And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
sent by Lynn-Moss Sharman
9/27/99
Museum a 'forgery': Cardinal
Ottawa architect to boycott Washington groundbreaking
Ian Brodie
The Times of London
WASHINGTON -- Plans for a museum honouring American Indians on
Washington's National Mall have been clouded by a heated and highly unusual
dispute over its architecture. The ground breaking ceremony
tomorrow will be boycotted by the leading design architect.Douglas Cardinal
of Ottawa is responsible for the dramatic curves, intended to evoke stone
cliffs eroded by wind and water, that will make the
building uniquely recognizable. A Canadian of Blackfoot ancestry, Mr.
Cardinal was belatedly invited to the ceremony last Thursday afternoon by
the museum's director, Richard West of the Southern Cheyenne tribe. He
immediately declined, saying that to attend would be like going to his own
execution. "They're trying to pass off a forged copy of my work on the
American people and frankly I'm astounded," he said.
To the embarrassment of Washington's establishment, the argument over
whether Mr. Cardinal's plans have been purloined not only pits Indian
against Indian. It also involves the federal Fine Arts Commission, which
approves designs for new buildings, and the venerable Smithsonian
Institution, which already administers 16 museums and galleries. Ten years
ago, when an Act of Congress authorized the Smithsonian to build the
National Museum of the American Indian, Mr. Cardinal began producing design
and construction drawings, but not quickly enough or in sufficient detail.
Eventually he was dismissed for alleged breach of contract in what an
official document called "a failure to provide the Smithsonian with an
acceptable plan for completion of the project on schedule." The Smithsonian
turned over the Cardinal drawings to what the architect called "a
committee." But the revised plan when submitted. But when the revised plan
was submitted, it was rejected by the Fine Arts Commission as lacking the
spirit and unique flair of the original.
Benjamin Forgey, architecture critic of the Washington Post, wrote: "To
drop an architect with so strong and personal a vision in mid-course, and
yet expect to continue in the same design direction, is a recipe for
messiness and mediocrity, or worse."So it was back to the drawing board. In
June, the design team came up with a second revised plan. It was still
essentially Mr Cardinal's original structure of undulating walls made from
rough-hewn limestone, but
with some changes. This time, the Commission of Fine Arts approved.
But Mr. Cardinal, admittedly a prickly figure, was still displeased.
He said: "It's all in the details ... you've heard the saying that a camel
is a horse designed by a committee. They've got a camel."
The Smithsonian said the failure to invite Mr. Cardinal in a timely fashion
to the ceremony was an unfortunate error. He is still listed as the leading
design architect for the building, said a spokesman.
But unlike the "committee," Mr. Cardinal's name does not appear in the
Smithsonian's news release announcing tomorrow's ceremony.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ROBERT NAULT MINISTER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
BIG JOB AHEAD FOR ROBERT NAULT
Brantford Expositor Staff 9/26/99
Robert Nault, Canada's new Minister of Indian Affairs, says he wants to get
rid of the century-old Indian Act. This is not exactly a new promise for an
Indian Affairs minister to make. Nault's predecessors have said much the
same thing for much the same reasons. The philosophy underlying the act is
based on an 19th century paternalism that assumes Canada's First Nations
need the protection and guidance of better educated and more sophisticated
white men
sitting in Ottawa. It was wrong a century ago, and it's wrong today.
The problem is, however, that the Indian Act has become so entrenched as
the guiding force for almost every action that takes place on a reserve
today, from land use to education. But it also entrenches a fiscal
arrangement between the federal government and reserves, which Natives have
been reluctant to give up.
So for decades, both federal and native leaders have recognized that the
Indian Act has to disappear if natives are ever to achieve true
self-government and to regain control over their own communities
and even, to a great extent, over their own lives. But no one was willing
to mess with the existing house of cards in fear that the result might be
chaos. The only way out was to build a new relationship between the federal
government and native groups,
something that could take a long time, given the many decades of ill will
and pent-up frustration. Several significant steps have been taken,
however, to establish that new relationship. First, the
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, though it took years and millions
of dollars to complete, at least provided an outline of how the new
relationship between Ottawa and natives might develop.
Second, the decision by the federal government, during the tenure of former
minister Jane Stewart, to apologize for the horrors of the residential
school system, helped bridge the gap. Finally, some experimental efforts
have been underway for several years to try to find new political and
administrative structures that will see reserves and acquire both more
power and more responsibility for the administration of native affairs.
Self-government agreements and experiments with aboriginal justice systems
are just two of the examples. Nault acknowledges that it is not simply a
matter of repealing the Indian Act and eliminating the Department of Indian
Affairs. A new relationship between the federal, provincial and natives
must be developed, and it must be one built on partnership, rather than
paternalism and trust, rather than suspicion.
Like Nault, Stewart also entered the Indian Affairs ministry with the same
hope of being the minister who finally dismantled the Indian Affairs act.
Like Stewart, we trust that Nault will continue to work with native leaders
to find new political and administrative structures, and then to redefine
the relationship, so that soon the Indian Act will be consigned to
history's trash can.
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE
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