I loved Paul Apodaca's concise explanation of the origin of Native American history as 'natural history'. As an Anthropology trained Director of a 'General' museum which included Natural History and History, I thought about this question a lot. In that setting it was easy to conceptually split the rocks, shells, birds and animals from Native American materials by naming Ethnographic collections as a separate area of collecting. I also came to the conclusion that 'history' is equivalent to the retrospective anthropology of one's own culture. Since, in History museums, we deal with the history of the various ethnic groups in our area, it follows that Native American history should be no different. We just have resources (archaeology and oral tradition) that provides a longer, deeper history than for, say, our Scottish, Portuguese or Chinese heritage people. I hope that, over time, more and more Natural History Museums will shift to the idea of 'natural history' as including all humans and their relation to the natural world. (Some already do.) With the new century I'll bet we'll see interest in environmental history burgeon --both the environmental movement and all preceding knowledge about the relationship of humans to the enviroment-- that would be a perfect evolutionary step (no pun intended) for the 19th century born Natural History museum. Lucy Skjelstad ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ museum-l.html. You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).