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Transcription: [00:19:41]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
We have a lot of tourists coming to the museum.
[00:19:44]
They are very interested in how these are done.

[00:19:51]
{SILENCE}

[00:19:53]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
Are there more (--), most of the people who come to tribal museums then are tourists from outside.

[00:19:58]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
A lot of tourists, yes.

[00:20:01]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
Is there any teaching going on in the museum now?
Are you teaching people about basket work?
Or are you still teaching in your family mostly?

[00:20:09]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
Well, mostly in the family.

[00:20:12]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
Mmm. So that way of preservation is continuing?

[00:20:16]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
Yes.

[00:20:17]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
When you demonstrate in the tribal museum, how long (--) how long a time period does that take place? Is it a little workshop like this or are you there for several days or a longer period of time?

[00:20:32]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
Well, last year I worked there for a month but this year it was two days.

[00:20:38]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
Just two days.

[00:20:40]
{SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"}
[[affirmative]] Mmm hmm. [[/affirmative]]

[00:20:41]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
Some of the tribal museums have language projects.
[00:20:44]
For example, like you'll see in the Luiseno language project over here, as part of the ongoing program for tribal people.
[00:20:51]
They're making tribal dictionaries in the museums and if you go to one of these tribal museums you will see people doing the work
[00:20:59]
of making the dictionary as a part of the living exhibit of the museum.
[00:21:06]
They are doing the work right there.
[00:21:08]
Other parts of the tribal museum have demonstrations.
[00:21:11]
What, um, your exam is based primary of artifacts of an archeological site.
[00:21:17]
Do you have living exhibit aspects of the museum as well?

[00:21:24]
{SPEAKER name="Greg Arnold"}
The Makah museum yes, we definitely do.
[00:21:27]
We have a number of projects that we're conducting right now.
[00:21:32]
We got a large photo uh archives search right now.
[00:21:39]
We picked up 115 photos of unpublished Makah material that is being researched by the elders.
[00:21:49]
At this very moment, we have a large language program that's been conducted for 5 years
[00:21:55]
and it covers grades from, well, 3-year-olds to high school students and its impacting them greatly.
[00:22:08]
We teach carving classes at the museum.
[00:22:13]
Just to expose the younger high school students to look at Makah tradition and history.
[00:22:22]
We teach basketry out at the museum where they younger people get an idea what it is to handle cedar bark.
[00:22:32]
How to prepare it, how to gather it, then finish the product.
[00:22:37]
Neat thing, an interesting thing, about the tribal museum,
[00:22:42]
its going to be the grandparents for a lot of younger people who,
[00:22:49]
whose families have at some point forgot some of the traditions and that resource is there for them and
[00:23:00]
they can, they have a place to go.
[00:23:03]
Where it was that you used to stay with your grandparents and that's how you learned.
[00:23:10]
I know because of my family situation, I didn't stay with my grandparents.
[00:23:16]
It took me until I was a teenager to start singing and dancing and start picking that information up
[00:23:26]
or as before younger people could do it from the time they were little.
[00:23:32]
And now that's happening.
[00:23:33]
My kids, every night, get 2-3 songs before they go to bed just so that I make sure that they
[00:23:40]
they'll know some of that information and we always talk about just,
[00:23:45]
those kinds of things that I didn't have the opportunity to hear when I was a younger child.
[00:23:52]
And that, those people that don't have that resource now are able to go to a tribal museum and
[00:23:59]
take a look to gather that information.
[00:24:05]
The other thing is, we just started singing practices.
[00:24:09]
We sit down with 3, 4, 5 elders who
[00:24:13]
who just sit around and sing and about half the time we sing and the other half we visit.
[00:24:19]
And talk about what is happening during these dances, where these songs have come from.
[00:24:27]
Because all the songs, you know, belong to somebody and
[00:24:32]
you've got to know that history of those songs before you can feel comfortable about singing them.
[00:24:38]
And, all those kinds of things are happening.
[00:24:43]
So, we got a lot of activity going on out of our tribal museum.

[00:24:48]
{SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
So the museum becomes a real center for activity around the community as well as for tourists to come in.
[00:24:55]
That's why these are community museums.
[00:24:57]
They are tribal museums for tribal people and for others who wish to come and learn.
[00:25:02]
They take different forms.
[00:25:04]
Some of them are museums not quite like the Smithsonian but they are museums in another sense.
[00:25:10]
Many of them are impressive physical structures.
[00:25:13]
There are museums like any of you would expect.
[00:25:16]
Others of them are small, historical houses where someone from that tribe lived and worked over the years
[00:25:23]
and which they gave to the tribe after their death to become an archive,
[00:25:28]
to become a center for preservation activities.
[00:25:31]
Many of them exist in the most unusual forms.
[00:25:36]
In the Learning Center, for example, you'll see the Luiseno culture bank,
[00:25:41]
which because of the way in which Luiseno people have been scattered over the years in Southern California
[00:25:48]
No museum as we understand it, in the modern sense, can be made.
[00:25:53]
What they've made is a museum that exists in suitcases and can be taken from place to place,
[00:25:58]
from school to school,
[00:25:59]
from person to person,
[00:26:01]
so the culture of the Luiseno people, language, books to teach language from,
[00:26:07]
pictures of traditional plants, pictures of traditional basketry,
[00:26:11]
and of the people who did these things
[00:26:14]
can be taken from one place to another and shown.
[00:26:17]
So, when we talk about tribal museums, or when we talk about tribal conservation efforts,
[00:26:22]
many of them exist in big monumental structures like a physical museum
[00:26:28]
and others of them exist in different and unusual forms which we're experimenting with in Indian country
[00:26:35]
and trying to bring to our own people as well as bring to a public audience.
[00:26:40]
In the film "A Box of Treasures" that I referred to before,
[00:26:44]
one of the older ladies from the Kwakiutl people says
[00:26:48]
"that thing you built on the museum, on the beach, called the museum. We never had these things before,
[00:26:55]
but now I see its necessary and we think of them of like an old box of treasures."
[00:27:00]
And so tribal people are now beginning to develop these different methods of preservation and working with them.
[00:27:08]
I'd like to open it up to questions.
[00:27:11]
Now we've had in all our workshops an audience who was really was interested very much in,
[00:27:18]
not only the specific crafts and kinds of skills that North American Indian people are bringing to this festival
[00:27:25]
and are bringing to the mall,
[00:27:26]
but general questions about the Culture Conservation efforts of tribal people and I wonder if any of you have some
[00:27:34]
questions that you would like to ask at this time?
[00:27:37]

Yes?

Transcription Notes:
All of these have been fixed! [00:20:32] Well, last year I worked there for a month but this years it was two days. (Fix it to) Well, last year I worked there for a month but this year it was two days. [00:20:40] {SPEAKER name="Nettie Watt"} Mmm hmm. (edit in an affirmative) [[affirmative]] Mmm hmm. [[/affirmative]] [00:22:22] We teach basketry out at the museum where the younger people get an idea what it is to handle cedar bark. (Fix to) We teach basketry out at the museum where they younger people get an idea what it is to handle cedar bark.