| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

Exhibition Reviews

"Diba Jimooyung: Telling Our Story." Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways, Saginaw Chippewa Reservation, Mount Pleasant, Mich. http://www.sagchip.org/ziibiwing/.
Permanent exhibition, opened May 2004. 9,000 sq. ft. Andre & Associates Interpretation and Design Ltd., exhibition design firm; Monadnock Media, Inc., multimedia firm; Maltbie, Inc., exhibit fabricators; Bonnie Ekdahl, Ziibiwing Center director until Dec. 2007; Shannon Martin, current director; Paul Johnson, Ziibiwing Center planner; Patrick D. Wilson, curator; William Johnson, curator; Charmaine Benz, editor/publications specialist; Amanda (Falcon) Agosto, visitor services coordinator; Gilbert Williams, multimedia specialist.

One of the most significant recent developments in the museum world is the emergence of tribal museums on reservations across the United States and Canada. These museums reflect the desires of Native Americans to present and preserve their history by establishing cultural institutions for their own communities and for the general public. The development of tribal museums is important given the complex historical relationship between Indigenous people and museums and the role that museums have played in the appropriation and misrepresentation of Native American people and cultures. Tribal communities, in an act of self-determination, are controlling the representation of their cultures and challenging mainstream museum representations of the past.

Current estimates place the number of tribal museums in the United States between 120 and 150. The Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways, located on the Saginaw Chippewa Reservation in Michigan, is one of the finest. The 32,000-square-foot facility includes a state-of-the-art research center, gift shop, and café; temporary exhibition space; and a 9,000-square-foot permanent exhibition featuring the history, philosophy, and culture of the Saginaw Chippewa people, a band of the Anishinabe, as told from their perspective. I first visited the Ziibiwing Center in May 2006 while attending a tribal museum development symposium on the reservation, and I have returned for numerous research visits. It was apparent during my first visit, and on every visit since, that the community center embodies a decolonizing museum practice and creates an engaging learning experience for visitors. The Ziibiwing Center reflects current and innovative exhibition strategies, including thematic rather than object-centered exhibitions; effective use of multimedia, storytelling, and the first-person voice throughout; and, most notably, an emphasis on contemporary survival that challenges head-on the "vanishing race" stereotype prevalent in past museum representations of Native Americans. The tribally authored narratives presented in the museum were developed in consultation and collaboration with Saginaw Chippewa community members, and it shows. The text is all in the first person, and the oral tradition is privileged throughout the galleries. Equally significant is the Saginaw Chippewas' desire to address the legacies of historical unresolved grief in their community; they bravely speak the hard truths of colonization to promote understanding and healing for tribal members. By emphasizing the oral tradition and by presenting the painful stories of colonization, the community engages in an important act of decolonization and provides a model for other tribal museums to follow.

In "Diba Jimooyung: Telling Our Story," a permanent exhibition that opened in May 2004, the museum offers an engaging and in-depth presentation of Saginaw Chippewa history and culture from precontact to the present. The gallery covers a range of topics, including precontact Anishinabe history and seasonal living, tribal creation stories and the oral tradition, first contact with Europeans, the legacies of colonization, and Saginaw Chippewa culture and identity today.

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are introduced to the idea that the Anishinabe understanding of history will guide their experience in the gallery. A large diorama of an ancient petroglyph site, complete with two life-sized mannequins carving teachings in stone, conveys the idea that Anishinabe history is deeply rooted in place and on the landscape. Text panels explain that the petroglyphs represent the Saginaw Chippewas' "ancestors' collective oral memory, wisdom, and spirituality."

Anishinabe understanding of history, as reflected in the oral tradition, provides the framework for the Ziibiwing Center visitor to interact with the tribe's unique history and culture. The museum is organized around the "Seven Prophecies/Seven Fires" of the Anishinabe people, an effective and intimate manner of narrating their story. As visitors travel through the exhibition, each of the prophecies is introduced on text panels and spoken via audio first in Anishinabe, followed by an English translation. The prophecies are the narrative thread that connects the contents of the museum and provides an understanding of tribal philosophies and spirituality. By representing historical events in the context of Anishinabe prophecies instead of rigidly adhering to the framework of United States–Indian relations, the museum deploys an important decolonization strategy. Historical context is provided, but it is placed in a tribally based epistemological framework that honors oral tradition and Indigenous conceptions of history.

The use of prophecy creates a coherent overarching narrative structure that guides visitors through the museum's material. Each of the seven prophecies is tied to a unique part of the exhibition, and this review will focus on a few of them. Visitors hear the "First Prophecy/First Fire of the Anishinabe," the "first story of the future," in the seasonal diorama gallery—a beautiful space depicting subsistence activities through the four seasons, with a replica of a birchbark spring teaching lodge at one end of the gallery and a winter teaching lodge at the other. Although museum studies scholars have critiqued the use of dioramas to depict precontact tribal life as keeping Native cultures "frozen in time," several tribal museums have continued to use them. According to a museum tour guide, the Saginaw Chippewa community chose that type of presentation to break free from another problematic display strategy: placing objects on pedestals in glass cases. The goal was to create an open, visually appealing space capturing seasonal activities and sites for traditional teachings. Furthermore, later sections of the museum effectively challenge the idea that Saginaw Chippewa culture is static or frozen in time by offering rich explorations of the group's contemporary experiences.

The fourth prophecy, concerning initial encounters with Europeans, is introduced after the visitor has engaged with substantial information on Anishinabe precontact culture and lifeways. Images of early contact painted by Robert Griffing, and maps of European contact sites line a hallway ending at a case with fur trade–era objects, including trade silver, copper items, and furs. Text panels emphasize that the Anishinabe "lived peacefully with the Light-Skinned people for about 200 years" but that their world changed dramatically as a result of further encroachment on their lands and lifeways.

The "Effects of Colonization" gallery presents the period of the fifth prophecy, which "foretold that the Anishinabek would encounter separation and struggle for many generations." The exhibits focus on the tragic period in Anishinabe history that included loss of land, disease, poverty, violence, and forced conversion at the hands of Christian missionaries. The design elements in this section illustrate physically the sense of intense pressure—the walls begin to narrow, giving the impression that the world is closing in on the Saginaw Chippewa. The gallery relates a painful story by layering information and including voice-overs and images to provide an auditory and visual break from the emotional stories that visitors are reading. The maps, text panels, and images of ancestors and treaties provide context for that devastating period.

The use of audio in this section is extremely effective. In one area visitors hear voices reading some of the documents featured on nearby text panels. As visitors walk through this space, they hear the words of government officials such as Lewis Cass and John Hudson. Listening to the angry and racist opinions of the colonizers is very difficult, and the exhibit is strategically designed so that no one misses hearing those words. One may choose not to read a text panel, but it is another thing entirely to avoid the words, repeated over and over again overhead as the visitor moves through the space. Hearing expressions of the deep-seated hatred that Cass and others had for the Anishinabe people is a difficult and emotional experience, one that the museum insists visitors confront.

After the hard truths of colonization, the museum provides a space for healing, entitled "Blood Memory." Visitors' engagement with that section begins even before they leave the "Effects of Colonization" area. The sound of a heartbeat and a beautiful song sung by three women from the community pull the visitor forward toward the healing space. The exhibit is an open, inviting, circular area with benches nearby for people to rest and collect their thoughts. The following text panel introduces the concept of blood memory to visitors:

Mindjimendamowin
Blood Memory

Blood memory is an inherent connection we have to our spirituality, ancestors, and all of Creation.

Blood memory can be described as the emotions we feel when we hear the drum or our language for the first time. The Creator gives these emotions to us at birth. We use these emotions or blood memories to understand our heritage and our connection to our ancestors. Blood memory makes these connections for us.

Today, many Anishinabek use their blood memory to relearn our language. Our beautiful and descriptive language is deeply rooted in the land and our connections to it. As more and more Anishinabek recall their blood memory, our language and our spirituality will be spoken for the next Seven Generations.

That moving message is a reminder that the museum's central audience is tribal members. The "Effects of Colonization" and "Blood Memory" represent powerful methods that a tribal museum can use to assist community members in the truth-telling and healing process. Alongside difficult stories, the Ziibiwing Center provides a place where tribal members can gain strength from understanding and reclaiming their rich cultural inheritance and identity.

The display "Creating Beautiful Things in Difficult Times" in the "Diba Jimooyung: Telling Our Story" exhibition features stunning beadwork items, including bandolier bags, vests, belts, and leggings. As part of the "Blood Memory" installation, the display makes the important point that even under the most challenging and difficult circumstances, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Anishinabe peoples were able to create objects of great beauty. Photo by Penrod/Hiawatha Co. Courtesy Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.

The remaining areas of the museum focus on contemporary issues, including language revitalization efforts, protection of tribal sovereignty, gaming, repatriation efforts, and the reclamation and revitalization of Saginaw Chippewa culture and identity. Particularly moving is a wonderful film focusing on identity in the "Spirit of Sovereignty" section. At the entrance to the theater, overhead banners list the names of the three bands that constitute the modern Saginaw Chippewa Nation. The voices of community members in the film convey the message that "our collective history is rich in the oral tradition and helps us to continue to be strong in spite of adversity and oppression." Community members share the challenges and hard work they face in retaining their culture and language. One interviewee sums up the take-home message of the film: "I am proud to say that I am Saginaw Chippewa. It is my whole identity."

At the conclusion of that gallery, in the "Continuing the Journey" area near the ancient petroglyph site where the visit began, visitors hear audio of a young boy's voice describing the Seven Teachings of wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility, and truth. Those core tribal values are etched on stones below seven original pieces of artwork in a dimly lit corridor. Text panels nearby explain that the original teachings were given to the tribe by the Creator and emphasize that those values need to be followed if the world is to survive: "If we apply the Seven Teachings to our daily lives and learn from the Seven Prophecies, we can create a better world for the next Seven Generations." The panels state that, according to oral tradition, we are now in the time of the Eighth Fire, facing a choice between a "path of desecration" and "a path of compassion." The message encourages all visitors to reflect on their life-styles and connects Anishinabe core tribal values to universal ones. The community demonstrates a unique willingness to share aspects of its spirituality with visitors, even though museum representations have long stereotyped and misrepresented Indigenous spirituality. The center sensitively incorporates aspects of Anishinabe philosophy and spirituality that effectively convey the uniqueness of the tribe's world view and knowledge system, a fitting way to end a thought-provoking and engaging museum experience.

It is important to recognize that the Ziibiwing Center is much more than an exhibition space. Perhaps it is most significant as a place for cultural preservation and revitalization. The center sponsors exemplary community cultural activities such as language immersion classes, instruction on the use of cradleboards (a practice the community is reviving), youth cultural programming, and the sharing of traditional knowledge with tribal individuals of all ages. During my most recent visit, I had the opportunity to attend the Anishinabe Performance Circle Presentation—a special event where young people performed their recently acquired dance skills for the community. It was evident that they felt pride in their newly developed dancing abilities. Equally touching was the large number of adults from the community present to watch the children perform. That event and others like it make it abundantly clear that the center is a site of community revitalization, knowledge making, and cultural sovereignty.

Ziibiwing Center staff members have long acknowledged that they were museum novices when they embarked on their ambitious plan to develop exhibitions for their $10 million cultural center. With their rigorous, collaborative, and commonsense approach, they have achieved one of the most engaging exhibitions of Indigenous history and memory in any museum in this country. The exhibition represents a decolonizing museum practice and sets the standard by which future presentations of Native American history and culture should be judged.

Amy Lonetree

University of California
Santa Cruz, California

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