In This Issue:

• Lead Story: Museum welcomes generous gift for "TREATIES" exhibition
• Feature: Bolivian president meets Native American leaders

Museum welcomes generous gift for "TREATIES" exhibition

The Shakopee Mdewakanton hope their $500,000 will help NMAI "tell the true history of relations with Indian nations," the tribal chairman says.

Iroquois wampum belt

Chiefe Wacamote's Lincoln peace medal and pouch

Bandolier bag

Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian From among the 800,000-item collection at the National Museum of the American Indian, staff members are working to select artifacts that could be used in the 2011 exhibition "TREATIES: Great Nations in Their Own Words." These include an Iroquois wampum belt, Chief Wacamote's Lincoln peace medal (1962) and pouch, and a Creek bandolier bag.

click images to access high resolution photo page

By Kara Briggs
NMAI Newservice

WASHINGTON, D.C.–The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community announced a $500,000 gift last week to support an ambitious, groundbreaking exhibition about treaties at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

"TREATIES: Great Nations in Their Own Words" is a major exhibition set to open in two years at the museum.

"We hope this exhibit will correct common misperceptions which are often at the root of important issues which impact our people today," said Shakopee Mdewakanton Chairman Stanley R. Crooks, of Prior Lake, Minn. "We encourage other tribes to support this exhibit because hundreds of different treaties were signed between Indian nations and the United States government."

"TREATIES" will be the largest, most historically detailed exhibition undertaken by the museum since its opening in Washington four years ago. The aspirations for this exhibition are as old as those for the museum itself, which was established by Congress 20 years ago.

"These treaties are as foundational to the United States as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence," said National Museum of the American Indian Director Kevin Gover.

But, Gover said, the era in which the museum could look to federal appropriations to help fund these kinds of significant exhibitions is over. Support from tribes, he said, will need to be part of the museum's funding strategy if exhibitions like this one are going to reach their potential. This makes the Shakopee Mdewakanton gift for "TREATIES" even more significant. The exhibition, which will include historic documents, articles that contextualize the time of specific treaties and period art, is projected to cost $2.5 million.

Chairman Crooks hopes that the exhibition in the museum, located 400 yards from the U.S. Capitol, will demonstrate that the American Indian experience is an important part of American history.

"It is important for the United States to tell the true history of relations with Indian nations," said Chairman Crooks. "So much has been left out of the history books, and what is taught in the educational system is insufficient.

"The result is that public knowledge on this subject is sadly lacking. People don't realize that the 562 federally recognized Indian tribes are sovereign nations, which are not beholden to states or other subdivisions of local governments. We are each an independent nation with direct government-to-government relations with the federal government."

"TREATIES" has been in active development since 2003.

Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, and Vine Deloria Jr., Standing Rock Sioux, initially brought the idea to the museum when it was established by Congress in 1989. Beginning in 2003, they served as guest co-curators. Since Deloria's passing in 2005, Harjo has remained the guest curator.

"Many people today do not know that treaties are living documents," Harjo said. "They are exercised daily, even by non-Native people who do not know that these are their treaties too."

In addition, both attorneys who have lead the museum, former Director Rick West, Southern Cheyenne, and current Director Gover, Pawnee and Comanche, are among the leading Native American thinkers who have worked on "TREATIES."

Curatorial reports reveal that the exhibition will take the long view of history, starting before European contact with the diplomacy practiced among Indian nations. The exhibition will explore, as Harjo said, "the diplomacy, promises and betrayals involved in and underlying treaties and treaty making between the United States and Native nations, as one side sought to own the riches of the ‘New World' and the other struggled to hold onto traditional homelands and way of life."

The narrative will follow the history forward into present-day U.S.-Indian relations. These connections will help the Native Americans and other people to understand nation-to-nation relationships in the modern era, said Chairman Crooks of the Shakopee Mdewakanton.

"We are not a special interest group," he said. "We retain rights which we had before the Europeans and others came to this continent, rights which are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution."

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Bolivian president meets Native American leaders

NMAI E-Newservice

Bolivian President Evo Morales, with NMAI Museum specialist Ramiro Matos views a Puma Incensario (AD 750-1250) of the Tiwanaka culture from Bolivia in the museum's "Window on Collections" exhibition. Photo by Katherine Fogden

click image to access high resolution photo page

During his Nov. 19 visit to Washington, D.C., Bolivian President Evo Morales requested a tour of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

It was another milestone in a United States trip that also saw him address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and the Organization of American States, which promotes economic development across the hemisphere, as well as pay homage to Martin Luther King Jr. during a ceremonial visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

"The National Museum of the American Indian is most pleased to host a cordial encounter between North American Indian leaders and the only indigenous head of state in the Western Hemisphere," NMAI Director Kevin Gover said. "As a cultural embassy for American Indian and indigenous peoples and cultures, our museum strives to listen in at the crossroads of the thinking and expressions of leaders and elders of all our communities."

Morales, 48, the first indigenous leader of Bolivia in 500 years since Spanish conquest, is Aymara, an Andean community numbering more than 2 million. Many, like Morales before his 2006 election, are coca farmers. He was also a community organizer.

During Morales' museum visit, Gover showed him the eagle feather that the first Native American astronaut, John Herrington, Chickasaw, carried on the space shuttle Endeavor flight in 2002. Later Morales dined at the museum with Native American leaders and Bolivian officials at a private luncheon, and chatted amiably about matrilineal traditions of the Aymara and other nations represented in the group.

"The dialogue with President Evo Morales is particularly meaningful, as it will focus on our ongoing theme of peace and reconciliation among cultures," said Gover, who is Pawnee and Comanche.

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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
Eileen Maxwell, NMAI Director of Public Affairs
Leonda Levchuk, NMAI Copy Editor
Sarah E. Smith, Red Hummingbird Media Corp., Copy Editor
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