Museum Exhibit Project Proposal

You are the Manager for the Department of Ethnobotany at the Museum of Natural History. Your museum has just received a large donation from a private fund. The museum’s director would like to use these funds to promote public appreciation of cultural diversity.   

The director has asked that each department manager create a presentation that outlines a potential museum exhibit. You have decided to develop a presentation on ethnobotany and subsistence living. To appeal to a broad audience, your presentation will link ethnobotany with environmental issues related to conventional agricultural or forestry methods.

Your first step is to select an indigenous tribe, or linguistic group of people, that will interest your museum visitors. There are many interesting groups living in the following geographical areas: Asia, Africa, Australia, Central America, India, or an island culture in the Pacific Rim. 

• Create a 9- to 12-slide Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation for the museum director and the other department managers. You may use the following eight slide headings to organize your presentation. Include the following points:

o Introduction 
• Provide an overview of the presentation. 
• State that your proposed exhibit will focus on ethnobotany and subsistence living.

o Benefits of an ethnobotanical exhibit 
• Explain what museum visitors will gain from an exhibit that focuses on ethnoecology, traditional agricultural methods, and plant species used in subsistence living. 
• Identify two ways in which museum visitors can relate to a culture they probably have never heard about.

o Focal indigenous group 
• Briefly describe your selected group’s culture, history, and the habitat in which they live. 
• Identify one similarity between this indigenous culture and your own culture, or a general U.S. culture. 

o Plant species of interest 
• Identify three plants that this culture uses for food, forage, fuel, and other subsistence activities. How does this group manage the wild plants it uses?   

o Agricultural practices 
• Describe two methods of traditional agriculture that your selected group uses. 
• Does your selected group have any special strategies for dealing with agricultural challenges, such as subambient growing conditions, pests, and plant pathogens? 
• How might these traditional methods and strategies be adapted to address an environmental issue related to agriculture? 

o Agroforestry practices 
• Describe your selected group’s methods for managing their forest resources. 
• Which forest species are important to your own culture? Consider food, forage, fuel, religion, and cultural celebrations or ceremonies.

o Ethnobotanical applications 
• Which conservation practices does your indigenous group use? 
• Do you think that these methods are sustainable? 
• Can these practices be adapted to address an environmental issue in forest management for industrial cultures? Explain your reasoning. 

o Summary 
• Conclude with the presentations major points while emphasizing the benefits of having an ethnobotanical exhibit at the field museum. 
• Include graphics such as photos, diagrams, or graphs.
• List brief points in the slides with detailed explanations in the notes section.
• Include three references formatted according to APA guidelines. References should include articles from scholarly journals found in the library. You may use any of the weekly Electronic Reserve Readings for your references. Include citations for photos taken from the Internet.

• Present the Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation.
o For Local Campus students, these are oral presentations accompanied by Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentations.
o For Online and Directed Study students, these are Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentations with speaker notes.