Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian A Walla Walla bag, made about 1915 of seed beads, wool, canvas, hide and cotton thread, is on display in "A Song for the Horse Nation" at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

The exhibition celebrates the relationship between American Indians and horses, featuring 98 elaborate examples that include horse trappings, objects with horse motifs and new works specially commissioned for the show. Originally indigenous to the Americas, the horse had become extinct before being reintroduced to the Western Hemisphere by way of European ships in the 15^th century. The exhibition revolves around the return of what some Native peoples call the Horse Nation, a great ally to the Native nations.

“Even though the pinnacle of the horse lasted only a century, this exhibition details how Native people rapidly integrated the horse into their lifeways, quickly becoming among the best mounted soldiers in the world,” said National Museum of the American Indian Director Kevin Gover, who is Pawnee.

The online exhibition, www.AmericanIndian.si.edu/exhibitions/horsenation, shares the script with the actual one, offering photos of many objects on display at the museum. Web viewers who live far away from the museums in Washington, D.C., and New York get a chance to share the experience in real time thanks to the online version’s simultaneous launch.

“It’s a comprehensive representation of the gallery exhibition that will grow in time to include additional educational resources and incorporate more interactive elements that might not be possible in the physical exhibition,” said Jason Wigfield, a web developer for the museum. “It’s a good opportunity for people, who, geographically speaking, may not be able to make it to the museum. And in addition to that, it’s accessible anytime and for long after the exhibition closes.

“This online exhibition is a great resource for teachers, parents, and anyone interested in exploring this topic.”

Interactive features, such as the opportunity to hear the word for “horse” in several Native languages through the computer, are a natural on the Web. Both the online exhibition and the one in New York provide recordings for the following languages: in Assiniboine, thongatch-shonga or sho-a-thin-ga (“big dog”); in A’aninin (Gros Ventre), it-shuma-shunga (“red dog”); in Lakota, Sunkakhan (“holy dog” or “mystery dog”); in Siksika of the Blackfoot, ponoka-mita (“elk dog”); in Cree, mistatim (“big dog”).

The exhibition uses video, images and commissioned artwork to carry the story of American Indians’ relationship with the horse into contemporary times.

“A Song for the Horse Nation” will be on view at the museum in New York until July 7, 2011. It is scheduled to reopen at the museum in Washington, D.C., in October 2011 and run through January 2013, followed by a national tour.

If you can’t wait for a chance to see it in person, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu/exhibitions/horsenation to view it from home or classroom.

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By Kara Briggs, American Indian News Service

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Courtesy Penny Gamble Williams and Thunder Williams - click photo for full resolution version

The former Sunksqua or female sachem of the Chappaquiddick Band of the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts shared the experiences with the American Indian News Service in an interview about the upcoming exhibition “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas.” She and her husband, Thunder Williams, lead the Ohke Cultural Network Inc. which submitted the proposal for the exhibition to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

“I have been an activist in movements—AIM, Women of All Red Nations and others. At a meeting of the Black Panthers in the 1970s, they told me that I had to choose. “You are either black or Indian, you can’t be both.’ I made my choice.”

The experience reminded Gamble-Williams of the time her fifth-grade teacher walked up to her desk after reading an essay about her summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Squeezing the young Gamble-Williams’ shoulder, the teacher said, “It’s not nice to make up stories. Everyone knows the New England Indians are dead.”

Gamble-Williams, who is descended from African American and Alabama Creek on her father’s side and African American and Chappaquiddick/Wampanoag on her mother’s, is a visual storyteller and cultural presenter. She serves as spiritual leader of the Chappaquiddick Band of the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts (www.chappaquiddick-wampanoag.org).

Thunder Williams, whose lineage is Carib Indian, African and European, emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at age 5.

Both have been active in the African American, Native American and Afro-Caribbean communities. For the past decade, they’ve hosted The Talking Feather Radio Show on Radio One WOL 1450 AM in Washington, D.C. It is also broadcast on Blog Talk Radio at www.blogtalkradio.com/talkingfeather.
They joined American Indian News Service Editor Kara Briggs for an interview recently.

Kara Briggs: Why is the IndiVisible exhibition important for America?

Penny Gamble-Williams: This exhibition, IndiVisible, is valuable because it helps all people formulate another way of looking at the history of this country. We cannot obfuscate the facts of American history, deny that genocidal practices nearly wiped out an entire race of people or refuse to acknowledge that two richly diverse indigenous civilizations, the African and Native, mightily contributed to the wealth and prosperity of the Americas.

Thunder Williams: African-Americans and Native peoples stood together in the cotton and tobacco fields. We were often literally chained together. We were bonded through the tyranny of oppression and colonization. We intermixed and intermarried on the Underground Railroad, the forced removals across Turtle Island and the resistance in maroon colonies.
All these experiences give us a rich shared heritage.

Kara Briggs: Penny, you grew up in Providence, R.I., not far from Chappaquiddick and the island homelands of the Wampanoag. You were saying that the tribe was a whaling tribe originally?

Penny Gamble-Williams: Chappaquiddick men were whalers historically, and after colonization they had to go out on the whaling ships to make a living. Whaling was one of the toughest jobs during that time and because the men were out to sea for long periods of time, sometimes years, it took a toll on the elders, women and children. Some of the men never returned home, either, because of death or settling in other parts of the world.

Thunder Williams: As the Native men went out to sea, African American and other foreign men who worked in the surrounding areas of the islands intermarried and became part of the tribal community.

Penny Gamble-Williams: My great-great-great aunt, Sarah Brown, who was Chappaquiddick, married a black whaling captain, William A. Martin. His great-grandmother had been enslaved on Martha’s Vineyard Island and was owned by the Bassett family. When I was Sunksqua of the Chappaquiddick from 1995 to 2002, Thunder and I traveled to London and conducted research in the British Museum, the Guildhall Library, Oxford and the Maritime Museum. It was amazing to see documents that related specifically to the Chappaquiddick and other Wampanoag Bands of Massachusetts, as well as Narragansett and Pequot.

Kara Briggs: What did you learn personally through that research?

Penny Gamble-Williams: Most of the European American whaling captains were well off and had stately homes in Edgartown. William and Sarah lived in a humble home that he built on Chappaquiddick. The house still stands and is privately owned. It needs major repair. There is no plaque showing the history of this black whaling captain. He and Sarah were married for 50 years. (Editor’s note: As this issue went into production the New York Times published an article about the current owner of William A. Martin’s house putting it up for sale.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/us/04chappaquiddick.html.)

Kara Briggs: Three generations before you, your relatives lived on the Chappaquiddick Reservation, were allotted land and owned houses. But in your childhood Chappaquiddick was anything but home.

Penny Gamble-Williams: I heard the stories and spent time with the elders of my family. I enjoyed every summer until I was 16 years old on Martha’s Vineyard in Oak Bluffs on Wamsutta Avenue. On some occasions we’d get in my uncle’s convertible and take a trip to Chappaquiddick. That’s where my mother would talk about the land and family. I’d say, ‘Why can’t we get out and walk around?’ My mother never wanted to.

Thunder Williams: Even now when you talk about the Chappaquiddick Indians, the current residents on Chappaquiddick Island, who are 99.9 percent European, seem threatened or guilt-ridden or noticeably indifferent.

Kara Briggs: In reconstituting your nation and reclaiming nation’s ties to Chappaquiddick Island, you faced court battles with residents even to have access to that burial ground. They were claiming that you weren’t Wampanoag.

Penny Gamble-Williams: Every Chappaquiddick family had title to the land that had been allotted in the 1800s. Most had to move from the island in order to make a living. My family moved to Nantucket, New Bedford and Providence. The ties were never broken. When I grew up I had my map with lots of information about family land on the reservation.

Kara Briggs: You and your family have been culturally active for decades. There are Chappaquiddick/ Wampanoag burial grounds on the island that have become gathering places for your people. But there was resistance to your reclaiming those places.

Penny Gamble-Williams: On occasion when my family got letters from attorneys representing parties who owned land in common with us, they would ask me, ‘Why are you trying to hold onto this land when you are not even Indian?’ They felt that because I didn’t grow up on Chappaquiddick I knew nothing about the land or the culture. They were wrong. Because of all these experiences we decided to have ceremonies on Chappaquiddick at one of the burial grounds where many of our relatives had been buried.

Thunder Williams: It’s normal for Europeans to visit their burial grounds, but if Native people want to pay homage to their ancestor and do ceremonies in their spiritual tradition they seem not to understand. They seem not to understand our deep-rooted spiritual bonding to Mother Earth and the healing nature of walking on the land, not selling it and not building trophy houses on it.

– By Kara Briggs, American Indian News Service

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Courtesy of Sam Devenney A Comanche family in the early 1900s. The elder man is Ta-Ten-e-quer and his wife is Ta-Tat-ty. Their niece, center, is Wife-per, also known as Frances E. Wright. Her father was a Buffalo Soldier, an African American cavalryman, who deserted and married into the Comanches. Henry, center left, and Lorenzano, center right, are her sons. Click photo for full resolution version.

“IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas” is an exhibition of 20 banners bearing photographs and text. It will be shown at the museum in Washington from Nov. 10 through May 31, 2010. A symposium on the topic of the exhibition will be held at 3 p.m. on Nov.13 at the museum.

Guest curator Thunder Williams, a Washington, D.C., radio talk show host, is Carib Indian, African and European. “The exhibition touches a deep interest in African American communities because of their links with Native America,” he said. Published accounts estimate that 60 percent of African Americans may share Native American ancestry, he said.

“People in the U.S. tend to be black or white, linear thinkers,” Williams said. “We have been indoctrinated by a race-centered system where vestiges of the ‘one-drop’ of black blood rule persist. When I acknowledge my Carib Indian and European ancestors, it is not a disclaimer of my African heritage. I am all of them, my blood is indivisible.”

The exhibition takes the long view of history, traveling in a few short panels that illustrate the 1600s, when intermarriage and slavery brought Native peoples and African slaves together, to present-day families for whom this dual identity is indivisible.

“It’s a very provocative topic,” said curator Gabrielle Tayac, who is Piscataway. “The huge back story is that it all has to do with interactions brought about by the European, with practices of slavery on the continent.”

Many panels, which feature contemporary and historic photos, touch core issues of identity for people of racially mixed heritage. The discussion is emotionally charged, Tayac said.

“In many Native communities on the Atlantic seaboard, African American mixing has had consequences historically,” Tayac said. “It may have them be erroneously viewed as less Indian, and it plays out in acknowledgement and enrollment. In African American communities, there is a controversy of whether people should identify as mixed race.”

Foxx Family (Mashpee Wampanoag), 2008. From left: Anne, Monet, Majai, Aisha, and Maurice Foxx. Photo by Kevin Cartwright. Courtesy NMAI. Click photo for full resolution version.

Ideas about the identities of mixed-heritage people grow out of colonial policies, which viewed black and Native people as dangerous.

“In colonial Mexico (the word) lobo, the wolf is the blend of Indian and black,” Tayac said. “The combination was thought to be dangerous, that you could have two colonized and enslaved people, if they come together it could be dangerous. How much did we absorb those ideas?”

The emotions stirred by the exhibition are so close to the surface that even staff at the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture sometimes felt uncomfortable.

“Though sometimes there were things that were uncomfortable, we decided to keep it in the exhibition,” Tayac said. “There are difficult stories; the Cherokee Freedmen on one side, the Buffalo Soldiers on the other. What’s been interesting is people keep coming to us saying, ‘I have a story to tell you about this.’ ”

Guest curator Penny Gamble-Williams, a spiritual leader of the Chappaquiddick Band of the Wampanoag Nation, knows people who denied their Indian heritage and others who would not talk about it. Some embraced their Native roots later in life.

She remembers some tearfully approaching her to ask how they could get information about the Blackfeet or Cherokee tribes, to which people from the South may have heard their family elders say they had blood ties. Many are eager, she said, “to find the missing pieces of their identity, to fill the void of belonging.”

In the end, such questions need to be answered with genealogical research, Gamble-Williams said. Or, perhaps acceptance, Tayac said, if a family story doesn’t check out.

IndiVisible doesn’t try to provide all the answers, Tayac observed. The exhibition often turns the question back to viewers.

And many will get the chance to reflect on them in the coming year. African American museums and schools across the U.S. have already scheduled the traveling version of the IndiVisible exhibition, which will visit Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Rome, Ga.; Aurora, Ill.; and Los Angeles, among other cities through 2011.

– By Kara Briggs, American Indian News Service

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