Museum ends Choctaw exhibit
By Jenny Hutchison
Contributing Reporter

> February 1, 2001

The Museum of Anthropology recently closed the exhibit ”Mississippi Choctaws: Traditional Life in a Modern World,” which began Nov. 28 and ended Jan. 26.

This exhibit consisted of photographs meant to portray contemporary Choctaw life on the Mississippi Choctaw Reservation.

There were also contributions of artifacts to the exhibit from the museum’s collections and the Schiele Museum of Natural History.

“We got a really wonderful response. We’re pleased that so many people came in and were curious about the Choctaws,” said Mary Jane Berman, the director of the museum and an associate professor of anthropology.

This exhibit was toured by the Southern Arts Federation and cosponsored by the American Ethnic Studies Program. The SAF is a non-profit regional arts organization that aids in the development of artists and arts professionals. It also promotes and produces Southern arts and cultural programming.

Berman said the museum receives information on traveling exhibits from all over the country, but she saw this one stood out.

“Students and people in the community seem to be really interested in Native Americans,” she said.

“The southeast is rich with various Indian traditions.”

The exhibit included a series of photographs, taken and complied by tribal archivist and folklorist Deborah Boykin and photographer Julie Kelsey, which illuminated the culture of the Mississippi Choctaws.

Photographs on display were of the traditional clothing worn by Choctaws on special occasions, traditional Choctaw dance, the game of stickball, basketry and the Choctaw Indian fair.

Berman said that the purpose of the exhibit was to show that “a lot of (Choctaw) traditions from the past are continued in the present but in differing ways.”

She cited the game of stickball as an example of this phenomenon. “Stickball, played by the Choctaws for centuries, is now played on high school football fields,” she said.

The Museum also held two programs in conjuction with the exhibit.

For the first program, Margaret Bender, an assistant professor of anthropology spoke on “Continuity and Change in Southeastern Languages” on Jan. 18. Bender is a linguistic anthropologist who specializes in the Cherokee and other Southeastern Native American languages.

Bender discussed how the Mississippi Choctaws and other Southeastern Native American groups are increasing or at least maintaining their proficiency in their native languages. Her lecture also explored the influences between European and Native American languages in the Southeast.

The museum also presented “An Evening with Leanne Howe” on Jan. 25. Howe, a visiting lecturer in English, read from one of her recent works.

After the reading, an informal discussion was led by Howe.

Howe is a Native American author, playwright and scholar. She is a citizen in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma where she was born and educated.

Howe has lectured and read from her fiction writings throughout the United States, Japan and the Middle East. She has held teaching positions at Grinnell College, Carleton College and the University of Iowa.

In the near future, she will write for a permanent exhibit on Choctaw creation stories for the National Museum for the American Indian in Washington, D.C., scheduled to open in 2002.

Berman hopes that the exhibit helped those who saw it become more aware of the Choctaw presence in the southeast.

“When people think of the southeast, they think of the Cherokee or the Catawba,” Berman said.

“They don’t realize that there are numerous other tribes, especially the Choctaw.”

The museum will host its next exhibit: “Transformations: African Masks from the Museum of Anthropology Collection” beginning on March 8.