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In This Issue:
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The making of a Pendleton blanket Photos courtesy of Pendleton Woolen Mills
First, the wool is dyed. Then the loose fiber is mechanically spun into strong yarn, ready to weave. Later it is run through a fulling mill to soften the fabric and to control shrinkage. Midway through the wash, a worker checks on the recognizable blanket fabric. |
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Museum official travels far to bring NMAI closer to Indian Country Carolyn McClellan uses her lessons from ‘the school of hard knocks' as well as the university in outreach role
By Kara Briggs, NMAI E-Newservice The first time Carolyn McClellan visited Washington, D.C.—as the valedictorian of her high school class—she thought the U.S. capital was about as far away from her home in Northeast Oklahoma as the moon. Now 56, this Cherokee mother of three grown children is the new associate director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and she aims to make the distance between Indian communities and the museum become a lot smaller. "We spent so much time getting the museum doors open and planning the exhibitions that we forgot to monitor these relationships," she said. Since joining the museum in May, McClellan has been traveling Indian Country, holding conversations about how the museum can be more connected with Native communities. Many Native people remember the museum's opening in 2004 with pride, but say communication from the museum has fallen short since then. "We hired Carolyn after a very thorough national search for people with an unusual combination of skills," said NMAI Director Kevin Gover, who is Pawnee and Comanche. "The most important, though, was her ability to work effectively with tribal communities." During last month's Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians conference on the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla reservation in Oregon, McClellan was invited by the elders committee to talk about the journey that brought her to NMAI. "I wasn't the first person in my family to graduate from college," McClellan said. "My oldest daughter was. I was the second." McClellan grew up in a house without running water, six miles from the nearest town—Talala, Okla., population 100. Her grandparents' allotment was a working ranch where the family grew its own food and raised its own livestock. McClellan had enough to do just helping out at home. She married at 17 and had three children. When her marriage, which she says had turned abusive, ended more than a decade later, she moved to California with her children. She sold real estate and made enough money to take her kids on vacation for the first time. "I have come through the school of hard knocks, and I am not ashamed," she said. McClellan was 38 when her oldest daughter, Traci McClellan, was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley. She remembers Traci telling her, "Mother, you have to go to college." It took two years of her children's encouragement, but at 40 McClellan enrolled in community college. When her daughter went to the University of Arizona for graduate school, McClellan transferred there also, moving the family to Tucson. Both received their degrees—McClellan's a bachelor's in anthropology—and got summer internships in Washington, D.C., her daughter at NMAI and McClellan at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. McClellan was asked back for three summers while she received her master's degree from the University of Oklahoma. It was during those summers that McClellan's love for the nation's capital blossomed. In 1998, she went to work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where she was hired to establish a bureau-wide museum program. "She had the clearest vision and realistic ideas about how to get the job done," said Ron Wilson, her former supervisor at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Six years later, she moved to the Bureau of Land Management, where she helped develop a policy for reburial of human remains on public lands. "It wasn't the best policy it could be," she acknowledged at the Affiliated Tribes conference in September. "It was the best policy we could get at the time." At the National Museum of the American Indian, McClellan feels she has come to a place where she can work without compromise for Native people. Travel has taken her out of the office for most of the five months since she started at NMAI. Traveling to Native communities from New Mexico to New York, she hardly has had the leisure to think about her personal journey. But her daughter, now an attorney in Albuquerque, has. "She never could have imagined when she started junior college that in 2008 she would be in senior management at the National Museum of the American Indian," Traci McClellan said. "It would not have been in her frame of reference." McClellan is focused on the job ahead—one that is informed as much by life experience as professional accomplishment. "I take the responsibility for these relationships with tribes on myself to make sure that we don't lose track of them again," McClellan said. "Our goal is that if we do this now, we will not need to make this kind of outreach again because we will stay present with communities." |
Historic photos offer opportunities to research, connect The museum's vast archive of images of Native life, dating to the 1800s, is available to the public, including by email NMAI E-Newservice
In the photo archives of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, it is possible to travel through time to the late 1800s, to a fisherman at a Tlingit village, Pueblo people digging clay for pottery, or Brazilian men hunting. The museum has a collection of more than 300,000 photographs, the majority from museum events, programs and objects shot since its founding. But the historic pictures, which span the entire Western Hemisphere from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, attract the attention of scholars and tribal peoples. Many of the photos were taken between the 1890s and 1930s by anthropologists hired by George Gustav Heye, the businessman-turned-collector who obtained almost one million Native American objects in NMAI's collection. "Few people were named," said Lou Stancari, who has been the museum's photo archivist since 1999. "You know what the location is. You know what year it is. You see objects that are now in the museum. You see photos of the object actually being used." Some of the pictures are personal to the people who find them. "‘Oh, my God, that's my grandmother!' You hear it all the time," Stancari said. The photo archives at the museum's Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Md., are open to the public. Visitors may view the materials by appointment. Tribal people who can't visit the archive may email nmaiphotos@si.edu, and request a search. The chances of finding something are better with a specific request, including location, event or even the name of a person. Many photos have been digitized and copies can be emailed. The photo archives can also be reached by mail at the National Museum of the American Indian, Cultural Resources Center, 4220 Silver Hill Road, Suitland, MD 20746. |
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Museum seeks applications for contemporary Native art grants NMAI E-Newservice The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian is seeking applications from artists for its Indigenous Contemporary Arts Program. The program supports the work of Native American artists in increasing knowledge, understanding and appreciation for contemporary Native American arts. Applications for the grants are due Jan. 15, 2009. The grants come from the Exhibitions and Publications Program for Native arts institutions and the Expressive Arts Program for new works by Native artists. Awards will be announced March 15, 2009. "The National Museum of the American Indian considers the recognition of living artists of the Western Hemisphere to be of the utmost importance," said museum Director Kevin Gover, who is Pawnee and Comanche. "These awards will strengthen scholarship and create opportunities for new and innovative work." Last year 13 awards totaling $145,000 were given. Recipients included Three Sides, a chamber music trio comprised of Dawn Avery, Mohawk; Steven Alvarez, Yaqui and Apache; and Tara-Louise Montour, Mohawk. Others who received the grants included Tsimshian artist and performer David Boxley, teaching and producing a play at the Alaska Native Heritage Center; and an exhibition, "Ili-ho: The Surface Within," exploring four Native Hawai'ian textiles from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai'i. The criteria are based on the merit of the project and its ability to reach a diverse audience. This program is made possible with a generous grant from the Ford Foundation's IllumiNation program. For information or to download an application, visit http://www.americanindian.si.edu/icap/.
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Using art to prevent childhood diabetes NMAI E-Newservice
"Through the Eyes of the Eagle: Turning to Elders' Wisdom for Health and Diabetes Prevention" is a traveling exhibition of 65 framed watercolor and gouache illustrations on paper that opened at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and in New York City. Organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the exhibition is based on a popular series of children's books that were created to address the diabetes epidemic in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The NMAI is the first stop on the exhibition's tour. "Through the Eyes of the Eagle" will be on view in the second-floor gallery of the Mall Museum and in the George Gustav Heye Center's photo gallery in New York City until January 4, 2009. "Through the Eyes of the Eagle" in Washington, D.C., will include 31 works from books one and three of the series ("Through the Eyes of the Eagle" and "Plate Full of Color"). At the Heye Center in New York, 26 works from books two and four ("Knees Lifted High" and "Tricky Treats") will be on view. Today, diabetes is a scourge among Native peoples, who are twice as likely as other people to get the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 1994 and 2004, the rate of diabetes among Natives younger than 35 doubled, according to the Centers for Disease Control. |
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Go to www.nmaie-newservice.com to access high resolution photo page Or add editor@nmaie-newservice.com to your address book to receive the HTML Version of this news service The NMAI E-Newservice is supported by National Museum of the American Indian membership dollars. For information about membership, go to http://www.AmericanIndian.si.edu/subpage.cfm?second=membership&subpage=support. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian is located in Washington, D.C. The Museum also operates the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, and the National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Md. The National Museum of the American Indian is committed to advancing knowledge and understanding of the Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere, past, present and future, through partnership with Native people and others. The museum works to support the continuance of culture, traditional values, and transitions in contemporary Native life. The NMAI E-Newservice is a free news service to news media serving Native America from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The NMAI E-Newservice provides articles, photographs and editorial content for news outlets to use free of charge. Please credit the NMAI E-Newservice, AND use bylines as provided. Kara Briggs, a Yakama and Snohomish journalist, is the editor. She owns Red Hummingbird Media Corp., which contracts with the National Museum of the American Indian to provide this service. Contact her at editor@nmaie-newservice.com or by phone at 503-577-0012 if you have questions, comments or requests, or if you wish to subscribe. Kara Briggs, Editor National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center Cultural Resources Center To opt-out to this publication, please email editor@nmaie-newservice.com. ©Copyright 2008, NMAI, All Rights Reserved |