There has been some controversy brewing around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). A bit of it is due to the dismay over the exclusion of so many tribes, which in time will be remedied, given that the exhibits are supposed to rotate every couple of years. But more fundamental is the debate over the museum's deliberate choice to center its philosophy around the interpretive exhibits of so-called community curators. One's opinion of the success of this approach, whether Native or not, may depend primarily on one's expectations of the function, responsibility, and very definition of what a museum should be because those expectations will be challenged. The author of this essay found that a lack of conflict or drama in the museum's presentation of the "history" of Indian America made his visit to the NMAI an unsatisfying experience. It is the author's opinion that as a result of filtering and processing the exhibits through the eyes and agendas of the Native community curators, the museum represents an exercise in cultural propaganda that emphasizes the positive, glosses over the negative, and is generally very cryptic about what really makes Indians "tick." (Contains 4 endnotes.)