Montana Built a $107 Million Museum. Its Smallest Room Says a Lot About the Thought That Went Into Designing the Space

You can take a few different paths upon entering the new Montana Heritage Center in Helena. Go left, and explore the life and works of prolific “cowboy artist” Charles M. Russell, creator of more than 2,000 paintings and sculptures of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Straight ahead are views of the State Capitol. But before any of that, I’d urge you toward the right, to a small plaque marking a windowless room. This room—the smallest in the museum—might be the most important one in the whole place.

The plaque marks the smudge room. For members of Montana’s 13 sovereign tribal nations, some of the items in the museum’s galleries are living entities. Encountering them can surface joy or trauma in equal measure.

To center themselves and enter that space safely, visitors smudge: burning materials like pine, sage, cedar and sweetgrass, then wafting the smoke over themselves as a form of blessing, cleansing and preparation. The museum also smudges to purify and protect the sacred items in its care. Many, though not all, Indigenous cultures practice smudging.

Smudging also happens on the way out of a space, even more often than on the way in, Sanders explains. Smudge rooms have long existed in tribal spaces like colleges and hospitals in the United States, and they are increasingly appearing in other places. Mayo Clinic converted a historic parlor into one in 2019, and Montana State University just built one into its new American Indian Hall.

But this was the first one I’d seen incorporated prominently in a museum. It feels welcoming: Brightly lit and airy, the room itself is curved and built with natural materials. Stones embedded into the floor mimic the feeling of walking outdoors.