Native American Museums

knowledge of cultures or peoples can be based on false stereotypes and notions. Museums have always been based on displaying things, educating the public through exhibiting materials and the false notions from the public are one thing that museums refuse to propagate.15 However, refusing to display these well-known, popular yet false data sometimes can hinder the feedback on a specific exhibit, displaying accurate but not the popular expectation of the specific subject. Museums carry a great impact on society’s understanding of native cultures through their displayed information and most museums are history museums with a considerable majority being Native American materials.16

In 1897-99 museum exhibits of native cultures were defined in

a few ways, the first being of ethnographical that displayed materials from a region or cultural groups. This mentality offered visitors a trip around the world without ever leaving the museums. These exhibits were laid out by region and the time period the materials were from. The second theme was that of evolution base, illustrating change through objects such as producing fire, hunting, crafting, cooking, etc.17 Another was that of “life-group”, where museums would create an actual scene from the materials and specific region, for example, a Monacan settlement where women were sitting weaving baskets and cooking around the fire pit. Franz Boaz even used this theme to display Inuit scene in the American Museum of Natural history. Another type that has been used through the years is open storage, where all artifacts and materials are set out randomly, ignoring
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15. Ibid., 33.
16. Ibid., 34-35.
17.

Ibid., 36.

their provenience.

One common theme throughout every Native American display is the portrayal that Indians are only present in the past and do not exist in the present day world. In the end of the 19th century, it was widely believed that Native Americans would disappear. To the public, and the unsuccessful way museums have been exhibiting native cultures materials, represents these cultures in only one dimension, in the past and illustrates that real Indians are gone. In the past, museum displays including works of art such as pottery, basket weaving, or spears never included the names of the people who made them. They rarely listed and identified the makers. This added another negative notch to the presentation of art or crafts made by anonymous, no name, background, or meaning to object thus the culture itself. It displays an object with a simple description with no place in the current world.18 The Indian culture, by the way, the materials and exhibits have been laid out in museums for years, demonstrates Indians do not live among us, they have all disappeared, their materials are less meaningful and non-existent, and no progression or evolution in the American Indian history. Museums have had to work to meet expectations along with providing new interpretations and perspectives on objects even if it isn’t the popular outlook that has been portrayed from past years and

mistruths.
The argument of display tactics in museums begins in the 1880s. Arguments of different scientists, curators, and professionals began of how to accurately and effectively divide the collections into groups that would represent and establish logic was by Otis Mason who wanted
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18. Ibid., 39.

to organize materials based on their human progress through time, an evolutionary aspect.19 The evolutionary aspect brought bouts of racism and the act of a culture evolution from savagery to civilization. This type of thinking, however, at the time, was what Americans already portrayed Native cultures to be. One opinion brought on by Franz Boaz was to portray each culture as their own separate entity. Boaz disagreed with Mason’s outlook and even presumed it was the reason why American’s had such an unrealistic view of foreign cultures.