Repatriation of museum holdings controversial

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It's said that the shortest distance between two people is a story. When Gerald McMaster spoke in Toronto on March 17, he was the last speaker for this season's distinguished speakers series, organized by the department of Aboriginal studies at the University of Toronto. McMaster, a Plains Cree from the Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan, is an artist, but he was in Toronto to speak about his work in museums.

He is now the deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, one of the Smithsonian Institution's museums in Washington, D.C. He looks after all its permanent exhibitions. The museum occupies two floors in the U.S. Customs House in New York City, two blocks from the infamous trade centre bombing of 2001.

On Sept. 21, the National Museum of the American Indian will move to its new site at the Washington Mall. A collection of 800,000 objects is being shipped now from the Bronx to Maryland, at a rate of about 1,000 pieces per week.

McMaster is excited about the move. Thirty years ago, he recalls he was "looking at old slides," but now the young people who are involved in the move can see the original works.

One of the stories McMaster told was about Ishi, the last Yahi Indian in California. An anthropologist, Arthur Kroeber, put him on display, taking him to anthropology museums in different parts of the world. Being an object while one is still alive is something Native Americans will recognize, and it is something that McMaster has worked to change.

McMaster said, "Native artists have always been the ones to put themselves in the battle for rights." Motivated by their dislike of the way Native people were represented in museums, activist artists such as Rebecca Belmore, James Luna, and Joanne Cardinal Schubert, who "shake people up and make them realize the world must change," were responsible for museums changing their approach.

He said the notion of "voice" comes from the artist, and it is important for museums. When exhibits are mounted, they have a particular focus. Until recently, native communities did not have much say in this focus.

"The Native American has traditionally been represented in the past and as part of nature," McMaster said.

But the native voice is now being heard. "We go directly to the tribal governments," he stated, and into the Native communities to hear their viewpoints and learn their perspectives. Community members visit Washington to look at the collections. Some people have never been to a museum before. Tribes from the Amazon have gone to the Smithsonian to give advice on exhibits. He added, "It's a learning process on both sides." The museum staff learns how to handle the objects (for example, female staff can't touch some objects). "It's got to face east" was the advice Gerald got when he asked how one exhibition should be set up.

Why are museums important? And why for Aboriginal people? McMaster was asked if spaces are places for negotiating identity, why Aboriginal people would want to negotiate space in what many see as still a colonial space. He said they have been struggling in these spaces-reservations and urban spaces. Artists want to be in the galleries in large cities, and Native artists are coming to terms with museums and galleries as exhibit space, at the same time as they try to look back to the communities, negotiating space in tribal communities. It is a struggle to be on display, but this promotes recognition of the differences in tribes. "Find out just who we are" is how he put it.

McMaster sees artifacts from his tribe all over the world. "It's all in museums." He spoke about a hot issue, repatriation, which may involve sacred or spiritual objects or human remains. One thing the new museum will not house is human remains. (In cases where the remains can't be returned, they will be housed in another Smithsonian building.) According to laws passed during former president Clinton's administration, ll human remains have to be returned. But there is no tradition in Indian communities to handle these situations, and some tribes do not want to have anything to do with an object that has been offered for repatriation.

The National Museum of the American Indian gets several million visitors a year. In Ontario, community museums welcomed almost three million visitors in 2002. The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, will soon open a new section on contemporary Native artists. And on June 21, National Aboriginal Day, the National Gallery in Ottawa will open a wing in the Canadian Galleries dedicated to Native art, which is "the first and true Canadian art."