Robin Johnson of Alexandria, Minnesota, says in a recent letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “until Minnesota adults stop thinking of their state’s history and culture as being the almost sole province of children, the complex arguments [about the history of Historic Fort Snelling] will never make an appearance inside the forts, museums or zoos.”
Johnson’s letter to the Star Tribune is part of a continuing a debate about the Historic Fort Snelling and the way it is being interpreted by the Minnesota Historical Society, fostered by the efforts of Waziyatawin and others to call for the tearing down Fort Snelling physically and symbolically. Nick Coleman wrote a column on June 7, entitled Minnesota’s Cradle and Stain, raising questions about whether the Minnesota Historical Society is adequately dealing with the whole negative history of the fort for Dakota people. This week Michael Fox, Deputy Director of the Minnesota Historical Society responded with a column A Full History at Fort Snelling, stating:
While many who come to the fort engage with the reenactment of life on a frontier military post in 1820s, the total visitor experience there today is broader, richer and far more complex. We invite Coleman and all Minnesotans to visit and judge for themselves. View the orientation film in the visitor center that describes the history of this significant place, including the presence of Dakota people at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Sit with kids in the schoolhouse and ask the interpreter about all aspects of the story of the fort. Read the interpretive panels on the 1862 internment camp located below in what is now Fort Snelling State Park, and on the execution of Shakopee and Medicine Bottle outside the fort in 1865. Take one of the special tours we offer on particular eras of fort history, including World War II, the Civil War and the U.S.-Dakota War. Additional interpretation will be available at the site later this summer via your cell phone.
The letter from Robin Johnson of Alexandria takes on the basic problem of how history is presented not only at Fort Snelling, but at other places in the state. The letter is headlined Stop treating state history like entertainment for all ages.
I read with interest Nick Coleman’s assertion that the whole, controversial history of Fort Snelling be told to visitors instead of the edited versions we’re given now (“Fort Snelling: State’s cradle — and stain,” June 6). My reaction: Fat chance of that happening. Historian Bruce White was right when he told Coleman the Minnesota Historical Society “wants to tell a safe, happy story to kids.” Unlike Europe, Britain and elsewhere where you can see a small but visible percentage of contemplative, childless adults visiting cathedrals and historic sites for their personal education and interest, America treats is cultural places like glorified amusement parks. Minnesota children are trotted out to Fort Snelling and the State Capitol at the age of 10, too young to fully understand much beyond the loud cannons or care beyond, “When do we eat?” Most don’t come back until they are distracted, harried parents, or they never come back at all. I don’t really blame the museums, zoos and historical sites for turning themselves into Disneylands. Their economic struggles have been going on for a lot longer than the past two years, and when 98 percent of your audience is under 12 you’re forced to serve up the sterilized pabulum adults feel is appropriate for tender ears. But until Minnesota adults stop thinking of their state’s history and culture as being the almost sole province of children, the complex arguments will never make an appearance inside the forts, museums or zoos. ROBIN JOHNSON, ALEXANDRIA
Contrary to an earlier finding by a federal agency, state officials assert that Coldwater Spring meets the criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP). The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (MNSHPO) in St. Paul, has put on record its agreement with a June 2006 report by a cultural resources consultant supporting the eligibility of Coldwater as a TCP for Dakota people. MNSHPO has informed officials at the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), the local St. Paul branch of the National Park Service, that MNSHPO does not concur with the decision of MNRRA, in 2006, to reject the finding of the consultant about the Dakota importance of the spring.
Coldwater Spring basin
In a letter of April 14, 2010, Britta Bloomberg, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, informed MNRRA of MNSHPO’s determination. The letter was written as a cover letter to the signed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) involving actions to be taken during the removal of buildings on the Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines Twin Cities Campus property. (The letter and MOA are available here as a pdf.) On the issue of the status of Coldwater Spring as a TCP, Bloomberg voiced the independent judgment of the state agency, expressing some of the same surprise that others felt about the decision by MNRRA in 2006. Bloomberg stated:
While the MOA is silent on the matter, we wish to put on record our opinion that Coldwater Spring meets the criteria for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP). Our staff has reviewed the ethnographic resources study prepared by your cultural resources consultant (June 2006) and are in agreement with their findings that the site does qualify as a TCP. We were surprised that the National Park Service has disagreed with this determination. We will be happy to discuss our reasoning. We want to be clear that signing the MOA in no way implies that we concur with the National Park Service’s opinion on this matter. We fully expect to revisit this discussion during the separate Section 106 process referenced in Stipulation II.C. of the MOA that will be undertaken before determining the final treatment plan for Coldwater Spring.
The MNSHPO is a program within the Minnesota Historical Society though it carries on functions funded through the federal government and has a role in processes such as the so-called Section 106 process, which fulfills the requirement that federal agencies take into account the effect of their actions on historic properties such as Coldwater. The MNSHPO however is an agency separate of federal agencies and provides an independent evaluation of federal decisions. Nina Archabal the director of the Minnesota Historical Society, is officially the State Historic Preservation Officer, but Deputy Director of MNSHPO Britta Bloomberg manages the program. While Archabal signed the MOA, Bloomberg signed the letter to MNRRA.
The effect of this rejection of the MNRRA decision on Coldwater Spring depends on how MNRRA–and John Anfinson, the historian in MNRRA who, according to the recently released “White Paper,” made the decision to reject the findings of the independent consultant–respond to SHPO’s letter. According to the “White Paper,” Anfinson’s decision in 2006 did not preclude further discussion. According to a message received from Britta Bloomberg, a discussion on the issue was held on May 20, 2010, with Anfinson “and that discussion continues.”
The disagreement with the MNSHPO also provides an opportunity for the wisdom of the MNRRA/ Anfinson 2006 decision to be re-examined within MNRRA and the Park Service and also by Anfinson himself. It is too soon to know if federal officials or Anfinson are taking advantage of this opportunity.
Here are some real plans that people are talking about for what to do about Fort Snelling and keep it from being attacked. You are going to want to read this because it is very topical, including all the parts some of you campers will not like at all.
The guy who runs this website, that “White” guy, is telling me to stop talking trash about those rich people on the Minnesota River just south of Bloomington because other people are giving him carp about it and talking about sovereignty, which is really scary. OK, I get the message. I’m a changed person of infindecimal characteristics and I will try harder because that is completely, exactly how vaguely defined I am.
So, about Fort Snelling. That lady Nina Archabal (AKA Oprah), is retiring this year. When she said she was going to go she told a reporter that Fort Snelling will be a big honking job for the next Pope of the historical society because Fort Snelling was falling apart just like Humpty Dumpty. Earth to Oprah! Remember that part about “All the king’s horses and all the King’s may not be being able to put Humpty back together again”? Even I knew that. (By the way did you see that I didn’t call it the “hysterical society” because you jokers need to know that calling it that is just lame and stupid especially when you are writing something that is pretty long and have to keep saying it because the editor says you have to be consistent?)
Fort Snelling: It’s the new white treat. It’s what’s for dinner!
According to what I hear from people who may or may not know, who are the best kind of people to tell you the real truth, those people at the historical society are planning all kinds of things to figure out how to handle Fort Snelling because it is a handful and because of what is going to happen between now and 2012 when all heck breaks loose. That lady Nina Archabal had her picture taken in front of Fort Snelling because as far as she was concerned: “Fort Snelling, it’s the new white treat. It’s what’s for dinner!” And she was going to be getting in there and taking a stand. She was going to be saying: “If those darn Dakotas think they’re going to tear down Fort Snelling I will crush them with my fancy shoes!”
But now that that lady is retiring, those people are going to have to figure out what to do about that fort and about those darn Dakotas. Some people there are going to try and carry on what that Nina lady was planning, which is why that guy the other day said that the historical society was going to start planning for Dakota internment there. He really said that! Can you believe it? The ad slogan was going to be: “It was great in 1862, why not now?”
But from what I hear there are people in that historical society who are a lot nicer (Mnisota waßtecake?) and they want to try some other things first before rounding up Dakotas into internment camps. They figure that pretty soon there will be people crawling over the walls and hanging signs saying “Tear Down this darn place!” (Right, they’re really going to say “darn.”) Some of these people at the historical society used to work in art museums and they have good contacts with that artist/ bagman Christo, not the guy with the Greek restaurants, but the guy who hangs stuff up, wraps things, and puts covers over rivers. And it just happens to be the real truth that that Nina lady is a good pal of Christo, from way back when she did what she really liked, which was to run an art museum, instead of that boring carp, history.
Pretty soon there are going to be banners all over that fort with slogans on them.
So what they were going to do is get Christo to wrap up Fort Snelling with sheets and sheets of sheets. Put it under a layer of something with some good tight ropes so it is protected for a few years, until at least 2013, after the 150th anniversary of the stuff that happened in 1862 and 1863 when the 38 (+2 later) Dakotas were hanged with ropes and the rest of them were wrapped up and shipped out of state, by the federal express of that time. I just happen to have some pictures here that these guys gave me showing how they were going to be wrapping up Fort Snelling. You’ve got to give it to them. It is a great concept.
Fort Snelling, all wrapped up by Christo
But the big obstacle for that is that there is this guy who is married to that other woman, who just happens to be running for governor, the wife, that is. And this guy is working for the historical society and he is saying: “Those types in the legislature won’t like this, paying all that dope for grak.” (Because generally those types hate paying dope for grak or even crump, or so I am being told.) So he is putting a stop to that. And of course there are other people who think that wrapping up that fort is kind of weak, so they say that if you can’t beat them up, join them. And they are all for getting that other guy Jim Denomie (a really great guy and I really mean that, although I’ve never met him, it’s just something I hear from that “White” guy, who keeps going “Jim Denomie is such a great artist and a real mensch” or something like that and no one else ever says anything bad about him) that fort painter who’s been working on plans of his own for the fort, including turning it into a hamburger place. They’re going to call it Burger Bdote. I swear this is true, even though he is Anishinabe and that could be a problem for those darn Dakotas.
The new Burger Bdote at Fort Snelling, as inspired by artist Jim Denomie
But a lot of times a lot of guys at the historical society are always asking: “But what’s the bottom line?” Then they start talking about fund raising. And those guys have other plans. They are thinking they will show those other darn Dakotas a thing or two by turning over Fort Snelling to those folks with the money machine down the river to put their new money machine right there where it belongs at Bdote, right there inside Fort Snelling. And it will be called Mystic Bdote Junction. I mean Bdote really is THE junction, in case you were not aware. So what are the darn Dakotas going to be doing then, complain about other Dakotas? You can’t tell me they would do that. I know they all get along with each other. They never fight. They are all kodas, at least the men are, and they are all niijikwes and nijikwenhs and copains and copines and druhs and tovaryshes. Which is great because who wants to be in a room with relatives who are not getting along with each other? It is a P.I. T. B. And what’s more you might get hit.
Mystic Bdote Junction, a new vision for Fort Snelling
But the bottom line for this whole deal is that Nina Archabal (AKA Oprah) is now retiring and this whole problem is going to be a problem for who ever it is who has to fill her fancy shoes, or least her profile.
See! I didn’t say anything bad at all about the folks with the money machine on the Minnesota River. They are the good guys in this story. They are going to save Fort Snelling! Just like I said I am a changed person. Or I least I have change, in case you need some spare for the penny slots.
NOTICE: The opinions of Daniel Shagobince and the other commentators on this site are their own and do not represent those of www.MinnesotaHistory.net
There will be mixed feelings among many about the announced retirement of Nina Archabal, long-time director of the Minnesota Historical Society. People may have disagreements about the legacy she leaves in the institution she led. The good news is what Archabal said in the interview reported in the Pioneer Press this morning. Archabal stated that Fort Snelling would be a challenge for whoever replaces her as director of the Society: “The new director will have to ‘figure out how to knit Fort Snelling back together; it’s like Humpty Dumpty, it’s falling apart. That’s probably a 10-year undertaking.'”
Unfortunately too many people, including some in the Minnesota Historical Society, view Fort Snelling as a stone and mortar problem. What is really falling apart is the historical consensus that led to the fort’s reconstruction in the 1960s. The problems with Fort Snelling are conceptual and philosophical ones. Spending more money on construction cannot solve those problems.
That is the real challenge for the new director of the Minnesota Historical Society.
Reconstruction of the commissary at Fort Snelling in 1974. Minnesota Historical Society photograph
The multifarious, extensively pervasive, unpersuasively extensive, existential influence of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and its Mystical Lake Casino is made embarrassingly clear when you go to the Star Tribune web site to read about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Wolfchild case, a decision that does a great job of shoring up the revenues from Mystical Lake Casino for the paltry percentage of Dakota people in Minnesota who are officially enrolled members of the alleged Shakopee community. If you click on that itty bitty metaphorical buttony thing that helps you to print out the article, an ad for Mystical Lake will appear on your printed page. This mystical and transcendental, juxtapositional conflagration is made possible because the Strib has imposed a new innovative way to make money from its readers, through a logarithm aka logrolling rythm created by those humanitarians at Format Dynamics (what a stupendously, crypto-fatalistically tendentious company name!) by forcing them to print out the advertising it sells. And who can blame Mystical Lake for insisting that its ads be lined up with stories to tie into its majorly important source of income? Hey, check it out! You can get the March/ April package, even though it is already April. Mystical Lake even has time travel packages! Whoah! Can I go back to 1976? That was a great year. If I went back think of the things I could tell myself, or maybe my father or my grandfather (depending on how old I allegedly am).
Shakopee’s Mystical Lake–or maybe Mystical Lake’s Shakopee–spreads its pervasively internet-like web of influence everywhere through ads and through the liquid money it gives to tribes throughout the entire universe. They even give money to needy Klingon tribes! Shakopee is real generous, but the only tribal people who have never benefited from Mystical Lake’s money are the descendants of people who were once part of the Shakopee Band of Dakota–you know, the one that really existed, back in the day.
That’s right. There was a Dakota chief named Shakopee and he had a village, back in the day. But that was before all the Dakota people were rounded up and driven out of eastern Minnesota to the Upper Minnesota River Valley and before 1862 and before the Dakota were rounded up again and driven out of Minnesota entirely and before the U.S. government kidnapped the chiefs Shakopee and Medicine Bottle in Canada and brought them back to Fort Snelling and hanged them right outside the walls of Fort Snelling. WTF? How come they didn’t re-enact the hanging of Shakopee in 2008 when Minnesota celebrated the Ginormetennial of the state of Minnesota? That would have been something, a fabulous way to tell the true history. Jane Leonard, chair (table?) of the Ginormetennial of Minnesota was really asleep on that one!
Shakpe or Shakopee, the chief kidnapped in Canada and hauled back to Minnesota, to be hanged just outside outside the walls of Historic Fort Snelling (viewed in the background of this image from the Minnesota Historical Society website) in one of the may corrupt and stupid chapters in the sorry, disgusting history of Minnesota. Opinion Alert! Opinion Alert!
Okay. Let’s get serious about this. What most of “you people”–all you wasichoos and mokes and haoles–do not seem to get is that the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community was made up in 1968–literally made up–of many people who never had any connection to Shakopee’s village of days gone by. In other words, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community does not exist! It is an oxymoron, kind of like a Republican with compassion or a Democrat with real money. Some of Shakopee’s members, it has been said, are not even Dakotas! (Okay, maybe I can’t prove that myself and even if the Shakpemopolitans are not Dakotas, but they are probably Siouan.) Where did the “Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community” come from? That’s a complicated story for another day. Go find a historian to tell you. Believe me, it’s complicated!
Why am I telling you this? Hey, I just thought you ought to know. Why should you listen to me? I don’t know cause I’m just a mystically unlabelled sextupally elusive person of indefinably vague characteristics who thought you ought to know. But then you probably won’t believe me because you only believe what comes from reliable sources, like Fox news or the Stribune or MPR or KARE or other media outlets that carry Mystical Lake commercials. Anyway, I’m just saying. Take it for what its worth. Enough said. For now. . . .
Hey wait a minute! You’re not going to put a warning line on this at the bottom are you? That’s cold. What’s so wrong with what I said! It’s just Shakopee, c’mon. Your talking like I said something bad about the Pope or Oprah, or maybe the Popra, or even Nina Archabal. Say did you hear that lady is going to retire, OMG, I can’t believe it. You should put something about that on your site. . . . . Okay, fine, I gotta go too.
NOTICE: The opinions of Daniel Shagobince and the other commentators on this site are their own and do not represent those of www.MinnesotaHistory.net
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 own important traditions and violate the mission it has been given by the State Legislature of Minnesota.
Despite all the promises made for digitization, the reality of what it can deliver does not always live up to the hype. This is especially true in the world of libraries, historical societies, and other cultural institutions. It is true that digitization offers a great deal in improving access to information. Creating digitized versions of printed books, handwritten manuscripts, and photographs made with film that can be viewed online is a boon to research. Having the documents accessible in this way often protects the originals from excessive handling, which extends their longevity.
But digitization of non-digital records is not preservation. Recently in a presentation on conservation of of collections, at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Digital Library on June 8, 2009, Robert Horton, Director of the Minnesota Historical Society’s Division of Library, Publications, and Collections, pointed out that if the problems of preserving two-dimensional records and books were difficult, the problems of preserving digital content is much greater and much more challenging. However, despite this knowledge, the Minnesota Historical Society has announced that it will abandon a decade’s old practice of collecting and microfilming 400 local newspapers from around Minnesota. Instead it will attempt to preserve their content digitally.
The newspaper office of an Aitkin, Minnesota, newspaper, around 1938. Minnesota Historical Society photo.
The policy was described in several recent emails from Michael Fox, Deputy Director for Programs at the Minnesota Historical Society, to concerned writers and historians, including one dated June 9, 2009 to the noted Minnesota writer Cheri Register (author of Packinghouse Daughter and other books):
What is accurate in the comments you have heard is the fact that the Society will be discontinuing the microfilming of newspapers. We simply are looking for other, more efficient ways to preserve and make them accessible. Perhaps a misunderstanding of that fact has lead to the conclusion that will discontinue collecting them. We will, but only in a physical sense. The two major metro newspapers and 13 other regional papers are microfilmed commercially. We have not filmed them ourselves for years but instead have purchased copies from these vendors. We will continue to do so. We are looking at a variety of ways to acquire the remaining titles directly in electronic form or scan them. We also have a major initiative to scan older newspapers for online access.
In other words, the Historical Society plans to abandon a proven method of preserving newspapers in favor of one that is more difficult and more challenging.
It should be noted that preserving Minnesota’s newspapers has been a longtime activity of the Minnesota Historical Society. Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota’s first territorial governor and first president of the Historical Society’s governing board stated in an early speech to the legislature that newspapers were “the daybooks of history.” He called for the importance of preserving “a copy of each and every newspaper that may be published in the Territory.” The Society’s library has been collecting and preserving the territory’s and state’s newspapers ever since. In a recent proposal for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to digitize portions of its newspaper microfilm collection for the Library of Congress’s Digital Library, the Historical Society stated:
The newspaper collection is one of the most valuable, most used and most extensive. The Society holds the largest collection of Minnesota newspapers of any repository, represented by over 4000 titles. The dates of the collection range from 1849 to the present and it includes daily, weekly, non-English language, labor, ethnic, reservation, legal, prison, religious, political and school papers. Virtually the entire collection has been microfilmed. Catalog records were created and contributed to CONSER/OCLC by the Society which was selected to represent Minnesota in the United States Newspaper Program (USNP). The newspaper collection receives intensive use from library patrons, for a variety of purposes, from scholarly research to family history, and serves users statewide and nationwide through Inter Library Loan (ILL). The collection is especially important because of Minnesota’s role as a cultural and economic center in the Upper Midwest and its historical significance in the economic development of the entire Northwest.
Preserving newspapers has been a contingent part of the funding received by the Historical Society from the Minnesota legislature beginning early in the Society’s history. A bill passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 1869 (S.F. 111) stated that the Society in partial consideration for an appropriation of $2,000 would: “cause to be properly assorted and bound, their collection of unbound state newspapers; and should any of their files of said papers be deficient, they are authorized to perfect the same, as far as can be done, from the unbound newspapers accumulated by the state in exchange for copies of its laws and session journals.”
More recently, starting in 1984 and continuing today, the Society the role of the Society in relation to Minnesota’s newspapers was further defined in the legal definition of a “qualified newspaper,” one which is eligible to publish official notices of legal actions. The law provided that such newspapers would “file a copy of each issue immediately with the State Historical Society.”
These provisions are some of the dozens in Minnesota law in which the Historical Society, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit has been given various public tasks to perform in return for its annual appropriations from the legislature. In the case of the law regarding qualified newspapers, the task asked of the Historical Society is to be a repository for official newspapers publishing legal notices, among other things. It is clearly in the interest of the state and of other levels of government that there be a reliable place in which past notices and other legal acts requiring publication be preserved in an unchanging form. As a non-profit, non-state agency, the Historical Society would be free to decline the money it receives from the state if it wish to refrain from performing the tasks asked of it. Of course lawyers working for the Historical Society could present the argument that the law only says that newspapers must file copies with the Historical Society, but does not require the Historical Society to do anything with them. Perhaps the Historical Society could file the newspapers in dumpsters and still be within the letter, though not the spirit, of the law.
The Minnesota Historical Society has been a pioneer in the creation and use of microfilm as medium for the storage of documents. Here is a view of an early microfilm viewer of the kind used at the Historical Society from the 1930s to the 1960s. Many better ways exist today to view microfilm, print hard copies from it, and digitize it. Microfilm remains an important and stable tool for the preservation of documents. Minnesota Historical Society photo.
However, for more than 30 years, the Historical Society has adhered to the letter and the spirit of the law and its own historical traditions by microfilming the newspapers it receives, including not only official newspapers but many other daily and weekly newspapers from every county in the state. The announcement that it would not collect or microfilm a large proportion of the newspapers it has received in the past raises important legal questions about the duties of the institution under state law. But it also raises questions about the nature of preservation and the advisability of replacing microfilm with digital storage technology.
What was not mentioned in Michael Fox’s description of the implementation of these changes was the problematic nature of digitization as a form of preservation. The problem relates to questions about the continuing use of particular software and the longevity of the physical media used to back up digital records. As noted, the Society’s own Director of its Library, Publications, and Collections has noted the difficulty of preserving digital documents. His opinion accords with many other experts, including the Library of Congress, which has stated that the preservation of objects that are “born digital” is more challenging than the perpetual care of paper.
The possibility that digitization of newspapers could be used as a form of preservation is still untested. In 2007, the MHS received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work with the Library of Congress to digitize the an selection of Minnesota newspapers for the National Digital Newspaper Program. For the purpose of this project the Historical Society has been scanning and indexing a selection of newspapers already on microfilm. Notably, however, the project description does not describe its purpose as a preservation one. Rather, the project was designed to improve access: “Digitizing the newspapers and making them available online would greatly increase their usage and value.”
At the completion of the project the Historical Society will supply the the Library of Congress with duplicate negatives of the newspaper microfilm: “For each microfilm reel digitized, the Society will transfer a second-generation duplicate silver negative microfilm, made from the camera master, barcoded (LC to supply barcodes for all reels).” Clearly for the purposes of this project, the microfilm, not the scanned versions, was to be the primary preservation medium. Indeed a description of the Library of Congress Digital Library Program states: “However, a major program assumption is that digital surrogates provide efficient access to the content but are not intended to replace originals which remain secure and protected in appropriate storage.” It is clear that had the Minnesota Historical Society offered to supply the Library of Congress with scanned pdfs without the backup microfilm, it would not likely have received its current NEH grant.
Other agencies have raised questions about the whole concept of digitization as preservation. The Washington State Library in a site devoted to “Digital Best Practices” states that:
Preservation of digital objects is little understood and no one has yet perfected the methods that will assure that a digital version of any material will survive over time. The National Archives recommends that public records and permanent copies of documents be preserved in an “eye readable” format. Eye readable for the most part is still paper copies or microforms that can be viewed on readers.
Digital preservation issues are a continuing subject for discussion, as evidenced by the various presentations at the recent Minnesota Digital Library annual meeting. And it may be that the chances for achieving real preservation through digitization are improving. Digital archivists are increasingly using the portable document format (pdf) as a long term software format for storage, the same format that is being used in the Minnesota Historical Society’s newspaper scanning project.
But the reliability of the media used for the physical storage of digital pdf files-whether on cds, dvds, hard drives-is another matter. CDs and DVDs-which many people use to back up their computers-do not have a proven record of longterm stability. The safest route for digital storage is simply to keep copying and recopying digital records and store them on multiple media in multiple places, a practice that will certainly raise the long term costs of digitization.
Of course mass media of various kinds have faced preservation issues. Until the 1940s most black and white film was silver nitrate-based, an unstable medium that could self-destruct or even combust, if not stored safely. Nonetheless these problems were solved with the development of safety film starting as early as 1909. Improved processing made film storage greatly more reliable. Black and white film technology, the technology used to copy and preserve newspapers is now a mature medium. Microfilm can be stored safely for hundreds of years. Multiple copies can be made. It can be viewed with minimal technology. If you had to do it, you could even view a roll of microfilm with candlelight and a magnifying glass.
Given the drawbacks for digital storage and access there are cases in which one would achieve greater long term storage prognosis by printing (using printers using inks or toner with long-term stability) on archival, acid-free paper as a backup for precarious digital storage. Further, contrary to what many people may think, there are few cases in which it would make sense to throw away old film or photos and rely on scanned, digital versions as the only means of storage.
Given all these factors, digitization of non-digital records is a poor long term solution for preservation. Digitization does not amount to preservation except in the sense of preserving original documents from wear and tear. The bottom line is that by eliminating the collecting and microfilming of newspapers the Minnesota Historical Society is trading a proven, reliable, and comparatively inexpensive storage medium with one that is unproven and may in the long term be more expensive. For this reason, even if the Historical justifies its elimination of a program which the Minnesota legislature has mandated it to do, on its own terms digitization is not the panacea many would like to suggest.
More on the issues of digitization and the future of the Minnesota Historical Society, in later installments of this series.
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 many important books and articles on Minnesota history, continuing the legacy begun by earlier generations of curators and archivists at the Historical Society, who combined collecting and cataloging with a vital interest in the history of this state. Lucile Kane was a modest, pleasant, good-humored, and intelligent person, and a dogged researcher. Through her work she inspired several generations of historians and archivists at the MHS and throughout the country. The best honor that the Minnesota Historical Society can give her is to continue to carry out the important mission of the Historical Society to collect the manuscript records of Minnesota’s past and make them available to present and future generations.
Lucile M. Kane, in 1951, looking through a uncatalogued collection of manuscripts, with the enthusiasm she always showed for her job. Minnesota Historical Society photograph.
What follows is Lucile Kane’s obituary, received in an email today. In its original form the obituary mispelled her first name, putting in a double-l. That has been corrected.
Lucile M. Kane, age 89 of Kaukauna, formerly of Plum City, WI, St. Paul, MN and Bloomer, WI Born: March 17, 1920 Died: May 30, 2009 at St. Paul Elder Services, Kaukauna. Lucile was the daughter of Emery and Ruth (Coaty) Kane. She was born and raised in the Town of Salem, Pierce County, rural Plum City. She graduated from Ellsworth High School. Lucile graduated from River Falls College and then taught at Osceola High School. She went on to receive her Masters Degree from the University of Minnesota. Lucile worked as the Curator of Manuscripts for the Minnesota History Society. In 1975 she was appointed State Archivist for the State of Minnesota. A position she held until 1985. While archivist, she discovered the long lost manuscripts of Lewis and Clark. Lucile was a published author and wrote several books and articles of history. Lucile is survived by her two sisters, Dorothy (Shafi) Hossain of Sherwood and Audrey (Kenneth) Cernohous of New Richmond, sister-in-law, Lennis Kane of Plum City, brother-in-law Robert Eder of Amery, many nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends. She is preceded in death by her parents, one brother Sheldon “Bud” Kane and two sisters, Georgia “Sr. Alora” and Leona Eder. Private Funeral Services will be 11:00 AM Saturday, June 6, 2009 at St. John’s Catholic Church in Plum City. Rev. Ambrose Blenker will officiate. Burial will be in the church cemetery. Friends may call one hour prior to services at the church on Saturday. Memorials proffered to the Alzheimer’s Association, Women’s Shelters and the Humane Association.
Here is a biographical sketch of Lucile Kane from the Minnesota Historical Society website:
Lucile Marie Kane, a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of state and western American history, was born at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin on March 17, 1920, to Emery John and Ruth (Coty) Kane. She earned a bachelor of science degree at River Falls State Teacher’s College (later known as the University of Wisconsin-River Falls) in 1942, and a master of arts degree in history from the University of Minnesota in 1946.
She taught at Osceola High School (Osceola, Wisconsin) from 1942 to 1946; worked for the University of Minnesota Press (1945-1946); and was a research fellow and editor for the Forest Products History Foundation (Saint Paul, 1946-1948). She was curator of manuscripts at the Minnesota Historical Society from 1948 to 1975, and Minnesota state archivist from 1975 until retiring on July 1, 1979. Kane was a senior research fellow at the Society (1979-1985), and a senior research fellow emeritus (1985- ).
Kane edited and translated a substantial book entitled Military Life in Dakota: The Journal of Philippe Regis de Trobriand (1951). She contributed to The Public Lands: Studies in the History of the Public Domain, which was edited by Vernon Carstensen (1963). In 1966 she published The Waterfall that Built a City: The Falls of St. Anthony in Minneapolis, which was later updated and published as The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (1987). She helped edit The Northern Expeditions of Major Stephen H. Long (1978), and with colleague Alan Ominsky co-authored Twin Cities: A Pictorial History of Saint Paul and Minneapolis (1983). Kane authored various articles that appeared in such periodicals as Minnesota History, Wisconsin Magazine of History, Business History Review, Agricultural History, and The American Archivist.
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 in any consistent way would require nothing less than the removal of half of the current fort.
The schedule for the June 13-14 weekend at Historic Fort Snelling describes the re-enactment of an odd juxtaposition of historic periods at the 1820-period fort:
Travel back to the World War II era to learn about Minnesota’s role on battlefields and at home. Costumed staff, period displays, weapon firing demonstrations and an encampment of Allied reenactors occupy the historic fort during this special weekend devoted to “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation.” Participate in many hands-on WWII activities for families including crafts, games and obstacle course. Winning films from the 2008 Greatest Generation Film project will be shown in the Visitor Center. Learn more about the Greatest Generation from the exhibit “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation: The Depression, The War, The Boom” at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
It is true that Fort Snelling as a whole did serve as the entry point and exit point for soldiers who entered the Army during World War II. But that had little to do with Historic Fort Snelling, the place first built in the 1820s and reconstructed in the 1960s. When soldiers entering the Army in the 1940s came to Fort Snelling, there were a few buildings standing from the original fort, including the Round Tower, the Commandant’s House and officers’ quarters. But these buildings had been greatly altered since the 19th century. The original walls of the fort and many other structures were long gone.
Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, designed as a military outpost when built in the early part of the 19th century, was called into active duty one last time during World War II. For 300,000 young men of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation, the fort represented their gateway into military service. At the end of the war, it represented their ticket out.
What was Fort Snelling during World War II? Physically it was a vast complex of offices, warehouses, rail yards, barracks, parade grounds and classrooms sprawled over a 1,500-acre site above the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. It was buildings as old as 120 years – solid brick and stone structures on park like green lawns studded with mature elms – and hundreds of tar paper and wood frame huts heated with coal stoves.
But more importantly, what was Fort Snelling to those who experienced it – over 600,000 men and women during the war years? To a regular army officer or enlisted man, the post’s historical character made a strong impression. The commander of the Reception Center wrote in 1943:
“When I stood at the commandant’s house overlooking the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers and gazed about me, I could hardly fail to realize that I was stationed at a post that was physically older than most of the other forts and posts in the Middle West. How far back in the nation’s history this Fort Snelling reached! I could turn and see two buildings that actually dated from the 1820s – the Round Tower, the oldest man-made structure in Minnesota, and the Hexagonal Tower still guarding the actual junction of the two rivers, though its gun ports are laughable now when one considers the size of modern artillery…. Fort Snelling took its place in the vision of a coast-to-coast United States–a picture, incidentally, that few men were capable of envisioning in the year of our Lord 1820!…the men who were responsible for erecting Fort Snelling were not ordinary bureaucrats, but patriots who dared to love their country well enough to think and plan for its future.”
It is not surprising that soldiers of later generations might view Historic Fort Snelling in this light, glossing over the unpleasant associations that might come from a more careful reading of the history of the fort, remembering only the service to their country of those who were stationed there in the 19th century. But historians have an important role to remind their fellow citizens of both the good and the bad in their history, including the fact that for much of the 19th century Fort Snelling, both the original fort and the expanded fort on the Upper Bluff, was associated with a longterm war against Indian people. And as stated before, associations aside, the bottom line is that if one were to commemorate Historic Fort Snelling as seen by World War II soldiers it would be the place before its reconstruction in the 1960s. So, if the connection of the Greatest Generation to Fort Snelling is to be one of the reasons for the Historical Society to continue to operate Historic Fort Snelling, accuracy requires the careful removal of all the changes made to restore the 1820s-era fort.
Historic Fort Snelling looking east from the Fort Snelling Bridge, in 1939, during a Works Progress Administration project to restore some of the stone work of the outer wall below the fort. The structures in the background were substantially the same during World War II and little was done to restore the fort to the 1820s era until after the Minnesota Statehood Centennial, during the 1960s. Minnesota Historical Society photograph.
Fort Snelling's old Round Tower as it looked to the Greatest Generation in 1942, covered with ivy and surrounded by a grassy lawn. Minnesota Historical Society photograph.
Here’s what the Historical Society has planned at Historic Fort Snelling in June 2009, according to a recent press release.
World War II Weekend
June 13 and 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Travel back to the World War II era to learn about Minnesota’s role on battlefields and at home. Costumed staff, period displays, weapon firing demonstrations and an encampment of Allied reenactors occupy the historic fort during this special weekend devoted to “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation.” Participate in many hands-on WWII activities for families including crafts, games and obstacle course. Winning films from the 2008 Greatest Generation Film project will be shown in the Visitor Center. Learn more about the Greatest Generation from the exhibit “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation: The Depression, The War, The Boom” at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
Cost: Activities are included with regular admission fee of $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students, $5 for children ages 6-17.
Historic Fort Snelling Craft Program
June 13, 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m.
Join in a free craft activity that helps participants learn about Minnesota’s role in World War II. This hour-long program is offered as part of Historic Fort Snelling’s World War II Weekend program. Space for the craft program is limited, but any child under 16 may register in person from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. for a chance to win a free American Girl doll. Craft sessions are held at 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. The drawing will be held at 4:30 p.m.
Cost: Craft activity is included with regular admission fee of $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students, $5 for children ages 6-17.
Blacksmith for a Day
June 21, 1 to 4 p.m.
Join the skilled tradesmen of the fort at blacksmithing. Select a project with the smith, work the forge, pound out the hot metal, and shape the iron using hammer and tongs as it was done two centuries ago. Bring the project home to impress family and friends. Children ages 12-17 must be accompanied by an adult. Groups of up to eight people can participate with advance reservations.
Cost: $33; $30 for MHS members. Reservations are required. Call call 612-726-1171 or register online at http://shop.mnhs.org/category.cfm?Category=190
Civil War Walking Tour
June 27, 10 a.m.
More than 24,000 troops trained for the Civil War at Fort Snelling, including the famous 1st Minnesota Regiment, which played a vital role in the victory at Gettysburg. In 1862-3, Minnesota volunteers were called upon to fight the Dakota in western Minnesota. After five weeks of fighting the Dakota were defeated, resulting in the tragic internment of over 1,600 Dakota in the river flats below the fort. This special walking tour will focus on the fort from 1858 to 1865, including the role President Lincoln played in the trials of the Dakota, and a walk down to the memorial located where the Dakota were held over the deadly winter of 1862-63. This tour does not include admission to Historic Fort Snelling.
Cost: $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for children 6-17, with a $2 discount for MHS members.
Upper Post Walking Tour
June 28, noon
Fort Snelling served as an induction and training center during World War II with more than 300,000 members of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation beginning their military life there from 1941-1945. The Fort also trained several special groups, including military police, railroad engineers, and Japanese translators at the Military Intelligence Language School. During the special tour, start in the Visitor Center where a World War II map shows the Fort extending to include the National Cemetery. Then follow a guide on a two-mile loop to the Upper Post, where many World War II-era buildings still stand, including the old barracks, headquarters and other structures that were a part of the biggest military base in Minnesota. This tour does not include admission to Historic Fort Snelling.
Cost: The fee is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for children 6-17, with a $2 discount for MHS members.
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 seal come to life in the background at left, and many other trenchant historical references; reproduced with the permission of the artist.
One of the many unhappy announcements in the last few weeks of budget-cutting news was that Heather Koop, southern district manager of the Minnesota Historical Society’s Historic Sites Department, was among those slated to be laid off, assuming the Historical Society has to cut 16% of its budget. This announcement has implications for what happens at Historic Fort Snelling since Koop was among the few people in a position to accomplish anything, who was actually confronting the issues about Fort Snelling and trying to make a difference. For the past few years Koop and others at the Historical Society had launched a discussion among many people about changing the nature of the interpretation at the historic fort.
Interpretation at Historic Fort Snelling has focused on early nineteenth century military history, but a revitalization project hopes to broaden the history to include the complex relationships between the military and the Dakota people. Over the last year, a public participation process with Dakota people has been taking place across the American Midwest and Canada. The site is fraught with controversy. Today, Fort Snelling is the subject of on-going protests by some in the Dakota community that seek to “tear the fort down.” Other Dakota hope to develop a memorial or living commemoration to Dakota culture and history. It is a controversy characterized by historic divisions in the Dakota community: friendlies vs combatants, federally recognized groups vs those communities not recognized, treaty ratification and failure. Layer on a dominant narrative that has not paid much attention to these issues and there is quite a lot to suggest the power of place and meaning.
In the paper Koop gave an effective critique of the way Fort Snelling had been interpreted in the past and why it was necessary to overhaul it.
When the historic fort was reconstructed in the 1970s a living history program was developed and implemented. Costumed guides interpreted 1827 military life on the frontier, complete with period-appropriate armaments, uniforms, barracks, and domestic implements with washerwomen, soldiers, and blacksmiths performing daily rituals. First person interpretation was popular in the bicentennial ear with visitors eagerly immersing themselves in living history museums and historic sites around the U.S. and Canada.
While visitors were taking a step back in time during their tours, the interpretive method and historic content did little to challenge visitor’s conceptions of the struggles of the time period let alone their relevancy to contemporary times. Visitors perhaps walked away feeling the early medical science was a lot of guess work and procedures primitive or that more soldiers were bored than exhilarated by battle or that there was little in the way of equality for women. They most definitely did not leave the site with any better understanding of the issues of treaty making, the history of westward expansion, or the role of slavery in supporting the mostly southern officer corp. The limitations of first person interpretation did not allow interpreters to engage visitors with the bigger issues of the day. How could a washerwoman be expected to discuss with visitors the impact of the 1805 treaty that ceded hundreds of thousands of acres of land to the United States and changed the industrial economy of the Dakota Indians? How to explain that the residency of one slave and his wife at Fort Snelling would be the basis for one of the most important Supreme Court cases in United States history? How could we move from these singular perspectives to a dialogue about the broader impacts of history? The Society felt that there was great potential in moving beyond the tried and true interpretation at this site. . . . In order to devise a new interpretive plan, we looked to the public participation processes that are utilized by planners and adapted them for our purposes.
In the rest of the paper Koop described the process itself, how she and other Historical Society staff began and carried on a discussion about the future of Fort Snelling with various groups which had varying interests in Fort Snelling. The process was based on a familiar trope of management theory–a “stakeholder analysis,” the identification of “any individual or organization that can place a claim on the organization’s attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output.” Once stakeholders were identified, discussions were initiated with stakeholders as a whole and with groups of stakeholders.
While the idea of stakeholder analysis appears to be designed to be a benign way to identify and cater to people who care about historic sites, a stakeholder analysis process hangs or falls on the way in which it categorizes groups of people and determines how to deal with them:
The first step was to find the right stakeholders. A staff-working group was convened to brainstorm a list of stakeholders. . . . We then asked ourselves, whom are we missing? Who else might be interested in a revitalized interpretive plan? Are there groups or individuals who we have purposely neglected? We wanted to know what the power and interest relationships were in relationship to one another. One useful stakeholder analysis techniques is the Power vs. Interest grid, which help to determine the potential coalitions that should be encouraged or discouraged and to provide information on how to convince stakeholders to change their views.
The language here indicates the degree to which stakeholder analysis, like interest-group politics–is both calculating and judgemental. It also demonstrates how it caters to powerful groups and entities. And the way in which groups were identified in this case says a lot about the nature of the Minnesota Historical Society as an institution. The groups categorized as “Subjects” having a “high interest” and “low power” were: Staff and volunteers, Other local sites, Ojibwe community, Dakota community, History buffs, Re-enactors, and Archaeologists. In contrast, those categorized as “Players” having “high interest” and “high power” were considered to be: National Park Service – MNRRA, State Historic Preservation Office, National Trust, Fort Snelling State Park Association, DNR Parks, Senior Citizens, Daughters of the American Revolution, School users, and Sibley Friends [Friends of the Henry H. Sibley Historic Site]. Those “Context setters” with “low interest” and “high power” were: City of Mendota, Hennepin County, Mn. Dept. of Transportation, Donors, State Gov’t, Other MHS sites & departments, and Other area attractions.
Koop writes that it is these last two “powerful” groups, not the Dakota or others in the first category, that were of primary importance in the process. These were the groups to be satisfied.
Plotting the stakeholders on the Power vs. Interest grid graphically illustrates the quadrant that was most critical to success of the project. Those groups with both high interest and high power – players — and low interest and high power –context setters had to be satisfied first. The subjects and crowd had to be paid attention, as well, but our focus would be on satisfying those in the context setters and player categories.
It is truly shocking to read this analysis and learn that the Historical Society placed Dakota people in the same category as historical re-enactors, history buffs, and archeologists, with less perceived power than the Daughters of the American Revolution. But for anyone who knows the way the leadership of the Historical Society has run the institution for the last 30 years and longer, these statements ring true. Throughout this time period the Historical Society has often sought to identify the powerful–defined in traditional “mainstream,” Master Narrative terms–and to cater to them.
In fact, however, Koop’s paper makes clear that during the process of discussion Dakota people were actually given greater respect than indicated by the outlines of the stakeholder analysis; they were in fact perhaps the most important group of stakeholders of all. Perhaps this was a result of an evolution in the thinking of Historical Society staff members during the process. In particular they may have realized that the initial stakeholder analysis was faulty and that Dakota people, including several powerful Dakota communities in Minnesota were more more powerful in terms of achieving results than anticipated. Perhaps there was a realization of the importance of the Dakota Treaty of 1805 and the longterm claim and very tangible stake it gives Dakota people in the Fort Snelling Reservation. Or perhaps the Historical Society was influenced by a justice argument, realizing that because of what happened to Dakota people at Fort Snelling, Dakota people were different from Ojibwe people and historical re-enactors in terms of their claim on Historic Fort Snelling.
Koop mentions many of the details of what happened historically to Dakota people at Fort Snelling. She and those working with her made a real effort to understand the positions of Dakota people about Fort Snelling and their concerns about how it is to be interpreted in the future. Although Waziyatawin, for one, would not engage in the process, Koop appears to have made an effort to try to understand Waziyatawin’s point of view expressed about Fort Snelling expressed in such works as What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
In addition, “deliberative workshops” took place with Dakota people in southern Minnesota. Koop and others heard that not all Dakota people pushed for the tearing down of Fort Snelling, but, “believing that the Society and other dominant cultural institutions had been disingenuous with Dakota history, they urged us to tell the truth about the treaties and dishonesty that led to war.” They learned that many Dakota people wanted this to be the beginning of a relationship that would lead to continuing discussion about the issues. At the time the paper was written Koop anticipated that the discussions would continue this year. Now however, if Koop were to leave it is not clear that these discussions can continue.
From the Minnesota Historical Society website, a composite image of Director Nina Archabal in front of Historic Fort Snelling.
A few years ago, Fort Snelling was said, among people who knew things about Fort Snelling, to be “the next big thing.” By this it was meant that the fort would become the focus of attention and money. Over the last 25 years this has meant primarily one thing: construction. Among the previous big things were the History Center and the Mill City Museum. In building buildings, the Historical Society appeared to believe it was building a brighter future for history in Minnesota. Several years ago the Historical Society hatched plans to build a new interpretive center at Fort Snelling, which, it was hoped would, among other things, solve the nagging interpretive problems at the fort. But in this case, attempts to raise money at the legislature for a new Historic Fort Snelling interpretive center have met with many obstacles over the last few years, including finally, the effects of the current recession. Heather Koop’s work in mediating a solution for Fort Snelling was to be part of the same process involving the new interpretive center and it continued even after the interpretive center plan was put on hold. Now it appears that even her work will stop.
Perhaps the problem with the Historical Society’s building plans for Fort Snelling is that the problems with the fort are not ones that more building can cure. There is no way that Fort Snelling can ever fit into the kind of happy, upbeat, nostalgic, popular message some in the leadership of the Historical Society seem to favor. But even some of the scenes of the Holocaust in Germany have museums, so perhaps something could be done to make Fort Snelling into that kind of Museum for the Dakota experience. It may be hard to imagine this ever happening under current leadership of this Historical Society, but something of this kind should be on the table for discussion about the future of Fort Snelling.
In the meantime, perhaps the best thing to do, for all sorts of reasons, including the budget crunch, would be to shut down Fort Snelling for a few years, to give it a rest. It is an attractive idea, especially with the upcoming 150th anniversary of the events of 1862. Perhaps Fort Snelling should be closed so that all the stakeholders can think about its future. Then in a few years, perhaps the solution about what to do with this stony anachronism will be clearer.
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 proposed cuts. There will be further discussion of these cuts on this website in the days ahead.
The North West Company Fur Post, pictured here in 1978, is one of the historic sites that would have to be closed under proposed 16% Minnesota Historical Society cuts announced on April 16, 2009.
The plan for cuts, announced by the Minnesota Historical Society on April 16, is based on expected cuts in the Society’s funding from the state of Minnesota, as well as the effects of the current economic downturn. The reduction was developed in anticipation of serious budget shortfalls during the Society’s next fiscal year, which begins July 1. A final decision on the Society’s state funding levels is expected in late May when Governor Pawlenty and the Minnesota Legislature announce an overall state budget for the upcoming biennium, which also begins July 1.
In January, the Governor’s budget plan contained a 15-percent reduction to the Society’s operating budget. The Minnesota House recommended a reduction of nearly 10 percent earlier this month, and the Minnesota Senate recommended a seven-percent reduction this week. In addition, the Society is projecting a 20-percent shortfall in its non-state revenues over the next two years, due to declines in admissions, sales, charitable gifts and investments. “We know that Minnesotans value the work of the Historical Society,” says Nina Archabal, director. “Our main objective in meeting the challenges of today’s economic downturn is to continue to preserve the state’s history and educate the state’s schoolchildren and adults.”
Since October, 2008, the Society has been engaged in a comprehensive strategic planning process. This process provided guidance in developing the proposed budget reductions. The planned budget reductions would result in less public access to the Society’s services, programs and facilities. It also would affect the Society’s work to preserve the state’s history. Layoffs would occur for 94 full- and part-time employees, and an additional 223 employees would have their hours reduced. In total, 317 individuals would be affected, or 46 percent of the Society’s staff, including individuals that work directly with the public, as well as people that support public programs and preservation statewide.
Under the 16-percent reduction plan, the Society anticipates cuts in all of its major service areas. Reductions would occur at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. Access to the library would be reduced to four days per week, limiting use of the Society’s vast collections. The Society’s Reference and Collections departments would merge. The Minnesota Historical Society Press would reduce the number of books it publishes annually by about 30 percent. Reductions also would occur in functions ranging from collections, reference, conservation, marketing, curatorial services and exhibitions, to institutional support areas such as finance and human resources.
Another view of the interior of the North West Company Fur Post in Pine City, which would be closed under a proposed 16% budget cut.
Under the plan, access to historic sites would be reduced statewide. Three historic sites would close on July 1, but would continue to be maintained and preserved by the Society. They include: Historic Forestville in Preston, North West Company Fur Post in Pine City, and Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site in Little Falls. Public access to Historic Fort Snelling would be reduced from seven to five days per week except for prearranged group tours and school field trips. Four sites would be open to the general public on weekends only with service during the week limited to prearranged group tours and school field trips. These sites are: Oliver H. Kelley Farm in Elk River, Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post in Onamia, Forest History Center in Grand Rapids, and Jeffers Petroglyphs in Comfrey. Access to the Sibley House in Mendota would be limited to special events and prearranged group tours. Alexander Ramsey House in St. Paul would be open only during the November/December holiday season. Mill City Museum in Minneapolis will be closed on Thursday evenings. Timeframe Following the announcement of the state budgetary decisions in May, the Society will finalize its reduction plan and make a formal announcement. Until an announcement is made, all historic sites, museums and programs will remain in full operation and open to the public. Current hours and services are listed at www.mnhs.org.
Also pending is a decision on how proceeds from the Legacy Amendment will support history education and programming. The constitutional amendment, which was passed by voters in November 2008, calls for funds to preserve Minnesota’s history as a way to supplement, rather than substitute for, current funding and programs. The Minnesota History Coalition, representing historical organizations statewide, including the Society, has recommended that 50 percent of the funding for the Arts and Cultural Heritage portion of the amendment be dedicated to statewide history education and preservation.
The Minnesota Historical Society is a non-profit educational and cultural institution established in 1849 to preserve and share Minnesota history. The Society collects, preserves and tells the story of Minnesota’s past through museum exhibits, libraries and collections, historic sites, educational programs and book publishing. More information can be found at www.mnhs.org
