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Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities
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- Permanent
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This exhibition examines the identities of Native peoples in the 21st century, and how those identities, both individual and communal, are the results of deliberate, often difficult choices made in challenging circumstances. This exhibition explores the forces in modern Native life that Native peoples are profoundly influenced by -- their families and communities, the language they speak, the places they live and identify with, and their own self determination. Eight communities contributed their stories to this telling: the Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians (Southern California), urban Indian community of Chicago (Illinois), Yakama Nation (Washington State),Igloolik (Nunavut, Canada), Kahnawake Mohawk (Quebec, Canada), Saint-Laurent Metis (Manitoba, Canada), Kalinago (Dominica), and Pamunkey (Virginia).
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Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories
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- Permanent
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This exhibition discusses events that shaped the lives and outlook of Native peoples from 1491 to the present. The first part of the exhibition reveals the forces that affected the lives of Native peoples; it shows how Native peoples have struggled to maintain traditions in the face of adversity, and explains why so little of this history is familiar. The second area consists of eight small galleries that recount the histories of individual tribes: Blackfeet (Montana), Chiricahua Apache (New Mexico), Kiowa (Oklahoma), Tohono O'odham (Arizona), Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation (North Carolina), Nahua (Mexico), Ka'apor (Brazil), and Wixarikari -- sometimes known as Huichol -- (Mexico). The exhibition also includes a "wall of gold" featuring over 400 gold figurines, dating back to 1490, along with European swords, coins, and crosses made from melted gold.
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Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World
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- Permanent
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Focusing on Native cosmology and organized around one solar year, this exhibition explores the annual ceremonies of Native peoples as a window on their ancestral teachings. Under a "night sky" of fiber-optic stars and constellations, discover how celestial bodies shape the daily lives -- and establish the calendars of ceremonies and celebrations -- of Native peoples today. Featured communities: Mapuche (Chile), Lakota (South Dakota), Quechua (Peru), Yup'ik (Alaska), Q'eq'chi, Maya (Guatemala), Santa Clara Pueblo (New Mexico), Anishinaabe (Hollow Water, Manitoba, Canada), and Hupa (California). The exhibition also highlights the Denver (Colorado) March Powwow, the North American Indigenous Games, and the Day of the Dead -- seasonal celebrations that bring Native peoples together.
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Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of Chesapeake
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- Permanent
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Through photographs, maps, ceremonial and everyday objects, and interactives, this panel display provides both an overview of the history and events affecting the Native peoples -- Nanticoke, Powhatan, and Piscataway tribes -- of the Chesapeake Bay region (what is now Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.) and information on their continued presence today.
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Window on Collections: Many Hands, Many Voices
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- Permanent Displays
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These permanent displays feature more than 3,500 items from the museum's collection that reveal the remarkable breadth and diversity of Native American objects. Located on the third and fourth levels of the museum and housed in drawers and glass-fronted cases, objects are arranged by categories, including beadwork, peace medals, arrowheads and other projectile points, containers, dolls, and animal objects.
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Outdoor Sculptures: Always Becoming
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- Indefinitely
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On view outside the museum is a family of five sculptures hand-built by artist Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo, Espanola, N.M.), winner of the museum's outdoor sculpture design competition. Based on aboriginal architecture and made of organic, nontoxic materials -- dirt, straw, sand, clay, wood, and moss -- the tipi-like forms are from 6 to 15 feet tall and 3 to 4 inches deep. Each will take on a life of its own as the elements of nature slowly erode the organic materials over time, thus the name Always Becoming. Note: Nora Naranjo-Morse is the first Native American woman to create an outdoor sculpture in Washington, D.C.
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Last update: January 29, 2010, 13:24
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