West refuses to live in the past: W. Richard West wants the National Museum of the American Indian to be rich in history while celebrating the continuance of contemporary native communities

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 26, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

A: An institution like ours considers itself as a husbander of our cultural patrimony and an assembler of the wonderful material culture of native peoples. But it is also an international institution of living cultures. It anticipates a future for native peoples and native communities, not just a past. Looking at an institution that way brings us an obligation to try to support contemporary native communities in ways that allow them to continue as distinctive cultural entities in the fabric of society. We can do this in various ways. We've done it, for example, through repatriation, where certain objects that are central for their contemporary ceremonial and religious practice have been returned to native peoples. This includes the reburial of human remains [that had been held as specimens in museums].

But there are lots of things we haven't done yet. My guess is that only a tiny fraction of those people who are indigenous to this hemisphere will ever set foot in the National Museum of the American Indian. I've felt we need to take this museum to them. We're in the process of constructing an electronic database of images of every single object in our collection and associated photographic and textual information.

In five to 10 years, and probably closer to five, there will be an electronic database that can be accessed in real time on an interactive basis by native schools, native cultural centers and all kinds of native entities that sit out there in contemporary native communities, remote from Washington.

Q: So you're not a museum of cultures frozen in the past but a museum that's part of vital, very-much-alive cultures in which the museum will participate?

A: If I had a nickel for every time we've been told by a native community with whom we have consulted over the course of the history of this institution to please make sure people understand that we are a contemporary cultural phenomena, not just historical relics, I'd be a very, very rich man! And of course the National Museum of the American Indian has a compelling obligation to a greater nonnative public to explain this slice of American life. We're here and we will continue to be here for a long time, we think.

Q: American Indians once were called "the vanishing American" but you're not vanishing at all.

A: I think native people feel very strongly about that. Many of our problems have come from the fact that we either were invisible or were made to seem invisible. And this emergence, this visibility that we now have, is really very critical to us.

Personal Bio

W. Richard West: The Southern Cheyenne chief and advocate of indigenous Americans.

Currently: Director, National Museum of the American Indian.

Born: San Bernardino, Calif., Jan. 6, 1943; grew up in Muskogee, Okla.

Family: Wife, Mary Beth; two children, Amy and Ben.

Education: B.A. in American history, magna cum laude, University of Redlands in California; M.A. in American history, Harvard University. Doctor of Jurisprudence, Stanford University School of Law, where he was an officer of the Stanford Law Review and won the Hilmer Oehlmann Jr. Prize for excellence in legal writing.