Nancy J. Fuller/Susanne Fabricius: Native American museums 
229 
which to conduct ceremonial activities, conferences and workshops. Most centers 
have exhibition areas which depict the history and customs of the Native people living 
in the surrounding region. They are often used as a means to educate school children 
and visitors. Also, they offer an accessible market to tourists and collectors for 
purchase of American Indian made arts and crafts and thus, help to ensure that tribal 
artists receive an equitable share of the purchase price. The programs offered by the 
Daybreak Star Arts Center in Seattle are typical of this category of museum. The 
Center provides an Indian Dinner/Theater to which guests are invited for an evening 
of authentic Indian entertainment and traditional foods. During the week, staff 
conduct pre-school classes and organize outings for the elderly. There is a sales gallery 
in which works of art created by Indians are exhibited, and, a publishing venture which 
produces educational materials for use by Indian communities throughout the nation. 
The Sherman Indian School Museum in Riverside, California, and the Stewart Indian 
Museum Association, Inc. in Carson City, Nevada exemplify another type of pan- 
Indian cultural center. These places help Indian people from various tribes who are 
linked by common educational experiences to maintain contacts with each other and 
document a significant period in history from the participants’ perspective. 
Additional categories of Native-controlled cultural facilities include those which 
are components of institutions that may or may not be Indian controlled. In this 
category would fall college or university museums such as the Atalona Lodge Museum 
of Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In a separate category are museums 
managed by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, U.S. Department of the Interior. 
Examples are the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma and the 
Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Montana. Some tribes do not have a tribal 
museum on their reservation land, but install exhibitions that they develop themselves 
in an area of a mainstream museum. In Alaska, municipally operated museums play 
vital roles in the presentation and preservation of Alaska Natives’ history and culture. 
Many of these museums encourage Native participation in program development 
through membership on advisory boards. The Yugtarvik Yup’ik Museum in Bethel, 
Alaska has worked closely with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Kuskokwim 
Campus to develop a Mackintosh-videodisc program utilizing museums exhibitions 
in the multimedia presentation. This resource is used by teachers throughout the state 
as a means of integrating Yup’ik culture and language into the school curriculum. In 
other instances, the National Park Services provides exhibition space for tribal groups, 
especially those whose traditional lands are contained within park boundaries. In cases 
s uch as these, Indian staff have negotiated a level of autonomy. The Southeast Alaska 
Indian Cultural Center in Sitka, Alaska is an example. For the past twenty-two years, 
it has been housed in a wing of the Sitka Visitor Center at the edge of Sitka National 
Historical Park. The initial purpose of the Center was to provide workshop space for 
Artists and instruction in traditional arts for students. Its policies require that each 
participant annually contribute an artistic work for retention by the Center. This 
Practice has led to the accumulation of a meaningful collection of objects by contem-