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Cécile R. Ganteaume

In addition to curating Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field, Cécile R. Ganteaume is co-curator of the exhibition Americans, on view at the museum on the National Mall, and author of Officially Indian: Symbols That Define the United States. Ganteaume serves on the curatorial committee of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative and is a recipient of a 2011 Secretary of the Smithsonian’s Excellence in Research Award and a team recipient of the 2018 Smithsonian Excellence in Exhibitions Award. (Photo by R.A.Whiteside, National Museum of the American Indian)

Stories from this author

Genízaro Delvin Garcia standing in remains of the 18th-century Santa Rosa de Lima Church. Abiquiú, New Mexico, 2019. (© 2020 Russel Albert Daniels)

“Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field” Presents Contemporary Native Experiences from the Inside

Since the turn of the 20th century, Native American photographers have taken the representation of their people into their own hands. In “Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field,” Russel Albert Daniels and Tailyr Irvine present original images that illustrate issues important to Native Americans today. Daniels (of Diné and Ho-Chunk descent) looks at the Genízaro people of Abiquiú, New Mexico. The Genízaro embrace the painful history of their ancestors and their perseverance in creating an enduring community. Irvine (Salish and Kootenai) visits the Flathead Reservation and nearby Missoula, Montana. She shows how blood quantum requirements for tribal enrollment complicate young people’s most personal decisions. Created in collaboration with the museum originally for exhibition in New York and Washington, as well as online, “Developing Stories” opens on the museum’s website with Daniels’ piece, to be followed this summer by Irvine’s essay.

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Roach. Italy, 1944 or 1945. (Photo courtesy of Della Boyer)

The Italian Campaign, the Lord’s Prayer in Cherokee, and U.S. Army Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Roach

Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Roach (Cherokee, 1912–1984) served with the Fifth Army during the Italian Campaign, the longest continuous combat and some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Here, his granddaughter tells the museum about his life and the Cherokee language prayer card he carried as a soldier in Europe, then as a combat engineer in the Philippines. We're especially proud to share Sgt. Roach's story this weekend, during the groundbreaking for the National Native Veterans Memorial. The memorial—to be dedicated on November 11, 2020, on the grounds of the museum on the National Mall—honors the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native men and women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces since the country was founded.

Winyan (Woman) Power: New Art by Kevin and Valerie Pourier Honors Women Who Stand Up for the Rights and Welfare of Others

"Winyan Wánakikśin" (Women Defenders of Others), a buffalo horn belt created by Lakota artists Kevin and Valerie Pourier, honors the strength and perseverance of women activists. Inspired by the Native women who took part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, the art work represents an important event in Native American, American, and environmental history, and speaks across artistic, cultural, and national boundaries.

Manitok Thompson, Veronica Connelly, Rosie Kowna Oolooyuk, and Bernadette Dean at the National Museum of the American Indian's Cultural Resources Center. The four women—skilled caribou and sealskin clothing makers, and fluent Inuktitut-speakers and knowledge keepers—traveled to Washington from Nunavut as guests of the Embassy of Canada to attend the opening of the embassy's exhibition

Inuit Women's Survival Skills, Which Kept Arctic Explorers Alive, Help Heal Residential School Survivors

This May the National Museum of the American Indian was privileged to host four remarkable Inuit women from Nunavut who were in Washington as guests of the Embassy of Canada to attend the opening of the exhibition "Captain George Comer and the Inuit of Hudson Bay." At a related symposium, Bernadette Dean, Rosie Kowna Oolooyuk, Manitok Thompson, and Veronica Connelly spoke of the knowledge of land, ocean, ice, sky, and animal behavior their people shared with George Comer, a whaler who wintered over at Cape Fullerton 14 times in the early 1900s. They also described the knowledge Inuit women needed to make life-saving caribou and sealskin clothing. Now they're concerned with passing that knowledge on, to help museums conserve Inuit collections and to help Inuit women heal from the deep-rooted scars left from attending Indian Residential Schools.

In the exhibition

The entangled history of non-Native Americans and American Indians has shaped and defined who we are as a people

Images of American Indians are embedded in Americans' everyday lives and have been since before the American Revolution. What other nation in the world is so fascinated by one segment of its society? And what can we learn about ourselves and our history by thinking about why? One of the curators of the "Americans," opening January 18 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., gives a brief introduction to a few of the ideas behind the major new exhibition.

A 1948 Indian Chief motorcycle, a loan from the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, is on view in the atrium of the museum. When Americans opens in the fall, the motorcycle will be moved to the exhibition gallery.

The exhibition Americans, opening in October, previews with a 1948 Indian Chief motorcycle

Indians are everywhere in American national and pop culture, and have been for centuries. Why is that? Americans, opening in the fall, explores Americans’ and American Indians’ entangled history, revealed by the events that have shaped our national consciousness and by the imagery of American Indians all around us in our everyday lives.

The famous engraving of Pocahontas made by Simon van de Passe (1595–1647) mirrors the Renold Elstrack (1570–1625 or after) engraving of Queen Elizabeth—and the 31 other engravings of British sovereigns published in 1618 in

Marking the 400th Anniversary of Pocahontas's Death

The broad strokes of Pocahontas’s biography are well known—unusually so for a 17th-century Indigenous woman. Yet her life has long been shrouded by misunderstandings and misinformation, and by the seemingly inexhaustible output of kitsch representations of her supposed likeness. The conference "Pocahontas and After," organized by the University of London and the British Library, sought a deeper understanding of Pocahontas's life and the lasting impact of the clash of empires that took place in the heart of the Powhatan Confederacy during the 17th-century.