Native tradition

Christian Century, March 22, 2005 by Carolyn Piper, Philip Jenkins

I WAS appalled at Philip Jenkins's response to the National Museum of the American Indian ("The antimuseum," Feb. 8). Though he acknowledges the need to realize that this is not a museum in the Western European tradition, he manages to be very critical of the Native American approach. His is not a critique but rather a denigration not just of the museum, but of much of the Native American's approach to life. Jenkins's comparison of the introduction of Christianity to the native people with missionary movements on other continents misses the experience of this people: Christianity came as part of the conquest of the land. The museum is a celebration--a statement that after all that has happened to us, we were not eradicated, we survived. Finally, we are regaining our sense of self as a people and able to celebrate our being.

Many museums tell the American Indians' story. Here is a place that offers another approach--the experience of a people, not just facts about them. I hope Jenkins visits again with a different attitude: What is the Native American Indian trying to tell me?

Carolyn Piper

Worthington, Ohio

Philip Jenkins replies:

It is exactly because I know that the Native American story deserves and demands to be told that I complained as I did about the National Museum, which, for all its good intentions, does a poor job of making its incredible materials accessible to the people who need to hear the story. Related to that issue, the highly impressionistic and postmodern model that guides the museum is a precise manifestation of the Western and Euro-American approach of which Carolyn Piper complains. Native history and culture should indeed be celebrated, but properly, intelligibly and accessibly.