New space lets tribes ‘tell our own story’
Doors opening at First Americans Museum
William Tarrant walked through the First Americans Museum and saw the peach seed game his daughters made to show the traditions of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation.
“The individuality was big for me,” said Tarrant, cultural historic preservation officer for the Seneca-Cayuga,
based today in northeast Oklahoma. “There’s 39 tribes, and we’re all different people.”
The First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City opens to the public Saturday. No other space has made such a comprehensive attempt at representing the stories of every tribal nation in Oklahoma.
Curators consulted for years with tribal leaders before the museum opened. They learned about cultures as diverse as the tribes’ original homelands, which covered most of the contiguous U.S., as well as parts of Mexico and Canada. The federal government systematically and forcibly removed them from those lands to present-day Oklahoma in the 1800s.
“The story of our 39 tribes is really the story of the history of the U.S.,” senior curator heather ahtone said. ahtone, who is Chickasaw and Choctaw, does not capitalize her name.
The museum aims to teach people about Indigenous cultures from Indigenous perspectives and presents accurate information about the painful histories Native people endured. The exhibits counter the mainstream narrative of Oklahoma history, tribal leaders say.
Every member of the curatorial team, which has been as large as 11 people, is a citizen of a tribal nation in Oklahoma.
“Our tribes have contributed so much to the historical and contemporary experience of the U.S. that it’s really shocking how little of that is really told anywhere,” ahtone said.
Talks for the 175,000-square-foot museum began in 1989, and construction got underway about two decades later. But progress stalled amid a public funding dispute. In 2015, the Chickasaw Nation stepped in and agreed to cover some final development costs as well as initial operating losses.
Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby had been involved in the effort since the beginning. He said it made sense to step in on a project of such educational, cultural and economic significance.
“The original dream has been fulfilled,” he said. “It takes a while to really put these things together. And maybe it wasn’t so bad that it took so long to do it, because we were able to see that things were right, that everything was like it should be.”
The museum has two main exhibits. The first, Okla Homma, tracks the individual and collective histories of the state’s 39 tribes, starting with creation stories and carrying into modern times. The second, Winiko, explores the material culture and life of the tribes more than 100 years ago. Most of the objects — a Modoc spoon, a Pawnee buckskin coat — were originally collected in Oklahoma and are on loan from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
“It brings to the forefront this information that pretty much has been dismissed or missing altogether,” said Matt Reed, historic preservation officer for the Pawnee Nation in north central Oklahoma.
The focus on representing each tribe sets the museum apart from any other place, Tarrant said.
“I know it’s hard to try to represent 39 different tribes in a given space,” Tarrant said. “A lot of times we are lumped together, so you get kind of this pan-Indian representation, instead of individuality.”
First Americans Museum curators started by reaching out to leaders of every tribe and asking who they should work with to answer a wide range of questions for the exhibits. They centered their approach on four principles: respect, responsibility, relationships and reciprocity, ahtone said.
Curators respected that much of the information they sought was not written down in books, and they felt a responsibility to present the knowledge they were provided in an accurate way. They worked to build long-term relationships and looked for ways they could also help the tribes.
From the Otoe-Missouria in northern Oklahoma, several tribal members worked with the museum to make sure their culture was accurately represented, said Kennetha Greenwood, the tribe’s creative project manager, in an email. Otoe-Missouria language keeper Jade Roubedeaux narrated a version of the tribe’s creation story, as one example.
“The museum is giving each tribe the opportunity to tell our own story and share a part of their history that isn’t otherwise public knowledge,” Greenwood said.
For the nearby Pawnee Nation, many
questions from curators were considered first by the tribe’s cultural committee, Reed said. Museum officials also asked for input about the Pawnee objects they planned to request from the Smithsonian.
“They definitely were taking our information to heart,” he said.
Reed has seen what can happen without community input. He previously worked for the Oklahoma Historical Society. When he started there in 1999, its Native American exhibitions were drawn from stereotypes. (The exhibits were later changed.)
“Oh my gosh, they were so dated,” he said. “It was very 1950s, 1960s kind of concepts. Indian history told by people that were not from tribal communities.”
Curators for the First American Museum tried to avoid inaccurate or inappropriate representations from the start. They talked often about how to show and teach the cultures of every tribe without enacting the types of harm that museums can cause, such as displaying sacred items against a tribe’s customs.
“Sometimes that’s quite problematic,” ahtone said. “This is something that we are hoping to shift.”
If tribal representatives did not want the museum to display a specific object from the Smithsonian, curators simply crossed it off the list, ahtone said. The items were all collected in Oklahoma between 1909 and 1914 by Mark H. Harrington. Those objects became part of a broader collection transferred without compensation through an act of Congress to the Smithsonian, which in exchange agreed to establish the National Museum of the American Indian, among other terms, said First American Museum Director James Pepper Henry, in an email.
Curators worked with tribal leaders to find appropriate ways to display culturally important or sensitive items. The Seneca-Cayuga peach seed game is one example. Game sets used in ceremonies cannot be loaned out and displayed. So the tribe gifted an unused game set to display at the museum.
ahtone hopes the museum can keep evolving. Its two exhibits could not cover all of the topics raised by tribes, such as in-depth displays about current religions and ceremonies.
Organized Christianity is central to many aspects of the modern day culture of Kialegee Tribal Town in eastern Oklahoma, said tribal administrator David Cook, who is Seminole. Kialegee was one of 44 towns that banded together in Alabama and Georgia to form the Creek Confederacy, known today as the Muscogee Nation.
Leaders wanted the museum to represent that aspect of Kialegee culture, but it was difficult to find objects to loan, Cook said. Family Bibles, for instance, are passed down from one generation to the next.
Cook said he hopes the museum can teach people, particularly younger generations, about the diverse heritage of Oklahoma.
Tarrant, the Seneca-Cayuga historic preservation officer, said the museum includes information that is often not found in his daughters’ history textbooks. He hopes visitors pay particular attention to the exhibits that discuss forced removal and boarding schools, designed to assimilate Native children to white society. His grandmother attended one of the schools.
“I know I have a good idea (of what happened), and it still made me get a lump in my throat seeing how it was displayed.”
Anoatubby said when he walked through the completed space, he thought, “We finally, finally have it.” He also thought about all the people whose contributions over decades made the space possible. Some never lived to see its opening.
“It is everything that we hoped for before,” he said. “We can always do more, and that’s what our plans are.”
Seeing the widespread support among tribal leaders for the museum has been incredibly rewarding, ahtone said. Some leaders are approaching curators with more ideas about loaning items to the museum or providing educational programming related to the exhibits.
Those suggestions could shape the backbone of the museum’s long-term plans, ahtone said. “We’re opening a museum that’s going to be open for a long time, maybe 100, 200 years,” she said.
Molly Young covers Indigenous affairs for the USA Today Network’s Sunbelt Region of Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. Reach her at mollyyoung@gannett.com or 405-347-3534.
“I know I have a good idea (of what happened), and it still made me get a lump in my throat seeing how it was displayed.” William Tarrant, cultural historic preservation officer for the Seneca-Cayuga