed in the museum's exhibitions. It is even asserted in the way the museum's mesa-like structure of Kasota limestone thrusts itself eastward toward the Capitol building, as if declaring - after centuries of battle, disruption, compromise, betrayal, defeat and reinvention - 'We are still here.'

"In fact, that kind of assertion, along with a six-day First Americans Festival of music, dance and storytelling that the museum predicts will attract 600,000 people, is not unrelated to the museum's project. The museum will, of course, mount exhibitions that draw on the 800,000 objects that the Smithsonian acquired from George Gustav Heye's famed historical collection of what he called 'aboriginal art.' But its mission statement also asserts another 'special responsibility': to 'protect, support and enhance the development, maintenance and perpetuation of native culture and community.'

"In other words, the museum will advocate not just for artifacts but also for the living cultures that once created them. Most museums invoke the past to give shape to the present here the interests of the present will be used to shape the past. And that makes all the difference.

"So it is probably no accident that Tuesday's procession begins in front of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, which still has a major collection of Indian artifacts, and heads toward the new museum. Because that is precisely the path the Indian museum's director, W. Richard West Jr. (who is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma), has had in mind. In public statements he rejected 'the older image of the museum as a temple with its superior, self-governing priesthood.' Instead, he said, he would create a 'museum different.' Indians would tell their own stories no outside anthropologists would intrude. The objects would even be available for ritual tribal use.

"Unfortunately, the result proves that a genuinely celebratory march should really be heading in the other direction.

"The Museum of the American Indian has much to boast of: raising $100 million of its $219 million from private sources (a third of that from Indian tribes made wealthy from gambling casinos), a building whose initial design - by the Canadian architect (and Blackfoot) Douglas Cardinal - hints at what might have been, a collection of surpassing aesthetic and cultural value. And with its verve and theatricality it could easily wind up welcoming the 4 million visitors a year it anticipates.

"But the ambition of creating a 'museum different' -- the goal of making that museum answer to the needs, tastes and traditions of perhaps 600 diverse tribes, ranging from the Tapirape of the Brazilian jungles to the Yupik of Alaska - results in so many constituencies that the museum often ends up filtering away detail rather than displaying it, and minimizing difference even while it claims to be discovering it.

"On top of that, the studious avoidance of scholarship makes one wish that the National Museum of Natural History's American Indian Program, with its scholarly staff (directed by an anthropologist, JoAllyn Archambault, herself a Standing Rock Sioux), could have proceeded with its once-planned revision of its aging exhibits instead of having to close them down, scuttle hopes of renewal and slink into insignificance in response to its new competition.

"Some of these problems seem palpable in the Indian museum's building itself, which fills the last open spot on the Mall. In 1998 Mr. Cardinal was fired from the architect job and multiple voices came into play he called the result a 'forgery' and refuses to take credit. His vision of a sweeping earth-form, shaped by nature's force fields, can still be sensed. But the northwest corner of the building is leaden, its Mall-facing facade only half-heartedly awakening as it leads toward the east-facing front. The landscaping, which includes 33,000 plants of 150 species along with various invocations of Native American elements - a boulder from Hawaii, growing stalks of corn and a recreated Chesapeake wetlands - is marred by fussiness.

"But the exhibits are where the problems begin in earnest. The display for the Santa Clara Pueblo of New Mexico, for example, explains: 'We are made up of two major clans, Summer and Winter people.' But, the Pueblo curator writes: 'There is no dividing line. There is just a sense.' The exhibit's commentary is limited to comments like 'Respect and sharing of your self is very important.' One does not learn what daily life is like or even what the tribe's religious ceremonies consist of.

"Similarly with the Anishinaabe, who are 200,000 strong in the Great Lakes region. The explanatory panel reads: 'Everything has a spirit and everything is interconnected.' The central image is a 'teaching lodge' in which the tribe learns seven teachings: 'honesty, love, courage, truth, wisdom, humility and respect.' A diorama with life-size mannequins shows various tribe members, including children, in the lodge. They use a bowl from 1880 and a dress made in 1920, but no information is given about whether or not these objects are like the ones currently used or precisely what the 'clan system' is that one comment refers to.

"Such detail, apparently, was not what the tribal curators thought important. In fact, there is an astonishing uniformity in the exhibits' accounts of religious beliefs, which may have been homogenized by subtle forces within the museum itself. The building emphasizes a kind of warm, earthy mysticism with comforting homilies behind every facade, reviving an old pastoral romance about the Indian.

"But these were communities that at least at one time were vastly different, which farmed or hunted, engaged in war, suffered indignity, inspired outrage. The notion that tribal voices should 'be heard' becomes a problem when the selected voices have so little to say. Moreover, since American Indians largely had no detailed written languages and since so much trauma had decimated the tribes, the need for scholarship and analysis of secondary sources is all the more crucial.

"But the museum almost seems afraid of distinctions. There are display cases of objects made with beads, organized with no particular logic a beaded horse-head cover from 1900 North Dakota appears near a mid-19th-century sea-otter hat from the Aleutian Islands. One wall holds 'star' objects, whose only connection is that they have pictures of stars on them. Some tribes are asked to present 10 crucial moments in their history the Tohono Oodham in Arizona choose, as their first, 'Birds teach people to call for rain."'Their last is in the year 2000, a 'desert walk for health.'

"The result is that a monotony sets in every tribe is equal, and so is every idea. No unified intelligence has been applied. Moreover, with a net cast so wide, including South and Central America as well as Alaska, the only commonality may be the encounter with colonizers - and even this must be simplified. The accidental epidemics that killed perhaps 75 to 90 percent of North American Indians is made far less central than the wars and forced migrations that followed. Internecine tribal wars such as those mentioned in the exhibit of the Brazilian tribe, the Tapirape, don't fit the model, either.

"The focal point becomes a series of displays called 'The Storm,' which reflect three forces most terrible: 'guns, churches and government.' There are hundreds of guns and rifles on display, ranging from a 17th-century pistol to a 1985 Uzi. The church display includes nearly 200 Bibles translated into 175 languages. The government's assaults are in documents: laws, land deeds, violated treaties.

"From this apocalypse one is meant to pass to an anthology of current-day tribal life, which includes examples of casinos, ice fishing, social clubs and platitudes.

"But a great opportunity was missed in this museum. Individual tribes could have been explored in depth. Even the 'storm' could have been illuminated with more detail rather than by just invoking the forces involved.

"The museum, though, seems satisfied with serving a sociological function for Indians of the Americas. It may indeed succeed, because it has packaged a self-celebratory romance. Understanding though, requires something more. It is not a matter of whose voice is heard. It is a matter of detail, qualification, nuance and context. It is a matter of scholarship."

American Indian Museum Opens

The first of two stories in The New York Times on September 21, 2004 on the new museum was an Associated Press story titled, "American Indian Museum Opens"

"A colorful Native Nations procession heralded the opening Tuesday of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian, the newest addition to the historical treasure-trove dotting the National Mall," the story began..

"A group of five White Mountain Apache Indians from White River, Ariz., drew a crowd with their exotic dress. Four had their chests painted black with white lettering while the fifth was painted white with black lettering. Pine needles were wrapped around their arms and waists, and wooden headgear reached two feet above their heads, which were covered in masks. 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.

"Onlookers cheered as the procession made its way to the new museum near the U.S. Capitol, and the air was filled with the smell of burned sage and the sounds of drums, bells and music.

"Among those celebrating was Nicole Soulier, 19, a Ojibwa Indian from Bad River, Wis., who 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.

"Leading the procession was museum director Richard West, wearing a Cheyenne Indian headdress, along with Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Lawrence Small, the Smithsonian secretary.

"In the afternoon, the museum was to open to the public, and musicians, dancers and storytellers were to begin the First Americans Festival, which will last the rest of the week.

"Deanette Ives, vice chairman of the Port Sklallam Gamble Tribe near Kingston, Wash., said she took her 14-year-old daughter out of school to attend the ceremony. 'I thought it was important to share this historic moment,' said Ives, wearing a black and red shall embroidered with the tribe's logo, a killer whale. 'This is a time she'll remember for the rest of her life.'

"On Monday, hundreds of people already were milling about the museum to get an early peek. 'At last we're getting some kind of recognition as Indian people,' said Lawrence Orcutt, from the Yurok tribe in northern California.

"Dave Anderson, who heads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the museum will allow Indians to open a new chapter in the United States. 'I look at this whole museum opening as an opportunity for healing, for optimism,' he said.

"Missing from the opening festivities, however, was the architect who designed the stunning tan building, layered in swooping levels of Minnesota limestone rounded to depict the curves of the Earth, sun and moon.

"Douglas J. Cardinal, a Canadian, was hired as architect in 1993, but he wound up in a dispute with the architectural firm that he subcontracted for, GBQC of Philadelphia, claiming he was losing money. The Smithsonian failed to settle the differences between the two parties and fired both in 1998. Another architectural team finished the work.

"Two months ago, West wrote Cardinal a three-page letter, asking him to attend Tuesday's opening ceremonies and offering to pay for Cardinal's travel and accommodations. But Cardinal, a Blackfeet Indian, turned down the offer after consulting with family members and tribal elders.

"'It was not a gift but professional work for which I should be reimbursed,' wrote Cardinal, who claims he is owed $1 million for the work he did on the museum.

"Responded Smithsonian spokesman Thomas Sweeney: 'The Smithsonian Institution paid Mr. Cardinal up to the time of the termination.'

"Cardinal's design is unlike any other structure in Washington's wealth of monuments and museum. Built at a cost of $214 million, the sweeping lines represent a communing with nature as the country's tribal peoples did. It houses 8,000 objects from across the Western Hemisphere. Four million visitors a year are expected for the museum's movies and music paintings, photographs and sculptures masks, weapons and animals jewelry and medals even food and plants.

"Cardinal, 70, said he's seen photos of the museum and that the 'broad strokes' are consistent with his original design. 'I would have wanted every note to carry the detail,' he added. 'The play between the glass and the stone. I usually recess the glass into stone so you can't see the frames.' "

Drums and Bells Open Indian Museum

"Drums and Bells Open Indian Museum" read the headline for James Dao's story in The Tines the next day, September 22. 

"To thundering drums, jubilant whoops and bell-jingling dancers," Dao wrote, "the Smithsonian on Tuesday opened the National Museum of the American Indian, dedicated to the history, culture and painful travails of native people in the Western Hemisphere.

"With the glistening white dome of the Capitol as a backdrop, more than 20,000 people from Alaska to Peru paraded across the Mall to witness the event. Under gauzy blue skies, they formed a brilliant river of deerskin jackets, feathered headdresses and beaded skirts, in conflict with Washington's pinstriped style.

"The opening capped a 17-year quest by tribal leaders and elected officials to commemorate Indian culture and history in the capital. Housed in a yellow limestone building with wave-shaped walls at the southeastern corner of the Mall, the museum expects to draw more than four million visitors a year.

"But there have been some rumblings of discontent. Some critics have complained about the truncated treatment of native history. Others have expressed dismay that casino money is helping defray the $219 million cost. Some Indians oppose gambling on Indian land.

"But the event on Tuesday was overwhelmingly celebratory. Their voices cracking with emotion, visitors from as far as Hawaii and as near as Virginia likened the gathering to a joyous family reunion, calling it a long-overdue tribute to native perseverance in the face of disease, war and colonization.

"'It's more than all the colors and feathers, it's about coming home the way it should have been a long time ago,' Pamela Best Minick of the Cherokee and Pottawattamie tribes of Illinois said as tears streamed down her face. 'To come back in the same way and have people not laugh but respect you - it shows we've come full circle.'

"The day began with a three-hour procession from the Smithsonian castle to the front of the new museum. Officials of the Smithsonian Institution estimated that nearly 25,000 people walked in the parade as tens of thousands watched.

"A group of Chippewa women from the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin wore colorful dresses fringed with silver bells made from discarded chewing-tobacco tins. Behind them, five men wearing baseball caps thumped on a drum while children in moccasins danced.

"'For me, this is of immense spiritual significance,' a tribe member, Ann-Marie Evenson, 35, said. 'It's like a big family reunion.'

"Behind them walked a group from the Cheyenne River Lakota Akicita from South Dakota, led by men wearing military fatigues.

"'We are proud to serve,' said Lyle Cook, 43, a former Army medic and Lakota tribe member. 'We do it not to serve the United States, but to protect our people. This is still our land, even if it is called the United States.'

"There were Aztecs from Mexico wearing rattles around their ankles, young men in Metallica T-shirts chanting traditional songs and sun-weathered older people using digital cameras to record the festivities.

"Marta Frausto of the Otomi tribe in central Mexico had traveled for two days. 'The museum is a way for the people to know we exist,' she said. 'We're thriving as a nation, and we hope to thrive in the future.'

"On the ground floor, a group of Hawaiians in deep red robes called kiheis and wearing necklaces made from black and white nuts, posed for pictures in front of a traditional Hawaiian canoe.

"The Hawaiians, though not formally recognized by the federal government as a native tribe, were invited by the Smithsonian.

"'There is a sense among native people of belonging,' Keone Nunes of Oahu said. 'This museum will hopefully educate people that native people are still around.'

"The museum holds nearly 8,000 objects organized in three major spaces that focus on the histories, spiritual beliefs, daily lives and traditions of 24 tribes. Videotaped oral histories provide the narrative backbone to many displays. Over the years, the exhibitions will rotate to feature other tribes.

"The 'Our Lives' exhibition, about the Metis of St.-Laurent, Manitoba, includes an odd-looking vehicle used for ice fishing on Lake Manitoba. Called a Bombardier, the vehicle has tracks in the rear and skids in front, portholes on the side and a roof rack filled with fishing gear.

A Metis, Josh Gareau, 18, laughed when he saw the vehicle. 'It's pretty weird to come all the way here and see all this stuff from our little town,' Mr. Gareau said. 'It's pretty neat, too.'

"Speech after speech echoed a similar refrain, that we are still here. Some statements had touches of defiance. President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, that nation's first democratically elected Indian president, called the museum a 'profound symbol of reconciliation.'

"Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he began pushing for the museum 17 years ago, when he learned that not one of the 400 monuments here was dedicated to an Indian.

"And Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne chief from Colorado who also sponsored legislation creating the museum, called it 'a monument to the millions of native people who died of sickness, slavery starvation and war. Only 400 years after the Old World collided with their world, the native people of this land became America's first endangered species,' said Mr. Campbell, a Republican who wore a full headdress that he wore onto the Senate floor for an appropriations debate."

A Melding of Spain and Peru

On September 24, Roberta Smithy's review of "The Colonial Andes" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was published in The New York Times with the headline "A Melding of Spain and Peru."

The story began: "The dream of cities with streets of gold that lured Spanish adventurers to the New World in the early 16th century lives on in the Spanish phrase 'Vale un Perù,' which has the idiomatic meaning of 'Worth the world.' For it was in the Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Peru and Bolivia) that the fantasy of treasure beyond measure was most memorably realized.

"Wish fulfillment began in earnest in 1532, when Francisco Pizarro and his troops arrived in Cuzco, the capital of the Incan empire, took hostage the Incan king, Atahualpa, and demanded ransom. For several months the Incas gathered riches from the four corners of their well-organized realm.

"The Spanish were astounded by the scores of objects (and ingots) of silver and gold and mounds of exquisite tapestries that poured in. It all equaled tens of millions in today's dollars. But they murdered Atahualpa anyway, selected a puppet ruler from the Incan aristocracy and set about subduing the larger population through the imposition of Spanish power, culture and religion. The goal, in principle, was to save native souls through conversion to Roman Catholicism in practice, it was to extract maximum wealth at minimum expense and open new land to European immigrants.

"The forced mixing of these two great and already heterogeneous cultures is the subject of 'The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830,' a sumptuous, groundbreaking exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that opens on Wednesday after a members' preview the day before.

"In sharp contrast to the isolation and frequent eradication of native peoples by the Europeans who laid claim to North America, the exploitation of the local Andean population was, relatively speaking, a story of integration, assimilation and exchange that created a new synthesis.

"The Spanish influence on Incan crafts began with the books, prints, domestic objects and textiles imported from Spain by the conquerors. It continued with instruction from priests and from European artists and artisans (including Flemish weavers and German silversmiths), as well as with commissions from wealthy colonists. And it was further complicated by the influx of Chinese objects, textiles and even artisans that began when Spain opened sea routes to Asia. By the early 1600s, the Spanish had re-established workshops like those overseen by the Incas (although conditions were much harsher). By late in the century, what scholars now call the Andean Baroque was in full swing.

"'The Colonial Andes' is the first in-depth combined examination of the silverwork and textiles that were the fruit of this development. It was organized by Elena Phipps, a textiles conservator at the Met, and Johanna Hecht, an associate curator in its department of European sculpture and decorative arts, in consultation with Cristina Esteras Martín, a specialist in Spanish colonial silver. It presents about 150 examples of tapestry and silverwork from public and private collections on four continents, many of which have never been exhibited before, much less together.

"Their display is enhanced by a selection of queros, the handsome wood beakers (whose richly colored designs are inlaid, not just painted on) from which the Incans drank maize beer for pleasure and ritually to seal agreements, and by large paintings, almost all depicting objects similar to those in the show. Among the women's mantles with their bands of inventively divided cubic forms that can be seen in the show's early galleries is displayed a painting of a proud Incan noblewoman wearing one. Although shown in the portrait style of European royalty, she rests her hand on a red-fringed Incan crown and is accompanied by one of the hunchback dwarfs, here holding a feathered parasol, who frequently served the Incan elite.

"In one gallery, large silver altar coverings can be seen. In the next, three large late-17th-century paintings of the annual Corpus Christi procession in Cuzco feature multi-tiered silver-clad altars being carried through the streets one of these paintings is actually framed in slices from just such an altar cover.

"Initially, these richly patterned tapestries, heavily tooled silver trays, coffers and religious objects and statues may seem familiarly European. But they soon distinguish themselves in all sorts of ways: in the profuse and vigorous foliate ornamentation (especially in the silver pieces) that create a sometimes overwhelming surface energy in depictions of figures in traditional Incan dress and in incongruous details like the fine white-on-dark patterns on tapestry that were inspired by European lace, which the Incas loved.

"Plus there is a kind of abandon, even a casualness, in the silverwork, as well as a scale and density that suggest how abundant the metal was. Exhibit A on this score are two ornate lifesize sculptures of pelicans with gemstone eyes - extremely tangible symbols of the Eucharist. Indeed, the Spanish discovered the world's largest silver lode in Potosí in 1545, quickly pressing Incan miners, with Incan overseers, into abusive labor.

"Above all, there is the concentrated fineness of the Incan tapestries, whose perfection often has what amounts to a devotional quality. They are double sided, which is to say their backs are as finished as their fronts their color transitions are interlocked - a sophisticated, labor-intensive technique that results in unusually tight, smooth surfaces.

"The Incan civilization, while less than 100 years old at the time of the conquest, represented the culmination of more than three millenniums of progress by successive, merging and sometimes warring Andean empires and kingdoms, the earliest of which date back to the time of the first Egyptians. Weaving, having preceded ceramics in the Andes cultures by about 1,000 years (usually it was the other way around), enjoyed an unequaled centrality.

"The Incan textiles, which were woven from memory rather than from drawings, even in colonial times, served purposes more political than religious: they were primarily garments worn by the ruling elite, from the king to the royal emissaries who circulated among the empire's far-flung villages and cities. The boldly geometric style of the men's poncho-like tunics were especially heraldic. Dominated by black-and-white checkerboard patterns, they were instantly recognizable in a culture that never developed a written language, and announced the representatives and the stability of the empire like flags or coats of arms.

"The importance of textiles is evident in the gallery of preconquest material at the beginning of the show. Also included here is a small Incan silver votive figure completely outfitted in miniature garments that is thought to represent a child, in this case prepared for sacrifice infant Jesus figures in churches got the same sartorial treatment, as reflected by several tiny tunics included in the show.

"Partly because their contrasting colors make them easy to read, the tapestries show the hybrid nature of colonial culture most clearly. Especially notable is the Incan ability to adapt and subvert outside motifs and techniques in ways that consciously or unconsciously make their own presence felt. (In much the same way, their nature-centered faith reshaped Catholicism into what one writer in the show's excellent catalog calls 'a local religion.')

"In some cases Incan weavers' penchant for abstraction clarified imported motifs. In the two tapestries whose juxtaposition in the show's second gallery is a high point, the repeating hexagonal lozenges of Hispanic-Moorish carpets are reduced to an interplay of lines that create an acute, pulsating rhythm.

"But the Incas, who frequently detailed their checkered tunics and banded mantles with tiny schematized depictions of insects, plants and animals, easily took to more specific forms of representation. Among the women's mantles is one from Lake Titicaca with the traditional edge-to-edge bands of abstract pattern. But instead of dividing blank fields of color, the bands alternate with expanses of flora, fauna and figures that include four depictions of Eve emerging from Adam's rib.

"The same theme is tackled in a tapestry from the southern Andes, in which the image has the scale of a European painting and the bands have been replaced by concentric, framelike borders filled with foliate patterns. Still, a sampling of Andean animals - oddly disgruntled looking - crowds the scene, and Adam has the handlebar mustache of a conquistador. These two works, both dating from the early 17th century, also demonstrate that assimilation occurred throughout the region at different rates.

"In embracing representation as they never had in the preconquest era, the Incas were able to record their own existence. A work owned by the Met that has just emerged from five years of conservation has two concentric borders dominated by foliate patterns. But between them is a wide, beautifully colored band that mixes figures from Incan, Christian and Greek myths with scenes of everyday life: hunters, houses, a man thwacking a goat with a stick, a brown-and-white cow (outlined in blue) tending her pink-and-brown calf (outlined in white).

"In the show's final gallery, in an armorial tapestry from the British Museum, a similarly wide band is populated by Incan noblemen and women in their traditional tunics and mantles, accompanied by those hunchback dwarfs again, still wielding feathered parasols. The work dates from the late-18th century, a few decades before the people of the Andes would rid themselves of their Spanish masters and achieve independence."

Summer_2004

Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya

Holland Cotter's April 9 New York Times review of "Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya" was subtitled "A Mystique of Blood and Beauty." Read more about Kathleen Berrin, one of the show's co-curators, in a Media File story from San Francisco magazine later in this issue.

Datelined Washington, DC, the story began: "Textbook history? I believe barely a word of it. It has as much credibility as a Hollywood movie. Like the movies, it's all about formulas: good guys, bad guys win, lose. But, as the news of the day keeps reminding us, every win is a setup for a loss angels and devils change sides all the time.

"Consider the Maya, who flourished in Mexico and other parts