Playing ball with the Washington Indians

Page 18

THE URBANE INDIAN

Surprisingly, Toronto and Washington, D.C. have much in common. Both have muddy, dirty rivers-ours is the Don and theirs the Potomac. Each has its own large phallic symbol looking down benignly over the city-the CN Tower and the Washington Monument. (Ours is bigger, not that it matters, I'm told.)

But Washington has something we don't have. It now has a museum dedicated to Indigenous people.

On Sept. 21, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian opened with a bang and I was there. Thousands of people from several dozen nations or tribes and assorted Aboriginal organizations across Turtle Island participated in the grand entry that took at least two hours to make its way to the stage. Tens of thousands of spectators looked on.

The museum building itself has several Canadian connections. Its original design was by world-renown architect Douglas Cardinal.

The building's distinctive rounded, smooth surface will remind anybody of the Cardinal-designed Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.

Cardinal and the Smithsonian parted ways just before construction. Another architectural firm was hired to complete the work based on his design. But bad blood still exists between the two parties, and Cardinal was not at the opening to bask in the glory.

A week or so before the opening, e-mails were flying talking about a possible boycott of the museum opening for the disrespect shown to Cardinal. Calls for letters of protest were heard, but apparently went unheeded.

Then there was the leaflet handed out at the celebration by the Minneapolis American Indian Movement. AIMsters dissed the museum for failing to display the "sordid and tragic history of America's holocaust against Native nations" and suggested renaming it the National Holocaust Museum.

It's no secret that Native people have a strained relationship with museums. They're sometimes perceived as a mortuary for our ancestors, and there was some concern about how this particular one would operate. But it seems the mandate here is quite different. Most of the curators are Native and the focus seems to be on today's First Nations, not hundred-year-old totem poles and boxes of bones.

But perhaps one of the best things that I witnessed during the celebration was something that happened in a place where very few of the guests to the opening got to go. An ancient, or some would say contemporary, event known as a 49er spontaneously erupted one evening in one of the conference rooms. You can't have a powwow without having a 49er after the sun goes down. And it seems you can't have a museum opening without one either.

At this one, an Iroquois water drum group sang followed by other folk from the four directions. It was the kind of magic that can't be planned for.

On my final day in Washington, I was invited to the Canadian Embassy for a wine and cheese party celebrating the opening of a Native art show. But more than rose and dairy products got served here. We were offered lovely "Canadian" munchies of caribou and musk ox tenderloin.

At the meet-and-mingle, I heard a Canadian joke told by an American: A seal pup walks into a bar. He looks at the drink menu trying to decide. The bartender gets a little frustrated and says to the seal pup, "Hey, what do you want to drink?" The seal pup puts the drink menu down and says, "Anything but a Canadian Club."

As the night drew to a close and we were all leaving the embassy, I noticed a group of people hanging around the front of the building in front of a circular, concrete structure with a unique echoing effect. One of the noted Native artists being honored, Ahmoo Angeconeb, took out his hand drum and began to sing. One by one, two dozen or more started to dance around him, holding hands, feet moving side by side, bellies stuffed with blueberry bannock and musk ox tenderloin. Eventually the song ended, as all songs must, and we all went home with the warm and fuzzies.