Covering Indian Country Blog

First Impressions from a Northwest Reporter

The National Museum of the American Indian has the best cafeteria of any museum I’ve been to. Especially since we had vouchers good for an entrée, two side dishes, soup and a fountain beverage. More food than I would have gotten if I’d been paying.

The café is divided into geographical regions. Because I identify frybread with traditional Indian meals, I sought that out and found it in the Great Plains section. It was labeled as a side dish. I got a quinoa salad from South America, pumpkin soup from the Northern Woodlands and pinto bean and corn enchiladas from Meso America. I skipped the Northwest Coast, because I don’t eat salmon anyway.

During lunch, I asked associate curator Emil Her Many Horses if there were any Northwest tribes among the 24 tribes represented in the museum and was disappointed when he said Yakama was the only one from Washington.

However, my tour guide, as it turned out, was from the Lummi Nation. And while they’re not exactly in my coverage area, I am well acquainted with that part of the state, since I spend nearly every weekend there.

Phillip Hillaire moved to DC last summer to work in the museum. He was robbed within a month. His mother attended an Indian boarding school and his grandfather was given the name Hillaire by French missionaries who thought he was hilarious.

When I was new to the state, I liked calling Western Washington’s northernmost county “What.com.” I knew it was really an Indian word, but today I learned that Whatcom means “the sound of water.”

In the Universes exhibit, Hillaire drew our attention to a Welcoming the Morning song, which he said he recognized when he started at the museum because it was a Northwest Coastal song by the Squamish Tribe.

Although I felt a connection with our tour guide, I felt rushed in the museum and wished we had some free time to look around more.

The sculptures were a highlight. A tall bronze one near a window depicted George Washington and some Oneida Indians “burying the hatchet,” literally. A bear, wolf and turtle were represented as well. And a little Indian girl holding a doll stood behind them, looking up at a bird in the bronze tree.

I also enjoyed Allan Houser’s sculptures in the Native Modernism section. After hearing that Houser was Apache, I thought, “Of course.” The faces on his sculptures looked Apache. I don’t even know what it means to look Apache, but something about the broad stalwart faces and long flowing hair looked different to me than representations I’ve seen of other tribes. Later in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs meeting room, I admired a statue of an Indian aiming an arrow at the sky. (or lighting fixture, to be precise.) He looked Apache to me too, and no wonder, because it was a Houser as well.

The museum displayed Houser’s series called Mother and Child, in which the mothers clutched their children and hid them under clothing to protect them from soldiers. In most of the sculptures, the faces of mother and child were the only discernable features.

In the Lives exhibit, Hillaire pointed out a ceramic Lummi figurine from among dozens in a serpentine display case containing heads and figures made of clay, wood and stone. Next to them were gold pieces and ears of corn. Corn was more valuable to the Indians than gold, because it sustained the people, but the white man, of course, was more interested in the gold.

A group leader from New Jersey, who merged his teenage group with ours, mentioned that some of them would be visiting the Holocaust museum later. He seemed defensive, I thought, about complaints he must have heard about the lack of Indian Holocaust history at this museum. However, a Seminole display nearby documented several instances where the fight to remain in the Everglades cost tribal members their lives or dignity. 

As we left that area, Hillaire showed us a wall where the names of the remaining Western Hemisphere tribes were projected in circular patterns. The names didn’t seem to be in any order, and I couldn’t actually find any from my region. I think Klallam was the closest of the ones I read. But because I couldn’t find the names I was looking for, I wound up reading a whole bunch of names I’d never seen before. Neat trick, to get me to learn something new.

--Kari Neumeyer, The Olympian

Posted on 03.08.05 at 2:30 AM by Kari Neumeyer, The Olympian (Olympia, WA)