“Gotta see everything and do everything.” That’s just how it is when you go to a famous city like Washington, D. C.

Or so some people think, me included most of the time. Didn’t work out like that recently because I made the mistake—or maybe the right choice—of checking out the National Museum of the American Indian first thing.

Stayed all day.

Number 18 in the collection of Smithsonian Institution museums, this one in sight of the U. S. Capitol opened in 2004 but my first visit came four years later.

Being partial to people stories more than things behind glass, I felt like a guest, welcomed into American Indian communities with real residents telling their tales and helping me understand the context of what I thought I already knew.

Sounds heavy but it isn’t. Friendly. Interactive. Personal. Names and faces, families and friends, fabulous (and some would say funky) food. The breadth of experiences kept me all day, and I was alone, sharing reactions and insights only with myself.

“This may fly in the face of what you know,” Plains Cree Indian Floyd Favel cautions as he narrates one of the many films and audiovisual events.

“This museum is the result of consultations with Natives about our way of looking at American history,” Favel says, as opposed to collections not created by Native peoples.

“Our story of survival is one of the most extraordinary stories of humanity,” he says.

Self-telling: giving a personal point of view of the events in one’s community, family, daily life and history. That’s what’s going on in the National Museum of the American Indian with storytellers Favel calls the original people of this hemisphere.

Some are so personal I thought I might add their names and addresses to my birthday book, my calendar of contacts for sending cards and occasional notes.

These stories flesh out history, but they also triggered in me a sense of connection to today.

“I watched my grandmothers beading; they had no patterns, but pulled designs out of their heads.” I understood, because quilters in the south praise their grandmothers for patterns in their souls and minds expressed in scraps of fabric.

“Everything is about respect: our elders, the land, our traditions.” There’s a movement underway in the world today called The Elders tapping those who can contribute wisdom, independent leadership and integrity to bring courage where there is fear, agreement where conflict and hope where there is despair.

“We honor places of hope; for us natural resources are cultural resources.” America talks a lot about going green and seeking meaningful change.

I listened to American Indians telling the stories they know, and sharing history from their point of view, in videos and on computer screens, with me pushing the buttons to choose the topics.

I walked with others on a free one-hour tour through this four-story Museum, seeing the highlights and hearing the significance, rather than reading the signage, and then I returned everywhere. For a brief visit, or a starter, this is the way to go. They happen at 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. and also at 11:00 a.m. on the weekend.

My stay-all-day visit gave me the luxury of playing all the games, seeing all the films, strolling the grounds and eating an incredible interesting lunch.

Indigenous foods of the Americas are the headliners, but some familiar offerings help out the USA traditional eater.

Aji spiced wilted greens, blue squid ink calamari, Jicama tamarillo and a pine nut rosemary tart pleased me, plus the Indian pudding. Why? Because I’d never tried any of them before and I selected from the abundant buffet for just that reason.

Buffalo burger, wild rice and watercress, pineapple salad or ceviche would have been calmer choices, and still adventurous.

The staple food of the Inca, quinoa, is available here too and even though it’s mild

in flavor, the museum cooks consider it the “mother grain” of the Americas.

Stroll through the cafe, at least to experience the names and the looks of food familiar to America’s Indians. Recipes come from the Great Plains, Northwest Coast, Northern Woodlands, Meso America and South America.

Stroll upstairs, too, to the fourth floor Lelawi Theater for a 13-minute film shown on a three-dimensional fringed fabric screen. This is three-quarter theater, not completely in the round and the Who We Are story that is told rounded out my understanding of the

diversity of Native life.

Sitting every now and then is good after walking around this Capitol city. The National Museum of the American Indian also offers up little booths with four seats on the top floor, another good resting and story-telling location.

Tales about the forming of stars and constellations show here, with lights above coming on to illustrate the stories on the planetarium-style ceiling.

Some Museum stories are printed, usually decisive statements on a wall of photos so you get a face and an expression to go along with a point of view.

Community curators these people are called, chosen by their peers to decide which stories to share and how to do so. Others tell their tales on video, the monitors placed in settings displaying homes, rivers, woodlands, agriculture or travel representative of different peoples.

The array of interactive information sharing is astonishing; certainly a hallmark of Smithsonian Institution facilities, the hands-on opportunities here are as diverse as the stories they tell.

I didn’t, but you might hang out in the resource center and track down your own genealogy.

I did wander around the building, as well as within. Blackfoot, Cherokee/Choctaw and Hopi are the American Indian connections of the designers; they aligned the building with cardinal directions and marked the north-south and east-west axes of the center with special stones.

The landscape team drew on the Navajo/Oneida heritage of ethnobotanist Donna House to feature four environments of the Chesapeake Bay region: hardwood forest, wetlands, cropland and meadow. With the famous dome of the U. S. Capitol in sight, it’s quite fine to stroll by those landscapes.

Corn, beans, squash and tobacco aren’t generally growing next to a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

Good indicators that surprising stories might be told inside too.





America’s longest-running play opens every night in Washington, D. C.

Hearty loud laughing tops off a grand day of museums in America’s capital and Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center seems likely to offer that chance whenever you go.

Guinness book records say it’s the longest-running play in American theater history with 29 years in Boston and 21 in Washington, D. C.

Shear Madness is a whodunit comedy tickling groups of school kids as well as business people in suits the night I laughed it up in the intimate Theater Lab venue at the Kennedy Center.

A touch of improv even gets the audience into the act near the end, trying to determine who stabbed the concert pianist with scissors.

It’s easy to get there with a metro ride to the Foggy Bottom station where the Kennedy Center has clearly marked red vans waiting to transport everyone to the theater, and back again after closing.

Mighty nice night time view of the Washington, D. C. skyline at intermission from the balcony patio.