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American Quarterly 57.2 (2005) 485-506



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The National Museum of the American Indian as Cultural Sovereignty

On September 21, 2004, more than twenty-five thousand Native Americans gathered together on the Washington Mall to celebrate the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). As a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, I, too, participated in that moment, which was beautiful for so many reasons—because of the physical beauty of the NMAI building and grounds, because of the cultural significance and even sacred connotation of so many objects in the museum, because of the more than sixty-five thousand non–Native Americans who joined the celebrations, and because the sun came out that morning after a solid week of rain. The thousands of people present that day seemed to understand that the National Museum of the American Indian is more than just a museum. As NMAI Director, W. Richard West (Southern Cheyenne) reflected, "There was just this kind of power in the air for Native people. But somehow it was almost the same for non-Indians who were there. They sensed, lots of them, the sixty-five thousand who watched the procession, that there was something very fundamental going on that day."1

Even in 1989, when Congress passed Public Law 105-189 establishing a National Museum of the American Indian as part of the Smithsonian, those involved knew something fundamental was occurring. Introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawai'i and then Representative Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne) of Colorado, the bill significantly embodied the cultural resurgence that had been growing in Indian country for a number of years, a resurgence that took a more clearly limned shape and form and a stronger, more insistent voice in the public arena.2 This consciousness recognized and acknowledged, in the words of poet Simon Ortiz (Acoma), that "This America has been a burden of steel and mad death" but also saw, in the "flowers and new grass and . . . spring wind rising" a different future for Native peoples.3 This outpouring from Native Americans manifested itself in everything from the red power movement, to the growth of American Indian studies in the academe, to the renaissance of contemporary Native American [End Page 485] art, literature, and film, to the emergence of tribal museums and cultural centers, to the upsurge in economic development and the increased exercise of tribal sovereignty in legal and political arenas. The congressional bill, which appropriated funds for three museum facilities—the Gustav Heye Center in New York City, the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.—was one of the many institutional changes wrought by Native cultural resurgence and revitalization and one of the most significant because it involved museums, which have served as powerful colonizing forces throughout Native America.

The NMAI as an Exercise of Native Cultural Sovereignty

As I walked through the NMAI, I was particularly struck by a display in Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories, one of the three permanent exhibitions. The installation consisted of long, curvilinear glass cases, one of which was filled to overflowing with guns, one with Bibles, and one with government treaties. The accompanying wall text argues that the three major forces of colonization were warfare, churches, and government, and through the display of literally hundreds of guns, Bibles, and treaties, the exhibit demonstrates how all three served as instruments of dispossession. But, the exhibit goes on to say that these same objects—in the hands of Native Americans—served also as instruments of resistance, resilience, and survival. Armies may have used guns and warfare to seize land and conquer tribes, but Native peoples used guns to protect their communities and fight back. Missionaries and schoolteachers may have used churches and Bibles to "civilize" Native individuals in their attempt to destroy elements of Native cultures, but Native Americans, in an exercise of profound cultural agency, either rejected the imposed religion or adapted elements of it into existing religious and...

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