[env-trinity] Chron-State's tribes play big role in museum Building to open on National Mall

[Tom Stokely]

State's tribes play big role in museum 
Building to open on National Mall 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/16/MNG0T8PNMR1.DTL 

- Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau 
Thursday, September 16, 2004 

Washington -- These are the headiest of days for the Hupas of Humboldt 
County and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in Palm Springs and 
the 107 other federally recognized Indian groups in California. 

The Smithsonian Institution opens its 18th museum Tuesday, the $219 
million, 250,000-square-foot National Museum of the American Indian, 
kicking things off with a procession of Native Americans in tribal garb 
followed by a six-day First Americans Festival along the National Mall just 
west of the U.S. Capitol. 

The Agua Caliente Band and the Hupas will play major roles in the new 
museum, whose curved shape and craggy exterior of Kasota dolomitic 
limestone from Minnesota stand in sharp contrast to the gray granite Greek 
temples along the National Mall. 

"It's an historic, once-in-a-lifetime event,'' said Richard Milanovich, 
chairman of the Agua Caliente tribe, a band that owns two thriving casinos, a 
bank and a stake in a hotel and contributed $500,000 to help build the 
museum. "For Indians in particular, it will bring out the self-esteem that's 
been lacking in not being represented in such a place as the National Mall,'' 
added Milanovich, whose ancestry is part Serbian American and part 
American Indian. 

Milanovich, along with about 60 other members of his band and their 
families, is attending the events in Washington this weekend. 

The museum opened Wednesday for a preview intended to show off a place 
created in consultation with Indians from across the Western Hemisphere. 
The discussions allowed the tribes a say about how to tell the world their 
story of an ancient civilization that was almost destroyed by five centuries of 
contact with Europeans but has persevered into the 21st century from Chile 
north to the Arctic Circle. 

"This institution speaks to all of us about cultural memory, remembrance 
and future,'' said W. Richard West Jr., the museum's director, who is also a 
peace chief of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma and a 1971 
Stanford law school graduate who now sits on the university's board of 
trustees. 

Part of the Indians' pride in the museum, which is expected to draw about 4 
million visitors a year, is that tribes and individuals raised $100 million 
privately for its construction. The biggest donors, at $10 million each, were 
three tribes from Connecticut and New York that have thrived in recent 
years running big casinos. Other major donors include the William Randolph 
Hearst Foundation, created by the founder of Hearst Corp., which publishes 
The Chronicle. 

Another $119 million came from Congress. 

West has headed the museum for about 14 years. It was created by Congress 
in 1989 to take over the collection of George Gustave Heye (pronounced 
high), a wealthy New Yorker who more than a century ago started 
assembling a collection of Indian artifacts that eventually grew to an 
estimated 800,000 items. The new museum building occupies the last major 
open space on the 200- acre mall that stretches west from the Capitol to the 
Lincoln Memorial. West also oversees a smaller museum named for Heye in 
lower Manhattan and a storage and research center in Suitland, Md. 

The new museum, which displays about 8,000 items, is physically striking. 
Situated on a 4.5-acre piece of land nearest to the Capitol on the Mall, its 
main entrance is from the east, in keeping with the tradition of many tribes. 
Inside, the first thing visitors encounter is a vast atrium called the Potomac, 
named not for the nearby river but for the source of the river's name, the 
Piscataway word meaning "where the goods are brought in.'' 

The circular Potomac, which will be used for performances of Indian dance 
and music, sets the architectural theme for the entire building, which doesn't 
contain a single straight line. 

Traditional Indian architecture scorned boxes, since the point of buildings 
was to blur the line between the indoors and nature. 

The whole museum evokes American Indians' view of harmony with nature, 
love of the land, and an abiding view of injustice at the hands of governments 
across the hemisphere. It's certainly the only museum in Washington with a 
small garden where corn, tobacco, beans and squash were growing 
Wednesday. 

On the museum's fourth and top floor in the Our Universe section is an 
exhibit on three ceremonial dances of the Hupas -- a healing ceremony, a 
plea for abundant harvests and a rite to ward off misfortune. 

The tribe chose its own curators to design the exhibit and explain the deeper 
meaning to visitors from outside the tribe. 

At the museum's Mitsitam Native Food Cafe, the upcoming opening was 
eagerly awaited by Faye Wright, a Klamath Modoc Indian from Klamath 
Falls, Ore. , who moved across the continent just to work in the museum. 

"I'm thrilled to be here," said Wright, who landed a job as a cashier in the 
restaurant. "This is a very big event for our people. I said I'll do anything to 
work here.'' 

Members of her tribe are coming to Washington for next Tuesday's grand 
procession along the mall. "It's a small tribe,'' she said. "But the Klamaths will 
be here for the parade, and I'll be marching right along with them.'' 

E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein at sfchronicle.com. 
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