Word: lakota
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Last April, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University opened an exhibit called “Wiyohpiyata,” Lakota for “west,” which alludes to the tribe’s idea that thunderstorms originate in the west; to the cultural belief that thunderstorms fuel warfare; and to bloody Western expansion. The center of gravity for the exhibit is a ledger inscribed with the work of several Lakota artists. The ledger—which has been in the possession of Harvard’s Houghton Library since the 1930s...
...tale of a Native American warrior who rescued his friend in combat—the exhibit itself is the product of an intricate interweaving of stories and cross-cultural negotiations. The product of a 30-year friendship between Peabody Museum Associate Curator of North American Ethnography Castle McLaughlin and Lakota tribe member Butch Thunder Hawk, the Wiyohpiyata exhibit explores the tribe’s culture and traditions with genuine Lakota perspective...
...Together we wanted to come up with the key Lakota concepts that would form the backbone of the exhibits and [decide] how to best express those concepts,” McLaughlin said...
While working on a reservation for blue roan horses—the decedents of original Lakota war ponies—in the 1980s, McLaughlin grew acquainted with Thunder Hawk, the tribal arts instructor at the United Tribe Technical College. The friendship between the two has served as the impetus for the current Wiyohpiyata exhibit, which they co-curated. Its planning required a large team of workers and over four years of conversations and brainstorming, according to Thunder Hawk...
...wanted to design a Lakota-centric exhibit,” McLaughlin said, as she described the museum’s conscious effort to include a Native American in the process of producing the exhibit. “I was supposed to provide a non-[American] Indian perspective when necessary...