When I think of an archive, I imagine a windowless facility to prevent the sun, the enemy of delicate materials, from entering. I picture a well-guarded safe house, endless shelves, and boxes caked with dust. The National Museum of the American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center and the National Museum of Natural History’s National Anthropological Archives changed my perception.

I was fortunate enough to visit these Smithsonian archives in Suitland, Maryland, six miles southeast of the National Mall, along with participants of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Native Language Reclamation in the U.S. program. I was able to discuss with Native Hawaiians and Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) people how our visit provided them with an opportunity to walk through history and reconnect with their ancestors through their words and objects.

A babbling creek runs down the steps as you enter the Cultural Resources Center, and then you are immediately greeted by a blessing from the Hopi community once inside. You enter through the east, a deliberate choice to honor the Indigenous American custom of greeting the morning sun with east-facing doorways.

Once inside, warm sunlight bathes the central rotunda through a glass roof, representative of a portal to the world above us. Columns representing the cardinal directions flank the room, supporting angled panels and glass sections with latticework meant to resemble butterfly wings and spiderwebs. A glass box sits at the center of the room, representing the world below; I was told this is because knowledge is believed to rise from beneath.

I was in awe of the beauty of the building and the reverence put into its design. Working in collaboration with Indigenous architects, the designers knew it was important for the building to have windows, so that the objects—living beings, in Indigenous belief—can see the changing of the seasons.

For Mary Linn, curator of the Native Language Reclamation program, providing a trip to the archives and collections while participants were in D.C. for the Festival was always a goal.

“Community access and shared stewardship is part of my being,” she said. “It was critical to me that if we invited young Native people to give us their time and expertise for the Festival that we provide an extra day and open our collections to them to see their own heritage that we help care for. I also want to help create the next generation of Native museum workers, archivists, and memory professionals, as well as language workers.”

Pelehonuamea “Pele” Harman was excited about the opportunity. “One of our major desires since we’re going to be all the way there in Washington, D.C., was to incorporate educational activities for our group,” Harman explained. “Specifically, we wanted to be able to look at the Hawaiian collections in the Smithsonian.”

Harman is a kumu hula (hula teacher) at Hālau I Ka Leo Ola O Nā Mamo (School of the Living Voice of the Descendants), a hula school on the island of Hawaiʻi that teaches exclusively through ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language). In the archives, she and her students were able to see objects they use in their performances today, such as ipu hula, or gourd drums. “It really was like children in a candy store,” she said.

For some of Harmon’s students, such as Kāwika Keuma, it was their first time visiting an archive. He associated the word “archive” with archived classes on Google Classroom, but he was astounded seeing the reality: rows and rows of cabinets housing countless objects.

“I don’t think any of us would have expected that those huge, super meaningful sacred artifacts would be in a place like that,” Keuma reflected. “Being able to go somewhere else and see things that are from here, it was a really cool experience because we were going there to showcase us, and we were able to see a part of us there.”

One of the most memorable objects for him was an ʻahu ʻula, a cape made of red and yellow feathers, a sacred object not often seen in everyday life. Although Keuma had seen pictures before, being able to see these objects in person added a deeper level of appreciation. “To be in their presence, especially that feather cape because it’s at such a high status and chiefly status, was really cool,” he said. “Certain capes represent certain islands, and everybody in our group, we all have different backgrounds, so being able to see that and being represented in things that were there was really cool.”

Harman said she was in awe of the ʻahu ʻula’s craftsmanship and amazed at its preservation. “The level of excellence in the artistry that went into it, and the fact that the colors remain super vibrant, the designs are intact,” she said. “I found myself constantly looking back and thinking, can you imagine this? That this was more than 100 years ago, and look—it’s in pristine shape. What does that tell us about our daily lives? Do we create things that are meant to last centuries?”

In addition to providing her students with an invaluable educational experience, Harman’s motivation for visiting the archives was deeply personal. The Smithsonian currently has five boxes of archival material belonging to her great-grandmother, Hawaiian scholar, dancer, and educator Mary Kawena Pukui, who is honored on the 2025 U.S. $1 coin.

In her lifetime, Pukui worked diligently to document Hawaiian culture in the wake of the kingdom’s overthrow in 1893 and American annexation in 1898. “She really dedicated herself to preserving whatever she could of our culture and our language,” Harman said. “A lot of [the archival materials] are transcriptions of interviews that she did with Native speakers or Native high practitioners of our traditional medicines. It would also be papers or essays that she authored about a lot of the practices here in Hawai‘i that she was seeing disappear before her eyes.”

The material also included Pukui’s anthropological writings on native plants and other ethnographic notes that would later become part of her more than fifty published scholarly works, including the Hawaiian-English dictionary she authored in 1957 and ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings in 1983.

For Harman, her most treasured memory of the visit was watching an archival film of her great-aunt Patience Namaka Wiggin performing traditional hula dances. She had seen the film before at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, but during the digitization process, half of the film was corrupted, resulting in the loss of entire sections. Thankfully, the Bishop Museum requested that the Smithsonian copy the film before they attempted to digitize it, and this copy remains in pristine condition.

“That was mind-blowing because some of the names have changed over time, or we no longer know the hula practitioner,” Harman said. “There was a whole other portion that I had never seen on the film explaining hand motions. We watched the film in its entirety. I saw things that I’ve never, ever seen. Just to see my great aunt, who lived to be almost 101, dancing was definitely the highlight.”

Wishe Brant Mittelstaedt, a member of the Kanienʼkehá:ka nation, described a similar personal experience during our visit. He viewed three baskets woven by the prolific basket maker Mary Adams, and though she passed away before he could meet her in person, he has since formed a close bond with her children and granddaughter. “Seeing those was pretty cool. I even video-called one of her daughters, Trudy, who’s in her late seventies, and showed her, like, ‘Hey, I’ve got your mom’s baskets here, and they’re still in good shape.’”

Mittelstaedt also described two group members’ interactions with century-old cradleboards from their community of Gonzaga, north of Montreal. “That was really emotional for those two people in particular, to know that there were babies from the community that were swaddled in there. They were painted and designed beautifully.”

Mittelstaedt is a member of Ionkwahronkha’onhátie’ (We are becoming fluent), a grassroots organization operated by and for young adult second-language (L2) learners of Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) working to reclaim and revitalize their language.

“We’re all very big nerds when it comes to learning our language,” Mittelstaedt said. “We were excited to find all these new words people don’t say anymore and getting a different understanding of things. It’s interesting to see what your ancestors were saying 200 years ago. It may not be relevant now, but it’s so cool.”

Among some of the documents, Mittelstaedt and his peers were able to peruse in the National Anthropological Archives were word lists of names for various medicines and plants, newspaper clippings, and even a letter written in the late 1700s. 

“I’ve had experience working with archivists, but that was my first time in an archive, especially at the scale of the Smithsonian. It was awesome,” Mittelstaedt said. “There were boxes and boxes and boxes. I would just like to read through all of it and see what I find.”

Mittelstaedt expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to visit the archives and forge connections with other Festival participants. “It was really nice that we had the chance to meet these other Indigenous groups: the Hawaiians, the Myaamia, and the Sugpiaq. That was probably the best part of the whole trip—that we all got to hang out with four different groups.”

Harman echoed the sentiment, speaking of the deep sense of community she felt and the rare chance to stand before objects once held by their ancestors. “It was so nice to see all these Indigenous people delving into their collections and geeking out on the things that fill their cup,” she said.

“We’re just very appreciative to know that this is a place that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren can continue to go and visit,” Harman continued. “I have no doubt that they’ll be around for a very long time, for future generations to engage with, because they’re cared for.”

But Keuma hopes these collections will one day be easier to access. “If some of those pieces could eventually be returned here, to any of the islands, that’s more accessible for everyone. We could catch a forty-five-minute plane to O’ahu and be able to see that cape somewhere way closer.”

I am likewise grateful for the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian’s collections and archives, and it was a powerful reminder that while objects may travel far from their origins, their spirit still belongs to the people who made them. Seeing Indigenous ancestors’ words, works, and artistry so carefully preserved left me wondering what future generations will inherit from us, and whether the things we create today will carry forward the same resilience, beauty, and truth.

Sebastian Barajas is an intern in the Folklife Storytellers Workshop and the Mother Tongue Film Festival and a recent art history graduate from The University of Texas at Austin.