In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent fellow Virginians Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a westward expedition that opened an era of drastic change.
In memory of Jefferson's role in proposing the cross-country trek, the University, Monticello and the city of Charlottesville will kick off the opening events for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration in January 2003.
The week's activities, from Jan. 14 to 19, will include a wide range of performances and exhibitions by musicians, dancers, chefs, historians, professors, authors and environmental anthropologists.
Monticello Chief Operating Officer Kat Imhoff said she was pleased with the multicultural elements planned for the commemoration.
"One night we'll have a Lakota hoop dancer, another night opera, another day Native American storyteller, the next a panel of scholars on the evolution of the West," Imhoff said. "It's hard to make this exposition week fit into a box. It involves arts, scholarship, tourism and sovereign nations, and that's what makes it exciting."
The Monacans, a Native-American nation indigenous to the area, will host the national commencement ceremony Jan. 18 on Monticello's West Lawn. It will include Monacan Chief Kenneth Branham, Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians, as well as award-winning historical writer Stephen Ambrose.
Ambrose is the author of "Undaunted Courage," which chronicles Jefferson's proposal and Lewis' scientific contribution to the journey.
President George W. Bush also has been invited to the service.
For the past year, University faculty from a variety of disciplines have met regularly in colloquiums to discuss Jefferson's role in proposing the expedition, as well as the presence of Eastern Indian tribes in the region and important aspects of the West, before and after American settlement.
According to Anthropology Prof. Jeffrey Hantman, who is helping to organize the commemoration, the University previously "had not focused on the American West." He added that now the University is "developing a whole new perspective on American history and building it into the curriculum."
In the fall, Hantman, along with Anthropology Prof. Peter Onuf and History Prof. William Seefeldt, will co-teach the class "American Wests," which is cross-listed under the anthropology and history departments.
"We're very excited," Hantman said. "I've never worked so hard on designing a class." He described the curriculum as including both the European perspective of the American West as well as the perspectives of groups who lived in the West, such as Native Americans, Asians and Hispanics.
In order to raise awareness for the historical and what they see as continued marginalization incurred on indigenous peoples, several Native-American groups have stepped forward to participate in the activities.
"The sovereign nations are alive and very much a part of American culture," Imhoff said. "They want to talk about their history and where they want to go. This can change the nature of how we understand our history and what we know about our history, and that will change what we do in the future."
This Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration group has been careful not to offend any groups that may have a more negative historical view of the expedition.
The 1992 quincentennial commemoration of Columbus' arrival in America offended several Native American groups that equated Columbus' arrival with negative parts of their native history.
Hantman said the Columbus event "started out as a celebration when first planned, but the native people whose ancestors were colonized and affected by European diseases ... didn't see it as a celebration."
"I don't think most Americans anticipated the degree of resistance to any kind of notion celebrating Columbus' arrival," he said.
Hantman also spoke about the importance of "challenging notions" about the West through this commemoration, "the most important notion being the idea that the West needed to be 'discovered."
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