The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass | Hacker News Reader

The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass

theappendix.net

34 pointsbenbreen17 comments

This is silly. I live in Arizona, and many of our parks have dioramas that are very informative about past cultures.

I live in the mountains, and with docents from the forest service I have hiked to and appreciated about 100 ancient Indian ruin sites. I like to imagine what life would have been like when I am on site, and I do use mental images from dioramas.

Hopefully not off topic: I volunteer at a historic farm, and we all get to grow food for ourselves as a perk for doing lots of free work for the forest service. There is a very old Hopi Indian who has a patch near mine and it is more than interesting talking with him. He is a shaman and travels a lot giving talks.

I wouldn't advise dismissing it so irreverently.

As a glass-window diorama alternative consider the exhibits at the Mashantucket Pequot museum:

The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center features 85,000 square feet of permanent, indoor exhibitions including life-size dioramas, films, and interactive computer programs.

Pequot Village: Observe daily life in a recreated 16th-century Pequot village, pre- and post-European contact. Walk among the trees, wigwams, and people who are cooking, talking, weaving, and working. Hear natural sounds and smell the aromas of the woodlands and campfires. All the figures were life-cast from Native American people; the traditional clothing, ornamentations, and wigwams were made by Native craftspeople.

http://www.pequotmuseum.org/PermanentExhibits.aspx

Its really too bad-the exhibits at the UofM Museum of Natural History (the museum mentioned in the article) has/had truly beautiful dioramas. Sure they were old, but they were incredibly detailed and very accurate.

The problem, as I understand it, is that the dioramas were dehumanizing to the point that registered members of the tribes depicted were offended.

At the end of the article they mention the alternative being full-size recreations that the visitors can touch and interact with. While it limits the number of displays a museum can offer, I think it does show more respect and offers more depth to visitors:

"For non-Makah visitors, it is a diorama in which the viewer doesn’t examine the Indian under glass, but takes her place."

I grew up in Florida and started school around 1989. We were exposed to a lot of indian culture all throughout my grade school years.. In fact we were the "Indians". I remember Indians visiting our school as early as 3rd-4th grade as a cultural learning opportunity. We also learned about the trail of tears, the reservations, and yes we saw the exhibits.

I find this a bit of a shame as I really enjoyed those dioramas myself as a kid. I'm not sure anyone would argue that the Indians did not have an "ancient" way of life when the Europeans came.. To me this feels like just pushing the fact that we destroyed their way of life under the rug.

What if instead of taking down the Indians Behind Glass, we created more modern scenes behind glass? Like a UN general assembly, or Oktoberfest, or a military base in Afghanistan? That would be super cool.

It would make more sense to have such dioramas in a museum of human history, but I understand dioramas of indigenous people who still exist today not having a place in a natural history museum.

The 19th century Indian culture depicted in those dioramas is extinct now and definitely does have a place in a history museum - in exactly the same manner as the (now extinct) 19th century white American frontier town culture or the (now extinct) 19th century Bavarian farmer culture.

The fact that there are living descendants of all those cultures, and some of them [try to] follow traditional aspects of this culture does not diminish the historical value of illustrations about the culture as it was back thin.

There may be valid reasons to remove exhibits - for example, if the depictions are misleading and based on assumptions now known to be false; or if the depictions are irrelevant and boring. But if some people are offended by their own history, then that's not a reason worth considering, much less acting on it - if the depiction is factually accurate (which, as much as I understood from the article, isn't disputed), then it should stay.

If the current treatment seems unfair, then producing more relevant dioramas of the other cultures would be a reasonable response - such exhibits can be very effective illustrations about all the "non-native" populations as well.

A number of years ago I visited the War Museum in London. One of the more powerful exhibits is a diorama of the front line during WWI, showing trenches on either side of the no-mans-land. I don't know exactly when that diorama was created, but it's possible that some of the men who fought on that front were still alive, or their immediate descendants were.

Granted, the War Museum is not a natural history museum, but that diorama could be placed in any museum with exhibits about the history of western Europe, including natural history museums. I don't think anyone would complain because the descendents of the depicted soldiers are still around.

Getting back to Native Americans, we've lost so much of their history as it is that it's a shame that there's a push to hide the small amount that's been retained. Sure, we shouldn't make it seem like they're extinct, but the truth is that most Native American cultures are extinct, thanks to disease and war brought by Europeans. The ones that have survived and retained some of their original culture should be celebrated and protected, but we also need to remember the rest. The best place for that is in history museums, and dioramas are one of the best ways to bring them back to life.

The only thing that I could think of was trying to imagine what the Museum Dioramas will be like once the third or fourth generation of consumer VR rolls out?

Excellent policy: now non-indigenous sub/urbanites can learn about indigenous history from `Pocahontas` and `Dances with Wolves` instead.

As an Indian, this headline intrigued me to draw a click. Then I realized that the article was about Native Americans and this usage, as always, filled me with a mild rage for a few seconds. Is it really that hard to just use a non-confusing term for native americans in written language now that it's clear that India is somewhere else on the globe altogether?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8

The simple answer is no. The longer answer is yes, but ... it would confuse more people that it would help. When you start throwing around terms like aboriginal X or native X, you're getting somewhere re: clarity. However, when the term is modifying an ambiguous locator like "American" it makes it worse again. To United States citizens, "American" means them, but (I can't speak for Canadians, not ever having had this conversation with any) all my friends in Brazil, Chile and Mexico consider themselves American, too, and they are.

"Indian" to mean indigenous United States tribes is a cop out but it is by far the simplest way for writers to refer to these diverse groups without having to get deep into technical explanations.

p.s. Besides, it isn't our fault the Europeans were shitty navigators. :)

"The longer answer is yes, but ... it would confuse more people that it would help."

Can you describe a scenario where replacing the word "Indian" with "Native-American" in the headline of this article will confuse more people than the original version? None of what you said to support your assertion seems to make that case.

"Native Americans", from one point of view, is just as wrong of a term, since the literal meaning of the individual words suggest that it means people that were born in America, which is a very different group than American Indians.

"Native American" is a well understood term in everyday and (especially) journalistic writing. There's literally no scenario where the headline (and the article) itself will not gain in clarity by replacing the term Indian with "Native American".

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