Our Vision for a Living Museum

Our vision for a Native museum is first, last and always about living beings, not objects or buildings.

That may seem an odd thought to advance on the occasion of the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian’s museum on the Mall. There, the design and construction of bricks and mortar and the arrangement of things will be in the spotlight, just the way we many parents envisioned and brought them into focus from the 1960s to this day.

I am bursting with pride over the museum, especially as I see in her stature, dignity and strength my own family traits and those of countless other people I love. This child has great genes.

I would like for all who come to applaud the building and the objects she holds so carefully to also perceive and marvel at the life behind, around and beyond this place, this moment.

Life will be very much in evidence on the museum grounds and on the National Mall during this opening week. Thousands of Native people are gathering to be a part of this history, more than at any time since the great Anacostia feasts centuries ago.

Prayers are being offered by Native people throughout this hemisphere – our part of Mother Earth. Journeys are under way and each person who gathers here will represent myriad generations, past and unborn.

For millennia, Native people flourished in this rich area – with its lush and bountiful rain forests, fields and waterways – and then they did not live anywhere. They did not move away and they did not have a peaceful passage.

We parents of the museum envisioned that all visitors would think, if only for an instant, about the humanity and history of the Anacostia and other nations whose names live on in this beautiful Capitol city as place names.

We envisioned that the museum would help educate the decision-makers of today and tomorrow to reflect on the fate of the Native people whose home this once was.

We envisioned that the museum would face the Capitol and stand as a reminder to the entire policy industry to support measures that enhance Native life and to oppose those that lead in any other direction.

I am privileged to have been a part of conceptualizing the whole NMAI system and developing its legal underpinnings. That began with the coalition which formed at Bear Butte in 1967 to deal with the maltreatment of our dead and living relatives in museums, to protect our burial grounds and other sacred places and to gain respect for Native peoples in general society.

The steady gains made by Native traditional people – from return of sacred places and enactment of the American Indian religious freedom law in the 1970s to the development of Native American repatriation policy in the 1980s – are the firm foundation for the NMAI and its new museum.

I have also been a part of the physical shaping of the museum on the Mall, starting in the 1980s, when we negotiated its square footage, secured the NMAI establishment act and began meeting with spiritual leaders, artists and community, museum and technology specialists to design its indoor and outside spaces along cultural, functional and visual lines.

In 1990, we picked the perfect first director for the NMAI, my Cheyenne brother, W. Richard West Jr. During the past decade, we solicited architectural ideas and selected the many designers who carried out the Native consultations that we made sure were mandated by law.

It has been a pleasure to watch the museum grow bones and skin, and stand on her own. But, even though I saw this physical growth many times each week, from the groundbreaking in 1999 to this year, the museum only started to come to life for me on Father’s Day.

My daughter, Adriane Shown Harjo, and I were taking an evening walk to inspect the progress on our museum. As we neared the construction site, we saw a crowd of fireflies following a large white squirrel around the trunk of a tree. Muscogees view them as beings of good fortune, and they were a good sign for the health of my dad, Freeland Douglas.

We walked around the museum and watched insects and birds feasting at the water of the newly-installed pond. It was a joyous moment to see living creatures grace the building and breathe life into her. I had the same feeling in mid-August, when I heard that 1,000 lady-bugs were released in the museum landscape.

I experienced that joy again the week before the opening, as I watched a Snake Doctor (a dragonfly) sitting quietly on a leaf in the pond. His wings – one set for carrying prayers and another for spirits – were at rest and he did not move for a very long time. Spending time with this ancient repatriator brought me full circle to the purpose, context and power of the museum.

We will gather to honor all those Native nations and people who have not survived. We will gather to represent all those who have survived and the miracle of that. We will gather to mark America’s symbolic promise that we shall not return to the tumult of the past. We will gather to celebrate the achievements of our ancestors and our children.

I plan to walk from the Smithsonian Castle to the NMAI Museum with my daughter and son, Duke Ray Harjo. They, too, have sacrificed and worked toward this day. We, like all the other Native people, will walk for all our ancestors who sacrificed so we could have this good day and greet it in a good way.