Conversations with Remarkable Native Americans

3. Richard West, lawyer and founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian

CHAPTER THREE Richard West, lawyer and founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian The first director of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Richard West (Southern Cheyenne) has forged new concepts and achieved many goals that seemed totally unrealistic to most non-Indians and many Indians before the opening of the NMAI. His education in an artistic family and his legal training were combined to lead the way toward understanding and reconciliation in the field of Native art and Native heritage. This interview took place in Paris, where he was attending a UNESCO meeting for the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and was getting ready to retire, in September 2007. Since then he has been replaced by another lawyer, Kevin Gover (Pawnee and Shoshone), former U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. West directed the NMAI for seventeen years (1990–2007). He was active both on the national and the international scene. He played an instrumental role, as a “man between two worlds,” an ambassador of Native culture in the United States and abroad. In this interview he explains the genesis of the museum foundation. Looking back he is pleased to have contributed to creating: a “safe place for unsafe ideas.”1 Joëlle Rostkowski: As director of the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened its doors in September 2004, and looking back on its opening and its activities since then, how could you describe its main characteristics and achievements? Richard West: I consider that, on the whole, what we see today is what we had in view. The museum has been a collective undertaking; it emerged from a set of ideas debated by the Board of Trustees. Personally, being a lawyer and not a museum expert, I knew that we needed some consultations, but I also felt that we had to conceive something new, really different. I wanted to listen to informed people and to ask the communities themselves how they wanted to be represented. 17 18 CONVERSATIONS WITH REMARKABLE NATIVE AMERICANS I grew up in an artistic family, Indian (Cheyenne) on my father’s side and nonIndian on my mother’s side. My father was a painter and sculptor and my mother a pianist. I grew up around museums and I knew how difficult it was for artists—and particularly Indian artists—to be recognized. Initially I started with two main ideas: First I wanted the museum to represent the full spectrum of Indigenous peoples. Second, I thought that we had to invoke Native voices and integrate those voices into the presentation of the collections. That was the foundation of the new objectives we set for the museum. We conceived a museum that was to become not only a cultural space but also a community center. To the consternation of some people it has asserted its difference, its specificity as a civic space where one is confronted not only with Native objects but also with the native experience. However the museum is not designed for Native peoples only. It is conceived as a place for dialogue; it is supposed to enhance mutual understanding and respect. As far as the programming around exhibitions is concerned, non-Natives have also been involved. We have been engaged in “dialogical conversations,” joined symposia . And some Native artists have exhibited at the Venice Festival. James Luna, for example, and Edgar Heap of Birds have put together installations, have represented their own visions at the Biennale. And that’s so much better than the marginalized position in which Native artists—and I think of my own father—have been confined Richard West (Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian [NMAI]) RICHARD WEST 19 for so many years. Artists in those days were drawn into a corner by mainstream society and—simultaneously—they were criticized by their own communities if they succeeded in the outside world. JR: The National Museum of the American Indian owns a considerable collection of Native objects numbering almost one million pieces, all coming from the Heye collection, located for many years in New York. George Heye was a very eager collector of Native artifacts but not particularly interested in Native experience. How do you relate to the Heye collection? RW: I went to see the Heye collection in New York when I was a teenager. I remember I was thirteen and I admired their fine...