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.
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.)
