Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

credit: pequotmuseum.org

Name: Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
Tribe: Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation
Location: 110 Pequot Trail, Mashantucket, CT, 06338
Type: Museum, Research Library/Archive
Visiting Info: Opening for the season May 15 (through Nov), Wed-Sat 9am-5pm, Admission $12-$20
Contact: Website, telephone (800) 411-9671

After a five-month hiatus for refurbishment under a new director, the Pequot Museum is open again as of May 15, 2015. The museum is hoping to attract greater attention and more visitors with new programs and partnerships with artists.

In the Farmstead area outside, a group of Wampanoag canoe-builders is working on a 36-foot mish8n ("mishoon," the Wampanoag word for canoe), which will be the longest canoe built in New England in the last 200 years when it is completed in June 2015. Visitors can also see a 400-year-old dugout canoe on display inside the museum's exhibits hall.

The Pequot Café is open with a new menu featuring indigenous selections made from local ingredients sourced when possible from Native vendors.

The museum is also offering free work studio space for local Native artists who would like to become Artists in Residence. (For more information contact: bburrell@pequotmsueum.org, 860-396-6960)

And of course, there is still the original 85,000 square feet of permanent, indoor exhibits, including the Pequot Village, a recreation of a 16th Century Pequot settlement before and after contact with Europeans. The movie theater shows The Witness, a 30-minute film about the attack of the Mystic fort by colonists. The "Life on the Reservation," "The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Today," and the "Portrait Gallery" areas discuss life for Pequot citizens in Connecticut today and the state of the Tribe since they secured federal recognition in 1983.

On the museum grounds, a 185-foot glass tower provides a view across the surrounding tribal land. There are walking and hiking trails and a self-guided tour through the 1780's-era Pequot Farmstead that discusses traditional tribal foods and medicines growing in the gardens.

Additionally, the Research Center includes collections, a library, a children's library, archives, and archaeology and conservation laboratories.

Resources:

Mashantucket (Western) Pequot Tribal Nation website
Pequot Museum on Facebook
The Day article from May, 16, 2015, "Pequot Museum Back in Business."
FoxCT article from May 15, 2015, "For the Pequot Museum, doors open again."

Article: "Native America Tribes Embrace Tourism"

A recent Men's Journal article, "Native American Tribes Embrace Tourism," explains how tribes around the country are branching out into the tourism industry to diversify their economies, educate outsiders, and reclaim their public images.

The article specifically mentions two Native-owned tour companies:

Monument Valley Simpson's Trailhandler Tours
Diné (Navajo) tour guides provide a variety of trips (Jeep tours, hiking tours, and photography tours) in the Monument Valley, Utah.

and

NDN2rs
An award-winning ethical travel company offering tours in the Great Plains and the Southwest (South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Arizona, Utah, Alaska) with a vast array of types of tours at various price points.

Tantaquidgeon Museum

Name: Tantaquidgeon Museum
Tribe: Mohegan
Location: 1819 Norwich-New London Turnpike, Uncasville, CT 06382
Type: Museum, Replica Village, Historic Building
Visiting Info: Open April - November, Tues - Friday: 10am - 3pm; Admission is free.
Contact: Website, telephone (860) 848-0594

"It's hard to hate someone who you know a lot about." - motto of Gladys and Harold Tantaquidgeon.

The Tantaquidgeon Museum is the oldest Native-owned and operated museum in the United States. It was founded in 1931 by Gladys, Harold, and John Tantaquidgeon, descendants of the famed chief Uncas of the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut.

The Tantaquidgeons were leaders within their tribe, and Gladys in particular was raised from an early age to be a tribal herbalist and culture-keeper. She later became an anthropologist, social worker, author, educator, and Native arts and culture advocate. As her bio on the Mohegan tribal website shows, she was inspiring and influential, both as a woman and a Native American, both within her tribe and the US federal government.

Father and brother Harold built the little stone original museum that was begun in 1930 and completed and opened in 1931. The purpose of this little stone room was to house our collection of various artifacts that had been made and used by our people and were scattered about our living quarters here and there so that not only our own people could enjoy them but others as well. Father was disabled at the time, and he had to use a cane, and he was blind in one eye. But according to what my brother said, I guess he handled every one of the granite fieldstones used in the construction of that building. When it was finally completed members of the community and other Mohegans brought in things to put on display. From the beginning, Tantaquidgeon Museum was to be the place where we keep Mohegan treasures. - Gladys Tantaquidgeon (quoted from the Mohegan Tribe website bio)

Today, the museum houses the tribe's collection of Mohegan art and artifacts as well as Gladys' collection of artifacts from the other tribes she worked with around the country over the course of her career. There is also a small village with Mohegan longhouse and roundhouse replicas outside behind the main museum building. Admission is free.

Visitors may also want to see the Mohegan Congregationalist Church just down Church Lane past the museum. Built in 1831 on Mohegan land and renovated from 1997-2002 by the tribe, the church still functions as an active Congregationalist community as well as a tribal gathering place. Services are held every Sunday morning at 9:30 am.

Resources:

Mohegan Tribe website
Tantaquidgeon Museum on Facebook
Tantaquidgeon Museum on Twitter
Wikipedia bio of Gladys Tantaquidgeon
New York Times 2005 obituary of Gladys Tantaquidgeon

Chickasaw Cultural Center

Kochcha' Aabiniili' Amphitheater
(photo from CCC website)

Name: Chickasaw Cultural Center
Tribe: Chickasaw
Location: 867 Cooper Memorial Drive, Sulphur, Oklahoma, 73086
Type: Cultural heritage, art, and event center, traditional food, research archive
Visiting Info: Open year-round; Admission $2-$10, separate theater/combo tickets, free entry to campus shops and gardens
Contact: Website, telephone 580-622-7130

The award-winning Chickasaw Cultural Center opened in 2010 as one of the largest Native American cultural heritage destinations in the country. The 109-acre campus includes gardens, an amphitheater, an exhibit center, a replica tribal village, a movie theater, a café serving traditional cuisine, and a archival research facility. The Center is located a short distance off I-35 in between Oklahoma City and Dallas, so it's a convenient stopover for people who are just travelling through.

The extensive outdoor space includes the Aaholiitobli' Honor Garden, the Kochcha' Aabiniili' amphitheater for cultural events, the Aba' Aanowa' Sky Pavilion, a replica traditional village which hosts cultural and crafts exhibitions, and the Spiral Garden with its presentation of the Three Sisters crops: corn, beans, and squash.

The Aapisa' Art Gallery in the Welcome Center and the Aaittafama' Room next to the Chikasha Poya Exhibits feature revolving collections of Chickasaw art and crafts. As of this post, there is currently a dugout canoe exhibit with an upcoming display of 1700's Beadwork of Southeastern Tribes.

The Chikasha Poya Exhibit Center consists of a variety of interactive historical and cultural presentations. There is an introductory film in a replica council house, a presentation on tribal spirituality, the Removal Corridor experience, and a multimedia stomp dance display.

Next to the 350-seat Anoli' Theater, the Aaimpe' Café offers traditional Chickasaw cuisine, such as pishofa and grape dumplings, as well as typical museum café fare for the unadventurous. There are also two gift shops on the campus.

And if your interests run to the more academic side, the Holisso Center for the Study of Chickasaw History and Culture is a beautiful research library and archive of materials about the Chickasaw tribe and other native tribes from the American Southeast. Genealogical and research help is available by appointment (email archives@chickasaw.net), and Holisso provides some online resource catalogs.

There are tons of ongoing events, workshops, films, demonstrations, celebrations, etc. Check the calendar before you go! There seems to be something for everyone no matter what your interests at the Chickasaw Cultural Center.



Resources:
The Chickasaw Nation
Adventure Road Project
The Chickasaw Nation Video Network
Chickasaw Country

Article: "Horse Capture: 'Native People Have a Story to Tell - Their Own'

I wanted to share this article by Joe Horse Capture from Indian Country Today, "Horse Capture: 'Native People Have a Story to Tell - Their Own'," because it talks about the relationship between mainstream museums and indigenous nations when it comes to exhibiting tribal cultural materials and art.

Whenever I'm looking at Native artifacts or art in a non-tribally-owned museum, I try to think about how the objects are displayed and described. Is there evidence that the tribe is partnering with the museum or that other Native representatives have been consulted about the collection? Does the museum publicize their efforts to return sacred items to tribes under NAGPRA (the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act)? Does the museum describe Native people as figures of a distant, almost mythological, past or dehumanize them as part of the physical landscape which you might see in some natural history museums? Do they acknowledge that some "art" is actually sacred or that some pieces have a problematic history of having been "collected" without permission?

As this article illustrates, the educational resources for children often reduce Native cultures down to damaging stereotypes. In simplifying exhibits for children, uninformed program designers working without tribal partners can teach kids misleading ideas about Native people.

The article states:

"These “educational” tools do nothing to promote accurate and respectful information about plains Indian art and culture. I believe they do more harm than good by enforcing negative stereotypes and creating an environment where non-Native children are encouraged to play Native American."

The importance of creating actual partnerships when designing exhibits and curating collections can't be overstated. Awareness of these sensitive issues is important for museum visitors as well as museum staff.

"I believe that, if the exhibition organizers had developed a real and meaningful partnership with a Native individual or community, many of these issues with the exhibition and its associated educational resources would have been avoided."

I was proud to note that two given examples of collaborative work with tribal communities came from the University of Oklahoma, my alma mater. I was also interested to see the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, mentioned for its training program for Native American museum curators. We will have to visit their collections soon.

I've also been looking around online for news articles and information about the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at Harvard University, which is near me and has extensive Native American collections. However, I must admit that when I looked up their website this morning, the first picture at the top was of a child dressed up in a Mayan costume as part of their school programs.

"...non-Native children are encouraged to play Native American," indeed.

Their website does discuss their efforts under NAGPRA, their partnership with the Wampanoag under the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project, and their return of the Kaats' and Brown Bear Totem Pole (Kaats' Xóots Kooteeya) to the Cape Fox Corporation on behalf of the Saanya Kwaan Teikweidi Clan of the Tlingit tribe. They then commissioned a Tlingit artist to carve a new piece for the museum out of the cedar tree given by the tribe in thanks.

These efforts are strong steps in the right direction, but it sounds like they, like most mainstream museums in America, still have a long way to go.

Aquinnah Cultural Trail and Aquinnah Cultural Center

Name: Aquinnah Cultural Trail, including the Aquinnah Cultural Center
Tribe: Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)
Location: Martha's Vineyard (Noepe), Aquinnah Cultural Center: 35 Aquinnah Circle, Aquinnah, Massachusetts, 02535
Visiting Info: Aquinnah Cultural Center is open Wed., Fri., Sat., 11 am - 4 pm, Admission $3-$5.
Contact: Website, telephone 508-645-7900

When most people think of Martha's Vineyard, they imagine rich people in boat shoes and khaki pants embroidered with whales eating lobster dinners by the sea. But the Wampanoag people who live on the island they call Noepe have a different experience to offer visitors. The tribe's website lists special places of interest on a self-guided tour around the island called Wampanoag Way: an Aquinnah Cultural Trail.

The Trail's wide variety of destinations range from the Aquinnah Cliffs, which are the home of Moshup the Giant (from Wampanoag oral history) and a sacred place for the tribe and protected National Historic Landmark, to the Gay Head Community Baptist Church which is on the National Registry of Historic Places, to the shipwreck of "The City of Columbus" at Devil's Bridge, to the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, to the tribally-owned Alley's General Store in West Tisbury.

The points of interest provide a picture of the tribe's history on the island, cultivating cranberries and cattle, fishing for herring and eels, and whaling. The website tells the stories of many of the island's place names, such as Tashmoo the swift runner, namesake of Tashmoo's Overlook and Lake, the love story of Katama and Mattakesset, and the tale of Moshup throwing a crab into the sea to make the island of Noman's Land which became the home of the sachem Tequenoman. The Trail also depicts the tribe's interactions with English and American settlers and missionaries over the past four centuries, including their harboring of escaped slaves and Quakers at Vineyard Haven.

The Wampanoag people of Massachusetts belong to two federally recognized tribes (and several other state-recognized bands and tribes): the Mashpee Wampanoag on the Cape Cod mainland and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on the island.

Gay Head was the name of the town on the southwest end of Martha's Vineyard until 1997 when the community there, which is home to most of the tribe, voted to change it to its traditional name of Aquinnah. The two place names continue to overlap, although it seems like Aquinnah is slowly taking over.

One of the stops on the Trail is the Aquinnah Cultural Center. The Center is located on the Aquinnah Cliffs in the Edwin Vanderhoop homestead, which was built in the 1890's and restored in 2006. The Center offers tours of the home and its collections. They also host cultural events through the summer months (June-August), including the Annual Feast and Fundraiser and a yearly Native American Artisan's Festival. The Aquinnah Lighthouse is nearby, and the Cultural Center offers a combo admission price.

Transportation to the island and around it is a challenge and the accommodations are expensive, especially in the summer. Ferries carry passengers and cars to the island year-round from several ports up the New England coast, but bringing your own car is pricey and there are fewer tickets. The ferries land on the northeast side of the island, away from Aquinnah, but there is a bus service around the island, taxis, and car and bike rentals. If you go in summer, you will need to get a rental reservation early as they book up fast.

Resources:
Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah
Aquinnah Cultural Center on Facebook
Gonomad.com article from 2010, "Martha's Vineyard: Homeland of the Wampanoags"
Boston Globe article from June 21, 2014, "The List: Native American-owned businesses on Martha's Vineyard."
Martha's Vineyard Magazine article from July 1, 2013, "Cultural Outpost" (list of native-owned businesses)

Old Indian Meeting House

Name: Old Indian Meeting House or Old Indian Church
Tribe: Mashpee Wampanoag
Location: 410 Meetinghouse Road, Mashpee, Massachusetts, 02649
Type: Historic Building, National Register of Historic Places
Visiting Info: By appointment or seasonal events
Contact: Website, telephone 508-477-0208 x101

A postcard photo of the Church from 1905

Originally built in 1684 on the site of an even older Mashpee church, the Old Indian Meeting House is the oldest Native American church in the Eastern US and the oldest church on Cape Cod. The Mashpee Revolt led by minister William Apess occurred here in 1833. Even though it is a reminder of the complicated relationship between Native tribes and Christianity, it has functioned as a church, a gathering place, a school, and a burying ground for the tribe for more than 300 years.

The Meetinghouse is open for annual events such as Native New Year (May), Ancestor's Day (September), and Native American Thanks Giving (November), hosted by the Old Indian Meeting House Committee of the Mashpee tribe.



Resources:
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe
Wikipedia article, "Old Indian Meeting House"
Mashpee Enterprise news article from Dec. 2009, "Mashpee Old Indian Meetinghouse Reopened"
Restoration photos at Keenan + Kenny Architects, Ltd., webpage
Cape Cod Times news article from Dec. 2009, "Mashpee tribe reopens meetinghouse"