Word: mashantucket
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...search of that story, I leave the casino and visit the nearby Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, a structure that might be best described as architectural non-sequitor. It has been clear, thus far, that Foxwoods is at best a poor reflection of and upon Mashantucket Pequot culture. Calling the main casino "Rainmaker" or the frequent player's program "the Wampum Club" seems in exceptionally poor taste. However, I've been assuming that this can somehow be attributed to the general milieu of tackiness of the early `90s, when the casino was first opened, not to any failure...
...museum, though, I begin to question myself and the Mashantucket Pequots. The museum seems to make even less sense in the context of its surroundings than the nearby casino and hotel complex. Designed by New York's Paul Jacob Parkers, who reveals himself here to be the poor man's Frank Gehry, the building makes little attempt externally to interact with its environment, strange given the emphasis one would expect to be placed on such a dialogue here on the rez. Things get both better and worse on the museum's inside. A spiral ramp draws the visitor artfully from...
...first exhibition hall is one dedicated to the current way of life on the reservation. According to the museum's very first display, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is a "newly-revitalized community--one that has been realized by years of planning, hoping and hard work." Certainly, the will of the Mashantucket Pequots to revitalize the rez is undeniable. But what gets short shrift here is the largely contingent nature of this revitalization, what with it being based upon the gaming industry...
...Elsewhere in the museum, I find white people taking a collective dump all over various other facets of Mashantucket Pequot culture. I hear a number of snide remarks and much repressed laughter during my tour through the museum. While I might ordinarily find such behavior highly reprehensible, here nothing manages to rouse my ire. This is because, in some very important ways, the Mashantucket Pequot's claim of a distinct cultural identity seems somewhat tenuous. The Mashantucket Pequots lack a distinct native language. The representations of modern indigenous language and culture within the museum are largely facsimiles or bastardizations...
...last exhibit space of the museum, there is a gallery of portraits of current members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, with quotes from many of them. All of these photographs depict people whom I would visually identify as either white or black, not Indian. Below the photograph of Regina Kirchner, whom I would identify as white, reads the following: "My mother never talked about being Pequot, so it's hard for me to have this feeling about being Indian. I really feel I'm living between two worlds, you might say. I'm trying to get back some...