"Gym Shoes, Maps, and Passports, Oh My!: Creating Community or Creating Chaos at the NMAI?"

Gym Shoes, Maps, and Passports, Oh My!
Creating Community or Creating Chaos at the nmai ?

elizabeth archuleta

For those of you accustomed to a structure that moves from point A to
point B to point C, this presentation may be somewhat difﬁcult to follow
because the structure of Pueblo expression resembles something like a
spider’s web—with many little threads radiating from a center, criss-
crossing each other. As with the web, the structure will emerge as it is
made and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that
meaning will be made.
Leslie Marmon Silko

For the September 2004 First Americans Festival, Washington Post jour-
nalists attempted to convey what they observed when thousands of In-
digenous peoples converged on the nation’s capital to celebrate the Na-
tional Museum of the American Indian’s grand opening. Newspaper
articles on the First Americans Festival tended to be positive, undoubt-
edly because reporters saw “real” Indians in bright colors, beads, buck-
skin, and feathers; nevertheless, items seemingly out of place puzzled
them. One reporter expressed his surprise at seeing Indians in full regalia
with cell phones, describing the image as “almost anachronistic.” He ex-
pressed astonishment at seeing Indian families pushing high-end
strollers, Indians drinking Pepsi, and Indians not looking “classically In-
dian,” never explaining what “classically Indian” means.1 While reports
on the First Americans Festival tended to be congenial, coverage of the

426 Archuleta: Gym Shoes, Maps, and Passports, Oh My!

museum was mixed. Surprisingly, some journalists even expressed an-
noyance. For example, Marc Fisher proclaims, “The museum feels like a
trade show in which each group of Indians gets space to sell its founding
myth and favorite anecdotes of survival.” Fisher appears to admonish the
Smithsonian for “let[ting] the Indians present themselves as they wish to
be seen,” hinting at the irresponsibility of a decision that led to the mu-
seum’s failure to provide its visitors with the tools they need to “judge the
Indians’ version of their story.” 2
In similar fashion, Paul Richard’s museum review begins with a cri-
tique of curators for exhibits that he describes as confusing and unclearly
marked.3 He compares his failure to understand the exhibits with the Pu-
ritans’ failure to make sense of the Indians they had encountered nearly
four hundred years ago. He notes that just as the Puritans felt stymied,
confused, and unable to “explain” or account for the Indians, so too does
he feel confused and unable to explain the Indians he encounters in the
museum. His confession demonstrates how little some have learned
about the peoples whose lands they now occupy. As a result of his bewil-
derment, Richard cautions potential visitors that “the new museum . . . is
better from the outside than it is from the in,” a statement that clearly in-
dicates the way he “knows” Indians—superficially. From this appraisal,
his review moves beyond a mere evaluation; his annoyance and confu-
sion evolve into an attack. Richard’s apparent rage puzzled me and left me
wondering how my perception of the museum would differ. When I at-
tended the museum later that day, I attempted to make sense of his review
by contrasting his descriptions and questions with my own observations.
Many of the exhibits do resist easy classification, but these displays
contribute to the museum’s strength as well as to its subversive charac-
teristics. Annoyed that the museum’s “Indians” remain beyond classifi-
cation, at least in his estimation, Richard charges curators with creating
an anomalous claim: “Indians are all different; overarching Indianness
makes them all alike.” Exasperated at this perceived claim’s presumed in-
consistency, which disrupts his notion of what an Indian is, he angrily
asks and then replies: “Well, which is it? The museum can’t make up its
mind.” Richard dismisses Indigenous peoples’ belief that their shared ex-
periences connect them historically, cognitively, and spiritually in ways
that resist uncomplicated classification or codification by appearance,
blood quantum, or cdib number.

american indian quarterly / summer & fall 2005 / vol. 29, nos. 3 & 4 427

figure 1. Body and Soul. nmai. Photograph by author.

Yet, just as journalists want their “Indians” to remain familiar, un-
touched by time, and without cell phones or strollers, Richard also wants
his “Indians” easily identified and uncomplicated (figure 1). He asks,

What is this Indianness? Well, according to your cdib [Certificate of
Degree of Indian Blood issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs], it
comes with your genes; you inherit it. A thousand cultures share it.
Indianness exists in people now alive and those dead 12,000 years. It
is ineffably mysterious. No one can describe it except in generalities.

He accepts their diversity as represented in the museum, but he refuses
to accept that blood, history, and experience also contribute to a larger
and more contemporary sense of self. The apparent incongruity between
a historical and contemporary Indian identity for Richard leads him to
describe Indianness in what he sees as generalities:

Indianness is not just vague. It also is so elastic you can stretch it
to cover Inuit walrus hunters, Mohawk skyscraper constructors,
public-information specialists, plumed Aztec kings, Mississippi
mound-builders, political activists, filmmakers, Navajo code-
talkers, surfing Hawaiians, art professors, bus drivers and all the
other individuals that the Indian Museum claims to represent.


Richard’s rejection of the multiple ways of constructing Indian identity
emphasizes his ignorance about Indians even more. He continues to
question and challenge the multiple ways that Indigenous peoples
choose to identify themselves: “I don’t buy it. To be accepted officially as
a Nez Perce, according to Title Six, the Enrollment Ordinance, you need
at least one-fourth Nez Perce blood. What about the other three-quar-
ters? ” Here, he once again makes clear that blood, for him, determines
identity; yet, his attitude suggests that mixed-blood identities are dimin-
ished the more diluted one’s blood becomes. The controversy over au-
thenticity and Indian identity is an outdated conflict that still plays out
among certain groups and with individuals like Richard.
His reaction also demonstrates the complicated task of distinguishing
between legal and biological definitions of Indianness when he sarcasti-
cally charges Indians with equating blood and culture: “The notion that
one’s spirit, one’s values, one’s identity, arrives automatically with what-
ever blood-percentage defines you as an Indian smacks too much of oc-
toroons and pass laws in South Africa and sewn-on Stars of David.” Al-
though the federal government imposes blood quantum standards on
tribes, Richard still chooses to ignore an aspect of U.S. history that con-
tributes to a generalized view of Indians and authenticity—the more In-
dian blood one has, the more “Indian” one is. He also perceives the cul-
tural components of identity as existing apart from the human activity
that creates identity. Clearly, Richard’s confusion about Indianness car-
ries across many issues and undoubtedly stems from an ignorance that
leads to a misreading of the museum and the communities that created
the exhibits.
My walk through the museum produced vastly different results. My
visit led me past Indigenous “self-portraits” that both mediate popular
stereotypes such as those held by Fisher and Richard as well as stereo-
types that respond to the general tendency to imagine Indians always
at the periphery (yes, we do use cell phones and high-end strollers and
drink soda). But more significantly, I saw the museum presenting mul-
tiple stories structured like the spider web that Silko uses to explain the
process of Pueblo storytelling. Rather than structure the exhibits in a way
that guides visitors and “teaches” them about Indians, leading them
from point A to point B to point C, museum curators structured them
like the “many little threads” of a spider web with each strand adding to


the larger picture. This method of organization means that visitors have
to set aside notions they previously held about museums and Indians,
“listen” to the stories being told in the exhibits, and trust that meaning
will be made if they become involved in the storytelling process.
Indigenous peoples throughout the world are connected through
shared histories and understandings, so instead of creating objective
models of reality displayed for the public’s edification, many more twen-
tieth-century museums are creating space as forums for debating the
past and giving voice to the historically silenced. Nevertheless, having
grown accustomed to museums’ authoritative role in defining percep-
tion, Fisher and Richard expect to remain passive observers at the nmai
rather than active participants in the narration process. Fisher criticizes
the museum for failing to offer “any science or sociological theories” that
would clarify what he saw. In similar fashion, Richard proclaims the ex-
hibits to be “disheartening” due to unbalanced installations that lack ex-
planation or theories similar to those that Fisher had desired. Moreover,
Richard encounters and describes exhibits that sound chaotic and space
that is either too sparse or too cramped and filled with a mixture of
“totem poles and T-shirts, headdresses and masks, toys and woven bas-
kets, projectile points and gym shoes,” which he describes as “all stirred
decoratively together in no important order that the viewer can discern.”
In this description of individual items, it becomes clear that Richard fails
to appreciate that the key to comprehending the larger story contained
within this seemingly random collection lies in the visitor’s ability to
connect the individual stories in each display by understanding their re-
lationship across all of the exhibits.
As forums for storytelling, the nmai exhibits initiate and even encour-
age dialogue, a relationship that Western museums avoided before the
repatriation movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Before the appearance of
tribal museums or the nmai, Indigenous peoples’ only museum appear-
ances came at the expense of their communities after government-spon-
sored exhibitions and private collectors robbed many tribal nations of
their cultural patrimony.4 The colonial nature of earlier museums led to
displays that were narrowly defined before the passage of the National
Museum of the American Indian Act (nmaia) and the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (nagpra).5 After the enactment
of nmaia and nagpra, however, museums’ trust obligations shifted,
forcing them to form relationships and engage in dialogue. Historically,


museums have perceived themselves as maintaining collections that
benefit the larger public rather than specific constituent groups, but with
the passage of these key pieces of federal legislation, museums have had
to support, collaborate, and interact with Indigenous nations whose
cultural heritage and ancestral remains they held until the passage of
nagpra and the building of a museum by and for Indigenous peoples
long silenced by colonial power.
The nmai’s decision to challenge traditional museum modes of exhi-
bition is political in that the outcome confronts stereotypes created by
museums and other knowledge-producing institutions. More often than
not, Indigenous peoples have not recognized themselves in “traditional”
museum exhibits because the displays have overlooked or concealed
their realities. The nmaia and nagpra have empowered tribal nations to
dislocate and relocate themselves away from museums’ colonialist ten-
dencies by scrutinizing the process of annihilation inherent in “tradi-
tional” exhibits and freeing themselves from outsider representations
and interpretations. Therefore, the nmai should be read as a testament
to Indians’ ability to adapt and change yet remain true to the core values
of their tribal nations regardless of change. Achieving museological lib-
eration and working against established structures, practices, and images
by substituting them with Indigenous models is a decision that has the
potential to destabilize and dislocate its majority audience as evidenced
by Fisher’s and Richard’s responses. Had he looked more closely, Rich-
ard would have seen that even the artwork to which he refers to dis-
paragingly as “gym shoes” contain multiple stories rather than stereo-
types of Kiowa peoples.
Since societal stereotypes obscure the reality of Indigenous peoples’
lives, nmai curators had the courage and vision to transform the stric-
tures that Western museums have established and situate Indigenous
stories in exhibits that intermingle experiences of cultural persistence
and change. The gym shoes narrate such a story of change and adapta-
tion. As she explains it, Kiowa artist Teri Greeves tells stories through
beaded sneakers in order to educate others about the history and values
of her people and to bring balance into the world.6 Her beaded sneakers,
including those entitled We Gave Two Horses for Our Son, Gourd Dance,
and Grandma and Grandpa Raised Me at Warm Valley, celebrate and
honor significant events as well as Kiowa traditions and peoples. The red
beaded sneakers in the nmai exhibit celebrate children (figure 2). The


figure 2. Teri Greeves, Kiowa Aw-Day. nmai. Photograph by author.

text that accompanies the shoes explains: “Traditionally Aw-Day (Fa-
vorite Children) lead the Kiowa Black Legging Society into the dance
arena as preparation for tribal leadership.” Greeves beaded her son onto
this pair of shoes to celebrate his presence as a favorite child who will one
day assume a leadership role among his people.
Not only does she celebrate her family and community through her
artwork, Greeves also challenges several popular assumptions with her
sneakers. First, she challenges the notion that history can only be passed
down through words, oral histories, or written text. Next, she challenges
the notion that Indians have abandoned older ways of communicating.
Greeves tells her histories one bead at a time in images she creates rather
than words she writes, meaning her work resembles those stories con-
tained in pictographs. Finally, by incorporating larger histories beaded
onto high-top sneakers Greeves’s work echoes Lee Marmon’s photo
White Man’s Moccasins, and both challenge traditional images of Indians


in moccasins. Like Marmon, Greeves also self-consciously adapts the
traditional with the contemporary.7 Altogether, Greeves’s beaded stories
challenge the tendency to privilege text. Nevertheless, Richard refused to
“hear” or “read” her pictographic narrative when he singled out the pres-
ence of her artwork for criticism.
Unfortunately, Richard interprets everything he sees as a hodgepodge
of items unclearly marked and incoherently displayed. Consequently, he
does not “listen” well enough to make meaning out of the stories em-
bedded in items such as sneakers. Neither does he understand how the
stories in the shoes connect with the multitude of additional stories con-
tained in other seemingly disparate items. In her multi-genre text en-
titled Storyteller, Leslie Marmon Silko claims that all of the stories need
to be told before one can create a sense of self or community because, ac-
cording to her, stories tell individuals who they are. Therefore, she in-
cludes in her book the letters, photographs, family stories, oral stories,
anecdotes, gossip, jokes, poems, and legends that make up the patchwork
collection of her family’s life and their connections to land and com-
munity.8 Resembling this Pueblo web of stories is the nmai’s larger web
of Indigenous narratives created from a combination of totem poles,
T-shirts, woven baskets, and yes, even gym shoes. Altogether, these items
contribute to a story that tells Indians who they are by what they share as
disparate groups.
For political reasons, many Indigenous artists encode their work with
additional meaning through the stories inherent in their art, leaving the
task of interpretation up to the viewer. Before viewers can unravel an
object’s political signiﬁcance, however, they must ﬁrst understand that
Indigenous stories sometimes contain an absence that is always present,
inviting the “listener” in. For example, Greeves encodes her sneakers
with histories and political connotations that give the shoes added mean-
ing, but her audience must read between the lines. They must be re-
sponsible for uncovering the histories or narratives left untold such as
the history of the Kiowa Black Legging Society. Kimberly Blaeser advises
listeners or readers of Indigenous stories that “We have a response-abil-
ity and a responsibility to the telling. We can and we must make the story
together.” 9 The result of creating a story together, of taking responsibil-
ity for meaning making, means that there is no “truth” or ending to the
story because listeners constantly recreate and remake the stories in or-
der to add their own truths based on their own experiences and perspec-


tives. The narrator in Betty Louise Bell’s novel Faces in the Moon de-
scribes the process of meaning making in Indigenous cultures: “They
heard, and they taught me to hear, the truth in things not said. They lis-
tened, and they taught me to listen in the space between words.” 10 The
narrator learns how to listen for the unspoken, the unarticulated. She
does not expect anyone to explain the story; she must make meaning for
herself. By saying less rather than more, the museum’s exhibits require
the same kind of active participation or response-ability of their audi-
ence. Finally, they require patience in order to understand things not
said. They require the “listener” to pull meaning out of blank spaces.
Space is never neutral, nor is it ever merely a backdrop in which
people live out their lives; space is literally filled with ideologies and pol-
itics. For example, the District of Columbia is a city dominated by
marble and granite and neo-classical styles that are reminiscent of the
United States’ transplanted European heritage and reminders of a gov-
ernment that has tried desperately to assimilate Indians, transforming
them into white Americans. The nmai’s presence in space largely occu-
pied by the federal government challenges this heritage and history and
asserts Indigenous peoples’ survival. Although it was built in the last
available space on the National Mall, the museum now occupies the first
place on the Mall facing the National Capitol building. For Richard,
however, the politics of unnamed space is unobservable and therefore
meaningless, even after an nmai placard claims and politicizes space by
naming and defining it:

Native space is land—and something more. Native space is a way of
feeling, thinking, and acting. Even away from our ancestral lands,
we carry our Native space with us. All of the Americas is Native
space, but in the course of 500 years most of us have been displaced.
Even today, indigenous people continue to be uprooted from an-
cestral homelands.11

The placard identifies the Americas not as American, Canadian, or Mex-
ican but as Native. Jolene Rickard’s and Gabrielle Tayac’s inscription of
space is double-edged. They inscribe Native space as land that contains
emotion and thought and action. But more important, they present a
truth that remains unspoken: “All of the Americas is Native space.” By
“reading” and identifying space as Native and space as land, Rickard’s
and Tayac’s placard embodies an historical claim. It asserts territorial


figure 3. Mapping Kuna Yala. nmai. Photograph by author.

possession, proclaiming what Indigenous peoples have always known:
that the Americas are and will always be Indian Country in spite of re-
movals, relocations, and displacements, and even in spite of being the
last group invited to occupy space on the National Mall.
Other museum items that silently challenge non-Indigenous assump-
tions about space appear in political documents such as the Kunas’ map
of their homeland, the Comarca Kuna Yala (ﬁgure 3). Text that accom-


panies the map places in a historical and global context what museum
goers see—the ongoing colonization of the world’s Indigenous peoples.
nmai curators share with museum-goers some of the numerous threats
that the Kunas and their homelands now face because they “do not pos-
sess documents proving their ownership.” 12 These threats include the
invasion of Kuna Yala by loggers, cattle ranchers, land developers, and
landless settlers from overcrowded and already developed provinces.
The Pan-American Highway’s scheduled completion represents another
threat. In Central America, the Kunas occupy Panama’s Darién region,
which contains the largest section of intact rainforest. Although the re-
gion became a designated buffer zone in the 1970s, protecting the U.S.
cattle industry from the hoof-and-mouth disease endemic to Colombia,
it also remains the only uncompleted section of the Pan-American High-
way.13 Due to the ever-present cloud cover, maps of this region are based
only on approximations.14 Therefore, it is highly likely that engineers
would have to thoroughly explore and map the region before construc-
tion can begin. The absences contained in Western maps are the histo-
ries of colonization, and outsider attempts to map the Kuna Yala would
create and expand these silences.
Like space, maps are not neutral documents that contain facts and
ﬁgures. In the past, colonial regimes named, organized, constructed,
and controlled space and place through the imperialistic practice of
mapmaking. Maps are virtual realities that represent for the colonizers
permanent and visible markers of conquest, domination, the triumph
of civilization, and the subjugation of nature. Maps are also myths de-
signed to conceal Indigenous ways of knowing and connecting with their
homelands.
When the Kunas began the project of mapping their homeland, they
were, at the same time, unmapping colonial space by removing the vis-
ible markers that colonial societies have used to deﬁne themselves and le-
gitimate their ongoing occupation. These markers have concealed for
colonizers Kuna ways of knowing and identifying Comarca Kuna Yala. In
Race, Space, and the Law, Sherene Razack claims that although mapping
enabled colonizers to legally claim and possess lands they came upon,
unmapping undermines “the idea of white settler innocence (the notion
that European settlers merely settled and developed the land) and to un-
cover the ideologies and practices of conquest and domination.” 15 The
Kunas’ map includes sites important to their traditional way of life. Their


mapping project ensures that the “real” names and land use patterns for
the geographical landscape include those places where they hunt, fish,
cut firewood, gather medicinal plants, and pick fruit.16 The Kunas’ names
replace those that have only been given recently, after colonization. The
map’s accuracy and detail has even encouraged the Instituto Geográfico
to use it in order to update official Republic of Panama maps.
The Kunas’ combined Western mapmaking techniques with their
own complex cultural cartographies signify a conscious reclamation of
space in the creation of a political document that blends the traditional
(their accumulated geographical knowledge) with the contemporary
(the science of mapping and the legalities of ownership). The map em-
bodies both a historical claim as well as a geographic assertion, trans-
forming it into something resembling Rickard’s and Tayac’s placard: the
map asserts territorial possession. Moreover, it makes a property claim
by formally delineating and authenticating Comarca Kuna Yala. In an in-
terview, Marc Chapin from the Center for the Support of Native Lands
observes that the Kunas’ map represents their effort to “work within the
political system and through the courts of law” to legitimize their land
claim.17 This was their reason for creating the map in the first place,
so the Kunas’ inclusion in the nmai retells a story of ongoing struggles
to protect Indigenous lands. Their inclusion also signals an awareness
among Indigenous peoples that struggles at the local level also occur at
the global level.
The shared experience of land struggles that help define “Indianness”
connects many of the museum’s narratives. Other stories that echo
threats to the Kunas’ land include tales of the Central American Dias-
pora, Clause 231, and the Yakamas’ Closed Area. The museum defines
“diaspora” as displacement from one’s ancestral homeland, the space
where one’s identity formed (figure 4). Even though 1980s civil wars dis-
placed close to one million Indigenous people in Central America, these
groups transplanted their traditions to their new homes, taking their Na-
tive spaces with them. Many of these displaced groups have ended up in
the United States, but most still long to return home. While diaspora dis-
places some from their lands, Western legal systems render others inca-
pable of making decisions about lands they still occupy. Brazil is one
such example. Since 1934 Brazil’s Constitution presumably protects and
preserves for Indigenous peoples the lands they occupy. Clause 231, para-
graph 1 of Brazil’s 1988 constitution defines occupation as


figure 4. Central American Diaspora. nmai. Photograph by author.

lands traditionally occupied by the Indians and inhabited by them
on a permanent basis, used for their production activities, essential
for the conservation of the environmental resources necessary
for their well-being and those necessary for their physical and cul-
tural reproduction, in accordance with their uses, customs and
traditions.18

In spite of this outwardly liberal policy, Brazil’s Civil Code nevertheless
“puts indigenous peoples in the same category as minors—persons ‘rel-
atively incapable of exercising certain rights.’” 19 The museum publicizes
the struggles of Indigenous peoples in Panama, Central America, and


figure 5. Yakama Enterprises. nmai. Photograph by author.

Brazil to protect, preserve, and remain in their homelands, rendering
their stories visible in a space of power, the U.S. capital.
Closer to home is Washington State’s Yakama Nation, telling a story of
successful nation building. One of their display cases includes a bottle of
Broken Spear pickled asparagus, a box of Chief Yakama apples, a base-
ball cap, a timber industry catalog, and pictures of a warehouse and fruit
orchard (ﬁgure 5). At ﬁrst glance they might appear to be examples of the
thousands of businesses that exploit Indian imagery to sell their prod-
ucts; but the placards tell a different story. At a time when non-Indians
believe casinos to be the only money-making venture on reservations,
the Yakamas’ products dispel this stereotype. In 1950 the Yakama Nation
Land Enterprise was created as an institution to offset the crisis of land
loss. The Enterprise is an institutional vehicle that oversees the manage-
ment, control, and promotion of land re-purchase and development on
behalf of the Yakama Nation. In addition to increasing the reservation’s
land base by tens of thousands of acres, the Enterprise has also con-
tributed to the development of agriculture, timber, and tourism indus-


tries. Moreover, in addition to selling “pears to Del Monte Corporation
and Monson Fruit,” the Enterprise also “developed three Yakama Nation
Apple labels, and popularized its Broken Spear Pickled Asparagus” and
has successfully marketed its products overseas as well. As a result of its
success here and abroad, the Enterprise now “purchases between three
and six million dollars worth of land every year,” incorporating it into
their current land base.20
Alongside successful nation building efforts are efforts to preserve
documents that signify a powerful claim to space and place that defines
and embodies Yakama culture and identity. Clearly exhibiting pride in
their economic achievements, the Yakamas also include items that serve
as reminders of times very different from today: they include original
pages from an 1855 treaty that formed fourteen tribes and bands into the
Yakama Nation (figure 6). Indigenous peoples regard treaties as sacred
documents not to be violated, a sentiment voiced by community mem-
ber Carol Craig: “Back in the ’60s, some non-tribal people would won-
der, ‘Why are Yakama people talking about these antiquated pieces of
paper? They don’t mean anything.’ But those people didn’t realize the
rights the treaty guaranteed us. These rights have been reaffirmed in sev-
eral different court cases over the years.” 21 “These antiquated pieces of
paper” not only represent rights, they also represent land and lives lost
to westward expansion and colonialism and so are made sacred by
blood. Affirming this sacred connection to land is the Closed Area, a pro-
tected and restricted land area, another part of the Yakamas’ nmai ex-
hibit. The Closed Area remains sacred because it is strictly controlled and
“accessible only to tribal members, their immediate family members,
and select outsiders.” Created in 1954 and comprising 807,000 mostly-
forested acres, the Closed Area is described by community member
Lehigh John as a place where you can go and “pick up a piece of dirt and
run it through their fingers and say, ‘This is Yakama land that no one can
take away from us.’” 22 These are just some of the stories of land lost and
land regained that interlink the web of stories in the museum and create
shared histories that contribute to a collective sense of “Indianness.”
Another museum item that contests received notions of legally de-
marcated space is the Haudenosaunee passport (figure 7), whose mere
existence signals a refusal to defer to the border by identifying Kah-
nawa’kehrónon as citizens of the Iroquois Confederacy.23 The Hau-


figure 6. Yakama Treaty of 1855. nmai. Photograph by author.

denosaunees do not deﬁne their national status based on U.S. or Cana-
dian terms. They deﬁne themselves through the Gayanashagowa, the
Great Law of Peace, and the Guswentah, the Two Row Wampum, the lat-
ter being an agreement with the Dutch colonists that the Hau-
denosaunees have honored since the seventeenth century.24 The Hau-
denosaunees interpret the wampum belt to say:


figure 7. Iroquois Confederacy Passport. nmai. Photograph by author.

You say that you are our Father and I am your son. We say, We will
not be like Father and Son, but like Brothers. This wampum belt
conﬁrms our words. These two rows will symbolize two paths or
two vessels, traveling down the same river together. One, a birch
bark canoe, will be for the Indian People, their laws, their customs


and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and
their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall each travel the
river together, side by side, but in our boat. Neither of us will make
compulsory laws or interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Nei-
ther of us will try to steer the other’s vessel. The agreement has been
kept by the Iroquois to this date. Passports are formal documents
issued by national governments to their citizens, which allow for
travel abroad as well as exit and reentry into the country.25

The Mohawks’ refusal to defer to a border diminishes the legal status of
an “objective” boundary or imaginary line deﬁned and enforced by the
United States and Canada. It is the Gayanashagowa and the Guswentah
that deﬁne and embody the boundaries of Haudenosaunee culture,
lands, and identity, and this claim extends both historically and geo-
graphically.
As a legal document, the passport also challenges Canadian and U.S.
legal claims that would attempt to diminish the sovereign status of na-
tions that make up the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1794 the Jay Treaty rec-
ognized the Haudenosaunee peoples’ right to move freely across Cana-
dian and U.S. borders. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century the United
States challenged this right when they arrested Paul Kanento Diabo for
working in the United States. The Mohawks’ nmai exhibit includes a
statement about this event, asserting that Diabo “sued the U.S., claiming
his arrest violated his rights as a citizen of the Mohawk Nation under the
Jay Treaty,” and concludes with the statement, “In Diabo v. McCandless
(1927), a U.S. court ruled in his favor.” The Mohawk Nation occupies a
space that refuses to become “American” or “Canadian,” that refuses to
cross over into a status other than Mohawk. In 2001 the Mohawks’ pride
in maintaining and protecting their sovereign status for almost four-
hundred years was expressed through Laura Norton, a community
member quoted in the exhibit: “In this community, we’ve never recog-
nized the border. We’re here because we’ve always been here, and we will
always be here. These countries developed around us, and we kept mov-
ing back and forth across the border.” Like Greeves’s beaded sneakers
and the Kunas’ map, the Haudenosaunee passport evolves out of an oral
tradition, this one contained within a wampum belt; the passport is an
extension of that tradition.


Many American Indians perceive their communities as maintaining
dual citizenship—they see themselves as citizens of their tribal nations as
well as citizens of the United States. The exception to this notion is the
Haudenosaunees, who have exercised their sovereignty by refusing to ac-
knowledge U.S. or Canadian citizenship or national and international
boundaries. Like the Kunas’ map, the Haudenosaunee passport throws off
the mantle of colonialism by disregarding what Lauren Berlant calls the
“national symbolic,” or the “official story about what the nation means,
and how it works.” 26 As the accepted version of a nation’s identity, the na-
tional symbolic controls collective memory by excluding counter memo-
ries; yet, the Jay Treaty, Diabo v. McCandless, and the Haudenosaunee
passport challenge the Canadian and U.S. national symbolic. The pass-
port also challenges Canadian and U.S. myths of national identity and
sovereignty, because other countries recognize the Haudenosaunees’ sta-
tus as a sovereign nation, which is evidenced by their membership in the
International Lacrosse Federation, who officially welcomed the Iroquois
Nationals Lacrosse Team. When the team travels outside their nation’s
boundaries, they take their Haudenosaunee passports, not U.S. or Cana-
dian passports.27 The museum’s inclusion of the Haudenosaunee pass-
port helps visitors to understand how tribal nations continue to preserve
items significant to their traditions, and at the same time the passport re-
flects how their lives have changed and evolved. Contained within the
passport is knowledge that Indigenous peoples’ lives cannot be viewed in
a vacuum or in isolation from the institutions and events that have
shaped them today.
While the museum records the presence of the “new,” they also relay
the persistence of Indigenous worldviews. The exhibit Our Universes:
Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World (figure 8) introduces visitors
to Indigenous peoples’ philosophies, intellectual traditions, and beliefs
that, to my knowledge, Western museums have never presented because
Euroamericans once believed that only Western civilizations created
philosophies and generated knowledge. The eight Indigenous philoso-
phies represented in Our Universes relate a set of common values neces-
sary for maintaining and ordering society in ways that contribute to sur-
vival. In The Anishinaabe Universe, curators refer to these values as “the
seven teachings,” which include “honesty, love, courage, truth, wisdom,
humility, and respect.” The Pueblo of Santa Clara Universe (figure 9)


figure 8. Our Universes. nmai. Photograph by author.

refers to survival strategies as “seeking a good life.” “Seeking” implies
movement and a constant state of ﬂux, meaning that a society composed
of humans is never set but always moving along a continuum that seeks
balance and harmony. Santa Clara Pueblo curators recognize the human
inclination toward weakness, jealousy, and indecision that exists along-
side human strength and courage. Thus, this placard belies notions of
Indians as never changing, never encountering temptations that chal-
lenge identity and survival.
While I went in to this particular exhibit realizing that I would learn
about the various philosophies that form the foundation of diverse In-
digenous worldviews, I could not help but think that the introductory
panel that greets visitors to Our Universes would be problematic. It
states:

In this gallery, you’ll discover how Native people understand their
place in the universe and order their daily lives. Our philosophies of
life come from our ancestors. They taught us to live in harmony
with the animals, plants, spirit world, and the people around us. In
Our Universes, you’ll encounter Native people from the Western
hemisphere who continue to express this wisdom in ceremonies,


figure 9. Santa Clara Pueblo. nmai. Photograph by author.

celebrations, languages, arts, religions, and daily life. It is our duty
to pass these teachings on to succeeding generations. For that is the
way to keep our traditions alive.28

Despite the truths the placard contains, and even though Her Many
Horses meant for it to be instructive, the rhetoric presents Indigenous
philosophies as something hauntingly familiar to non-Indigenous peo-
ples through Hollywood movies or New Age spirituality. The panel sim-
pliﬁes Indigenous philosophies by describing them as enabling “life in
harmony with the animals, plants, spirit world, and . . . people.” Not only
is this familiar to many non-Natives, it also presents beliefs and values
that a good number of non-Indigenous people would undoubtedly claim
they hold. This panel, therefore, troubles me in that it might reinforce
stereotypes and attitudes about American Indians already held by the
dominant culture, and I base my presumption on further comments that
appear in Richard’s review.
It appears that Richard’s observation of this exhibit reinforces the con-


tradictions that he perceives in the museum as a whole, which leads him
to make another allegation:

We keep seeing the Indian through lenses cracked by rickety, ro-
mantic or contradictory assumptions. We’ve been doing this so for
centuries. It’s built into our heritage; it’s part of who we are. The
museum does the same. . . . From 1913 to 1938, after slaughtering the
buffalo, the Indian’s fellow victim, we put that creature on our
nickel and will do so soon again. We want it both ways. We treat the
Indian with disdain while appropriating his special strength with
missiles called the Tomahawk and sedans called the Pontiac and ball
teams named the Redskins and the Indians and the Braves. The mu-
seum wants it both ways, too.

Renato Rosaldo identiﬁes the phenomenon that Richard tries to explain.
Rosaldo calls it “imperialist nostalgia,” or a yearning for that which one
has transformed or destroyed.29 Surprisingly, as part of the larger “we,”
Richard implies that he too prefers images of romantic over “real” Indi-
ans because he disapproves of contemporary Indigenous realities. Even
more surprising, when he alleges that Indians also prefer imagined over
real images of themselves, he transforms himself into a spokesperson for
peoples he clearly misunderstands. Moreover, when Richard mistakenly
refers to Indians and buffalo as victims, he debases the continuance and
survival of both. As it afﬁrms not only the literal but also the spiritual
survival of the world’s Indigenous peoples, the museum counterbalances
governmental and extra-legal efforts to destroy them. By replacing sci-
ence and sociological theories with words characteristic of Indigenous
storytelling, the most important thing the curators do is deny their ex-
hibits the kind of narrative closure that Western facts and theories bring
about.
The stories told through generations and the evolving of stories over
time interweaves individual and tribal experiences together to create a
shared sense of Indianness. Just as the spider creates a web strand by
strand, its beauty is not evident until the end when the pattern material-
izes. The storyteller’s talent becomes apparent when the story maintains
or strengthens community. Indigenous stories have a purpose beyond
entertainment; they record the details of daily existence little known be-
yond stereotypes and reinforced by popular culture, and they make vis-
ible the cross-fertilization that has taken place among and between In-


digenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The nmai’s stories attempt to ini-
tiate dialogue and reinforce a sense of community even when the issues
and items community curators have chosen to exhibit appear divisive,
chaotic, or complex. Stories maintain a history, and the nmai’s exhibits
capture histories that include the United States as one frame of reference
in a more complex reality that encompasses Indigenous peoples’ lives.

notes
1. Hank Stuever, “A Family Reunion: Opening Day on the Mall Brings Tradi-
tions into the Light of Today,” Washington Post, Wednesday, September 22, 2004.
2. Marc Fisher, “Indian Museum’s Appeal, Sadly, Only Skin-Deep,” Wash-
ington Post, December 6, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/.
3. Paul Richard, “Shards of Many Untold Stories: In Place of Unity, a
Melange of Unconnected Objects,” Washington Post, December 6, 2004,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.
4. They also came at the expense of individuals who became “live” exhibits,
including Ishi, Minik, and others.
5. The nmaia was enacted on November 28, 1989, and nagpra was enacted
on November 16, 1990.
6. “Teri Greeves: Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native American Artist Fellow,
2003,” School of American Research Web site, http://www.sarweb.org/iarc/
dobkin/greeves03.htm.
7. Laura Addison, “Traditions/ Technologies: Contemporary Art Practices in
New Mexico,” Capital City Arts Initiative Web site, http://www.arts-initiative
.org/live/neighbors/essays/laura_addison.html.
8. Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1981).
9. Kimberly M. Blaeser, “Writing Voices Speaking: Native Authors and an
Oral Aesthetic,” in Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts, ed. Laura
J. Murray and Keren Rice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 64.
10. Betty Louise Bell, Faces in the Moon (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994), 56 –57.
11. Jolene Rickard, guest curator, and Gabrielle Tayac, Our Lives, nmai, 2004.
12. nmai, Kuna Yala exhibit.
13. Mac Chapin, “Indigenous Land Use Mapping in Central American,” Yale
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Web site, Bulletin 98 : 197–98,
December 6, 2004, http://www.yale.edu/environment/publications/bulletin/
098pdfs/98chapin.pdf.
14. Chapin, “Indigenous Land Use,” 200.


15. Sherene Razack, introduction to Race, Space, and Law: Unmapping a
White Settler Society, ed. Sherene Razack, (Toronto: Between the Lives, 2002), 5.
18. The text of Clause 231 can be found on Brazil’s Ministry of External
Relations Web site at http://www.mre.gov.br/cdbrasil /itamaraty/web/ingles/
polsoc/pindig/legislac/c1988/art231/index.htm?.
19. Rickard, Our Lives, nmai.
20. Yakama Nation Land Enterprise, “Honoring Nations: 2002 Honoree,”
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Web site,
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/hpaied/hn/hn_2002_land.htm.
21. Carol Craig, Since Time Immemorial, nmai.
22. Lehigh John, Closed Area, nmai.
23. The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Na-
tions, are comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and
Tuscarora nations.
24. Information on the Haudenosaunee taken from the Haudenosaunee ofﬁ-
cial Web site at http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Great_Law_of_Peace/.
25. “Gustwenta— Two Row Wampum,” Haudenosaunee Web site, http://
sixnations.buffnet.net/Lessons_from_History/?article 2.
26. Lauren Berlant, The Anatomy of a National Fantasy (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1991), 11.
27. “Honoring Nations: 2002 Honoree: Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse,” The
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Web site,
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/hpaied/hn/hn_2002_lacrosse.htm.
28. Emil Her Many Horses, curator, Our Universes, nmai, 2003.
29. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 68 – 87.


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