21.1 (Spring 1997) Museums and Indigenous Cultures

Representing Native Identity: The Trail of Tears and the Cherokee Heritage Center in Oklahoma

While studying the exhibitions in the Hall of the North American Indian in Harvard's Peabody Museum, I overheard a conversation between two other museum visitors whom I speculatively identified as a Harvard student and her European guest. The conversation was intriguing and revealing, particularly the following exchange.

European guest: "How many Indians have survived?"

Harvard student: "I think…about 5% of the original population."

European guest: "Have you ever seen one?"

Harvard student: "Only descendants…not the way they were."

Tibetan School Project: Project Site; Katsel, Tibet

A wonderful dream has come true in a small Tibetan village northeast of Tibet's capital city Lhasa. For the first time in over 30 years, a school has been established in the village of Katsel, Medrogonkhar. It began in 1987 when Sonam Jamyangling visited his hometown, Katsel, after 28 years in exile and decided a school was desperately needed in the village. In the next year, Sonam, who lives in Sweden, founded the Swedish Society for School and Culture to promote the Tibetan culture and more importantly, to establish schools in Tibet. He later enlisted assistance from Tibetan exiles and U.S.

Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life.

Settle and London: University of Washington Press, 1995, xxi + 269 pp.,

appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. 10 color photographs, 25

black and white photographs, figures, tables.

Review by Reinhild Kauenhoven Janzen, Department of Art and Theatre Arts,

Washburn University.

Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor and Social Drama in Northern Ireland.

Washington: Smithsonian Institution 1995. x+270 pp. notes, bibliography, index $44.50 (cloth) ISBN 1-56098-520-8

Review by Begoña Aretxaga Department Of Anthropology, Harvard University

Museums and Indigenous Cultures

The idea of gathering things, normally beautiful things, together and putting them on display is very old. Babylonian kings had their private collections in the sixth century BC. The emperors of China and royal personages in other parts of the world certainly had collections of their own. The idea of a museum, however, comes to us from the Greek word museion, which did not originally refer to a collection. Instead it indicated a seat of the muses, a place for philosophical contemplation or for artistic performances.

Publications