Plateau Celebrations
Cultural Transitions in the Indian Reservation Era
September 26, 2009 – February 13, 2010
The United States Interior Department headquarters was the first building in the Nation's Capital authorized, designed, and built by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Dispersed throughout the main building are over twenty-five murals commissioned after the department’s commitment to collecting artwork and artifacts that highlighted the new era, including Maynard Dixon’s mural: Indian and Soldier. “This work represented the themes of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and symbolized the transition of the Indian from warrior to farmer and the immense loss of Indian culture involved.”
The romanticism of this Native America exhibited in Dixon’s painting and its theme was prevalent throughout a larger America that saw the assimilation of the Indian as inevitable and near completion. However, life on the reservations here in the inland Plateau were changing, but not drifting into the dark night of a lost culture. For the first time people traveling to the Indian reservations as tourists and spectators (trying to catch a glimpse of a dying way of life) were introduced to a resilience of American Indian identity.
Gone were the campaigns of war and removal. The allotment era had been initiated for more than a generation. Stability against these odds had provided the tribes some time to formulate a new balance between the ongoing changes that impacted their lives. The pride of this survival was revealed in the celebrations that invited one and all to the reservations to see a continuation of this important part of American culture.
This highlights artwork and cultural objects from this era, including Plateau Indian horse regalia, paintings from the 1930s Nespelem Art colony and 4th of July Pow-wow and historic photographs from the Museums American Indian archives.
Plateau Celebrations
