DENVER – For museums to remain relevant, they will have to develop a new relationship with Native America, an anthropologist said on the eve of an annual Spring Buffalo Feast and Honoring Ceremony March 18 at the Museum of Nature and Science.
;’If museums have a future at all, it has to be a future together with Indian country,” said Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, curator of anthropology. He described Denver as the ”epicenter of contemporary Native American society” because of the presence of many surrounding tribal nations and the metro area’s more than 25,000 Indian residents.
Hundreds of pounds of buffalo meat donated by the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota were being prepared for nearly 1,000 guests at the annual feast, where anthropologists mingled with members of Plains, Southwest and Oklahoma tribes now living in Denver.
The event developed primarily through the efforts of the museum’s department of anthropology working with the museum’s Native American Resource Group, an informal working committee whose membership has varied over time.
”We believe the feast has become a community-building event,” Colwell-Chanthaphonh said in an interview. ”We hope to use that one evening a year as a springboard for us to be a resource for the community year-round – to do for the community, as well as what they can do for us.” He also sees museum exhibits as an opportunity to assert contemporary Native values and to present different points of view.
The museum recently opened what it describes as ”the largest collection of gold ever displayed,” termed ”Gold: Wealth, Beauty, Power.” It is presented locally by Denver-based Newmont Mining, whose contemporary national and international gold extraction operations in Native areas have caused controversy.
To attempt to balance that exhibit with an acknowledgment of the impact of colonialism and the early Spaniards’ desire for gold on Native peoples, Colwell-Chanthaphonh assembled a small exhibit titled, ”Songs of Sorrow: Gold and the Spanish Conquest through Native Eyes.” Following conquest, ”Aztec poets composed lamentations expressing the sorrow and desperation of a devastated people,” an exhibit caption states.
There is also an attempt to balance the old and new. The displayed works of the late Woody Crumbo, a Citizen Band Potawatomi printmaker, combine Native images with Western media and technique.
In these activities and others, the museum is following a trend set by Native curators themselves, who take the stance that ”museums can and should be of benefit to Native communities,” he said, noting the trend is also expressed by the National Museum of the American Indian, the White Mountain Apache Heritage Center, the Museum and Heritage Center of the Pueblo of Zuni, and others. ”We can see how dynamic museums can be when they become strongly community-based.”
New for 2008 are programs he terms ”baby steps” in working with the community:
“Native American Science Career Day, in which 50 to 75 Native students will come to Denver to meet American Indian science professionals, including an astrophysicist, anthropologist, biologist and registered nurse to ”plant some seeds in their mind that Native Americans are science professionals” and to excite them about science, one of the functions of the museum.
“A Visiting Indigenous Fellowship Program, a privately funded adult internship, is ”geared toward Native artists, elders, community members, curators of Native art” and others, he said. Three fellowships are to be awarded this year, the first to Bernard Siquiros, curator at the Tohono O’odham Heritage Center in Topawa, Ariz., who is an ”example of our vision – he’s a community member knowledgeable about Tohono O’odham traditions.” The two-week program fosters connections with museum collections and museum professional staff. The next recipient could be, for example, a contemporary beadworker who might use museum collections as inspiration.
“Science Scholarship Awards of $1,000 each to five recipients ”in keeping with the museum’s emphasis in focusing on Native students who are in college and pursuing science degrees.
“In addition, a First Nations film and video festival that started three years ago provides an opportunity for Native filmmakers to showcase their art.
“The Spring Buffalo Feast and Honoring Ceremony is an outgrowth of an ill-fated attempt more than a decade ago to develop a major bison exhibit that would have centered on the cultural meanings and natural history of bison – ”the relationship between bison and the American Indian as well as the American Indian to the natural world,” he said. When the exhibit was not funded, the annual feast became a way to thank Native community members for the work they had contributed toward its completion.
This years’ honorees were: Elders Award, Norma Williams, Northern Cheyenne/Oglala Lakota, a Traditional dancer and former Denver Housing Authority employee; Educator Award, David Martin Redhorse, Lakota/Dine’, a focus schools education specialist; Student Award, Solomon Little Owl, Crow Nation, Native American Student Services director at the University of Northern Colorado; and Community Service Award, Theresa Halsey, Hunkpapa Lakota, active in Native programs in Boulder Valley and the University of Colorado. All have performed volunteer work in the community.
Recipients of the five Science Scholarship Awards were Jessica Starr, Dine’/Apache, with a 3.6 high school GPA, who plans a dual astrophysics/art degree; Goldlin Wall, Ute Mountain Ute/Dine’, a Colorado State University graduate student who plans a veterinary career; Michael Vicente, Ute Mountain Ute/Jicarilla Apache, seeking a degree in agricultural business at Northeastern Junior College; Tiffani Kelly, Choctaw, pursuing a natural sciences degree at Colorado State University; and Marni LaFleur, Canadian Metis, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at the University of Colorado.
