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Spily^y Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
February 26, 2009
P^ge 7
Youth Art Exhibit at Museum
The Museum at Warm Springs is now hosting the Sixteenth
A nnual Tribal Youth A rt Exhibit. Some o f the items on display
include:
“Our Regalia” (top), created by youth in room A-3 at the
Early Childhood Education Center. 'Tittle Indians” (below),
created by youth in room B-2 atECE. Beaded items (right) by
Soraya Yvana Mende% “Yaxla”. Other young artists featured on
this page include Turak Newman, Charmaine Billy, Martin
Smith Mannely, TaRonn Katchia, andECE Headstart 4year-
olds.
Dave McMechan photos
National museum posts 5,500 art, artifact objects on line
W ashington, D.C. — Jeri
Redcorn was 54 years old when
she first saw the beautiful clay
pottery that would change the
course o f her life.
The pottery had been un
earthed by archaeologists in Ar
kansas and Louisiana.
It was amazingly Eght-weight
for its size, and vastly different
from any American Indian pot
tery she’d seen.
A nd it was made by her
Caddoan forbears for thousands
of years.
In the 160 years since the
Caddo moved away from Ar
kansas and Louisiana— first to
Texas and later, escaping with
their lives, to the plains of Okla
homa—generations of Caddo
people had never seen, nor
heard of these iconic ancestral
pots.
The skills to make them had
been lost. “We were overcome,”
Redcorn recalled of that day in
1992.
“An elder man, speaking for
all o f us, said, ‘I didn’t know we
did this.’”
Now, at age 69, Redcorn is
known for reviving the Caddo
style o f pottery, and her pots are
among the first 5,500 objects
from the Smithsonian’s National
Museum o f the American In
dian collection to be posted
online.
The new service debuted ear
lier this month. You can view
the site at:
www.AmericanIndian.si.edu/
searchcollections/home.aspx
800,000 items
“I f I had had access to an
L
Mask among many items
NMAI has posted on line.
online collection o f Caddo art
then, it would have made my life
so much easier,” said Redcorn,
who lives in Norman, Okla.
The museum plans to post
images and information about
its 800,000-object collection on
its website.
T he purpose, said NMAI
Curator Ann McMullen, is to
make the site educational at the
same time as bringing the col
lection back into the heart of
Native communities, at least
digitally.
Museums worldwide are ex
perimenting with online data
bases that allow the public to
view their collections from
home computers.
Smithsonian Institution Sec
retary Wayne Clough hosted a
symposium at the National Mu
seum o f the American Indian
last m onth w here he talked
about the importance o f digi
tizing all 137 million objects in
the Smithsonian museums— to
bring the material to “young
people, especially.”
Few museums have ventured
to post indigenous collections
online,.in part out of a recogni
tion of ethical concerns.
Such issues are easy to medi
ate with contemporary art by Ev-
ing artists such as Redcorn.
But when the artists and ob
jects are historic, the museum
must make sensitive decisions,
including whether an object is
too sacred to be p ut on the
Internet.
To date it has posted objects
already on display in its muse
ums, because tribes have ap
proved their pubEc exhibition.
T h e M useum o f N ew
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in
Wellington attracts 63,000 hits
a month for its online coEection
o f 130,000 objects, said PhiEp
Edgar, coEection information
services manager.
B ut his m useum has re
frained from posting aE of its
Taonga Maori coEection while
it develops a process for con
sulting with iwi, or tribes, espe-
ciaEy for objects whose prov
enance is unknown.
Edgar said he wEl watch how
NMAI deals with simEar ethi
cal issues.
The National Museum of the
American Indian has been suc
cessful in what it caEs commu
nity curation, in which tradi
tional culture bearers from Na
tive communities advise cura
tors about the care, maintenance
and display of objects from their
tribes.
NMAI Associate Director
for M useum Program s Tim
Johnson, who is Mohawk, said
the online coEection wiU expand
that valuable input.
“Now we can do curation via
online chatting with someone in
a Native community,” he said.
The result wiE likely be a cor
rection of the museum’s origi
nal records.
Many o f those documents
were established by George
Gustav Heye (1874-1957), the
New York investment banker
whose vast historic coEection
was the foundation for the Na
tional Museum of the American
Indian.
‘You have to remember, the
coEection was collected by a
non-Indian, so the interpreta
tion of that material was not
from a Native perspective,”
Johnson said. “The revolution
o f this museum is to promul
gate that interpretation of the
coEection by tribes.”
Those who use the onEne
coEection, such as tribal elders
and scholars, can easEy share
insights and information about
the artifacts with museum staff.
Associated with every object
is a contact button, through
which web users can make com
ments, send corrections, or ask
to reprint photos.
Curator Ann McMuEen is
among the NMAI staff who wiE
review the Internet correspon
dence daEy.
McMuEen has been working
tow ard linking the public
website with the museum’s own
database since 2006.
Staffers studied surveys fiEed
out by tech-saw y Web users,
elders, eighth-graders and pro
fessional teachers, aE o f whom
the museum imagined might use
its onEne service.
The “coEection search” site
is programmed to recognize his
toric as weE as contemporary
names. A map o f the Americas
aEows users to pick a geographic
area to easEy find objects from
a general location, if a tribe’s
name isn’t known.
“We wanted a grandparent to
be able to go to a Ebrary with a
chEd and use this,” McMuEen
said.
She knows there is work to
be done, research that may de
lay posting of the entire coEec
tion for years.
Sometimes a historic object
may be identified by one tribe,
but reaEy originated in another.
As tribes correct this infor
mation, McMuEen said, it wiE
generate insight into gifting,
trade, and exchange traditions
among various nations, as weE
as about famiEes who made ob
jects.
Truman Lowe, a H o Chunk
artist and professor at the Uni
versity o f Wisconsin, agreed:
“It’s not only going to rein-
vigorate history, it is also going
to reinvigorate the art tradi
tions.”
In the same way, he said, the
very existence of the National
Museum of the American In
dian, which was estabEshed by
Congress in 1989, has provided
important new Enks among gen
erations.
Lowe remembers when Hopi
painter Michael Kabotie found
a painting by his father, Fred
Kabotie, in the NMAI coEec
tion.
As museum curators gath
ered, Michael Kabotie sponta
neously shared a history of art
in his famEy and tribe.
Much Eke Redcorn’s discov
ery of her tribe’s pottery and her
determ ination to revive the
practice, Lowe anticipates that
“a contemporary look at these
objects opens a potential for the
rebirth o f culture. I am more
excited about the cross influ
ences that wiE transpire. It hap
pened historicaEy, and it’s al
ready happening with contem
porary artists. Technology has a
way o f speeding up influences,
variations on tradition.”
To Redcorn, her work being
part of the NMAI’s online col
lection is one more sign that no
one need go without knowing
what Caddo pottery is.
As she found in her effort to
recover the Caddo potter’s art,
the clay from the banks o f the
Red River would be her great
est teacher.
Native art, she said, wiE usu-
aEy lead back to something tac
tile, Eke a river, a riverbank, a
vein of clay.
“Even though we had our
language, songs and dances, so
much was taken away from who
we were—until we were on the
plains singing an alEgator song
where there were no alEgators,”
Redcorn said. “Right now we are
aE experiencing a lot of pride in
who we are. I think that is great.”
(Article by Kara- Briggs o f the
N a tional Museum o f the American
Indian news service.)
J.