77% white 133% black or African-American 1% American Indian 17 % latinx and 6% Asian I also know that we're 13% immigrants that's a pretty big percentage here in California and on the coastal areas New York and Chicago we clearly are going to be much higher in
I can't yet account for why I'm not still a lawyer, except that I got this opportunity to come to the Smithsonian and run the National Museum of the American Indian . Let me give you a brief history of our museum.
If you grew up in New York, you've heard of that. I know that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act happened in 1978, the ability to practice our religions again.
We had just showed a planetarium show we developed, and we showed it at the National Aerospace Museum, and then we showed it for a week at the National Museum of the American Indian . OK, this is really important.
What is the problem with the greed on Wall Street that's actually creating such a destabilization in our own economy? There's a Native American Indian example, which I think very suitably addresses this question, that there are two
of Native American and Indigenous Studies at UCSD. A former Professor and Department Chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, he is the author editor of nine books in print or forthcoming, including a book entitled "Indian Blood-- HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco's Two-Spirit
It was also a condition that the Smithsonian would build a state of the art facility for the care and maintenance of the Heye collection. And the National Museum of the American Indian did that. We have a beautiful facility in Suitland, Maryland, just outside of Washington, which is now home to Mr. Heye's collection.
And eventually, the Smithsonian agreed. And so the National Museum of the American Indian was established by Congress in 1989. We opened our museum in New York in 1994, opened the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, the home of the collections, in 1999,
If you grew up in New York, you've heard of that. This is where a lot of American Indian people look at the adoption process and say that it was an act of genocide.
We're saying there's a pattern here where people of color don't get to live as long or aren't as safe in certain circumstances, Some have. But the American Indian movement has doubled down on Indian.
So as you heard, my name's Kevin Gover. I'm the director of the National Museum of the American Indian . If I lapse into jargon, I'll say "NMAI," because it sort of rolls off my tongue now.
So long story short, the collection was in some considerable risk of being broken apart and sold. It was at that point that there were several Native American members of the board of the Museum of the American Indian , and they very much wanted to see this collection not just rescued, but that it become the backbone of a new Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian .
by which the assets of the Heye Foundation's museum, the Museum of the American Indian , would be transferred to the Smithsonian. And the Smithsonian would establish a National Museum of the American Indian . There were two important conditions for our purposes.
There were two important conditions for our purposes. One was that the Smithsonian and the National Museum of the American Indian always have a location in New York City. And so we are the only Smithsonian Museum with separate locations in both Washington and New York.
It was called King Philip's War. Even the terminology, like American Indian , seems really whitewashed.
But what we've demonstrated to them is that, in fact, you can do this, and the tribes will repay the loans. And so we went out and commissioned a piece by the American Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Montana, and we worked with legal professors
But what we've demonstrated to them is that, in fact, you can do this, and the tribes will repay the loans. took to Congress on a change in the American Indian probate.
have been problematic stories. And some of our halls-- like this one is the North American Indian Hall-- still look like they're stuck in the 1930s or 1900s even, image of what a natural history museum should look like.
But he comes to Southern California for the first time for an extended stay in 1922. Here he is in "The Pony Express," playing a Native American Indian , of course.
I think what influenced me, culturally, though, because certainly, we didn't have Native arts and cultures in our curriculum-- it might be a little different now, I hope. But it wasn't until I was a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts, which was then, in the late '60s, a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. But it was an art school, the first time I had Native teachers.
Every time the federal government realizes they have a problem with fractionation, the way to solve it is put it on Indian people. And so in 2004, the American Indian Probate Reform Act passed. And it basically set up a process that if Indian people don't have wills, they lose control of their asset.
We are going to lose a whole bunch of Indian land, three generations out, if we can't get people to write wills. So we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to do pieces around the American Indian Probate Reform Act. Then we also work on using land as an economic asset.
And then I went to college. So growing up on a reservation, a modern American Indian reservation at a time in this-- I was born in 1978, and the reservations were created kind of as military forts and prison camps
But in February of 2015, the University of Wisconsin's Cooperative Children's Book Center, which does a fantastic job of tracking how many diverse books get published every year, for the first time posted a list of all the titles in its annual African-American and American Indian categories for the books of that year. It didn't list titles in any other categories and it hasn't done this since, but I read reviews of all the books,
knowledge of that connectivity is is what we see in the media in public. Right when we think about the everyday spaces, though, that there's been this long history of connection. Whether we're talking about how aim the American Indian movement, you know, partnered or worked with, uh those involved in the civil rights movement or the Black Panthers, what we think about the history of a place like Louisiana or New Orleans, where my family is from that there were right
Senate, and the House of Representatives, and finally, the Smithsonian Institution itself came together and struck a grand bargain by which the assets of the Heye Foundation's museum, the Museum of the American Indian , would be transferred to the Smithsonian. And the Smithsonian would establish a National Museum of the American Indian .
If you grew up in New York, you've heard of that. Now, when you go through the adoption process as an American Indian -- and I think this is nationwide to everybody-- they
It's a-- It's classic. It's an adjacent story to, but very inspired by, the American Indian Movement. It's called ARM-- Aboriginal Rights Movement in that movie.
We're saying there's a pattern here where people of color don't get to live as long or aren't as safe in certain circumstances, Whether they just didn't want to change their names and acronyms, or also because the word Indian and American Indian is the terminology that's used in US
It was at that point that there were several Native American members of the board of the Museum of the American Indian , and they very much wanted to see this collection not just rescued, but that it become the backbone of a new Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian . And so after a lot of haggling and a lot of drama and a lot of politics, the powers that be in New York City, New York state, the US
But it would be a Smithsonian anthropology museum, so it was no small matter. Over time, the Smithsonian was persuaded that its interests lay with having a National Museum of the American Indian . There were some very powerful members of Congress who supported the idea and basically told the Smithsonian,
The museum did accomplish two extraordinarily important things in its early years. One was that, under the legislation that established the museum, both the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History, which is one of the oldest museums in the system, were required to begin immediately returning to Native American communities
The mandate was later expanded to include sacred objects that were in the possession of the Smithsonian and objects of cultural patrimony. And so both of the two museums, now, Natural History and American Indian , maintain active repatriation programs. And we are returning things that, in all honesty, never should have left those communities.
From the time that we arrived here, I could feel the energy, and I really want to thank those who took time out of their schedules, out of their days, those amongst the Google American Indian network, to make this possible from the time we arrived at our parking spots.
I'm the client adviser for the Asian Google network, the Filipino Google network, the Indus Google network, and the Google American Indian network.
None of that's heard. You know, they're just, you know most of them as you would expect were Mexican or African American or American Indian .