A guest post by Jefe:
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is a Smithsonian museum with two galleries, one in Washington, DC and one in New York. Items not on display are stored in a cultural resource centre in Suitland, Maryland (Prince George’s County), which includes the Vine Deloria, Jr. Library. Both museums showcase the history, culture, anthropology and archaeology of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia. With over a million items, NMAI is the largest such collection in the world.
It was founded by an act of Congress in 1989, and draws its collection from the US government’s own archives and the private collection of George Gustav Heye, which had been on display since 1922 at the original NMAI in Audubon Terrace (at Broadway and West 155th Street in Manhattan). The Congressional Act required that the human remains in storage be considered for return to their tribes. So far, about 5,000 of the 12,000 to 18,000 remains have been returned.
The New York museum: Heye’s estate required that part of his collection remain in New York. Since 1994, it has been displayed on two levels of the U.S. Customs House at One Bowling Green near Battery Park. The main gallery is entitled “Infinity of Nations”, which showcases artifacts from indigenous Americans by region (eg, Eastern Woodlands, Patagonia, etc.). There is a classroom designed for students and a hall for performances and film screenings.
Oddly, it has nothing on the Lenape (Delaware) except for a brief introduction to wampum, a type of money common in eastern North America. Odd because the Lenape figure prominently as the “Indians” in Manhattan folklore. The website used to have an article on Manhattan in the 1500s.
The DC museum houses exhibits on five floors and, since 2004, is located on the National Mall between the National Air and Space Museum and the US National Botanical Garden. Native Americans have filled most of the leadership roles in the design and operation of the museum, aiming to create a different atmosphere and experience from the other Smithsonian museums. The museum includes a performance stage, a lecture hall for talks and screenings, an exhibit hall displaying treaties made with the US government and an exhibit hall for kids, as well as a café featuring various American Indian foods.
Unlike the NY museum, there is an exhibition on the local native peoples of the Chesapeake Bay region, which includes the indigenous peoples of Washington, DC, the Nacochtank (Anacostans), a sub-tribe of the Piscataway chiefdom, as well as Pocahontas, who was a member of the Pamunkey tribe, part of the Powhatan confederacy.
The exhibits focus on artifacts representing individual tribes, and in general, is not a history museum. Apart from the Chesapeake Bay exhibit, there is little attempt to frame the exhibits in a historical context to help visitors understand the evolution of American Indian history. The ancient and the contemporary are often mixed together.
Vine Deloria Jr. became a board member in 1977, and was associated with the NMAI until his death in 2005.
See also:
- Welcome to Native American Heritage Month 2015
- Prince George’s County
- Pocahontas
- “Manhattan was sold for $24”
- tribe
- Anacostia – homelands of the Nacochtank
- Indian
- The Delaware – the Lenape tribe native to the Delaware and Hudson river valleys
- Tips on Visiting Washington, DC
- Vine Deloria Jr.
- The Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Bay Region
- External:
- National Museum of the American Indian (official website)
Reblogged this on League of Bloggers For a Better World.
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Wish the one in New York showed all of the history and not the pretty parts.
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@ Jefe
Do you know if DC or Suitland have anything on the Lenape? If so, then its absence at the New York museum would amount to erasure.
There could be a history behind it: maybe the New York museum did have a Lenape exhibit among its “Infinity of Nations”, but was taken down because of some (almost inevitable) controversy.
One building I worked at in Manhattan had an exhibit in the lobby of the things they dug up when they laid the foundation. Among the things they found were arrowheads. It is not as if there are no Manhattan Lenape artefacts. I have seen them with my own eyes.
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There is definitely an exhibit on the 1682 and subsequent treaties with the Lenape in the Hall highlighting American Indian treaties in the DC museum. If you recall, I sent you a photo of that exhibit. I can resend that if you can’t find it. There are many artifacts of Eastern Woodlands Indians in the museum but I didn’t specifically look for Lenape ones. I saw the ones for the Chesapeake Bay Algonquians and for various Iroquois nations.
I do not know what is housed in the Cultural Resources center or Vine Deloria Jr. Library in Suitland, MD, but I would bet that there should be many artifacts and studies on the Lenape.
There are also various state or federally recognized Lenape communities (eg, in New Jersey and in Oklahoma). They probably have some information or artifacts related to the history of their nation.
I asked the museum in New York at the main information desk if they had any exhibit on the Lenape. They said I would have to go ask the guard in the Infinity of Nations gallery. He said that they didn’t have any, and I told him that I thought it was strange that they had nothing about the native peoples of the very land the NMAI in the US customs house sits on.
It is also odd, I think, that the article on the History of Manhattan was removed from the NMAI website in the past month, but the ones on the Iroquois and the Chesapeake Bay are still there.
It would be interesting to know if that omission is deliberate and what motivations lie behind it. If so, maybe one of the registered Lenape nations have information on that (maybe the one in New Jersey?).
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