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Back to the Future at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture With Steve Cantrell

INTERVIEW

Della Warrior arrived at the Museum of Indian Arts and

Culture (MIAC) in July 2013 after serving as president

of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), director

of Indian Education for the Albuquerque Public Schools, and

the first female chairperson of her Otoe-Missouria Tribe in

Oklahoma. Contributing Editor Steve Cantrell asked her about

her plans for the future of the museum.

Cantrell: Della, when you took this position you must have had some immediate visions and some ideas for the long term. What were some of the more immediate needs that you’ve addressed, where are you now, and where is your vision headed?Warrior: My life’s work has focused on trying to bring about

positive change for Native people. I’ve worked primarily with

schools, tribal governments, and a little with museums. Initially,

my vision was to help build partnerships and collaborations

with tribal museums and Native communities as well as with

schools serving not only Native students but all students, to

help them better understand and appreciate Native history,

arts, and culture.

[When I arrived] there hadn’t been a director for almost

a year, so we needed to focus on developing goals for the

future. I first met each staff member individually to hear their

recommendations. One of the things that came out of my

meetings with staff, and also with our volunteers, friends, and

some of our long-time supporters, is that this is a fabulous

museum with an amazing collection. We’ve just about finished

our strategic plan for the next five years, from 2015 to 2020,

and have our exhibits planned for the next four years.

Cantrell: Have you had any “Oh wow, what have I gotten myself into?” moments?Warrior: Oh, of course! And I have all these great ideas

for exhibitions that I’d like to see. One of those is [an

exhibition] where the general public can learn about some

of our contemporary Native American heroes, some of the

key individuals that helped to lead various movements. For

example, Annie Wauneka. She was a very strong, outspoken

Navajo woman. She was active in the ’50s, leading a grassroots

effort to eradicate tuberculosis among the Navajo people—

it was very prevalent throughout the reservation. It’s a very

different world now than it was in the ’50s. These are people

and stories that we have to share, that even the young Native

people of today may not be aware of.

Cantrell: You have long been a tribal leader and an expert in educa-tion. How does this position enable you to advance longtime goals?Warrior: My life’s work has been about helping Native people

obtain an education, letting them know they could do this

and still be Indian and remain a member of their tribe. In the

past, there was an attempt to eradicate Native people’s history,

cultures, and languages, to take the Indian out of Indian.

“Save the child but kill the Indian” was the philosophy of the

government at one time. Native peoples perceived that if you

left your home, your community, or the reservation and went

away to school you would take on the mores and cultures of

the dominant society and stop being a Native person.

As Native people, our identity and our cultures are very

strong. Our arts are strong. If you keep that with you and carry

it forward then you’re able to function in both worlds, both

the general dominant society and your own tribal culture and

way of living.

Within the last thirty or forty years, there’s been tremendous

progress, especially in the arts and culture. My heart swells

when I see all these young Native artists—painters, potters,

Photo by Blair Clark.

S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 E l P a l a c i o 33

jewelers, and weavers, and the Native people going into

technology, film making, writing novels, and fashion.

Cantrell: MIAC is in a museum-rich environment, here in Santa Fe. How do you see MIAC within this context of the other museums?Warrior: Santa Fe has very good museums. Currently, I’m

working on a project with the New Mexico Museum of

Art. They’re doing a show in 2016 on the influence [that

the] Institute of American Indian Arts students and faculty

had on the Santa Fe art scene in the ’60s. And there are

obviously a lot of collaborations we could do with the New

Mexico History Museum and the Museum of International

Folk Art.

Cantrell: Tell us about your background at IAIA and about the internship program you've initiated with IAIA.Warrior: As the president of IAIA I had the privilege and honor

of working with young Native people from all over the nation.

IAIA had a Museums Studies program for undergraduates

which has since developed into a four -year program. It’s

important to give these students the opportunity to get

experience so that they’re better prepared when they return to

their home community’s museums to take on a leadership role.

Because of my long relationship with IAIA and with the

school’s current president, Dr. Bob Martin, we got together

and developed the internship program here at MIAC. It’s been

ongoing since August of 2013. This semester we have four

interns. One in ethnobotany is working with us on revitalizing

our Avanyu Heritage Trail behind the museum. Two interns

are in collections. One is working with NAGPRA [Native

American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act] specifically.

And we have one in the library. I hope to grow this program by

forming collaborations with other colleges and universities. I

would like to develop an endowment so these students could

receive some type of stipend. After all, they are students, and

the majority come from economically deprived communities

and homes. I want to develop an internship program that can

continue long after I’m gone.

Cantrell: A recent report by the Center for the Future of Museums notes that if current trends continue, museum audiences are going to be radically less diverse than the American public at large and will serve an ever-shrinking fragment of society. How will MIAC attract diverse audiences and be a comfortable place for all kinds of Ameri-cans from all different backgrounds?

Warrior: I’m not an authority on this, but I would say that the

audiences at museums have not been diverse for a long time.

I know that Native people very rarely go to museums. If they

do it is on, say, a school field trip. I think this might be true

of a lot of other cultures. I think that there is a feeling within

minority cultures that they’re not really . . . I wouldn’t really

say so much unwelcome, as it’s that they don’t feel comfortable

in a museum setting.

We’re now at a stage where we have the opportunity to

change that and to help people know what they can learn

from the resources that museums have. At MIAC, we are

working with the tribal museums and the tribal libraries and

the leadership of the Native communities in the Southwest. In

fact we hosted the World Café a few months ago. Two hundred

Native people working in health, education, the environment,

museums, libraries, and government were invited to help us

develop ideas that we will incorporate into how MIAC can

better serve and engage Native communities, how we can get

more Natives to visit MIAC, and what opportunities there

are for collaborations with tribal museums and the tribal

communities. It’s important to start with the Native people, to

let them know about the resources here, how those resources

can benefit them, and also how these can enhance their work.

You have to remember that so much Native culture has been

lost. Like our languages, our histories. Most tribes didn’t have

a dictionary, and they didn’t have a written language; we’ve

had strong oral traditions.

Now things have moved forward. A lot of tribes now

have language-immersion programs, and they are writing

their own histories. There are a couple of tribes in the state

that are utilizing our collections to research, document, and

write about some of the societies that existed a long time ago

in an effort to reestablish them. Once we’ve developed this

action plan to engage Native communities, we can then focus

on other audiences by creating some really great programs,

using new technologies, and creating very exciting and vibrant

exhibits, so everyone will come.

Cantrell: Tell us a little bit about your tribe.Warrior: The Otoe-Missouria were two tribes that merged

sometime in the late 1800s. We were relocated to Oklahoma

in 1887. Our numbers were small, so when they removed

us to our reservations the two tribes merged into one. Our

tribe numbers a little over three thousand. We still have the

reservation boundaries there, but we don’t technically have a

INTERVIEW

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INTERVIEW

reservation because of the Dawes Act [which divided American

Indian tribal lands into allotments for individual Indians. Its

purpose was to integrate Native Americans into mainstream

society]. Recently a film was made of an elder there telling

youth how to put up a teepee, in the native language. It felt

so good to hear these young people speak their own language,

my language, which I can’t speak.

I know a few words, but I don’t know it, and I am always

sad about that. The tribe is doing very well in revitalizing the

language, and they’re sending more kids to college. It feels good

to see them doing good things for the tribe with the money

they are getting from gaming. The tribe is also developing

other businesses to provide employment opportunities.

Cantrell: Not long after you started you left for your family’s big annual gathering. Describe this for us.Warrior: The Otoe-Missouria Tribe hosts an annual

encampment in a beautiful pecan grove in northern

Oklahoma, the third weekend of July. It goes for four days.

Often it’s around 100 degrees, very hot, and very humid, with

600 or 700 people camped out. In other tribal cultures, such

gatherings are referred to as “powwows.” Our tribal ceremony

is more of a social and cultural, not a religious, ceremony. It’s a

homecoming. It’s a time for those that don’t live around there

to come back. We visit relatives, listen to songs and dances,

the Round Dance, Gourd Dance, Buffalo Dance, and the War

Dance. At my camp we have a large family, and we cook

three meals a day for 50 to 100 relatives. If we’re involved

in a ceremony, for example if one of our relatives is the head

dancer, the princess, or they’re raising our cousin’s flag, that’s

considered an honor, and we will invite the camp to come over

for breakfast, lunch, or supper. It’s an elaborate affair. It’s so

hot that I’ve cheated the last couple of years by bringing in a

little air-conditioned trailer to rest better at night. Some people

complain and say “that’s not traditional,” but I’m not the only

one. At my age I’ve got to be more careful in this heat!

Cantrell: Finally, give us an overview of the upcoming exhibitions we should expect to see.Warrior: On August 3 we open Footprints: The Inspiration DQG�,QÁXHQFH�RI�$OODQ�+RXVHU. Mr. Houser would have been

100 years old this year, and he is probably the most famous

Native artist in the world. He was very important to the Santa

Fe art community, so I thought it appropriate that we honor

his legacy. Fifteen artists that do monumental sculpture were

invited to exhibit their work on Milner Plaza, and about

twenty works will be on view there for one year. These artists

were either Houser’s students at IAIA or artists that worked

and studied with him. Mr. Houser also taught painting, but

our galleries were scheduled, so we’re not doing anything with

painting, only with the sculpture. That’s pretty exciting.

In November of this year, we’ll start an annual exhibition in

the Roland Sculpture Garden featuring female artists whose

work deals with women’s strength and endurance. We are

working on a David Bradley exhibition for 2015. He’s a very

important contemporary artist. We are planning an exhibition

honoring the legacy of the late Lloyd Kiva New. He was the

founding artistic director at IAIA and had a huge influence on

thousands of Native American artists. Students from all 565

tribes in the nation have attended IAIA at one point or another.

He was a well-known fashion designer, so we’ll also have a

major Native fashion show that year. One of our curators, Dr.

Maxine McBrinn, is working on an exhibit called Footgear,

about footwear from ancient times to the contemporary, such

as high-top beaded tennis shoes.

Cantrell: What project have we not touched on that is near and dear to your heart?Warrior: We’re restoring the Avanyu Heritage Trail. We used

to offer a weekend family time called Sun Mountain; people

would come out and engage in educational opportunities. The

Santa Fe Indian School and IAIA are seeding traditional edible

and medicinal plants, and we will replant those in the various

types of agricultural gardens that the Pueblos used years ago.

We’re repairing the trail and rebuilding replicas of traditional

dwellings and fieldhouses. I hope that within three to five

years the Avanyu Heritage Trail is a true museum-quality,

outdoor exhibit where people can learn about the traditional

ways of this region’s tribes. I hope to accomplish that through

partnerships with various organizations interested in the

environment, gardens, and nature. Q

Steve Cantrell is a public relations manager for the New Mexico Department of

Cultural Affairs, a contributing editor for El Palacio, and the organizer of FUZE.SW,

the annual Museum Hill “food+folklore festival” to be held this year the weekend of

September 12–14, 2014.