All Roads Are Good

From the Back Cover

In this evocative blend of first-person narratives, stunning illustrations, and historic photographs, native voices celebrate American Indian cultures and their perseverance in the contemporary landscape. The book evolved when the National Museum of the American Indian invited twenty-three accomplished figures from diverse indigenous cultures throughout the Americas to select objects of cultural, spiritual, artistic, or personal significance from the museum's collections and to reflect on their cultural heritage.

Insightful and intensely personal, All Roads Are Good weaves together a rich tapestry of old and new Indian folkways. Artisans, tribal leaders, a playwright, an architect, an archaeologist, and other professionals ponder Indian concepts of time, nature, the Creator, and the function of art. A Crow storyteller recounts thunderbird sightings. A Seneca museum director suggests that Indians themselves may sometimes help to perpetuate stereotypes. Laser beams and other technologies are the vehicles of a new vision, according to a Cherokee arts educator. A Navajo multimedia artist declares that his work is driven by the need to show our culture is not dead.

With more than 100 color reproductions, along with 51 photographs, the book depicts a broad array of indigenous arts and crafts: ceramics, basket-weaving, textiles, headdresses, animal costumes, jewelry, beadwork, canoe-making, and painting.