Camp Keeper’s Diary
I Am a Crow and Jeanne Is My Sister
Listen to the Camp Keeper
I was inside The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, doing what I usually do at museums — looking for collectors, scanning donor plaques for leads, and genuinely enjoying the exhibits. I signed up for the overview tour, a walk through everything in the venue.
Leading the tour was a pleasant Native American woman named Jeanne, working as a docent. She was extraordinarily knowledgeable about every exhibit — none of which featured Curtis. She also made a point of noting that the Tribes who helped finance the building were limited to basement exhibits, while the main collections belonged to everyone else. Typical.
After the tour, I was copying names from the donor recognition plaque when I noticed Jeanne sitting on a stool nearby, crying. I went over and asked what was wrong. She said, “They won’t let me tell it like it really was. They want me to change my entire presentation.” She told me she had resigned — and that I had just been on her last tour. I later learned that Jeanne held an advanced degree and was a professor of Native American culture.
We became friends. I hired her as cultural advisor for The Curtis Collection, and we worked together on several projects — some successful, some not. (See: How to Lose a Tribal Sale.) Through Jeanne, I met directors of Native American cultural museums and tribal leaders I never would have found on my own.
One day she asked whether I had ever been to Crow Fair in Montana — held each August on the edge of the Custer Battlefield National Park, in the heart of Crow country. I said no. I made plans to join her. Crow Fair is a week-long tribal event with over 10,000 people in attendance — parades, ceremonies, the Big Horn mountains, and a people whose traditions have not vanished.
I learned that while Jeanne is Lakota, her husband is part Crow, and she had been adopted by Georgianna Bad Bear’s family. I went to Crow Fair, met “MOM,” and had such a remarkable time that I told her I would return the following year. MOM said that if I came back — and she meant it as a test — she would adopt me into the family. She did.
The next year I went through a ceremony with the Elders in the pouring rain and became a Crow family member. MOM is only three years older than I am. She started early. I also gained Jeanne as an official sister and three new brothers.
On a later visit, I earned another distinction: official family cook, producing a seafood gumbo from scratch that no one had ever tasted before. It went over well.
Like families everywhere, my Crow family has its complications and its joys. Jeanne and I have remained close through all of it, and I visit her whenever I can.