Mexican Aztec Dancers from California danced on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to mark the opening of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
Drums and Bells Open Indian Museum
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO
With the glistening white dome of the Capitol as a backdrop, more than 20,000 people from Alaska to Peru paraded across the Mall to witness the event. Under gauzy blue skies, they formed a brilliant river of deerskin jackets, feathered headdresses and beaded skirts, in conflict with Washington's pinstriped style.
The opening capped a 17-year quest by tribal leaders and elected officials to commemorate Indian culture and history in the capital. Housed in a yellow limestone building with wave-shaped walls at the southeastern corner of the Mall, the museum expects to draw more than four million visitors a year.
But there have been some rumblings of discontent. Some critics have complained about the truncated treatment of native history. Others have expressed dismay that casino money is helping defray the $219 million cost. Some Indians oppose gambling on Indian land.
But the event on Tuesday was overwhelmingly celebratory. Their voices cracking with emotion, visitors from as far as Hawaii and as near as Virginia likened the gathering to a joyous family reunion, calling it a long-overdue tribute to native perseverance in the face of disease, war and colonization.
" It's more than all the colors and feathers, it's about coming home the way it should have been a long time ago," Pamela Best Minick of the Cherokee and Pottawattamie tribes of Illinois said as tears streamed down her face. "To come back in the same way and have people not laugh but respect you - it shows we've come full circle."
The day began with a three-hour procession from the Smithsonian castle to the front of the new museum. Officials of the Smithsonian Institution estimated that nearly 25,000 people walked in the parade as tens of thousands watched.
A group of Chippewa women from the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin wore colorful dresses fringed with silver bells made from discarded chewing-tobacco tins. Behind them, five men wearing baseball caps thumped on a drum while children in moccasins danced.
" For me, this is of immense spiritual significance," a tribe member, Ann-Marie Evenson, 35, said. "It's like a big family reunion."
Behind them walked a group from the Cheyenne River Lakota Akicita from South Dakota, led by men wearing military fatigues.
"We are proud to serve," said Lyle Cook, 43, a former Army medic and Lakota tribe member. "We do it not to serve the United States, but to protect our people. This is still our land, even if it is called the United States."
There were Aztecs from Mexico wearing rattles around their ankles, young men in Metallica T-shirts chanting traditional songs and sun-weathered older people using digital cameras to record the festivities.
Marta Frausto of the Otomi tribe in central Mexico had traveled for two days. "The museum is a way for the people to know we exist," she said. "We're thriving as a nation, and we hope to thrive in the future."
On the ground floor, a group of Hawaiians in deep red robes called kiheis and wearing necklaces made from black and white nuts, posed for pictures in front of a traditional Hawaiian canoe.
The Hawaiians, though not formally recognized by the federal government as a native tribe, were invited by the Smithsonian.
"There is a sense among native people of belonging," Keone Nunes of Oahu said. "This museum will hopefully educate people that native people are still around."
The museum holds nearly 8,000 objects organized in three major spaces that focus on the histories, spiritual beliefs, daily lives and traditions of 24 tribes. Videotaped oral histories provide the narrative backbone to many displays. Over the years, the exhibitions will rotate to feature other tribes.
The "Our Lives" exhibition, about the Metis of St.-Laurent, Manitoba, includes an odd-looking vehicle used for ice fishing on Lake Manitoba. Called a Bombardier, the vehicle has tracks in the rear and skids in front, portholes on the side and a roof rack filled with fishing gear.
A Metis, Josh Gareau, 18, laughed when he saw the vehicle.
"It's pretty weird to come all the way here and see all this stuff from our little town," Mr. Gareau said. "It's pretty neat, too."
Speech after speech echoed a similar refrain, that we are still here. Some statements had touches of defiance.
President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, that nation's first democratically elected Indian president, called the museum a "profound symbol of reconciliation."
Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he began pushing for the museum 17 years ago, when he learned that not one of the 400 monuments here was dedicated to an Indian.
And Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne chief from Colorado who also sponsored legislation creating the museum, called it "a monument to the millions of native people who died of sickness, slavery starvation and war."
" Only 400 years after the Old World collided with their world, the native people of this land became America's first endangered species," said Mr. Campbell, a Republican who wore a full headdress that he wore onto the Senate floor for an appropriations debate.