What I put forward here is that the interpretative practices of the museum, whether they take the form of exhibitions, education programs, written texts or digital productions, are fashioned by relationships between the familiar and unfamiliar, which in turn both shape and are shaped by human understanding in general. The development of a new…

This article interrogates the politics of representation, expectation, and responsibility at the new National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC. The authors explore the interpretive contests (between and among Natives and non-Natives) provoked by the museum's representational strategies. They think that NMAI has positioned…