BROWNING — The Blackfeet artists gathered in the Museum of the
Plains Indian here are used to the wind howling down off the sacred
mountains to the west. It is the ill wind blowing in from the East
that they fear.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the U.S. Department of the
Interior plans to eliminate funding for the Browning museum as well
as Indian museums in Rapid City, S.D., and Anadarko, Okla.
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Unless another group steps
up, the Interior Department will lock the museum doors on Oct. 1,
2007.
The incredible collections of war shirts, necklaces and tools of
day-to-day living on the Northern Plains would be boxed up and
shipped to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington,
D.C.
"There are huge collections in all three museums that are vital
to the people in the community," said Valentina LaPier, a Blackfeet
artist and vice president of the Museum of the Plains Artist
Association.
"These are the physical images of our tradition ... from out
there where the wind and the dirt are," LaPier says. "Outside is the
spirituality, the religion, the ethereal. This is real, the
concrete, physical foundation of what we are."
"My grandpa wore those clothes in there," says Blackfeet painter
Ernest Marceau Jr., gesturing toward the buckskin shirts and robes.
"This would be a real blow to Browning," said William Farr,
former chairman of the University of Montana History Department and
associate director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain
West in Missoula.
"Lots of people who go to Glacier and Head-Smashed-In (the
Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center in Alberta) also go to Browning
expecting to see the Plains Indian Museum," he said.
The Museum of the Plains Indian was founded in 1941. Its
collection includes arts and artifacts of the Blackfeet, Crow,
Northern Cheyenne, Sioux, Assiniboine, Arapaho, Shoshone, Nez Perce,
Flathead, Chippewa and Cree.
It houses historic clothing, horse gear, weapons, household
implements, baby carriers and toys from those tribes.
The museum's collection is priceless, according to acting curator
David Dragonfly.
"We have all kinds of documents. We have pages of that. It's
priceless. If we did have to move it, all things would have to be
appraised," he said.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Board inherited the three museums in
the 1950s from the Bureau of Indian Affairs when the BIA was facing
budget cuts.
The IACB has an annual budget of about $1 million, with the three
regional museums together taking up about $450,000 to $480,000 of
that. The budget for the Browning museum is roughly $138,000 per
year.
But the IACB is shifting its focus from museums to preventing and
prosecuting counterfeiters in Indian crafts. The IACB estimates that
sales of Indian art amount to about $1 billion per year, but they
have no estimate of the extent of fraud.
"They are ripping off consumers and they take a lot of money out
of the pockets of Indian artists and artisans," said Scott Cameron,
a Department of the Interior official.
"They are deflating the market, too. Something made in Malaysia
might sell for $10 while something made by hand by a real live
Indian might cost $75," Cameron said.
Cameron called the museums "the only realistic place to free up
the money.
"Museums have these great collections and the reality is they
attract a regional audience not a national audience," Cameron said.
"With millions of people walking through the National Museum of
the American Indian, there is a solid vehicle at the national level
to expose people to Indian arts and crafts," Cameron said. "This
underscores what we have known all along, that these museums are
important but they serve a regional rather than a national audience.
It is more appropriate for a regional entity to manage them."
Darrell Norman, a Blackfeet artist in Browning, disagrees. He
says the Museum of the Plains Indian is featured prominently in
German and French travel guides.
In fact, his wife, Angelika Harden-Norman, owner of the Lodgepole
Gallery and Tipi Village near Browning, is a native German who
visited Browning to see the museum.
Museum of the Plains Indian secretary Carleen McEvers, said
between 5,000 and 10,000 people visited the museum during July.
An estimated 15,000 visited over the course of the tourist
season. McEvers said tourists have come from France, Germany,
Australia, Thailand and China.
Rick West, director of the National Museum of the American Indian
in Washington, D.C., said it would be best if the collections stayed
at the regional museums.
"These are powerful and significant connectors between the
collections and the communities to which they relate," he said.
"In an ideal world it would be best if the museums continue to
exist and were supported adequately where they are.
"The NMAI has never wished to take advantage of the plight of any
of these museums as an excuse for collections coming to the NMAI. We
believe they should remain where they are."
Still, he said if the museums close and the collections have to
go somewhere, the NMAI would take them.
"The bottom line, I wish we could devise a solution, or wish the
DOI could allow those collections to remain in those institutions,"
West said.
West called the museum collections the tribes' "cultural
patrimony" and said the collections are larger than anything you
would ever see on display.
"I could not put a price tag on those collections," he said. "I
know that in each case, those are significant collections that sit
in all three of those museums."
Bruce Caesar, a Pawnee Indian, jeweler and metal smith in
Oklahoma, is active in the effort to save the Southern Plains Indian
Museum in Anadarko, Okla.
He says Sens. Jon Kyle and John McCain, both of Arizona, are the
ones pushing the effort against counterfeiting, especially in the
area of silver and turquoise.
But he points out that the Southwest tribes stole the craft from
the Mexican artists.
Caesar also said that some of the craftspeople that the
anti-counterfeiting measures aim to protect are selling cheap
imports.
"You have a lot of little old Indian women and men who don't have
the capability to make jewelry anymore," he said. "They buy from
jobbers, take off the labels and they look exactly the same as goods
made here.
"Those items are made of silver and turquoise and they tell
people they made these things when they have not."
Glacier County Commissioner Mike DesRosier points out that
Glacier County is among the poorest in Montana and that it cannot
stand many economic blows.
It is in fact, second poorest behind Roosevelt County, according
to the 2003 county level poverty rates released by the Economic
Research Service.
"We would be losing another attraction for tourists," DesRosier
said. "Browning as a community, greatly supports our neighbors and
their economic base, but none of those communities respect our
community. They don't come here and spend their money. Yet, we spend
our money there.
"We really need to attract visitors, people from around the
nation and the world. They do spend their dollars here. They also
spend their money in grocery stores and motels and that's important
for Glacier County."
DesRosier also drives for Sun Tours and encounters lots of
tourists.
"Those people come here for two things — the (Glacier National)
Park and the reservation," he said. "They want to see Indians and
Indian things."
When the National Congress of the American Indian convened
recently in Tulsa, Okla., they passed a resolution of support for
the regional museums.
And at each of the three regional museums, artists have banded
together in support groups.
About 20 artists are members of the Museum of the Plains Artist
Association, which began as an artist support group.
"When we started the artists' association, we didn't know what
was looming over us," LaPier said.
Caesar said the effort in Anadarko is similar to efforts to save
military bases.
"We have been running around doing petitions, talking to
politicians — our senators and representatives. We do have the
support of the majority of our delegation. The ones we don't have,
we are working on," Caesar said.
"It is similar to when they were trying to close our military
bases. We have these things that are a great asset to our community.
We have several military bases and everyone worked to keep them.
Blackfeet Tribal Council Chairman Pat Thomas says that naturally
the tribe opposes closing the museum.
"We have a year before they can do anything. We really haven't
gotten that far," he said. "We have talked about funding and we are
looking at where we can find funding.
But not everybody believes that the tribe is the best entity to
take over the museum.
Harden-Norman and Darrell Norman say the tribe is quietly trying
to take over the museum even though during a 1993 referendum, 82
percent of the Blackfeet voted against the idea.
Historian Bill Farr characterized the results of that referendum
as concern by tribal members that they could not afford maintenance
of the museum.
Thomas says this is different.
"Right now we are losing the funding. At that time it was more of
a takeover," he said.
Thomas said reports that the Blackfeet tribe is nearly bankrupt
are not true.
"We have good cash flow right now. We seem to be doing a lot
better," Thomas said. "Right now we have 300 people in Florida and
Louisiana holding down jobs and 50 or 60 more working on the
highways. Things are looking a lot better.
"We definitely will save the museum one way or the other," Thomas
said.
But County Commissioner DesRosier, also says that the tribe
cannot run the museum.
He says the museum needs to be funded by the federal government
or by the state of Montana or a foundation or the U.S. Government.
"The tribal government cannot do it," DesRosier said. "It's like
our infrastructure. The bridges are failing and the highways are
failing."
As much as museum supporters would like to see the state of
Montana step in, it probably won't happen.
Major Robinson, a senior economic development specialist for the
Governor's Office on Economic Opportunity said as much.
"All of our resources are tapped pretty well whether for Indian
tribes or other Montana citizens," Robinson aid. "At this point, we
cannot come up with additional funding, but we can look into the
feasibility of additional funding. We can investigate why funding is
on the chopping block.
"For the state to fund the museum, it would take an act of the
Legislature," Robinson said.
Staff for Congressman Denny Rehberg says, fear not.
"These D.C. bean counters don't understand the cultural
importance of these three museums," said Erik Iverson, Rehberg's
chief of staff. "Denny does understand the importance, not just in
Indian country but in Montana as a whole. If the Bush administration
wants to try to close it they are going to have a fight on their
hands."
Iverson compared the issue to threats to discontinue Amtrak
service along the Hi-Line.
"The president's budget stated that the feds should quit funding
lines like the Empire Builder. But Denny and Max and Conrad came
through. You will see a similar situation occur here.
"That doesn't mean that the goals are not worthwhile, but how
they are executing this plan is problematic," Iverson said. "There
is no sense penalizing a museum like the Plains Museum because
somebody else is counterfeiting. The message we sent was to find
another way to achieve your objective."
Iverson said, "Fifteen thousand visitors a year may not seem like
a lot to a museum in Washington, D.C., but it is a heck of a lot in
rural Montana. It is hard to put a quantitative value on something
that has such cultural significance."
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