Interpreting Native American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites
Interpreting Native American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites

Author: Raney Bench

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 075912339X

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Interpreting Native American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites features ideas and suggested best practices for the staff and board of museums that care for collections of Native material culture, and who work with Native American culture, history, and communities. This resource gives museum and history professionals benchmarks to help shape conversations and policies designed to improve relations with Native communities represented in the museum. The book includes case studies from museums that are purposefully working to incorporate Native people and perspectives into all aspects of their work. The case study authors share experiences, hoping to inspire other museum staff to reach out to tribes to develop or improve their own interpretative processes. Examples from tribal and non-tribal museums, and partnerships between tribes and museums are explored as models for creating deep and long lasting partnerships between museums and the tribal communities they represent. The case studies represent museums of different sizes, different missions, and located in different regions of the country in an effort to address the unique history of each location. By doing so, it inspires action among museums to invite Native people to share in the interpretive process, or to take existing relationships further by sharing authority with museum staff and board.

The Changing Presentation of the American Indian
The Changing Presentation of the American Indian

Author: National Museum of the American Indian (U.S.)

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780295977812

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Museums -- along with books, newspapers, and Wild West shows in the 19th century, movies and television in the 20th -- have shaped our perceptions of American Indians. How have museums' representations of Indians influenced society's understanding of them? How are Indians presented in exhibitions and programs today? What new directions will museums take in the 21st century? This book is the result of a symposium organized by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). It brings together six prominent museum professionals -- Native and non-Native -- to examine the ways in which Indians and their cultures have been represented by museums in North America and to present new directions museums are already taking. Traditional museum exhibitions of Native American art and culture often represented only the past, ignoring the living Native voice. Today, museums have begun to incorporate the Native perspective in their displays. Even more dramatic is the increasing number of Indian-run museums, such as the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota and the Museum at Warm Springs in Oregon. These essays explore the relationships being forged between museums and Native communities to create new techniques for presenting Native American culture. This publication will stimulate the discussions and analyses that can lead to new partnerships and collaborations.

Sister Nations
Sister Nations

Author: Heid Ellen Erdrich

Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society

Published: 2010-06

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0873516974

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A captivating anthology of fiction, prose, and poetry. Contributors include Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, and Diane Glancy.

Infinity of Nations
Infinity of Nations

Author: National Museum of the American Indian

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-10-12

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 006154731X

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The National Museum of the American Indian is one of the world's great conservators of cultural heritage, and its collections hold more than 800,000 objects spanning 13,000 years of history of the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, from Tierra del Fuego in the south to the Arctic in the north. Drawing on new insights from archaeology, history, and art history, Infinity of Nations uses culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant objects as a point of entry to understanding the people who created them. Following an introduction on the power of objects to engage our imagination, each chapter presents an overview of a region of the Americas and its cultural complexities, written by a noted specialist on that region. Community knowledge-keepers and an impressive new generation of Native scholars contribute highlights on objects that represent important ideas or that capture moments of social change. Together these writers create an extraordinary mosaic. What emerges is a portrait of a complex and dynamic world shaped from its earliest history by contact and exchange among peoples. Illustrated with more than 200 strikingly beautiful photographs published here for the first time, Infinity of Nations opens new avenues that extend well beyond those of conventional cultural studies. Authoritative and accessible, here is an important resource for anyone interested in learning about Native cultures of the Americas.

History Is in the Land
History Is in the Land

Author: T. J. Ferguson

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0816532680

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Arizona’s San Pedro Valley is a natural corridor through which generations of native peoples have traveled for more than 12,000 years, and today many tribes consider it to be part of their ancestral homeland. This book explores the multiple cultural meanings, historical interpretations, and cosmological values of this extraordinary region by combining archaeological and historical sources with the ethnographic perspectives of four contemporary tribes: Tohono O’odham, Hopi, Zuni, and San Carlos Apache. Previous research in the San Pedro Valley has focused on scientific archaeology and documentary history, with a conspicuous absence of indigenous voices, yet Native Americans maintain oral traditions that provide an anthropological context for interpreting the history and archaeology of the valley. The San Pedro Ethnohistory Project was designed to redress this situation by visiting archaeological sites, studying museum collections, and interviewing tribal members to collect traditional histories. The information it gathered is arrayed in this book along with archaeological and documentary data to interpret the histories of Native American occupation of the San Pedro Valley. This work provides an example of the kind of interdisciplinary and politically conscious work made possible when Native Americans and archaeologists collaborate to study the past. As a methodological case study, it clearly articulates how scholars can work with Native American stakeholders to move beyond confrontations over who “owns” the past, yielding a more nuanced, multilayered, and relevant archaeology.