Dear Kevin Gover,
As you know, there is a growing interest in Native land acknowledgments in the US.
Here in Washington, members of the DC City Council have begun using them during Council meetings.
My experience in Melbourne, AU over the last 12 years has sensitized me to the public acknowledgment of Indigenous people, since in Melbourne (as I have heard is also being done in Canada), public parks and many public buildings have permanent land acknowledgments at their entrances.
My question here is whether the NMAI in DC has a land acknowledgment for the Anacostans who once walked the land under the museum? Perhaps this already exists and I wasn't thorough enough in my search of online information about the NMAI.
If not, Indigenous Peoples' Day will be Oct 12, 2020, perhaps placing this acknowledgment could be part of the museum events for that day?
As you might recall, I have emailed you previously starting in 2016, when I learned there is a documented Anacostan Native site less than a mile from the NMAI, asking why visitors to the museum aren't being told about it. In 2018, I emailed again to ask about a possible real or online exhibit to tell the history of the Anacostans in Washington, DC. In other emails with your staff I have offered the contents of the Once As It Was Map of DC for use on the NMAI website at no charge.
As you know, there is great concern in the Native American and African American communities about the erasure of their history. A Native land acknowledgment in the NMAI would be a giant step in focusing attention on the Native Americans who once occupied the land that is now Washington, DC.
Sincerely yours,
Armand Lione, Ph.D.
Director, DC Native History Project
202.487.7092
Here are some excerpts from a 8/6/20 email response from the NMAI:
ReplyDelete"Thank you for your letter to the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum does have a land acknowledgement statement. Before public events and other important gatherings hosted by the museum in Washington, DC and New York City, a speaker offers this acknowledgment on behalf of everyone present:
“We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.”
...The museum’s acknowledgment is intended to recognize the Indigenous peoples who have lived where we now work over the long span of human history and the large contemporary Native population that lives in the Washington area and New York City today."
Comment:
Their acknowledgment is generic enough to be meaningless. The absence of details promotes the erasure of Native history. The NMAI website once had an excellent PDF "Manahatta to Manhattan," telling the story of the first people of NYC. They removed it from their website. Fortunately, the PDF is still available online (see link below). Instead of adding an additional article for the history of the Natives of DC, they reduced what they told. Their unwillingness to tell the stories of the Native peoples of DC bewilders me!
https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/indianed/tribalsovereignty/elementary/uselementary/uselementary-unit1/level2-materials/manahatta_to_manhattan.pdf