Paul Chaat Smith is a Comanche author, essayist, and curator. His exhibitions and books, including Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), focus on the contemporary landscape of American Indian politics and culture. Smith is associate curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.
“The Most American Thing Ever Is in Fact American Indians”
How is it that Indians are present everywhere—in place names, ads, sports team names, weapons systems—yet remain largely absent from the great national debates of our time? Paul Chaat Smith examines this question through twin lenses: Americans, the new show he curated at the National Museum of the American Indian, and the controversy surrounding the identity of Jimmie Durham, an artist whose Cherokee heritage has been questioned.