Who is Indian, and what makes a person an Indian?

My answer? There are many definitions of who is an Indian. As a starting point, “Indian” is a misguided label that spread through Europe after 1492. Native people have always associated themselves with their tribe(s) and referenced their tribal names in their tribal languages. Explorers and colonists from Spain, France, England, the Netherlands, and Russia, among other countries, began naming tribes they encountered in North America in European languages. As English became the primary language in the United States, American Indian (to distinguish us from Indians native to India) became the collective term used.

American Indians generally belong to or are descendents of tribes indigenous to what is now the United States.

In modern times the federal government, states, tribes and individuals have formed their own definitions of who is Indian. Three important criteria to consider when answering this question are federal legal definitions, ethnological Indian ancestry, and tribal membership. The federal government lists 565 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan Native Communities. Twenty-two states also have criteria for recognizing tribes within their boundaries. The majority of state-recognized tribes, however, are not federally recognized. For United States Census purposes, an individual simply needs to self identify themselves as American Indian and Alaskan Native to be counted in the final summary.

The question of who is an Indian is often debated among Indian people. Does carrying a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) make you Indian? Does being raised away from a reservation and not having traditional knowledge make a person less Indian? Does knowing your language make you more Indian? These are some of the complex questions that have been debated on determining Indian identity. The response depends on who is answering the question.

Skin color does not make you Indian. In our museum I have heard non-Indians comment they have seen an Indian simply if the person they saw has the long black hair, brown skin, and high cheek bones associated with the classic Indian image. In reality, there are proud Indians with blonde hair and blue eyes or black skin. Through intermarriage, their Indian descent comes from one or both Indian parents.

Each tribe has the sovereign authority to define who its members are and who is eligible to be enrolled. Some tribes have blood quantum requirements—a requirement that to be enrolled, a person must have at least a certain degree of tribal ancestry, such as one-fourth—while other tribes’ laws state that a person is eligible for enrollment if one of his or her ancestors appears on a particular historical list of tribal members. Ultimately the question, “Who is an Indian?” is determined by tribal law.

 

Please comment and turn this blog into a conversation.

From Alaska to Arizona: Native Artists Explore the NMAI Collections and Beyond

By Keevin Lewis, NMAI's Community Services Coordinator

Artist-in-Residence John Hudson of Metlakatla, Alaska, examines the museum's collection of Tsimshian puppets and masks. (Photo by Roger Whiteside, NMAI Staff Photographer)

 Since August 2010, seven Native artists have used the NMAI collections to gain inspiration and renew cultural connections before returning home to conduct community art projects with other artists or Native youth in their communities. Dylan Miner (Metis), John Hudson (Tsimshian), Erica Lord (Athabascan/Inupiaq), Royce Manuel Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian), Jeri Redcorn (Caddo/Potawatomi), Kelly Church (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Ojibwe Indians), and Eric Hamar (Haida) all came to Washington, DC, to study and document cultural material in the Smithsonian collections, archives, meet with SI staff, and conduct staff and public art presentations.

Knowing that Indigenous people have historically traveled in sustainable ways, Dylan Miner came to the Cultural Resources Center (CRC) to study Native transportation items, such as, carts, canoes, shoes that were eventually replaced by the automobile, plane, or bicycle. Dylan’s Youth Public Art Project hopes to work with about 10 Native youth in East Lansing, MI, to collectively produce 10 unique lowrider bicycles that will reflect the urban Native community in Michigan and serve as portraits for noteworthy Metis and Anishinaabeg visionaries.

Oral Native storytelling encompasses a variety of formats and puppetry is one method of storytelling for the Tsimshian of Metlakatla, Alaska, which is located about 20 miles south of Ketchikan. John Hudson  researched wooden Tsimshian puppets that were carved and used to explain legends, battles, and cosmologies. Mr. Hudson plans to collaborate with the Tsmishian art class in the Annette Island School District in Metlakatla, AK. The art students will help in the creation of numerous puppets, and will assist in the planning and public performance of the puppets.

Erica Lord traveled from Nenana, Alaska to learn more about the material culture of Alaska's Athabascan tribes, and how popular culture has connected indigenous groups that are geographically disparate and remote. (Photo by Roger Whiteside, NMAI Staff Photographer)

For Erica Lord it is all about the future for the youth in her home community of Nenana, Alaska, some  50 miles west of Fairbanks. Ms. Lord searched high and low in the collections, Photos and Film Archives of images of the Tanana Athbascans and material culture of the Gwich’in, Canadian Dene, and the Inupiaq to the north. For Erica’s community project, she will collaborate with the boarding school students who are from rural villages who attend school in Nenana and stay at the Student Living Center and create a wall mural in Nenana. The theme of the wall mural will explore how these young people relate to and define the history and culture of their village.

For Royce Manuel his goal is to recreate the tools of yesterday using the most authentic materials and methods. By studying the Kia-ha here at the CRC and at the Department of Anthropology for the National Museum of Natural History at MSC, Royce was challenged to gather and record as much information to patterns and size of agave fiber used to create these carrying baskets. Mr. Manuel plans to conduct an Artist Community Workshop to teach the methods, processing, and creating Kia-ha under the theme “Binding Our Future to the Past” in Scottsdale, Arizona, from January 29 to February 11, 2011. Royce told me that because the baskets are no longer used in its traditional sense no one has made these baskets in over 60 years. The NMAI Collections once again is a vital resource to Native artists for sharing skills and methods of Native knowledge through art.

Royce Manual researches the traditional methods of Kia-ha baskets for a community workshop he will hold this winter in his hometown of Scottsdale, Ariz. (Photo by Roger Whiteside, NMAI Staff Photographer)

Revivals in Oklahoma can mean many different things to people. But for Jeri Redcorn the revival of Caddo pottery is her main mission and personal story. Following the forced removal from their traditional lands Jeri realized that today no Caddo are making any pots and the pottery traditions are lost. After spending 2 weeks last month in the Smithsonian collections at the CRC and MSC, Jeri will share her new knowledge and inspiration with 30 other artists at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and the Oklahoma History Center March 10 – 12, 2011. Jeri Redcorn sees herself as a teacher and mentor and notes that she “accepts the challenge and responsibility to share her pottery experience so this clay art is not lost, but handed down from generation to generation with the utmost respect.”

One of the challenges of the NMAI Artist Leadership Program (ALP) is to provide a stimulating and empowering learning experience for all Native participants while here in Washington, DC. And when the participants are able to return for the second or even third time this challenge is set even higher. So with the third NMAI visit by Kelly Church we expanded her research time to include consultations with staff from the Woody Landscape Plant Germplasm Repository of the U.S. National Arboretum and Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. For Kelly it is all about black ash trees, the Emerald Ash Borer, and the legacy of the cultural and traditional black ash basket making. Ms. Church will conduct a Community Arts Symposium to include Native leaders on black ask basket making, seed collection and seed driers, harvesting and preparing black ash. This symposium is scheduled to take place in Plainwell, MI, April 5 – 7, 2011.

Eric Hamar, a carver, studies the museum's collection of Haida masks. (Photo by Roger Whiteside, NMAI Staff Photographer)

Eric Hamar is a participant in the NMAI Emerging Artist Program (EAP) as a sophomore in Native  American Studies at the University of Fairbanks. This track is shorter than ALP but still allows the participants to research the collections, meet with staff, and conduct staff presentations. Mr. Hamar knows the Haida language is on the decline and is making an effort to learn as much Haida as possible. Eric is also a carver and hopes to carve a fully functional dancing mask that incorporates facial features that will be painted with the corresponding Haida word. This will be Eric’s contribution to incorporating his Native language in art.

It is truly amazing to see so many SI, NMAI and off site facilities helped to make this ALP and EAP so meaningful to so many Native artists and their communities. Thanks goes to staff in NMAI Collections, Conservation, Photo and Film Archives, Education, Public Programs, Resource Center, Administration, Protection Services, Information Technology, Exhibitions, Curatorial, Public Affairs, Photo Services, Film & Video, External Affairs, Department of Anthropology, National Anthropological Archives, SI Arctic Studies Center, Library of Congress, U.S. National Arboretum, PROVISION Learning Project, SI Enterprises, Smithsonian Magazine, Discovery Theatre, La Mama Theatre, First Peoples Fund, Alaska Public Radio, and the Indian Craft Shop, Department of Interior.

The Emerging Artist Program seeks to enhance the artistic growth of emerging artists in high school and college. This program aims to rebuild cultural self-confidence, enable artists to think more broadly about themselves while providing the art student with new learning environments and resources of cultural materials.

The NMAI Artist Leadership Program enables indigenous artists to research, document, network, and then return to their home communities empowered with new artistic knowledge and skills to share with their community and the general public the value of Native knowledge through art. This program aims to rebuild cultural self-confidence, enable artists to think more broadly about themselves and their art while perpetuating indigenous cultures and reflecting artistic diversity.

The next ALP and EAP deadline for applications is April 4, 2011.

Please see the NMAI website under Indigenous Contemporary Arts Program for more information on ALP and EAP: http://www.nmai.si.edu/icap/leadership.html

 

Mohawk Artist Alan Michelson Wins Prestigious GSA Award

The National Museum of the American Indian would like to congratulate Mohawk artist Alan Michelson for winning the Citation in Art award from the Government Services Administration. Michelson's glass installation, Third Bank of the River, at the U.S. Port of Entry in Massena, N.Y., is one of just eleven works being honored this year at the GSA Design Awards. NMAI staffers Paul Chaat Smith, Rebecca Trautmann, John Haworth, and Kathleen Ash-Milby attended the ceremony this afternoon in Washington to see Michelson accept the honor. (Click here to watch video of the ceremony.)

In 2009, NMAI featured Michelson and Third Bank of the River in a five-page spread in American Indian Magazine. The article, written by Kate Morris of Santa Clara University, is reprinted below. You can also read about the Design Awards and the 2010 honorees at the GSA website.  

Michelson's video installation Mespat (2001) is on view at the museum's Washington, D.C., location now through August 7, 2011, as part of the exhibition Vantage Point: The Contemporary Native Art Collection.

 

Art on the river: Alan Michelson highlights border-crossing issues

By Kate Morris

Third Bank of the River, by Alan Michelson. 69 x 489 inches; ceramic glass melting colors on glass, 2009. U.S. Port of Entry, Massena, N.Y.

Last Spring, Mohawk artist Alan Michelson stood inside the new U.S. Port of Entry at Massena, N.Y., and watched as a crew of Mohawk ironworkers permanently installed his federally commissioned glass artwork Third Bank of the River above the passport checkpoint bays. Third Bank, nearly six feet tall and more than 40 feet long, is a striking medley of four panoramic views of the St. Lawrence River as it forms the border between the United States and Canada.

The title’s reference to three banks of the river reflects the unique geography of the international border-crossing at Massena. In the middle of the St. Lawrence, between the United States and the Canadian mainland, lies Cornwall Island. It is within the international boundaries of Canada, yet it is also the sovereign territory of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. All travelers crossing the border there must traverse Cornwall Island and are for a short time the “guests” of the Akwesasne.

Michelson, 57, is well attuned to the issues of the borders that divide the Haudenosaunee. He is an enrolled member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, in Canada, and has many relatives on the Six Nations Reserve. He was born in Buffalo, New York, raised in Massachusetts and educated in New York City at Columbia College and in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.  

Third Bank is comprised of hundreds of photographs that Michelson shot from a boat and digitally joined into glowing, elegant bands depicting the Ontario and New York banks of the St. Lawrence. Michelson also included the shores of Cornwall Island – the “third bank” of his title – underscoring the presence and participation of the Mohawk Nation at the “Three Nations International Crossing.”

The work can be likened to a stained glass window, but was fabricated by Franz Mayer of Munich using a modern process in which the glass was imprinted with images sandblasted through a dot-matrix screen.

Probing both geographic and political boundaries, Third Bank is but one in a series of extraordinary works by Michelson that has featured rivers and charted their cultural landscapes. His first video installation Mespat (2001), acquired by the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 2006, incorporated video of three miles of the industrial shoreline of Newtown Creek, the severely polluted stream that divides Brooklyn from Queens. The video, shot from a boat and then projected onto a screen of white turkey feathers, is a haunting, elegiac meditation on both the present and the past, underscored by the title Mespat, which means “bad water place” in the Lenape language.

Today, urban Newtown Creek is part of Michelson’s own “backyard”; he has lived in Manhattan since 1989. His evocation of the Lenape language in Mespat pays homage to New York City’s original inhabitants and is indicative of the artist’s approach to North American history, in which Native peoples are not only represented but are central to the narrative. Shot eight years later and 400 miles north, Third Bank continues this tradition.

The U.S. Port of Entry at Massena is one of 37 land ports that the Department of Homeland Security has built or significantly renovated since September 2001. Four times the size of their predecessors, and decidedly high-tech, their purposes are paradoxical. They must restrict access, exerting control over people, vehicles and goods; yet, according to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which is responsible for their design and construction, they must also strive to present “a positive federal presence at the border.”

Plans for a modernized border crossing station at Massena progressed through a series of design competitions sponsored by the GSA’s Art and Architecture Program, which in the end awarded the commissions to Manhattan-based Michelson and the architectural firm Smith-Miller + Hawkinson. Third Bank is situated high on the west wall of the main passenger lobby, facing travelers as they wait in line below to clear their documents.

The arresting composition – two horizontal rows of gemlike purple, interspersed with three horizontal rows of luminous white – can be discerned even from a distance. When viewed up close, details emerge, and the purple bands resolve into a pair of rivers, bordered top and bottom by trees and the occasional bridge, building or factory. Prominent among these monuments are local landmarks such as the Alcoa plant at Massena, a brick-making factory and all four anchorages of the Seaway International Bridge. In Michelson’s unique design, adapted from 19th-century panoramic maps, river banks mirror one another across two channels, so that the four shorelines are alternately right-side up or upside-down. The white stripes are expanses of sky – dazzling cloudscapes that digitally merge to conjoin separate, gravity-defying horizons.

Mespat, by Alan Michelson. 20-minute video; turkey feathers, monofilament, steel; stereo soundtrack by
Michael J. Schumacher, 2001. On view as part of NMAI's Vantage Point exhibition through August 7, 2011.

Third Bank recalls Michelson’s earlier, four-channel video installation TwoRow II, first exhibited in the New Tribe: New York exhibition at NMAI in 2005 and acquired by the National Gallery of Canada in 2006. For TwoRow II, Michelson filmed the opposing banks of a different river – Ontario’s Grand River – as it flows through the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. The river holds a dual significance for Michelson, as it defines both his personal ancestral territory – his grandparents were born and raised on the reserve and many of his relatives reside there – as well as the collective territory of the Six Nations, promised to them by a 1784 proclamation.

By the terms of Great Britain’s Haldimand Deed, the Six Nations were awarded a sixmile tract of land on either side of the Grand River from mouth to source; today the river forms a boundary between the reserve and non-Native townships. In addition to the video, Michelson made an audio recording of the non-Native boat captain as he described the history of the river and its people to his passengers. Michelson produced a second soundtrack, recording stories of the river told by Six Nations residents. In the gallery, the two run simultaneously, competing and conflicting as narratives, but never quite canceling one another out. As if to further underscore the degree to which the two cultures – the two sides of the river – are at odds, Michelson set the two video tracks moving in opposite directions; the Native and the non-Native worlds literally run at cross purposes.

TwoRow II describes a contemporary reality, yet the evocation of the river as a metaphor for contact and coexistence is generations old. The symbolism is said to date back to 1613, when, according to Iroquois oral tradition, the Haudenosaunee entered into a reciprocal pact of noninterference with the Dutch. In the metaphoric language of the “Guswhenta” Treaty, the two cultures – Native and European – were described as two vessels traveling down a river on a parallel course. These vessels, a birchbark canoe and a European ship, represented the laws and customs of each people; the agreement stated that neither would impede the other’s progress. The historic Two Row Wampum, a woven beaded belt which formally ratified the agreement and also embodied it in graphic form, represented the two vessels
as parallel purple stripes against a background river of white. Michelson’s TwoRow II reminds viewers that the treaties and agreements made between Native and European Nations have not been honored. Part of the soundtrack details the loss of nearly 90 percent of the Reserve’s land base promised by the Haldimand Deed.

While TwoRow II is a meditation on the relationship between two nations, Third Bank literally pictures three sovereign entities: the United States, Canada and the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. The region where these three nations come together has been described as one of the most complex international jurisdictions in the Americas. In order to convey the complexity of this territory, Michelson chose to navigate the river by boat, photographing the shores from that shifting perspective.

In foregrounding the river in Third Bank, and in printing his images on the reflective, highly interactive medium of glass, Michelson deftly captures much of the sense of movement and shifting perspective evident in TwoRow II. The artist’s dedication to this point is underscored in a statement he made in an interview in 2005. “[This is] why I make panoramic works,” Michelson said, “because you can’t just take them all in and think you know what you’re seeing. It forces you to look at things from more than one direction and one angle, and to look at life as flux rather than something that you can fix and control.” This then is one of the most crucial aspects of Third Bank: in keeping the river flowing and shifting, in refusing to resolve the complexities of either the image or the territories it pictures, Michelson’s work keeps the border visible, open and navigable.

In the months since Third Bank was installed at Massena, Michelson has completed a new river-based project, Shattemuc, a thirty-one minute HD video commissioned for the Tang Museum and Art Gallery’s “Lives of the Hudson” exhibition (on view through March 14, 2010 at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.). Once again, Michelson shot video from the perspective of a boat, this time from a former New York City police launch sailing up the Hudson at night, illuminating the banks of the river in the beam of a marine searchlight.

In this mesmerizing work, set to an original musical score by Apache composer Laura Ortman, pristine wooded landscape gives way to an increasingly industrial wasteland of quarries, factories and power plants that pass ghostlike through the light of the grainy beam. While it is tempting to read Shattemuc as an elegy for the river, or for the Native peoples who once called the Hudson by that name, it may also point to the uncertain future of any society, past or present, subject to global forces beyond its control.

Kate Morris is assistant professor of art history at Santa Clara University. She writes on topics in contemporary Native art, and is particularly interested in the depiction of landscape in both painting and installation art.

Reprinted with permission from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian Magazine, Winter 2009. To learn more about NMAI's American Indian magazine, click here.

Double Jeopardy!

This December, the National Museum of the American Indian was a category on Jeopardy!, the quiz show.  It was amazing to watch the contestants strategically avoid the NMAI category.

I guess the other subjects—“Places in the Bible”, “Movie Names”, “The Rat Pack”, “Play Penners,”and “Five-Letter Words”—were more familiar. 

The players avoided our category until every other clue was gone, then ran out of time before they could get to the $2000 NMAI question. 

Leonda Levchuk and Molly Stephey from the NMAI Public Affairs Office worked with the producers of Jeopardy! to create videotaped clues from the museum on the National Mall. They also signed paperwork swearing that they wouldn’t give away the answers—er, questions—in advance. After the show aired, Leonda and Molly asked the producers to send us a copy of the tape so that we could share it with you. I’ve edited it to get right to the NMAI part.  

Watch the video below.

 

Introduction & 1st question: American Indian or Native American?

Guests are drawn to the National Museum of the American Indian for a kaleidoscope of reasons and intentions. One is to experience Native cultures, an experience that is enhanced when visitors have an opportunity to speak with staff members face-to-face. People working at the museum’s welcome desk, as cultural interpreters, in visitor services, and at the resource center all serve on the front lines, meeting, greeting, and answering questions.

I am an American Indian and one of these liaisons for the museum. My name is Dennis Zotigh. I am Kiowa, Santee Dakota, and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. I grew up receiving cultural knowledge from both my maternal and paternal grandparents. My parents further made sure that I was well acquainted with first-hand knowledge of other, diverse tribal cultures and their aesthetics, across North America.

With this rich foundation, I became the director of an internationally known professional Native dance company and traveled to 26 countries representing American Indians. Recognizing my working knowledge, the Oklahoma Historical Society hired me to help develop the Indian gallery of the new Oklahoma History Center as a researcher and historian. While presenting a conference paper at the British Museum in London in 2004, I was approached by co-presenter, Terry Snowball, who’s now my colleague. Terry encouraged me to apply for the advisor position for the 2005 National Powwow.  I got the job, and my personal Native history began a new chapter.

My experience both traveling abroad and speaking daily to guests who visit our museum has shown me that there is a worldwide fascination with Indian cultures. I believe in the philosophy that the only bad question is the one that is never asked. I’ve been asked the gamut of questions pertaining to Native culture, from the insulting (a good test for that theory) to the academic and cultural-specific.

Beginning with this blog, I’d like to share a series of questions that I’ve been asked, give my answers, and invite you to discuss, debate, and add your personal ideas and experiences.

The first question is, “What do we call you, American Indian or Native American?”

My answer? Ultimately, I would like to be referred to by my tribal names of Kiowa, Santee Dakota, and Ohkay Owingeh! Most Native people also appreciate being associated with their particular tribes. But I know this is difficult. In actuality, the reference of Native American vs. American Indian is largely generational. My grandparents and other Native elders first referred to themselves by their tribes, although I also heard them less frequently refer to themselves as American Indian.  I refer to myself by my tribal affiliation first, but don’t mind being called Indian.

The generation younger than mine refers to themselves as Native Americans. Others have followed their politically correct identity. Were you born in the United States? If so, you are technically a native American, a label that literally describes anyone who was born in and remains a citizen of a country in North, South, or Central America.

"Indian" is the term used in federal law. It is also the official term used by major U.S. Indian agencies and organizations, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, National Congress of the American Indians, National Indian Education Association, and National Museum of the American Indian. In modern usage, the legal term "Indian" usually means an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe (or one who is eligible to be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe).

 

Please comment and turn this blog into a conversation.