Book Review: Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices
Karen Coody Cooper’s recent book, Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices, is an impressive survey of events and actions which have caused change in museums by the vehicle of protestation. Cooper sees the main theme of Spirited Encounters to be the struggle between “two great warriors”, or “titans”,[1] which she identifies as the museum and Native American people. Cooper anticipates that by engaging in the process of battle, these two entities will be positively transformed.[2] Cooper’s book is also about the dichotomy between positive change and the agent of protest; it is simultaneously about two warring entities and about the “partnerships, growth, dynamics and evolution” that occur between them.[3]
The title for the volume derives from two monumental events discussed in the text— two past exhibits which garnered considerable protest from the Native American community, The Spirit Sings and First Encounters. Cleverly combining words from these two exhibits, Cooper alludes to her subject matter, as she notes that “the term “spirited encounters” captures the energetic battles waged by indigenous protestors who have been determined to force museums to recognize and redress long-held institutional biases regarding Native life and history.”[4]
Spirited Encounters was published in 2008 by Alta Mira Press, and contains four parts— each with a brief introduction and containing multiple chapters, in addition to a preface, introduction and conclusion. The text was written solely by author Karen Coody Cooper who, at the time the book went to press, was the museum training program coordinator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. She is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
Cooper states that “the purpose of this study is to identify and explore the role American Indians have played in changing museums through protests.”[5] Cooper not only discusses how Native Americans have protested museums and government-owned sites and parks, but she also gives the reader a brief introduction to the history behind Native American activism. She states that it wasn’t until the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement that the United States was forced to take into consideration the minority point of view, and she links this directly to change in museums.[6]
Cooper claims that, prior to the Civil Rights Movement, curators and museum personnel assumed that they had an autonomous right to knowledge about the objects that their institutions held.[7] As Native Americans were (and many would agree still are) alienated from museums, institutional control of the objects as well as the telling of Native American caused a variety of unacceptable consequences. By not reaching out to the Native American community to create civic dialogue, museums were inexorably wrong in how they related information about Native Americans. This caused considerable frustration within the Native American community, as it perpetuated stereotypes.[8] Cooper concludes her preface by explaining that museums have arrived at:
realizations that they must talk to those whose materials they hold, that they must let cultural voices be heard in exhibitions and in public programs, and that they must consider who really owns museum collections, that objects are living rather than inert (and must be treated accordingly), that inaccuracies hurt the teller’s reputation, harm Native communities, and shortchange visitors, that power has shifted and institutional policies must adapt. We face an exciting era of change in museums because of the work and sacrifices of hundreds of Native people who would not be still, who would not be quiet. It is their story I strive to reveal in the pages of Spirited Encounters.[9]
Part I of the book, entitled ‘Protesting Exhibitions,’ contains four chapters which deal with the politics and display principles behind museum exhibitions. The second part of the book, ‘The Long Road to Repatriation’, contains two chapters outlining the processes and resulting protests surrounding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Part III, ‘Whose Heroes and Holidays’, presents three chapters which chronicle the considerable battle against culturally offensive events and historical characters such as Christopher Columbus, Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims, and General Custer. Part IV of Spirited Encounters, entitled ‘Claiming Our Own Places’, is comprised of two chapters which consider the concept of the museum, how that concept fits into the schema of traditional Native American practices, as well as the struggle of Native Americans to gain access to mainstream museums as well as museum-like facilities.
As half of the inspiration for the title of the current volume, the first chapter in Part I of Spirited Encounters, ‘Politics and Sponsorship of The Spirit Sings’, considers the protest waged by Native Americans against the exhibit organized by the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, to coincide with the 1988 Winter Olympics. As a reader, I believe this is one of the most effective chapters in the volume. The exhibit, entitled The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples, was originally slated to show 650 artifacts, some that had never been displayed before the public.[10] Interestingly, the protest did not center on the contents of the exhibit, but instead the sponsorship of Shell Oil Canada Limited which had been drilling on contested land.
After an in-depth discussion of the protest, including events that occurred in the planning-stage of the exhibit, as well as after the exhibit opened, Cooper concludes that increased dialogue occurred as a result of the protest, which was an improvement in the relationship of Canadian museums and the Native American community.[11] And she concludes that ultimately the Glenbow Museum was irrevocably affected by the experience, and has changed for the better.[12]
I also believe that Chapter 7 of the book, which outlines the events surrounding the mammoth traveling exhibit, First Encounters, and was the other half of the inspiration for the title, was one of the more effective chapters in the volume. The exhibit was designed to celebrate the quincentenary of Columbus’ voyage to the Americas. Unlike the picture many U.S. children are taught in school of the heroic adventurer, Columbus represents to Native Americans “all that has been lost, of untold suffering, and of all that should be protested.”[13]
Cooper describes the general protest agenda of Native Americans at each location that First Encounters traveled to between 1989 and 1992, as well as how each host institution decided to react to such protests. Cooper then describes in detail the events that occurred at the Science Museum of Minnesota where Native American activist Vernon Bellecourt threw a pint of his own blood on the sail of a replica of the Niña installed in the exhibit. Science Museum staff had been proactive to attempt to quell protestations by creating a counter-exhibit to First Encounters. Bellecourt, however, was not dissuaded.
A conference was held in 1993 at the Science Museum of Minnesota which addressed how Native Americans were portrayed in museums; Cooper states that this is one of the achievements that came out of the protests of First Encounters. [14] The museum filmed the resulting dialogue, and produced a documentary which was released in 1997. Cooper believes that the protest of First Encounters was a catalyst for this conference, and that it also inspired other museums to undertake similar civic activities.[15]
In the conclusion of Spirited Encounters, Cooper not only reviews the individual subjects and events that she presented in the book, but she also offers monumental evidence that the two warring entities named early in the text (museums and Native Americans) have started to come to some understanding of each other, as the situation has improved. She assesses the relationships and interactions between the museum and Native American peoples, and although positive actions have taken place, Cooper leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind that there is still much to be done.
Cooper lists as some of the “achievements gained by protests” as: an increasing number of Native American personnel in museums, especially in high positions of governance, “increased sensitivity found in modern exhibitions,”[16] as well as museum policies. She also asserts that repatriation laws, such as NAGPRA, would not have come to fruition if Native American concerns were not made public by protests.[17]
Cooper does concede that “although protests are not pleasant, they have their place in the scheme of progress.”[18] As the situation continues to gain credence and support, Cooper concludes that museums of the future will only be protested if they revert to archaic operations which do not include the perspective of the Native American community, and she does believe that museums today are becoming “responsive and responsible.”[19]
Conclusions
Considering the subject matter of Spirited Encounters, there was the possibility for the book to be viewed negatively by the museum community, as the opposing “warrior” to the Native American community. Although Cooper clearly sides with the Native American community in the battle she describes in the text, she does so with limited bias. Choosing to refrain from consistent usage of “us vs. them” language, Cooper is able to present a straightforward account of contentious events and situations. The result is a valuable resource, where the academic importance of the information is equally as significant as the cultural and humanistic messages it presents.
Spirited Encounters is a tour de force, and I highly recommend it. Spirited Encounters should not only be on the bookshelf of every museum professional, student, trustee, board member and volunteer, but, too, if you will forgive me a moment of idealism, on the bookshelf of every American. I applaud Karen Coody Cooper for not being still, and not being quiet.
Erin Peters
M.A. Program, Museum Professions, Seton Hall University
[1] Karen Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices, Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press, 2008, xi.