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.
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!
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?
Also, the proposal said nothing about the sign being temporary, it was meant to be a permanent change.
More importantly, the Museum was created to record our history for educational purposes and Shana wants to throw all of that in the bin because something something disruption.
Caught that re: the permanence. Just looks like the thing you'd put up over the real new sign for a month or so.
And I loathe "disruptive" museum mgmt. It's not performance art for the director/curator/board!
Shana Bushyhead's heart is in the right place, in my opinion, but her head is up her ass. If she wanted to run a modern art gallery for Natives she could go across the street and manage the modern art gallery for Natives that exists in the co-op.
