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From: jean ann mendoza <jamendoz>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 11:13:24 -0500 (CDT)
First, I apologize for the uncharitable tone of my post in response to Sharon, the librarian in Downers Grove. People do make a laudable effort on this list to take a thoughtful tone, and I did not.
This is an interesting museum phenomenon Debbie mentions. When my children were young, we had kind of a second home at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago on hot summer days (we had no ac). The sizeable, somewhat interactive Native American section was right across the hall from the skeletons
& dioramas of animals. Hm. . . . And the European "prehistory" section was buried in the basement, I believe. We came across it, or part of it, when we wandered down a hallway seeking a washroom. I remember noticing framed pictures of people wearing skins and feather headdresses, and realizing ! -- that it was early Europeans being depicted, not Native Americans. It's not every day European-Americans get that kind of look at their own racial/cultural background
-- the pre-Greco-Roman, pre-Christian context. I'm still not sure what all of that means. And why was I surprised? "Gawrsh, we didn't always wear cotton/poly?"
The Field Museum also had a resource center focused on native American history where my kids could play & draw while I read the Navajo Times or Through Indian Eyes. The woman who was in charge of it at the time related that she had quite a struggle with the Powers That Were in order to get contemporary materials into the Center. She tried to post current information about Native people in North & South America -- things happening in Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc. -- but was under pressure to focus on the past. I don't know what it's like now that she has left, but it is still there
-- the Webber Resource Center, I think. Not sure where I'm going with all this, but it has something to do withthe cultural capital Debbie mentions , plus a kind of forced location in the past. . . . and something potentially For Future Reference.
Jean M.
Received on Sat 30 Oct 1999 11:13:24 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 11:13:24 -0500 (CDT)
First, I apologize for the uncharitable tone of my post in response to Sharon, the librarian in Downers Grove. People do make a laudable effort on this list to take a thoughtful tone, and I did not.
This is an interesting museum phenomenon Debbie mentions. When my children were young, we had kind of a second home at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago on hot summer days (we had no ac). The sizeable, somewhat interactive Native American section was right across the hall from the skeletons
& dioramas of animals. Hm. . . . And the European "prehistory" section was buried in the basement, I believe. We came across it, or part of it, when we wandered down a hallway seeking a washroom. I remember noticing framed pictures of people wearing skins and feather headdresses, and realizing ! -- that it was early Europeans being depicted, not Native Americans. It's not every day European-Americans get that kind of look at their own racial/cultural background
-- the pre-Greco-Roman, pre-Christian context. I'm still not sure what all of that means. And why was I surprised? "Gawrsh, we didn't always wear cotton/poly?"
The Field Museum also had a resource center focused on native American history where my kids could play & draw while I read the Navajo Times or Through Indian Eyes. The woman who was in charge of it at the time related that she had quite a struggle with the Powers That Were in order to get contemporary materials into the Center. She tried to post current information about Native people in North & South America -- things happening in Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc. -- but was under pressure to focus on the past. I don't know what it's like now that she has left, but it is still there
-- the Webber Resource Center, I think. Not sure where I'm going with all this, but it has something to do withthe cultural capital Debbie mentions , plus a kind of forced location in the past. . . . and something potentially For Future Reference.
Jean M.
Received on Sat 30 Oct 1999 11:13:24 AM CDT
