Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices
By Karen Coody Cooper    

During the twentieth century, dozens of protests, large and small, occurred across North America as American Indians asserted their anger and displayed their disappointment regarding traditional museum behaviors. In response, due to public embarrassment and an awakening of sensitivities, museums began to change their methods and, additionally, laws were enacted in support of American Indian requests for change. The result is that American museums have revised their long-held practices due to American Indian protests.

Spirited Encounters provides a foundation for understanding museums and looks at their development to present time, examines how museums collect Native materials, and explores protest as a fully American process of addressing grievances. Now that museums and American Indians are working together in the processes of repatriation, this book can help each side understand the other more fully.

Table of Contents: Author's Preface • Introduction: American Indians, Museums and Protest • Part I: Protesting Exhibitions • Chapter One: Politics and Sponsorship • Chapter Two: Display of Sacred Objects • Chapter Three: Display of Human Remains • Chapter Four: Art Confined to a Reservation of its Own • Part II: The Long Road to Repatriation • Chapter Five: Demands for Return of Material Objects • Chapter Six: Demands for Return of Human Remains • Part III: Whose Heroes and Holidays • Chapter Seven: No Celebration for Columbus • Chapter Eight: Thanksgiving Mourned • Chapter Nine: The Custer Chronicles • Part IV: Claiming Our Own Places • Chapter Ten: Native Cultural Sites • Chapter Eleven: Transforming Museums • Conclusion: Achievements Gained by Protests

About the Author  Karen Coody Cooper was recently the Museum Training Program Coordinator at the National Museum of the American Indian, and was formerly Training Programs Manager at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies. She holds a Master of Liberal Studies degree, with a museum and anthropology emphasis, from the University of Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.  Karen Coody Cooper Website.

Book Information  AltaMira Press      Dec 2007 224pp      Discounted Price: $23.76 (15% off) List Price: $27.95        Paper 0-7591-1089-1 / 978-0-7591-1089-2 

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