About an hour to kill before I head to a meeting marathon, I decided to pay a visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian...
The gardens of the museum are home to tradition native American medicinal plants like the quechua here...
Traditional native American artifacts in the gardens at the entrance...
The building of museum itself has a unique architecture...
The building’s distinctive curvilinear architectural form is inspired from a wind-sculpted rock formation...
"Everything is alive and is making choices that determine the future, so the world is constantly creating itself" - Vince Deoria Jr.
This noble thought signifies the harmony with which the native Americans lived, harmony with Nature, a delicate equilibrium that was disturbed by the barbaric invasions by the European colonizers....
Flags of native American tribes...
Treaties that the natives signed with the colonizers robbed them of their traditional lands...
Anguish of the natives...
"Trick or treaty?" - that's a big question...
Some more native flags...
A walk-through various exhibits of native tribes...
Native arts...
The Mayan calendar...
Treaties between the natives and the colonizers involved surrendering land to the Europeans...
...and resulted in the locals losing their sovereignty over their ancestral lands...
...forcing the natives to adopt their ways!
And the colonizers spread westwards...
...assaulting native civilizations!
The Maidu Creation Story...
A display on the Maidu Creation Story...
Wings of freedom...
Moving southwards towards the Incas...
Incan artifacts...
The Gate of the Moon from the Tiwanaku civilization around Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia...
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Colonization of the Hawaiian archipelago...
The modern Hawaiian flag...
Potential of organized agriculture attracted colonizers to Hawaii...
Native Hawaiian flag...
"Free Hawaii" propaganda on display in the museum...
And I now leave with somber thoughts of how the United States was build on the blood and tears of the natives...
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