Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices

by Karen Coody Cooper

During the twentieth century, dozens of protests, large and small, occurred across North America as American Indians asserted their anger and displayed their disappointment regarding traditional museum behaviors. In response, due to public embarrassment and an awakening of sensitivities, museums began to change their methods and, additionally, laws were enacted in support of American Indian requests for change. The result is that American museums have revised their long-held practices due to American Indian protests. Spirited Encounters provides a foundation for understanding museums and looks at their development to present time, examines how museums collect Native materials, and explores protest as a fully American process of addressing grievances. Now that museums and American Indians are working together in the processes of repatriation, this book can help each side understand the other more fully.

Genres: Museology, Museums, Art, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2007

About the author

Writing is like breathing. It is how I assess and know the world.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spirited Encounters is an interesting read regarding Native Americans and museums. It is also a very biased read and can illicit very strong emotions from the reader as you work through the book.

The book details Native American protests in response to museum collections and exhibits, focusing only on the hurt feelings of Native Americans and how museums can revise their policies and practices to be less offensive. Beginning with the Glenbow Museum in Canada who refused to boycott the Canadian Olympics to the creation of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian (NMAI), Karen Coody Cooper goes through a long list of Native American grievances, some of which are understandable and others which are a bit preposterous. She states in the beginning her goal is not to antagonize museums and make it an "us vs. them" issue, but she does exactly that throughout the book.

As the reader quickly grasps, the museum is more often than not the bad guy. As with the Glenbow Museum mentioned above. The local Indians asked the museum if they would be willing to boycott the Olympics. Glenbow politely declined, and so the Indians started looking for something to boycott the museum on. Turns out, for a Native America exhibit they were building for the Olympics, they had accepted a large donation from Shell to help fund it. Well, Indians don't like Shell since they have drilling rights to part of their lands, and a flurry ensued. Like most stories in this book, it is only told from the side of the Indian in hopes of gaining compassion for their struggles. All this did was kind of piss me off. Exhibitions, especially loans, can cost an exorbitant amount of money. If Glenbow had turned down the Shell money, then there would have been no exhibition because the museum would not have been able to afford it. But do you think Karen Coody Cooper mentions that? No.

A more valid complaint is the Native America remains held by museums across the country. The passing of NAGPRA in 1990 began the process of returning the ancestral remains to Indians, although Karen Coody Cooper does point out some museums returned remains as early as the 1960s. NAGPRA states that any museum that receives federal funding must comply with NAGPRA, which was the kick in the pants for the rest of museums to get their stuff together. Museums should not hold Indian remains, and the return of the remains is a step forward to improving Indian-American relations throughout the country, not just with museums.

One thing that really bugged me throughout the book is Karen Coody Cooper's justification of all the protests, some of which were not respectful on the Indian's part. To protest a Columbus Day exhibition, one Indian through a pint of his blood on a model ship in the exhibit. Blood is considered a biohazard by the federal government, and has to be cleaned up by a hazmat team. That is expensive! To protest white men coming to America, they defiled Plymouth Rock. If they are protesting the desecration of their own monuments and sites by desecrating others monuments and sites, how is that acceptable? You are only sinking to your enemies level. Most of all, how is that going to create an open discussion for righting the wrongs of the past? It isn't. It is only fueling the animosity of both sides.

The back cover states, "Now that museums and American Indians are working together in the process of repatriation, this book can help each side understand the other more fully." No, not really. False advertisement. It can help you understand the Native American side more fully, but if you are looking for the museum side, you will have to look elsewhere. This book provides a good discussion about the Native American side of all the issues brought up, and that is it. It is worth the read, but you will feel frustration and other emotions as you read this book.

[AJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A refreshing and factual account of native American protests against museums and museum practices dated as far back as 1876 through 2006. Native American people have had a long and uneasy history due to the harshness in treatment of the culture from repatriation through the reclamation of lands. Examples of protests include Columbus Day celebrations, placing loved ones bones one walls as a sign of a Native American skeleton (aka repatriation), return of property used in ceremony, memorials placed in honor of white men on tribal lands, claiming native art as folksy versus contemporary, and the list goes on and on. (If you are interested, I may re-type it.)

It discussed the peaceful and not so peaceful protests of natives across the country in an effort to regain some semblance of respect and their culture that still lives on. I consider myself lucky to have this book in print as it is rare to find someone with enough time, energy, and gumption to collect these stories and place them in a tome. Museums rarely share this side. You should not expect Native Americans to do this either.

I was fortunate enough to meet the author of the book as she presented to a group of people from Calvert County. (I think I write about this in my journal at one point?) Anyway, it is always a warm, relaxed feeling when you know you are supposed to be somewhere. I never met her before but she looked at me square in the eyes and called me “Sister.” After five minutes of talking, she had that feeling……ya know, the one where someone really knows you yet they have never met you before? Yep.

Without going too far off the track, I stayed out of many history and science museums for this purpose. It is not the materials or the fact that I wanted to learn. It was the treatment.