Observations about belongings.
As part of the summer Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), SLIS Faculty, Dr. Laura Phillips, is co-teaching a course entitled Rethinking Museums through Indigenous Perspectives with Deji Duggar (Cherokee), a retired history teacher who taught in Moore and Norman for many years. Both Phillips and Duggar are volunteer docents at First Americans Museum and wanted to bring conversations about Indigenous belongings in museums to participants in the lifelong learning program.
The course is described as a senior seminar that invites participants to explore how museums have shaped — and continue to shape — understanding of Indigenous histories, cultures, and living communities. Together, the class reflects on how museum practices emerged from Euro-Enlightenment ways of seeing and organizing the world, and how Indigenous scholars, artists, and cultural leaders offer powerful alternatives.
The seminar includes interactive, experiential-based learning sessions. No prior background is required — just curiosity and openness. Participants will leave with a deeper appreciation of how museums are evolving, how Indigenous perspectives continue to reshape cultural spaces, and how thoughtful engagement can lead to richer, more inclusive ways of understanding the past, present and future.
In Week 1 “Finding Our Place on This Land”, the class drew inspiration from the Cherkoee values reflected in the OKLA HOMMA exhibition catalog shared by Candessa Tehee (Cherokee Nation):[1]
• ᏕᎦᏓᏟᏴᏎᏍᏗ — degadatliyvsesdi — Let us all embrace one another no matter what
• ᎤᎵᏍᎨᏗ ᏕᎦᏓᏰᎸᏎᏍᏗ— ulisgedi degadayelvsesdi — Let us all hold the existence of others as sacred
• ᏕᎦᏓᎸᏉᏕᏍᏗ — degadalvquodesdi — Let us all like each other unconditionally
• ᏕᎦᏓᎨᏳᏎᏍᏗ— degadageyusesdi — Let us all value the existence of one another
[1] From “We Are Still Here”, in heather ahtone and James Pepper Henry, eds. 2021. Okla Homma: Tribal Nations Gallery. First Americans Museum. p. 161.
Week 1’s session highlights included activities based on participants bringing a personal belonging they could share a story about. Using these belongings participants created a collaborative mini-exhibition, had a silent gallery walk and shared the stories behind their belongings in mini curator talks.
Week 2 focused on “How Museums Tell Stories”. In this interactive session participants revisited the museum labels created in Session 1 and reflected on the relationship between observation, interpretation, and storytelling. The class then explored how museums construct historical narratives through timelines and the choices they make about where stories begin. To prepared for the visit to the First Americans Museum the class participated in a collaborative discussion and historical inquiry using a timeline activity of key dates related to Indigenous dispossession and events that led to the creation of Oklahoma.
In Week 3 the class visited First Americans Museum [FAM] where Deji took the group through the Okla Homa galleries that include tribal origin histories, relocations to Oklahoma, addresses misconceptions about Indigenous presence prior to Columbus, taking Indigenous Nations now present in Oklahoma right up to contemporary times with sporting figures and other Indigenous heroes and military veterans. Phillips took the group through the WINIKO exhibit that features long term loans from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. that were selected because the documentation includes names of people that connect to living Indigenous community members today. These belongings have been reunited with contemporary ancestors of their original makers and owners through FAM’s Reunion program which is also the subject of a documentary. This exhibit centers different approaches to care and curatorship of belongings from Indigenous and European perspectives, emphasizing the continuity of practice and authenticity of Indigenous creations and inter-generational knowledge transfer through belongings.
In Week 4 “Looking Again”, the class will reflect on the field trip and conclude with inserting themselves into the timeline from Week 2, to provide opportunities for reflection on how we are within a network of relationships and how belongings carry our stories from past to present and into the future.
Watch out for future SLIS offerings through the OLLI program!
Deji leads the group through a facilitated observation exercise of Indigenous Brilliance by Joseph Erb (Cherokee).
Deji highlights the replica of the Cooper bison skull, the first known example of Indigenous artwork in North America dating to 15,000 years ago. Found near Woodward, OK, at a massive bison hunting site, the original is in the Sam Noble Museum.
The Route 66 100 anniversary mini exhibit at First Americans Museum, emphasizing the massive financial contributions Indigenous Nations make to the state of Oklahoma.
