"Weegie Clark, a member of the Koweta Indian Community in Oklahoma, wants out of the National Museum of American History. She has had enough of art she thinks she could make herself, enough of the $22 lunches. What she wants right now is to find a piece of shade to people-watch. Perhaps find a good bench on the Mall, “if that is what you call it, but it really doesn’t look like a mall.”

Clark laughs.

“I’m a people person. At home, I can just go out to Wal-Mart and sit in my car and just watch people.”

Washington is slightly better than the Wal-Mart parking lot for people-watching.

Clark, 59, and Bob Davis, 73, chairman of the Koweta community, push on an exit door, but it doesn’t open. A guard points to another door that’s unlocked.

The pair spy a shade-covered bench on the Mall. Before crossing the street, they bump into another member of their tour group who has come on the bus with them from eastern Oklahoma. Jerri Hudson, 78, tells them she and her husband made it uptown to the National Zoo to see one of the pandas eat bamboo.

Clark and Davis are impressed.

“We took a taxi.”

Clark and Davis are more impressed.

“And the taxi driver jumps the meter up $3 when you get in and shut the door,” Hudson says. “It jumps up $2 more when you stop. And you can’t understand a word he’s saying. Then he rolled the window down, and it blew my hair.”

“So the panda saw you on a bad hair day?” Davis says."

Get the Story:
Koweta Indian Community: Touring Washington with a different perspective (The Washington Post Magazine 7/24)