RETURN OF THE NATIVE

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By Pat Wingert

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When George Gustav Heye decided to open a museum of American Indian artifacts in Manhattan in the 1930s, it was with the expectation that the native people of North America would soon be extinct. He was wrong. And so it is with an emphasis on the survivors that the Smithsonian prepares to open its new National Museum of the American Indian, on the last unbuilt parcel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When the building is dedicated on Sept. 21, the participation of 20,000 representatives from more than 400 tribes--the largest and most diverse gathering of Indian people ever--will leave no doubt that the original occupants of America are still here, and that many of them are flourishing.

Fifteen years in the making, at a cost of $219 million, the museum involved an unprecedented degree of input from the very people who are its subjects: tribes from the Inuit of the Arctic to the Seminole of Florida and the Tapirape of the Amazon Basin. Tribal representatives selected the objects that would be displayed from the Smithsonian's 800,000-piece collection, ranging from Incan jaguar sculptures to Inuit ivory carvings. And they wrote the display text that accompanies their choices. One of the keys to that cooperation was the Smithsonian's corrective decision to repatriate 2,500 pieces of its collection, primarily human remains as well as religious and funereal objects, to tribes across the hemisphere. "This museum is about the empowerment of native people to tell their story," said Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director. "We're not trying to revise history--but write a history that is more inclusive."

Sensitivity to native cultures was the watchword of the museum's design, by the Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal, a member of the Blackfoot tribe. For some tribes, pipestone--a reddish, claylike stone from which ceremonial pipes were carved--is sacred; when they objected to its use for the floor of a performance space, the architects found a substitute. The sinuous, cantilevered exterior, executed in rugged, sand-colored limestone, brings to mind wind-worn canyons and cliffs. A rushing stream curves around one side; a garden is planted with corn, sunflower, beans and tobacco, and even the security bollards on the sidewalk outside are ornamented with wide bands of woven copper. Visitors may be surprised to find spectacular walls of Aztec gold on display, as well as beautifully beaded high-top sneakers created by modern Indian artists. A building, however grand, cannot make up for the historic crimes committed against Native Americans--but it can serve as a pointed reminder of what was lost, and what remains.

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