Hi all,

I know the museum has been open for a while but I finally got down to
see the National Museum of the American Indian today. I remember
reading all the reviews about it but wanted to see for myself.

My overall impression of it is that it lacks a sense of continuity and
purpose. There are snippets of some really great things in it but
nothing that ties everything together.

I'll go from the outside in.

The building itself - way cool!! It's what I would expect of an
American Indian museum. It stands out from the rest of the Mall yet it
doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. The grasslands are a nice touch
as well as the waterfall and representative river. I could sit and
watch the river and waterfall all day. It was very well designed.

The main entrance leads around a big bronze fence sculpture which is
kind of annoying because it creates a barrier between you and the rest
of the museum. I'm not sure what the purpose of it is. The view of the
big domed ceiling is rather breathtaking.

The walkway around the bronze fence leads you to a) a gift shop with
REALLY expensive jewelry, b) the elevators, and c) a rotunda with 3
native American boats and a bronze statue of an Indian drawing a bow.
Okay. The boats were neat but looking at the rest of the museum, I
didn't really understand why they were there. Also on the first floor
is the most excellent food court. More on that later.

Second floor - Another gift shop. Hurm.

Third Floor and Fourth Floor - this two floors have the majority of
the exhibits. There are 4 main galleries. The 3 main exhibits, Our
Peoples, Our Lives, and Our Universe have snippets of brilliance but
fail to tell a cohesive story or carry across a cohesive message. Each
exhibit has a "theme" and highlights several tribes but fails to show
you the whole picture. If I was a Navajo walking into the museum, I'd
expect to see my people represented in some way. I don't remember
seeing anything Navajo in the museum. There were cases upon cases
filled with stuff so some of those things might have been Navajo but
where was the Navajo voice? I understand that there are hundreds of NA
tribes over the Americas so you can't highlight them all, but I'd
still expect that every one of them would be mentioned in some fashion
somewhere in the museum.

The best exhibit there was the Pacific Northwest exhibit in the
changing exhibits gallery. That showed a cohesive picture of the
Northwest culture from history to modern day. Coming out of that
exhibit and felt like it told a story and represented a people.

I went into the "Our Lives" exhibit, which was on modern Native
Americans and came out thinking, "okay, your point?" I understand that
NA people still exist today. There was a good little exhibit on the
steelworkers who worked in NY. But where are the NA businesses, movie
stars, industry, artists, leaders, politicians, etc. etc? The exhibit
only highlighted 8 tribes. What about the rest of them? What about the
struggle that NA have today of maintaining their culture identity in a
"modern" world? The only bit that came close to showing that struggle
was an small exhibit on NAs who had been adopted by white families and
grew up in major cities like Chicago, away from their cultural
heritage. Along with that are full-blooded NAs who have parents of
mixed tribes and thus don't have enough of one tribe to claim
membership and register as a NA.

There was also NOTHING even remotely controversial in the museum. It
was well sanitized. You'd think that there would be at least an
exhibit or display trying to break down stereotypes like "No, we don't
all live in tepees or why Disney's Pocahontas movie was a piece of
crap". Given the press about using NA names for sports teams, this
would be the prime place to explore all sides of the issue. Or what
about Indian casinos? There was a small panel about one contemporary
artist who put himself on "display" in a 19th c. display case with
descriptive labels about his body like his scars and his physical
appearance in protest of NA displays in natural history museums. Made
a GREAT point and could have been the start of an excellent exhibit
about how the NA see themselves and how others have seen them
throughout the years. Sadly, it was just one panel and didn't go any
further.

The "Our People" exhibit which tried to delve into how Europeans
changed the NA way of life claimed to tell history from their view. I
understand that as period accounts from Europeans are really skewed
and horribly biased. But again, the strictly NA view is just as biased
in a different way. Somewhere in the middle is the truth and there
wasn't any attempt to find it. Other museums have tried to show the
18th and 19th c. view and the reasons behind it and then show a more
realistic view of NA. I would have expected a lot of that in this
museum.

Another thing that bugged me strictly from a design point is that the
display cases in the halls were poorly lit and the display drawers
were not labeled. Grrrr...not only could I not see everything clearly,
I didn't know what I was looking at half the time as well.

I also felt like I had to "find" the exhibits. They were back behind
the elevators so when you walked up the stairs or got off the
elevators, it wasn't immediately obvious where they were. Plus I
thought it was stupid to put the bulk of the museum on the upper two
floors. Couldn't they have had a few less highly overpriced Indian
jewelry cases in the gift shop and more exhibit space?

Lastly, the food court. Overpriced as one might expect but EXCELLENT
food and it made more sense than the rest of the museum. It was
divided up into regions with representative foods from each region.
There was the obligatory buffalo burgers and fry bread but also
wonderful salmon dishes from the Pacific Northwest, "typical" South
American food like tamales and mole, and pumpkin and squash dishes
from the Eastern Woodlands. They really needed a sampler platter with
one of everything as I spent 15 minutes wandering around trying to
decide what to eat.

So I'm glad that I went and it definitely wasn't a wasted day but I
expected so much more. I understand wanting to get away from a
"traditional" museum model but the NA story and culture could have
been told in many different ways to create a big picture. Instead it
was like the "Whitman sampler" of Native American culture. Hopefully
with more exhibits, the museum will improve.

So has anyone else seen it? How does it compare with other Native
American museums? I'd be interested in hearing from someone who has
seen the NMAI and the First People's Hall in the Canadian Museum of
Civilization and how they compare.

Deb - digging out her asbestos underwear.  :)

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