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.
-That mask should not be on a billboard for our people. It shouldn't be on display outside at all. That is a *sgili* mask, or "booger mask" if you use the common translation. It symbolizes an evil spirit that spreads disease and conflict, and is worn one day a year in an apotropaic ritual.
(In the ritual, the *sgili*, played by dancers, are invited to symbolically feast with us, where they dance drunkenly and lasciviously, and then depart, taking their evil influences with them.)
Putting it on a sign is asking for touble.
I don't know if this is happening to you too, but on web nothing else can be shown below this post. It just says "Continue this thread..." and jumps up to the top when you click it.
By the by, here's the mock-up of the sign they did, which... it shouldn't have the *sgili* mask, but it'd have been a lot better! It even has the sign written in syllabary, which is always good!
But you'll notice the sign that *is* only has a passing resemblance to the sign that was approved, which can mean one of two things:
1) Shana Bushyhead was so incompetent that she didn't understand that approvals are pretty strict.
2) This version of the sign was a Trojan horse.
That feels (especially the whole spraypaint bit) like something you'd slap up to highlight the transition, not as a permanent thing.
Are the colours particularly significant?
Now that part of the design I don't object to. It's trying to convey the name-change, right? Like, it's spray-painting "people" over "Indian". I think it's supposed to be a challenge to the othering nature of the term "Indian".
That's what every traditional person said to Luke Swimmer's stupid fucking design, but no, it's "hip" and "urban" and "rebellious", so up it went until the Tribal Council made them take it down. And now Shana and Luke are crying censorship.
Oh, it's something alright. Always love it when someone decides "Oh yeah, let's make it look like the sign was vandalized!"
Which, by the way, is what most of the people on that street thought happened! They called into the museum and tribal police about it!
I understand what they're trying to do with the sprayed "people" but combined with the evil mask and the disrespect to the deity it's a whole mess, wow
It's just... Luke Swimmer, who made it, is someone who is not very in-touch with being Cherokee. He doesn't really respect traditional ways of thinking, which is fine for his private art! I'm not going to say he's Being Native Wrong! But don't do this shit for a museum!
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!
Even if she did have that, it's not appropriate to hire someone into leadership straight out of graduate school.
I do wonder if Cammie has fundraising connections though.
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)
Yes, there is, their charter could be revoked, their lease to the land revoked, and the whole museum could be placed directly under tribal control. This is being discussed right now in council, despite the fact they just got a grant for facility renovation.
(Honestly, it might be *because* of the lease- they want to move in and make sure it's used to make this museum a museum of Cherokee history and not a place for Bushyhead to show off her collection of Dine blankets.)
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.
