MinnesotaHistory.net

Contrary to what was reported a few days ago, the Park Service did not lose funding from the federal Stimulus Package passed by Congress earlier this year. Getting that money was only a possibility to begin with. It was never a sure thing. When the Stimulus Package passed Congress, the Park Service was one of many agencies that stood in line to get funding. It just happened that there were more projects seeking funding than there was money. So the Park Service could not get funding for the rehabilitation of the Bureau of Mines property from stimulus money. But this does not mean that it will take five years to get funding for the work.

Word also is that the Final EIS…

Here’s a report just up on the Friends of Coldwater website:

Funds for Building Removal and Land Reclamation Eliminated

by Susu Jeffrey
Friends of Coldwater

June 23, 2009

Coldwater supporters are angry that funds to return the area to “open green space” were dropped from the federal stimulus package. The Twin Cities office of the National Park Service (NPS) budgeted $3.5-million to remove buildings and to prepare the 27-acre property for replanting as an oak savanna.

It would be at least five more years before a financial package could be processed through Congress according to Steven Johnson, Project Manager for the Coldwater restoration program initiated by former Congressman Martin Sabo in 2003. Without action now, the historic Coldwater Spring House and limestone reservoir, built in the…

Every era has its buzzwords, words that promise a great deal but do not always deliver. Today that word is digitization, a word that has been applied both concretely and metaphorically, suggesting greater economy, efficiency, and endless promise. If the movie The Graduate were made today, the word whispered in the ear of the young college graduate would not be plastics, it would be digitization. Just as embracing plastics has left us today with a continuing problem of dealing with the environmental consequences of plastics, embracing digitization unthinkingly may leave us in the future with some dangerous consequences: a lost or inaccessible cultural heritage. And in the case of the Minnesota Historical Society, digitization may lead the institution to abandon its…

Lucile M. Kane died on May 30, 2009. In terms of the profession of history in Minnesota, she was truly one of the “Greatest Generation.” A historian and archivist, she was committed to collecting and making available to the public the manuscript records of Minnesota’s history, for today and for tomorrow. During her years as Curator of Manuscripts at the Minnesota Historical Society, and as Minnesota State Archivist, she collected many important groups of  records and started the ambitious program of microfilming through which the MHS has helped preserve its collections and disseminate the information contained in them. She also wrote and edited several important books on Minnesota history, continuing the legacy begun by earlier generations of curators and archivists…

Is a benign historical interpretation possible for Historic Fort Snelling, one that ignores the events of 1862-63 and and other tragic aspects of the fort for Dakota people? For years the Minnesota Historical Society has been groping for such a possibility. The latest attempt to put this benign interpretation into effect is the effort to associate the Greatest Generation–the subject of a new exhibit at the History Center–with a site that was reconstructed in the 1960s to represent the fort as it existed in the late 1820s.  Will it work to cloak and 1820s fort with the Greatest Generation? Not if the Historical Society wishes to carry out accurate interpretation. In fact, interpreting the Greatest Generation at Historic Fort Snelling…

What will happen to Historic Fort Snelling, the anachronistic product of Minnesota’s Statehood Centennial celebration of 1958? It is hard to read the tea leaves at the Minnesota Historical Society these days, especially from a distance, but the proposed cuts at the Historical Society give some suggestions. It may be that in the very near future, beginning July 1, 2009, Fort Snelling will shut down so that careful work can begin to remove 16% of the walls of the fort. It would be a good start. But maybe this is all wishful thinking.

Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie's playful view or critique of Fort Snelling as a White Castle hamburger stand, with an Edward Curtis paparazzi in the foreground, a Minnesota state…

According to a traditional account, recorded from Anishinaabe informants at Mille Lacs and other reservations, Tail Feather Woman (Tailfeather Woman) or Wiyaka Sinte Win, the visionary Dakota woman who originated the big drum, went to Mille Lacs Lake around 1880 to teach Ojibwe people about the construction of the drum and the vision and the songs that went with it. According to this account and written records, this was just the beginning of the spread of Tail Feather Woman’s vision across the Midwest. As described here in March, it is this vision that Dakota people plan to commemorate this year at Pickerel Lake in South Dakota.

One of the most misleading myths about Minnesota is the idea that Dakota and Ojibwe people were implacable…

Ninety four people will be laid off. The library will be open only four days a week. Historic Forestville in Preston, North West Company Fur Post in Pine City, and Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site in Little Falls will be closed to the public. The Minnesota Historical Society Press will reduce by a third the number of book titles it publishes each year. These are just a few of the layoffs and reduced services to the people of Minnesota that will result, beginning July 1, 2009, from the proposed 16% budget cuts that may be asked of the Minnesota Historical Society by the State Legislature and Governor Pawlenty.  What follows is based on a press release by the Historical Society describing the…

What does Fort Snelling say when no one is speaking? The answer to this question is the reason for tearing down the fort. When this idea was first suggested several years ago, it caused the tearing of hair and rending of garments, even among those who never cared for the fort in the first place. When I first heard it myself, I did not embrace the idea. Now after careful thought, I suggest a gradual process of deconstruction, starting with the northwest or southwest walls, so that in the future a person arriving at the fort from the nearby visitor center will see a breach in this monolithic diamond. That would be a good start.

The truth is that many who…

The National Park Service/Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) has announced that there will be no further public meetings planned concerning the disposition of the Coldwater Spring property. A further meeting had been announced for mid-April, but that meeting will not take place. The decision appears to be the result of what happened at the Open House on February 23, 2009, at which some of those attending insisted on speaking publicly on the various issues involved in front of all those gathered, rather than speaking individually to the officials present. The decision was announced in an email to several of those interested in what happens to the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines property.

Email from Steven P. Johnson of MNRRA, April 7,…