Smithsonian Celebrates Native Americans

If you can trace any of your ancestry to the very first Americans, you’ll be particularly interested in the Smithsonian’s latest addition. Set to open in late 2002, the National Museum of the American Indian will be a five-story, 270,000-square-foot home to an 800,000-piece Native American artifact collection. The museum will occupy the last open site, a 4.25-acre area, in the National Mall, east of the National Air and Space Museum and near the Capitol.

Designed with the help of a number of Native American consultants, the museum will be a curved structure covered in Kasota limestone to give it the appearance of being carved naturally by wind or rain. Most of the building will be almost 100 feet high, with a dome peaking at 120 feet. The museum will feature a 300-seat theater, an outdoor performance space, conference rooms and classrooms. The surrounding grounds — three-quarters of the site — will be modeled after American Indian landscapes indigenous to the Washington, DC, area.

The museum’s artifacts will be drawn from the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Md.

Approximately 6 million visitors are expected annually. For now, you’ll have to settle for visiting the museum online <www.si.edu/nmai/>.

From the April 2000 issue of Family Tree Magazine