NMAI

Nikki has been working on some proofreading work she took so this weekend we sought out places where she could work and Georgie and I could go look around. Saturday that ended up meaning two hours at the big Whole Foods in Fairfax. Nikki worked in the cafe while Georgie and I did laps around the store.

Sunday we opted for something a little more exciting - the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. We entered and found that they were having a large native Hawaiian celebration with a live band and dancing. We made for the cafe to get Nikki situated and were amazed at the offerings. They have a large variety of native foods representing every region of the continent. More on that later.

Georgie and I ditched mama and went to the top floor. I decided to start with the section called Our Peoples and the very first exhibit I came to was on the Blackfeet. In the first corner of that section the Blackfeet have their own large section. Each tribe's history is told by its members and Nikki had met with and interviewed one of these 'community curators' (Darrell Kipp) in her initial fieldwork.

There were two videos being shown on screens. One was an animated Blackfeet creation story and the other was an interview with some tribe members on the place of lodges in Blackfeet culture.

It was really strange to see people walking by and looking at pictures of Browning and probably just thinking it was a completely different world, when I've been there and we are going to be living there. And it's interesting to see what a culture presents of itself and compare it with what you know of it.

We looked at a few more exhibits but Georgie quickly got hungry. While Nikki was feeding her I went to the gift shop. I toyed with the idea of getting one of the two Blackfeet ethnographies they had but ended up buying a book about girls' basketball on the Crow reservation.

Then I went back to pick us out some food to eat. There were a lot of good things to choose from. In "our" area (Plains), they had bison burgers, bison chili, fry bread and something called an Indian Taco. Then I noticed that the Pacific Northwest had a 5 region sampler so I got that. It had salmon with a wild berry glaze, a bison rib-eye, a jicama and pineapple salad, some wild greens that were similar to collard greens, and a salad with several kinds of beans. The rib-eye was amazing! I think I just found my new favorite lunch place in town.

After eating I took Nikki to see the Blackfeet stuff and then we left. Next time we'll spend a little more time there and some of the other exhibits.