The Thanksgiving story that most Americans know didn’t actually happen.
“It’s just a morale-booster based upon a myth that never happened,” said John Low, the executive director for the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian and a Potawatomi Indian. “The only feast that comes close to the first Thanksgiving was a celebration over the massacre of Pequot Indian women and children by pilgrims.”
Evanston’s Mitchell Museum, the only museum in the Chicago area with a main focus on American Indians, came from a desire to dispel stereotypes and educate visitors about America’s first inhabitants.
“This is not a place for Indians or just about Indians,” Low said. “This is a place for everybody and about everybody.”
John and Betty Mitchell founded the museum in 1977 as part of Kendall College in 1977, which existed as a liberal arts school in Evanston before relocating to Chicago in 2004.. The couple began with their collection of 3,000 American Indian artifacts and objects. Since then, the museum has more than tripled the size of its collection. In 2007, it became an independent nonprofit at its current location on Central Street.
The majority of visitors are elementary school groups who come to supplement what they learn in the classroom.
“It was a lot of stuff they haven’t seen or heard before,” said Erik Fritzsche, a third-grade teacher at Samuel Sewall Greeley School in Winnetka who took his students to the museum Thursday. “It was made real for them.”
Low, who said children have asked him if he rides a canoe home or lives in a teepee, sees educating these groups as an important part of dispelling stereotypes about American Indian people. He leads the school groups in hands-on activities, plays the flute, sings songs and tells stories.
“I grew up with a textbook that was extremely centered around the American colonial perspective,” said Loyola University Chicago freshman Daniela Lieggi, who works at the museum. “To have them come in here and get actual information based on real artifacts and actual instructions from a member of a Native American group who grew up on a reservation is important.”
The Mitchell Museum currently works with Northwestern’s Undergraduate Leadership Program as one of 11 nonprofits in Evanston participating in the program’s Community Connections Project. The group that chose to work with the museum will work on spreading awareness about it.
“The theme is helping us tell our story,” Low said.
A large part of the two-story museum is dedicated to American Indian art. “Transcending Boundaries,” the current exhibition, features carvings and sculptures.
“I think what’s really evident there is how active American Indians and their communities really are with art,” said Weinberg junior Lindsey Parker, who is working with the museum as part of the Community Connections Project. “It’s a part of their culture, and I didn’t realize how much so.”
In addition to art, the museum also has a birchbark canoe, Hopi dolls, Pueblo pottery and Cherokee carvings on display.
“I was taught by my elders that these things have a spirit in them,” Low said. “They continue to have the spirit of the makers and of their communities in them.”
The museum will be hosting a holiday bazaar Dec. 6-7 at which 21 American Indians will be selling traditional art and crafts.
