The Land Has Memory: Indigenous Knowledge, Native Landscapes, and the National Museum of the American Indian
Duane Blue Spruce and Tanya Thrasher
Abstract
In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region's original peoples might have known it. Unlike most plantings that surround other museums on the National Mall, the landscape around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is itself a living exhibit, carefully created to reflect indigenous ways of thinking about the land and its uses. This book offers beautiful images of the museum's natural environment in every season as well as the uniquely designed buil ... More
In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region's original peoples might have known it. Unlike most plantings that surround other museums on the National Mall, the landscape around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is itself a living exhibit, carefully created to reflect indigenous ways of thinking about the land and its uses. This book offers beautiful images of the museum's natural environment in every season as well as the uniquely designed building itself. Chapters provide an examination of indigenous peoples' long and varied relationship to the land in the Americas, an account of the museum designers' efforts to reflect traditional knowledge in the design of individual landscape elements, detailed descriptions of the 150 native plant species used, and an exploration of how the landscape changes seasonally.
Keywords:
National Museum of the American Indian,
NMAI,
Americas,
museum,
National Mall,
museum designers,
landscape
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780807832646 |
| Published to North Carolina Scholarship Online: July 2014 |
DOI:10.5149/9780807889787_blue_spruce |
