NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New Yorkers looking to celebrate Native American Heritage Month don’t need to go any further than Lower Manhattan, where the National Museum of the American Indian features an array of exhibitions that tell the stories of Native Americans, past and present.
The museum is located on the site of Fort Amsterdam, the center of the Dutch settlement in the 1600s and a place of deep significance to the island known as Manahatta by the Lenape, a Native tribe largely forced from New York in the years that followed.
Duane Blue Spruce, the facilities planning coordinator for the museum, told 1010 WINS that the long-term exhibition, “Native New York,” encompasses five centuries and locations across New York—from Long Island and New York City to Niagara Falls—to tell both the history and the contemporary lives of Native people like the Shinnecock and Haudenosaunee, both of whom continue to live on their traditional lands.
“A lot of the research had to do with looking at the New York City and New York State curriculums and seeing where there were omissions or oversights and where there were opportunities for us to tell perhaps a richer story about the Native people from New York,” Blue Spruce said.
He said it’s important to have a place where stories are told through the perspective of Native Americans—from the history of the well known “sale” of Manhattan to the Dutch centuries ago, to the less familiar lives of present-day Mohawk ironworkers in New York State.
“It’s like you wouldn’t have somebody tell your own family story, it’s very similar for us,” he said. “Who knows the story better than the people who lived it and experienced it and continue to live their daily life in the culture today?”
Blue Spruce pointed to the Shinnecock, of Long Island, whose traditions go back hundreds of years and whose traditional objects are featured in the museum, alongside photos of present day Shinnecock people.
“They’re on their traditional homeland, obviously it’s smaller than their original homeland,” Blue Spruce said. “It’s kind of the eastern end of Long Island, which is more well-known for the Hamptons and other things like that. But despite all the development and what Long Island has become, they’ve still been able to maintain their cultural traditions.”
A new exhibition that runs through March 2023, “Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field,” also features the work of three Native American photojournalists: Russel Albert Daniels, Tailyr Irvine and Donovan Quintero.
The exhibition’s curator, Cécile Ganteaume, told 1010 WINS that during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which started in 2016, she became familiar with Native photographers’ work in mainstream publications like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post.
“I was kind of thinking why we’ve never really worked with Native photojournalists, even though we’ve worked with a lot of Native photographers,” Ganteaume said.
By reaching out to some of her contacts, Ganteaume discovered there are many Native photojournalists, and so she pitched the photo essays exhibition to the museum, which welcomed the idea.
The photo essay by Russel Albert Daniels, “The Genízaro Pueblo of Abiquiú,” focuses on New Mexico’s Genízaros community, the descendants of formerly enslaved Native American people who’ve maintained their history and identity over the centuries.
“They are the descendants of Native Americans that the Spanish colonists in the 1600 and 1700s took as slaves, so they have different tribal backgrounds,” Ganteaume said. “The Spanish took them into their communities and gave them Christian names, baptized them, but also forced them into servitude.”
Despite a history born out of violence and slavery, the Genízaros have kept their community intact and lived in the same pueblo for many years, all while keeping the traditions of their ancestors alive.
The photo essay by Tailyr Irvine, “Reservation Mathematics: Navigating Love in Native America,” explores the “enormously complicated” legacy of blood quantum requirements, or the amount of tribal affiliation in a person’s ancestry, as well as the challenges this poses to young Native Americans.
The blood quantum system, which has no scientific basis, was imposed on Native tribes by the U.S. government in the early 1900s as way to define and limit their citizenship. The method is still used by some tribes.
“This notion of blood quantum really impacts their lives, because if they want their child to be enrolled in their own tribe, they have to know what their own blood quantum is, and they have to know what the blood quantum of who they’re dating is, so they can figure out if they can marry this person,” Ganteaume said.
“For example, let’s say there are two members of the same tribe—whose parents and grandparents were also members of that same tribe—they might be said to each be 100% Kiowa or Comanche. If one of them marries somebody outside the tribe, whether that person’s Native, their child would be considered 50% of that tribe,” Ganteaume said. “You end up getting down to very, very small percentages.”
Irvine’s work aims to show how the system impacts a diverse range of Native youth, not just heterosexual couples looking to wed, including LGBTQ people and single people, Ganteaume said.
The photo essay by Donovan Quintero, “The COVID-19 Outbreak in the Navajo Nation,” tells the story of the pandemic’s impact on the everyday lives of the Navajo, or Diné, over the course of a year, as well as the strength of the community during that period.
“[Quintero] told us what he wanted to do was not just cover the impact but cover the resiliency of the Navajo people, because he said when he goes out in the community, he sees both,” Ganteaume said. “He sees the impact, but he also sees the incredible resiliency of folks.”
Asked what can be learned through these photo essays during Native American Heritage Month, Ganteaume said that the images bring largely untold narratives to life.
“A photo essay tells a story through compelling photographs, with a minimum of words, so it’s really the emotive power of the photographs that are going to grip people and draw them into the story,” Ganteaume said. “It’s that imagery where you actually see people dealing with the issues that they have to deal with. And you can read the story on their faces. And that is what is so compelling about these stories—that they’re visual stories.”
The National Museum of the American Indian New York is located at One Bowling Green, across from the Battery in Lower Manhattan. More information can be found at the Smithsonian website.
