On the summer solstice, the sun sits perfectly at the apex of the mound. On the winter solstice, the sun shines directly through a tunnel cut into the mound, flooding the interior field (the museum’s Festival Plaza) with light. Visitors can walk to the top of the earthen mound to get a sprawling view of Oklahoma City, and on the equinoxes, they can have an extra special experience. So, all of our dwellings are round.” In the shape of two partial circles that intersect, the museum grounds function as a huge cosmological clock. In our beliefs, if you have a right angle, spirits get trapped in there and it causes an imbalance. James Pepper Henry, a member of the Kaw Nation and the director and CEO of the FAM, adds, “Right angles are not an aesthetic for many of the tribes here in Oklahoma. “There is no end because time is circular in Native cultures, much like the continuous rising and setting of the sun,” says Blatt. The museum buildings make up one circle, and an enormous earthen mound made from 500,000 cubic yards of dirt forms the other.Ĭircle and spiral shapes hold symbolic meaning in First Americans’ spirituality, and it was of the utmost importance to include them in the design, explains Anthony Blatt, principal with Hornbeek Blatt Architects, which worked on the museum with design architect Johnson Fain. In the shape of two partial circles that intersect, the museum grounds function as a huge cosmological clock, tracking the seasons by showing the movement of the sun across the circles and highlighting the equinoxes.

The FAM’s tribute to the state’s tribal nations begins before you even walk through its doors.

The museum opened this month after three decades of planning, and a design process that strove for an architectural masterpiece that would be meaningful to the tribes represented within it. At 175,000 square feet, the new First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City is the largest single-building tribal cultural center in the country, honoring Oklahoma’s 39 tribal nations and housing the National Native American Hall of Fame.

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