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Washington –People who live within driving distance of Washington, D.C., have created a new tradition of visiting the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the day after Thanksgiving.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian at dawn. (Photo by Judy Davis, Hoachlander Davis Photography)

That Friday is marked across the nation by trips to shopping malls, but last year 10,508 people visited, making it the museum’s busiest day of the year at NMAI.

This year the museum will also commemorate the first Native American Heritage Day. The heritage day was established last month by Congress to encourage recognition of tribal government, celebrate Native cultures and languages and to acknowledge “the rich Native American cultural legacy.”

The museum plans to give away thousands of buttons for Native American Heritage Day. Extra staff including museum managers will be on the floor greeting families.

“I am personally going to be on the floor like many of our staff who aren’t normally on the floor,” said Maggie Bertin, NMAI Associate Director, Museum Resources. “We are going to meet people and help people celebrate this first heritage day.”

Nationally-recognized storytellers Dovie Thomason, who is Kiowa, Apache and Lakota, and Sunny Dooley, who is Navajo, will entertain and educate. Dooley, who is from the Chi Chil’ Tah community at Navajo, said she didn’t relate as a school child to the Indian depicted in the Thanksgiving story. Now she is glad that people can learn about the unique and diverse Native American cultures at a place like NMAI.

“I am happy to be going to tell stories, and of all the families who come, I am grateful,” Dooley said. “I think they will learn a lot about Navajo culture.”