Rayna Green

Career

Green held academic positions at the University of Arkansas and the University of Massachusetts. From 1976 to 1980 she directed the Project on Native Americans in Science for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and from 1980 to 1984 she was associate professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. In 1984 she began work at the National Museum of American History as a consultant, becoming director of the American Indian Program in 1986.

At the museum she produced public programs on Native dance and song and symposia on contemporary Native art, science, and technology. She curated exhibitions including "American Encounters"; "Bon Appétit: Julia Child’s Kitchen at the Smithsonian"; and "Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950-2000". Green served as scriptwriter and director of three documentary short films on Pueblo life: "We Are Here: 500 Years of Pueblo Resistance" (1992), which won the Ciné Golden Eagle; "Corn Is Who We Are: The Story of Pueblo Indian Food" (1995), awarded the Silver Apple from the National Educational Film Festival; and "From Ritual to Retail: Pueblos, Tourism, and the Fred Harvey Company" (1995), produced in conjunction with the exhibition "Inventing the Southwest: The Fred Harvey Company and Native American Art".

She coordinated two audio recordings of Native women's music: "Heartbeat: The Voices of First Nations Women" (Smithsonian Folkways, 1995) and "Heartbeat 2: More Voices of First Nations Women" (Smithsonian Folkways, 1998). Green has written or edited four books and many academic articles. She was made Curator Emerita at the National Museum of American History in 2014.

Selected publications

Rayna Green’s 1975 essay “The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture” appeared in The Massachusetts Review, volume 16, number 4, on pages 698–714. The following year, she co-authored with Shirley Mahaley Malcom “AAAS Project on Native Americans in Science,” published in Science, volume 194, number 4265, pages 597–598. In 1977, her piece “Magnolias Grow in Dirt: The Bawdy Lore of Southern Women” was printed in The Radical Teacher, issue 6, pages 26–31.

She wrote “Native American Women” for Signs in 1980, volume 6, number 2, pages 248–267. Her 1983 book Native American Women: A Contextual Bibliography came out from Indiana University Press. The following year saw the release of That’s What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women. Green’s 1988 article “The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe” was published in Folklore, volume 99, number 1, pages 30–55.

In 1991, “The Mickey Mouse Kachina” appeared in American Art, volume 5, numbers 1/2, pages 208–209. That same year, her chapter “American Indian Women: Diverse Leadership for Social Change” was included in Bridges of Power: Women’s Multicultural Alliances, edited by Albrecht and Brewer and published by New Society Publishers. Also in 1991, Chelsea House Publishers released her book Women in American Indian Society. Her essay “On Looking in the Mirror of An Institution” first appeared in the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy Newsletter and was reprinted in Northeast Indian Quarterly (Summer 1990) and The Graduate Quill (SUNY/Buffalo, April 1991).

In 1992, she contributed “Rosebuds of the Plateau: Frank Matsura and the Fainting Couch Aesthetic” to Partial Recall: Photographs of Native North Americans, edited by Lucy Lippard and published by the New Press. That year also saw “Mythologizing Pocahontas” in Musical Repercussions of 1492: Encounters in Text and Performance, edited by Carol E. Robertson and published by Smithsonian Institution Press, and “Red Earth People and Southeastern Basketry” in Basketmakers: Meaning and Form in Native American Baskets, edited by Linda Mowat and published by the Pitt Rivers Museum.

In 1993, her article “Repatriating Images: Indians and Photography” ran in Rendezvous, volume 28, numbers 1 and 2 (Spring/Fall), pages 151–158.

Did You Know?

• She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia between 1964 and 1966.
• In 2008 she was Leman Brady Professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.