Apsaalooke Women and Warriors exhibit opens at Carnegie Natural History Museum

Western Pennsylvania’s curiosity about Native American culture, particularly the Apsaalooke people of the Northern Plains — also known as the Crow — is being fed abundantly by a new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History that opened Saturday. It continues through May 29.

“Apsaalooke Women and Warriors” celebrates the Apsaalkooke (pronounced ap-SAH-loo-gah) people’s bravery in battle, their artistry — including innovative bead work — and matriarchal society where women were largely on an equal footing with men.

The men were warriors who protected the inhabitants of the community while the women worked to preserve the culture.

“I think there is a lot more fluidity about roles and what gender means,” said Gretchen Baker, the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. “Compared to our European traditions, or at least how it plays out in the U.S. a lot today, there is certainly a sense of equal respect and leadership and power that reside with women.”

The exhibition features historical war shields and regalia with a mix of traditional objects and modern Native American art pieces. The exhibition is overseen by guest curator Nina Sanders of Chicago’s Field Museum who specializes in historic and contemporary Native American art.

“You walk into that exhibition and there are these photographs, these images of Crow women from this historic time positioned above the shields, themselves,” Sanders said. “It speaks to the way we honor and respect the shields. “It’s the women who take care of the shields. It’s the women who are watching over everything.”

Sanders said the items on display are very precious.

“When you look at one of these objects, the war shields are sacred or ceremonial items that were made by men to essentially gather power,” Sanders said. “The reasons these museums are having these exhibitions with Crow material is because these war shields that were created were quite the fancy at the time. Everybody wanted one, and now there are a limited number of them in several museums.

”They come with an incredible story. I would say there are not too many exhibitions that look like this.”

Sanders, a native Apsaalooke who grew up on the Crow reservation in Garryowen, Mont., said much of what is shown and discussed in the exhibition focuses on how the bravery and artistry of the Crow people is alive today.

“We have living contemporary artists who were inspired by the historic objects (of the collection) and created new works specifically for this exhibition,” she said.

Baker said the exhibition is very celebratory.

“When you see the exhibition, it’s vibrant colors (with a) variety of different techniques and textures and imagery,” Baker said. “A lot of museums hold objects from the Apsaalooke peoples and a lot of those objects came into museums’ care as a result of the impacts of the colonizing of the American West.

“This exhibition is a coming together of these historic collections that live in museums with contemporary works by a very vibrant culture. So for us, it’s trying to take this important culture out of this ‘frozen-in-time display case’ and bringing it to the current day.”

Sanders said exhibition visitors will experience an explosion of color.

“You don’t see a lot of black-and-white in Crow art work or bead work, historic or contemporary. It’s extremely colorful,” she said. “So, when you go in, it’s just an explosion of color the entire time.

“I really do hope the people of Pittsburgh come and visit the exhibition to really imagine what a Native American culture looks like today. We’re still the same people.

”We want to disentangle ourselves from the Disney stuff — these kind of old romanticized ideas — and give people a more well-rounded understanding of who Native people were and are, and who they are becoming. It’s part of the history of this country.”

Baker said she sees the “Apsaalooke Women and Warriors” exhibition as something signaling a recommitment to telling the story of the people whose collections the museum has in its care.

“This exhibition is important for this museum,” she said. “I’m super excited about it and what it signals for us.”