By HEATHER HANSEN
BYU has more than one museum of art. The Museum of Peoples and Cultures is an anthropological museum many have yet to discover.
“Come find out the best-kept secret on campus,” said Heather Seferovich, coordinator of public programs at the museum. “Our museum is interesting for classes to visit, enlightening for those who are curious about other cultures and a fun, free activity.”
“We are really a unique museum in Utah because our exhibits are all part of (BYU) curriculum,” Allen said.
The curriculum encompasses 30 hours of course work. Some of the classes include collections management and registration and curation and programming. It is from these classes that two or three students are admitted as co-curators.
“We couldn’t survive without students’ (help),” Allen said. “We get a lot of mileage out of a limited budget using students.”
With student help, Allen and Collections Manager Shane Baker curate the museum by examining the collection and checking for the most appropriate objects to put on display.
With everything from authentic arrowheads and harpoons made of bone to a bark skirt and deerskin headdresses, the museum has much to offer. Other characteristics include recordings of Indian dances and petroglyphs — artistic carvings in rock.
The museum features two exhibits: “In Our Footsteps, Legacies of the Fremont (Indians)” and “Follow the Sun, the Ute of Utah.”
“The Fremont Indians were ancient farmers whose fate remains debatable,” said Marti Allen, assistant director of the museum.
The Fremont culture was first identified by archaeologist Noel Morss in the 1920s. It was because his work was focused near the Fremont River in Central Utah that he named this lost people the “Fremont” Indians. This group appeared around A.D. 400, according to the label, but no one knows exactly when they died out.
According to the exhibit, the Fremont Indians did not leave behind a written language, so the name they used for themselves is unknown.
“Their distinguishing cultural traits began to disappear around A.D. 1300,” according to the label.
However, “at least 20 Native American tribes possess traditional knowledge that leads them to assert cultural affiliation with the Fremont,” according to the label.
“The Fremont are, simply put, still here and we are them,” said a Hopi elder as stated in an exhibit label. “They walked in our footsteps.”
The Ute, on the other hand, are related to a people who moved into the southwest from Mexico long ago. The descendants of the Utes live in Colorado, but eight bands are referred to as Northern Ute and now live on the Uintah-Oaray Reservation in eastern Utah, according to the label.
The Fremont exhibit comes from various loans: The University of Utah Natural History Museum, Fremont Indian State Park, College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price. Portions of the exhibit are also from excavations in Baker, Nev.
The Ute exhibit comes mostly from a donation from Mildred Miles Dillman, a Utahn who loved Ute culture.
The museum, located in the Allen Building on the corner of 700 North and 100 East, is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
