The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures.

• Author: Gomez, Saul Acosta
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

THE CHANGING PRESENTATION OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: MUSEUMS AND NATIVE CULTURES W. Richard West, Jr. (Washington DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2004), 119 pages.

The Changing Presentation of the American Indian is a collection of selected papers presented at the 1995 symposium held at the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center (NMAI), in New York City. The subject of that day and of this book is a critique of representations of American Indians and American Indian culture in North American museums, and an analysis of alternative models that incorporate the American Indian point of view in organizing exhibits. The papers are written by both American Indian and non-American Indian museum professionals, all of whom agree that for too long, the American Indian perspective has been disregarded.

David W. Penney's paper on American Indian art exhibitions, for example, points out that the majority of such exhibitions are disconnected from the realities of modern American Indian life, emphasizing the past over present culture and trivializing sacred objects by categorizing them as "sculpture" or "painting." According to another contributor, James D. Nason, by ignoring the reality of a continuing American Indian presence, museums convey the message that "real Indians" no longer exist and that the "real Indians" are "interesting only as an extinguished footnote or as obstacles that had to be removed" for the sake of...