#Museum of the American Indian

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Foolish Bear, 84, left, and Drags Wolf, 75, came to New York on January 13, 1938 to recover from the Heye Foundation (Museum of the American Indian) two sacred skulls of thunderbird deities that they believed would end recent droughts in their native North Dakota. The men were members of the Water Buster or Midi Badi clan of the Hidatsa (Gros Ventre) tribe. This was the first known successful repatriation of Indian objects. They visited President Roosevelt on the way to New York.

Article about this repatriation

Photo: Associated Press via WHNT

[direwolfrules]

Been spending too much time in this one Archaeology Professor’s courses. I went with my college’s history club to the Museum of the American Indian and I got super excited when I saw Clovis points. In my defense, they’re Clovis points.

Look at them! They’re stunning!

Anyway, I’m so glad my friends in the club are willing to listen to me rant because I went on a whole five minute spiel about the Clovis people and disproven claims of pre-Clovis populations.

[pointandshooter]

The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC

photo: David Castenson

[jasongr-ace]

It’s so frustrating how much of Piper fanart looks like it could be here

[lionofchaeronea]

The Song of the Talking Wire, Henry F. Farny, 1904

[arthistoryanimalia]

#TwoForTuesday:

Ceramic stirrup-spout bottles in the form of a #duck and a #feline (ID’d here as a puma)

c. 1100-1400 CE

Chimú culture, North coast of Peru

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian display

This type of grey-black ceramic was a signature Chimú style.

[christophermtaylor]

National Museum of the Indian American

[disarmluna]

[istandonsnowpiles]

Have a Seat

[rimouskis]

on the subject of museums though: I'm a FIRM believer that the smithsonians are genuinely some the greatest cultural heritage americans possess and I believe SO fervently in them being free to the public and accessible to all because they ARE our nation's history and tell (and ideally deconstruct) our national myths and help contextualize the natural world around us and show us the heights of human ingenuity and art. also my favorite of all of them is the national museum of the american indian and I personally think if you can only go to one smithsonian museum it should be that one

[petsincollections]

Kutenai children with two nuns, a dog and a cat

Seven young women, 5 young men and 2 nuns share a joke in this photo. The dog sitting with the boys in front wears a hat and one of the girls is placing a cat on the shoulder of one of the boys.

American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Images

Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture

[internationalemeteorologie]

Grace Hudson 

Boy with Fox. 1922

[drownmeinbeauty]

HOMELANDS

A long-running semi-permanent exhibit at the national Museum of the American Indian, Native New York, gives a straightforward, text-heavy account of native communities in New York State. Backlit maps and diagrams show who lived where and how. Communities in present-day Manhattan clammed at its northern tip, carved canoes along the Hudson, settled among the ponds at its center, and hunted beavers in its streams. Then in 1626 Peter Menuit gave the Lenape 60 guilders and claimed the entire island for the Dutch West India Company. The fiction of harmonious coexistence ended, and the struggle for sovereignty began.

Of all the artifacts on display (clay bowls, beaded mocassins, hand-hewn arrowheads, feathered spears, gourd-rattles, canoes dug from tree trunks, cartoons on newsprint, wool blankets), the most poignant is a Haudenosaunee passport, issued by a league of six Iriqouis nations (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora) and carried by enrolled members when they travel abroad. But it offers little security outside their homeland. It is recognized by the Irish government, only irregularly by the United States government, and not at all by the governments of Canada, Bolivia, Peru, and the European Union. One Canadian official, in denying the Haudenosaunee national lacrosse team entrance, called it a "fantasy document."

This little book mimics the pocket size, midnight blue color, and gold stamping of a US passport. In the low and low-lit museum vitrine it gives off a plasticky shine and won't lie flat. Why does it seem inert? Why doesn't it posses the same unquestioned, mythological, authority of a United States passport? The United States was created by proclamation, conjured with words and documents, not so long ago. Why don't we grant others the power to do the same?

[pointandshooter]

National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC

photo: David Castenson

[theaskew]

Paula Nicho Cúmez (Mayan-Guatemalan b. 1955), Mi Segunda Piel (My Second Skin), 2004. Oil on canvas, 82.5 x 58.8 cm. (Source: National Museum of the American Indian)

[lionofchaeronea]

The Harvest Dance, Joseph Henry Sharp, 1893-94