Newsweek

When George Gustav Heye decided to open a museum of American Indian artifacts in Manhattan in the 1930s, it was with the expectation that the native people of North America would soon be extinct. He was wrong. And so it is with an emphasis on the survivors that the Smithsonian prepares to open its new National Museum of the American Indian, on the last unbuilt parcel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When the building is dedicated on Sept. 21, the participation of 20,000 representatives from more than 400 tribes—the largest and most diverse gathering of Indian people ever—will leave no doubt that the original occupants of America are still here, and that many of them are flourishing.