BOISE — The Idaho State Museum’s Origins gallery provides visitors with an authentic and broad understanding of the state’s first peoples by honoring their stories since its opening almost eight years ago.
Through a building and trusting relationship between the Idaho State Historical Society and Idaho’s five federally recognized tribes, the permanent exhibit gives an introduction to each tribe with a tribal theater that reveals tribal Origin Stories, a large artifact display area — including a petroglyph, and the chance to create a parfleche.
Origin Stories often describe the relationship between humans and nature, or explain the origin of earth and life, and are traditionally passed orally from generation to generation, with some being sacred not to be shared with people outside of a tribe. Some Origin Stories inside the museum were shortened without changing their underlying meaning…