[IPSM] (the Nation article) First Nations in the 21st Century

[Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movment - Montreal]

First Nations in the 21st Century
by Habiba Alcindor

Tuesday, September 21, marked the Grand Opening of the National
Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, an event attended by
the largest gathering of First Nations people ever to assemble in
the   nation's capital.

All across the mall, the crowd celebrated unity in diversity. But
what of the museum itself, fifteen years and $219 million in the
making? As is often the case with inherited property, the museum and
the history it embodies have engendered darker and more divisive
opinions among those it's meant to represent.

It is not lost on the Indian community that the government has found
the money to create a showcase for the best of American Indian
culture but has opposed programs to educate Indian children and to
provide Indians with decent healthcare and housing. It has generally
refused to offer any means of compensation for its historic
devastation of the Native American way of life.

Clyde Bellecourt, who helped found the militant American Indian
Movement in Minnesota in the late 1960s, came to Washington prepared
to protest the offering of an official apology during the museum's
opening ceremony. Drafted by Senators Daniel Inouye and Ben
Nighthorse Campbell, the "Resolution of Apology to Native People,
S.J. Res. 37" ends with the disclaimer: "Nothing in this Joint
Resolution authorizes any claim against the United States or serves
as a settlement of any claim against the United States."

"This museum," Bellecourt proclaimed, "should be called The National
Museum of the American Indian Holocaust.... Right now, over at the
Mall of America, in Minnesota, where I live, they're digging up the
bones of my ancestors." He was concerned that the praises of
indigenous resilience would be sung by those who ignore the poverty
still plaguing Native communities.

Senator Campbell's politics, in particular, have earned him the
nickname Ben "Nightmare" Campbell among some in the Indian community.
In 1995 he switched his allegiance to the Republican Party because,
he said, "I was tired of giveaway programs. And I think Indian tribes
are a good example of people that have been almost forcefully made
dependent on federal programs."

Bellecourt, on the other hand, wants to know how the Bureau of Land
Management managed to misplace what he estimates to be some $200
billion owed to the American Indians to "lease" their lands, while
the federal government files successive appeals against indigenous
claims of broken treaties.

The weekend before the museum's opening, close to the Washington
Mall, a much smaller group of Native Americans pitched tepees and
participated in a less spectacular event, the eleventh annual
interfaith conference known as the Prayer Vigil for the Earth. At
The vigil, prayers were offered to honor each of the four cardinal
directions, a central concept shared by many indigenous spiritual
traditions.

Those attending the vigil had prayers that were clearly not going to
be answered by the NMAI. They prayed for the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg
in Canada, where residents must drink bottled water because mining in
the area has contaminated the groundwater with dangerous levels of
uranium, and for the young people of the Pleasant Point reservation
on the coast of Maine, subject to intense surveillance by numerous
law enforcement agencies. Prayers were offered by a Dineacute; woman
who'd survived "boarding school"--indoctrination camps, originally
established by the War Department, where children were removed from
their families and forced to cut their hair, learn English and adopt
Christianity. And by a woman of the Acjachemen tribe of San Mateo,
California, a group that had long ago built the San Juan Capistrano
Mission. (During the mission's 2004 reopening ceremony, she "felt
sick," she said, when she realized that the mission's committee
weren't honoring the Acjachemen but rather the wealthy donors who'd
financed the mission's reconstruction.)

Other misgivings about the museum centered on its appropriation of
sacred materials. Grace Smith-Yellowhammer, a Dineacute; elder,
worries about the provenance of some of the estimated 800,000 objects
in the museum's inventory. Many of the "artifacts" prized by
curators   are considered by religious practitioners to possess a
spirit, a divine purpose and a sense of place, and they liken their
placement in museums to imprisonment. In her sacred ceremonies, Jean
Day, a Ho-Chunk activist and medicine woman, was entrusted by tribal
elders with the use of a medicine pouch that she only recently
discovered dated back to the 1600s.

Indeed, there are several sacred objects on display in the museum. In
other respects, however, history is presented in emphatically
nonmaterialist terms. From the wide windows that draw in the
surrounding scenery, to the welcoming open space of its atrium, to
its emphasis on crafts and contemporary artists, to its rippling
architectural design and the cornstalks landscaping the site, the
NMAI communicates a sense of life in flux.

W. Richard West, the museum's director, told the Washington Post
that     the tribulations of indigenous Americans account for "at
best only about 5 percent of the period we have been in this
hemisphere. We do not want to make the National Museum of the
American Indian into an Indian Holocaust Museum." Thomas Sweeney, the
museum's public affairs director, added that Native Americans "are
not one homogenous group," and that the "Our Peoples" section of the
museum acknowledges tragedy with its display of weapons, treaties,
Bibles and other objects that illustrate centuries of oppression.

He also said that an exhibit titled "Tribal Names, Past and Present,"
which commemorates vanished tribes, will soon be projected onto a
wall using light, but was not ready in time for the opening.

On opening day most of the participants were far more moved by the
convergence of hundreds of tribes on the mall than they were by the
museum itself--they were there to honor First Nations people.
Several   groups wore buttons and T-shirts reading "Native Vote:
Protecting Sovereignty." People regarded the museum as a starting
point: an opportunity to educate one another, as well as the general
public,   about their cultures.

Anyone who'd heard of The Nation wanted to talk about issues: The
Penobscot River is being polluted by dioxin from paper mills; in
Hawai'i, people are being evicted from Mokuleia Beach to sanitize the
scenery for television shows. The Wampanoag want official federal
recognition. "Once people get a sense of the big picture," one Taino
man suggested, "we can join forces."

All bodes well for the National Pow-Wow, taking place on the
Washington Mall next September.

This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=alcindor

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