Our topic for this semester is Savages: Civilization and Its Shadow. The object of humanities study is to understand society, civilizations, and cultural productions from all available points of view, considering all the interpretative issues they raise. But the term “civilization” itself is notoriously burdened with unproven assumptions: it has often been used to validate one kind of society (or even individual) and disparage another. Alien peoples—often those inhabiting areas subject to conquest or exploitation—have been characterized as lawless barbarians, ruthless and ignorant primitives, or “noble savages.” In this course we examine the terms that have long been used to define humanity, "human nature,” and the social order to justify the power of one kind of society and the disempowerment of another—indigenous peoples through history and in the world today. Examples range from Greek tragedy and the Bible to the contemporary tribal peoples’ use of the Internet to place their issues and concerns before the world. Class discussions and writing assignments in and out of class will give you ample opportunity to criticize the points of view represented in these works and to formulate your own ideas in collaborative exchange with other participants in the course.
Your first assignment this semester is to visit the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall and consider how it represents the indigenous peoples of North and South America to the general public.
1) Visit the museum.
I recommend you explore the permanent exhibitions treating Native-American cosmology and beliefs, history, and contemporary reality. This should take about three hours if you consider the exhibitions attentively and take notes as you go. Make an effort to arrange to visit the museum with some other members of the class, so you can discuss your impressions right afterwards. (The cafeteria is a great place for lunch.)
2) Think about what you’ve seen. You certainly don’t need to cover all these questions, but consider these points, please:
What messages are sent about indigenous peoples of the Americas, their history, cultures, and present ways of life?
How are these messages communicated?
What objects and media are presented, and why?
What’s the point of view in the exhibits?
Who is the intended audience?
What’s the point of the exhibits? What are they aiming to do?
What topics, themes, categories or ideas that are emphasized here?
How are they differentiated from non-indigenous society?
What particular exhibits, images, objects or presentations strike you as especially important and meaningful in understanding the museum and indigenous peoples?
What’s your stake in this? Is there any way it’s especially meaningful to you?
3) Post your own individual response to the museum at the class blog. Focus on the messages the museum presents about the indigenous peoples of the Americas, using examples (or one extended example) from the exhibitions you’ve explored. Although it’s entirely legitimate to base your impressions on your personal taste and opinions, this should be a critical response: that is, not an autobiographical account of your time at the museum but a real consideration of how the museum communicates ideas.
Through the whole of the semester, we will consider how the subject matter of the humanities—ideas, beliefs, art, culture—is developed and shared through institutions. To study art, texts, and culture critically is to study the nature of institutions and how they communicate ideas. At a museum school, we have a special opportunity, and a special responsibility, to consider how museums and colleges affect popular belief and the world we live in.
Due by Monday, September 21 at 9 am at this blog.
Another option: Make your own separate blog entry including images from the web or your own photographs. To do this, you must accept the invitation to become an author at the blog.
Douglas Cardinal, member of the Blackfoot tribe in Ottawa, Canada, was given the task of designing the National Museum of the American Indian. Taking fifteen years, Cardinal finally saw his dream open in September of 2004, making the museum the latest addition to the National Mall in Washington, DC. Cardinal incorporated traditional American Indian attributes with modern architecture to create an aesthetic architectural masterpiece. Using Kasota dolomitic limestone from Minnesota for the exterior and other traditional building materials, such as American-mist granite, bronze, copper, maple, adzed cedar, adzed alder and imperial plaster, Cardinal stayed closed to his roots.
ReplyDeleteThe exterior overall gives the appearance of a natural sculpture created by wind and water erosion, making it seem more at home at Monument Valley then necessarily the National Mall. This surprising doesn’t make it seem out of place, rather it creates a very welcoming atmosphere that overall lures people to the museum. Facing true south are acrylic prisms that catch the sun’s rays and reflect a spectacular light spectrum onto the interior of the museum’s Potomac. This is easily the most aesthetically pleasing aspect of the museum and probably the most symbolic. The sun ‘creates’ a spectacular light show within the Potomac, symbolizing the creation story of many American Indians in which the sun created life.
The interior of the building loses the naturalistic feel the exterior of the building creates, instead it moves toward a more modern look. This transition suggests much about modern American Indians and their strong ties to their pass. We see Cardinal suggesting what a real American Indian is today with the interior of the building and allows the exterior to suggest the rich pride felt towards their ancestor’s. This is further suggested by the forty large grandfather rocks on site and incorporated within the landscape.
Cardinal is able to paint a picture of what a modern American Indian ‘is’ through the various galleries in the museum. The Evidence Gallery and Identity Gallery bring museum visitors through eight different American Indian tribes and leaves the viewer with a wide sense and understanding of what each tribe ‘is’. Cardinal successfully addresses the American Indian identity crisis through the galleries at the museum.
Cardinal was given a chance to represent the American Indian at the National Mall. He not only succeed in giving the District of Colombia a architectural masterpiece he was also able to educate the general public about what a true American Indian ‘is’. As we have seen through literature and art, the American Indian has not really ever been portrayed accurately unless it was behind a thick cut of glass at a Natural History Museum. Cardinal dismisses the traditional viewpoint of what a museum is and gives a learning and pleasurable experience into the American Indian culture.
There is a definitely a unique atmosphere about the American Indian museum that distinguishes it from its neighboring national mall attractions. A taste of this feeling is felt as soon as a visitor simply takes a look at the building itself, for the architecture of it as a whole resembles a sandy rock plateau. Along one side, abstract teepees are barely distinguishable. Both of these examples are worldwide known as traits of the American Indian- desert homelands, and transportable homes for a nomadic lifestyle. However, the abstract and clever take on these trademarks gives an unattached visitor the sensation of entering a world to which they don’t belong.
ReplyDeleteThe design of the interior of the building is entirely confusing. Artifacts from completely different time periods are placed next to each other behind glass- for example, a painting on a hard-hat of betty boop rests naturally next to a thousand year old arrowhead. There are rows of drawers that are barely noticeable but easily opened, add surprisingly, inside each one is an extremely fascinating and priceless Native American artifacts, including dozens of further arrowheads, and many of other older items that have lasted hundreds of years worth of existence.
Be wary of bringing children further into the exhibits- it is extremely easy to get lost around the winding walls inside the hidden exhibits toward the back of each floor. Some of these walls are creating enclosures dedicated to a specific type of Indian clan; while others are meant to lead around a bend toward an exit. Walking around this part of the exhibit can indeed causes a sensory overload- there are bright colored lights, modern styled television screens with surround sound, and pictures everywhere. It is apparent that the design of the areas meant to educate about Indians can very easily leave most visitors more confused about the ancestry than when they entered. However, I believe this was intentional.
Native Americans know very little about their own history. This is due to the fact that they were nomadic in the days they roamed America, and one tribe would have very rarely met up with another. When this did occur, a fight for territory would possibly have broken out, further rifting any possibly share of information and culture. Native American descendants today also have no real recorded history about the lives of their ancestors. As nomads, no cities where formed, and therefore leaving nothing to be searched today. Written documents were not in the norm for the culture, therefore history of the Indian clans were passed on by mouth, and over hundreds of years became distorted and unreliable as a reliable account for information. As the museum shows, all that truly remains are hundreds of arrowheads, some pottery, stories, and a few religiously significant creations.
And here lies the proof that this museum was created with purposeful disorganization. As expected, it was created with the intention of trying to explain to the public how Native Americans existed before the invasion of the British colonists. The truth, however, is ultimately- they don’t know. What information they do have is sporadic. The information on the tribes is taken from the mouths of descendants- and to top it off, they are all hidden from their neighboring Indians, just as the winding walls causes the exhibits to be completely hidden and unconnected to each other. To leave the museum full of images of the impressive displays and modern stylistic, but with no substantial idea of how Indians lived in the past, is a victory on behalf of the Native Americans who created the exhibit. There is one thing a visitor should always realize, however- that the blood of their people still lives on today, and with it, a faith guided pride for their ancestry.
katie eargle
Imran Khan
ReplyDelete09/20/2009
Humanities I
Response to the national museum of American Indian
I decided to talk about the building and the architecture of the national museum of American Indian, instead of a specific exhibit. The building is not just the house for the collection. It tries to represent the culture of indigenous people of North and South America. The landscape and the building of the national museum of American Indian are unique and very different from the other buildings on the mall.
Building is made of yellow sandstone. This museum is built in the landscape style. The plant around the building and the pond gives it the feeling and the style of indigenous people of America. The pond represents wetland which is important to some of the indigenous people of America. the plants on the north part of the building represent the forest. There are stones on the grounds that mark north, south, east and west. The centre of the museum makes the round shape and the four special stones come from the particular tribe of Native Americans.
The ideas of this building are about origins and creation not the history or anthropology. My comment on the building and the grounds is that there are hundreds different types of American Indian from North to South America. One museum cannot capture or represent the life of so many different indigenous people of America.
Upon first visit, the National Museum of the American Indian appears to be wrought from noble causes. One is overwhelmed by the seeming sincerity of it all. The building itself is made from limestone and designed in a curving, organic shape reminiscent of weather worn rocks and flowing water, naturally evoking a connection with American Indians.
ReplyDeleteOn the inside, the museum is fantastically interactive, giving the viewer the sense of a closeness to the culture in which they are observing. There are few limits to how near the viewer can get to most of the work showcased. In addition, the selection of work at the National Museum of the American Indian is extremely varied. The artwork within expresses the Indian as a diverse people, and more importantly, a people still very much alive and thriving. There is much work by contemporary American Indian artists, as well as older, traditional artwork. On my first visit, I noted a certain exhibit of interest. I felt that Fritz Scholder, who was a 20th century Native American artist, provided perhaps the epitome of the intention of the museum. Scholder's work was both controversial and self-aware. Unlike many other Native American galleries which attempt to memorialize the Native as a totally peaceful and nature loving culture that died out nobly, the National Museum of the American Indian tried to capture all facets of the culture. The NMAI's purpose is to give the viewer a broad and honest view of the culture, both the good and the bad aspects. Or so it seems.
I was more skeptical on my second visit. While all of the previous statements are still valid, I had to wonder about the true intentions of the creation of the museum, not the contents within. Why does the museum exist in the first place? Part of the struggle of indigenous people is dealing with unequal rights and segregation. Why is it that talented, contemporary Native American artists can only have their work housed with that of other Natives? The whole concept of the museum, upon closer inspection, seems novel, not noble. The NMAI is useful for preserving old Native artifacts, but is also, out of sheer existence, politically incorrect. No matter how close one can get to the works, there is still a sense of voyeurism. Just by being housed in a museum, not a gallery, the art seems antiquated. The NMAI aims to be informative and fun and it succeeds on a basic level. But more importantly, it is a failure in being a real representation of the struggles and serious issues regarding Native Americans.
During my visit to the National Museum of the American Indian, the exhibit that made the most lasting impression on me is Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities. Here, several tribes tell us about being an American Indian today. Our Lives is located on the third floor of the museum, intended to be viewed after the fourth floor exhibits Our Universe and Our Peoples:Giving Voice to Our Histories. As such, Our Lives, especially the video pieces, personalized and allowed for the internalization of what I saw in the first two exhibits of American Indian history. These were individual people discussing their everyday lives.
ReplyDeleteThe exhibit had long wall writings, contemporary "artifacts": hard hats, clothing, crafts and photographs, some antique and some current, of tribes people. There was also a more open layout than on either of the previous two main exhibits. This leaves the viewer to observe and take in what is presented to them instead of being overwhelmed with sensory information. Most impactful were the videos presented on LCD screens in each tribe's alcove of the exhibit. These video pieces were usually displayed next to maps of the area where the corresponding tribe now lives. What they communicate most effectively is the struggle for identity and economic trials of American Indian tribes now and over the past few decades. Taking in this exhibit and specifically these video pieces really personalized the
The Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians, for instance, live on a reservation. I've heard that word "reservation" since I was a kid but never really processed what it meant or what it must be like to live on one. These people talked about the economic prosperity they'd recently been experiencing as evidenced by being able to give their fire fighters salaries instead of having a volunteer fire department. That is a non-issue in most of the U.S. That something so small is a major accomplishment and sign of growth for this community communicates how fragile and fledgling it is. Also, why should a group upon whom currency trade has been imposed have their fate decided by their economy?
Some tribes have been successful in finding a means to financially support themselves. Mowhawk tribes which straddle the boarder of the Canada and New York State found themselves to be talented steel workers and had a large hand in helping to build bridges and skyscrapers in New York City throughout the twentieth century. At one point, a bridge on which 9 Mowhawk men were working collapsed, killing them. In response, due to the large percentage of their population which this constituted, the tribe passed a law that limited the number of men that could work on a project at the same time. So many Indians were slaughtered by Europeans and the US that this tribe is literally facing extinction.
Other parts of the exhibit tell of the identity crisis many American Indians face between preserving tribal life and surviving U.S. culture. The stories told showed the strength and pride of tribal communities as well as where these types of issues have made them weak. How can they preserve their customs when so much was tied to the land and their way of life, both having been stripped away from them. How do they adjust?
This exhibit seals the deal in presenting the history of the American Indian from a completely different perspective than what we've been taught, by schools as well as by public opinion and political correctness. Because it offers individual accounts and personal stories, Our Lives allows the viewer to identify in very personal ways with American Indians, in both their history and their present.
Pamela Hadley
When I first visited the National Museum of the American Indian, I was in awe at the intricacy of its architecture and how the organic aspects reflect the natural lifestyle of the culture. Inside the undulating stone building, the museum is host to many varying exhibits, many of which include ancient artifacts and many of which include insight into the many different tribes and how each is different.
ReplyDeleteOne exhibit which particularly interested me was the Ramp it Up exhibit, which focused on the controversial modern skateboarding trend in Native American youths. The exhibit used both photojournalistic and graphic arts approaches to explain this new age of an ancient culture, and also offered an attraction for a younger crowd, which is not something museums typically aim for.
Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, the Our Universes exhibit portrays the traditional art of Native American cultures. It navigates through eight different indigenous cultures and how they carry on their ways of life. Instead of being a primarily artistic approach, this museum uses exhibits such as this to demonstrate the culture and way of life through explanation of important celebrations and everyday life, in addition to portraying artifacts and physical pieces, such as embroidered bags.
I was also very interested in the Return to a Native Place exhibition, which explored the American Indian population in the region that became Washington DC. The use of maps was fascinating because it showed just how much development and change has occurred. I realized after seeing the photographs just how different the Washington area was before industrialization, and I believe this is a very persuasive media for educating visitors of the extreme changes that occurred as a result of western colonization.
Overall a very educational and interactive experience, and beautifully executed in terms of aesthetic.
Jessica Freidt
ReplyDeleteNature plays a hug role in the Indigenous Native Americans lives along with our lives today. The Indigenous people of America didn't just use nature in their everyday lifestyle but they were a part of nature. Nature was, and still is, a large part of their culture and beliefs which they expressed through pottery, cooking, dancing, and many other forms of tradition.
The National Museum of the American Indian gives people a great opportunity to learn and familiarize themselves with these traditions. The museum allows the modern cultures to meet with the original cultures of the Natives. It is intended to inform todays culture with those of the past so we can appreciate the orgins of our heritage. I learned a lot about our past traditions originating from the Native Indians which are still carried on in our everday lifestyle. Such as pottery, sewing, fishing, singing and dancing which is still continued today. Even the building itself has a very organic structure and style relating to nature and the beauty of its simplicity. While examining each piece of art I realized it wasn't about the beauty of the work , it was the connection one has with nature and the inner beauty being expressed within the piece. They would express this by combining a man and a bear into a piece of pottery representing strength and one with nature. Each piece of art was original in it's own way. I thought it was very interesting to read the story behind each one and how each artist relates to the piece.
The museum helps people realize that these natives are still amongs us today and practice the same tradtions to be carried on over the years. They take pride in their culture as they all work as one and there is no separation amongest one another. I left the museum thinking about the Native American Indians and how their lives differed from ours. In many ways it is still the same. I think it would have been interesting to live in that time period when so many new ideas were being discoverd and nature played such a strong role in their lifesyles. I think that we should participate in their traditions and beliefs even more in our society today.