The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations (review)

In The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations, Amy Lonetree and Amanda J. Cobb have collected essays focusing on the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the ongoing dialogue between Native peoples, museum experts, the media, and scholars. This volume consists of four “critical conversations” that include seventeen essays, and span the historical development of Smithsonian Institution, the creation and development of the NMAI, and responses to these. Common themes in the essays include how to treat Native communities with sensitivity, the historical distrust Natives have of the academy and museums, and questions of scholarly museum work and who is qualified to do this work.

In Conversation 1, Ira Jacknis, Patricia Pierce Erikson, and Judith Osrowitz outline the NMAI in the context of the Smithsonian’s history. According to this conversation, the misperception of American Indians and how the museum depicts them must change, and Native voices must be central to the dialogue between all stakeholders in museum development. To change these misconceptions, a different approach to the museum and its organization must challenge the norm. Erikson addresses the complexity of defying the norm in museum development, stating, “the inclusion of Native Americans in the planning, curation, interpretation, and representation process disrupts conventional notions of what a scholar is and who gets to constitute the consciousness of the visitor” (80). The connection between this conversation and the other three becomes obvious through the issue of reinterpretation. Conversation 3 further explores this through museums’ typical treatment of Native peoples as timeless and ahistoric.

In Conversation 2, Paul Chaat Smith, Cynthia Chavez Lamar, and Beverly R. Singer focus on the collaborative efforts between Native communities, individuals, and the museum, while providing a context for these factions’ interpretation of different aspects of the museum. Smith addresses Indian involvement in and the media’s response to the museum, the struggles with labeling exhibits, and mainstream viewers’ reactions to them. Lamar stresses the importance of Native community involvement. For the Our Lives exhibit, eight communities worked collaboratively with museum staff, and Lamar concludes that “most of the content of the community exhibits resulted in forward-looking concepts. It was a team effort based on consensus, and most groups worked toward achieving balance between history, cultural traditions, and pride” (149). The last essay in this section focuses on the making of the film Who We Are and outlines the process of effectively and appropriately portraying the communities filmed. This conversation readjusts commonly held ideas of the process of creating a museum and challenges the history behind the norms mentioned in Conversation 1.

Conversation 3 includes essays by Elizabeth Archuleta, Aldona Jonaitis and Janet Catherine Berlo, Gwyneira Isaac, Sonya Atalay, Myla Vincente Carpio, and Amy Lonetree and is rich in analysis of the historic relationship between Indians and museums, the NMAI in particular. Archuleta explains that museums, like literature, portray certain images to teach mainstream America. She responds to media criticisms (the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher and Paul Richard) of wanting Indians to be the same archetypes represented in the American conscience and psyche (185). According to Archuleta, visitors must “listen” to the stories told throughout the museum and understand the interaction between visitors and those stories. Jonaitis and Berlo continue this criticism by addressing the negative reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post that did not reflect the authors’ actual experiences in the museum. These two authors claim, “No longer can a museum succeed simply by placing beautiful things on its walls; visitors must have some way of personally having a meaningful encounter with all those things” (216). They criticize criticism, claiming that the museum in its entirety—from the café to the stores to the exhibits themselves—is the experience.

Isaac frames her essay in the concept of “genres of expectancy.” She wanted to “explore how the stories museums tell us are not just presented in the exhibits...