Shoshana Wasserman, deputy director of the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma, works to create opportunities for Native Americans to tell their own stories. Previously known as the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum, the First Americans Museum opened in September 2021. It explores the tribes throughout North America who were forcibly relocated to what was known as Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and part of Iowa.
Wasserman played an important role in the opening of the First Americans Museum. She also ensures that the institution focuses on the accomplishments and pride of Native Americans, as well as the Trail of Tears. Influenced by her Native American and Jewish heritage, Wasserman is considered a bridge-builder among cultures. She has joined forces with organisations in Oklahoma and across the US that encourage the development and enhancement of other Native American museums.
“Our museum tells the collective story of the 39 tribal nations that were removed from our homelands around the contiguous United States. We are representing so many tribes in one place, and having our voices be the primary voices in the content,” James Pepper Henry, executive director of the First Americans Museum, told blooloop.
“With 39 tribes from the Pacific to the Atlantic and the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico, we have a lot of cultural diversity. Yet there are also a lot of gaps in the scholarship existing about these tribes,” added Heather Ahtone, director of curatorial affairs at the First Americans Museum.
“There were certain tribes, the Osage, the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, and the Comanche, that have coloured the American mythical ideas of what it is to be a First American. Knowledge about those communities was abundant. But there were also the tribes for whom we had to struggle and work diligently to make sure that we included them in images. It was important that we fit them within the storyline in a way that gave them a presence.”