Okay, actually I'm going to yell about this online on behalf of my cousins: our museum is a fucking clown show right now.
The Museum of the Cherokee People (formerly Museum of the Cherokee Indian) is a privately-run organization indirectly managed by the tribe in accordance with a charter.
It'd be nice if we just ran our museum instead of having it be run indirectly with an oversight committee consisting of five elders, all of whom have beeves with the other four.
The charter empowers the museum to use tribal artifacts and other resources to produce exhibits that are meant to educate both members of the tribe and tourists about the history and traditional culture of the Cherokee people for the purposes of cultural preservation.
All of this is news to the museum's head, a White woman without any background in Native history or culture who was hired against Tribal policy, who instead believes that the museum should be an art gallery for modern Cherokee artists, ignoring that already exists across the street in the co-op.
The museum's historical exhibits were last updated before fucking 9/11. We still have a video illustrating one of our myths (the invention of pottery to capture fire) with god-awful 90's CG graphics. The whole place is moldy and busted-looking as fuck.
It looks *so* bad, in fact, that they've closed down the vast majority of the actual museum "for renovation" (out of shame), with no planned re-opening. Oh, but you can come and see modern pottery, some of which were even made by Cherokee people!
But the worst part- the *very* worst part- is the goddamn fucking sign.
Here's the old sign- it's simple and direct. You might bitch about red-and-gold being very stereotypical colors to associate with Natives, but it's inoffensive and it has Grandmother Spider (an important deity) on it.
Here's the new sign, that was briefly up before the Tribal Council ordered it taken down as an eyesore. Most people won't understand why this sign is bad so I will explain it:
-We are crossing out the eyes of Grandmother Spider like she's fucking *dead*? Really? It's insulting.
I would certainly believe it about the collections manager who, uh, got her MA in Art History last year and I would say probably doesn't belong in leadership in a major institution that seems unrelated to her background.
No, she's Native, we're talking about Cammie Bello, Manager of Collections and white as the driven snow, who cut ahead of *five* different Cherokee people because she's Shana's friend.
Like, if she already had a Masters in Native studies, I'd bite my tongue and live with it, but she's a fucking *Art Historian*! Not what the museum is for no matter what Shana says!
this has become such a common thing in arts nonprofits you could make this a template.
board decides they want to hire someone to shake things up who could care less about the organization’s core purpose (or, worse, actively despises it)
No background in Native history, hired against Tribal policy…
Wonder if this is a case of being made in charge of someplace where they can’t do anything damaging due to incompetence.
The thing is that they have already done damage. A lot of damage, both to their prestige as the old museum on Natives *by* Natives and to the actual purpose of the museum. They are sticking all the old exhibits into mothballs and getting rid of them!
They've basically said they don't want to talk about anything older than the mid-20th century, just reducing us to who we are as a colonized people! It's totally against the charter!
is there a system to... recall the museum? I gather you said that it's legally independent of the tribe, but presumably there's some kind of system to address this sort of issue like with a typical corporation? (not trying to 'splain your government to you, I just read about corporate boards a lot)
The assumption being that this doesn’t count as damage to who ever made her in charge against Tribal Policy.
I wanted to say Nepotism hire originally, but that would have definitely come up in your posts about this person it was the case.
Kind of a nepo hire, from what I understand the director and her (she's the Head of Collections) had a mentor-mentee relationship when she was doing her BA.
