To illustrate a short video segment about archaeological collections work, a co-worker recently asked me for pictures of fieldwork I did during graduate school. Only after I sent those pictures did it occur to me that they probably needed a bit more explanation. That is because most of them are not the pictures you would typically associate with fieldwork. There are none of me working in an excavation unit, or walking transects on a survey, or looking at pottery through a microscope. I mean, I did all of those things in grad school. But most of these pics are of me talking to people. And it was the most exciting fieldwork I have ever done.

Viewing a map with an elk hunter in the Rockies (M. Zedeno)

Many archaeologists develop a particular expertise in a specific material class. Some are ceramicists, some are malacologists (shell), some are experts in faunal remains (animal bones) – the list goes on. And we need them all! But I had a transformative field school experience in Arizona back in 2003 when I was just getting started in archaeology that led me down a slightly different path. We learned all the usual things you learn in field school – excavation techniques, survey, mapping, lab analysis, etc. But the focus of the field school was on tribal collaboration and ethical archaeology. We had guest speakers representing different tribes in the area, who shared their views on the past, the importance of oral tradition as a historical resource, and their perspectives on the sites and objects created and used by their ancestors. We also heard from archaeologists who had partnered with Native American tribes to develop research projects that increased archaeological knowledge, but also addressed topics that were meaningful or important to that community. I came away with the feeling that archaeology should have as much to do with living people in the present (also known as descendant communities) as it does with how their ancestors lived in the past. I was still interested in objects, of course. But I was most interested in how descendant communities see and think about those objects.

So what about those pictures of me talking to people? They were from projects run by the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. They focus on interviewing tribal elders and cultural specialists in the Northern Plains about their knowledge of specific resources – plants, animals, landscapes, and archaeological sites. For example, rather than do a walking survey by transects, we did survey on horseback with Blackfeet elders who showed us historic elk hunting camps. They gave us information about how they were set up and who used them – things we never would have known had we mapped them alone. And here is some unsolicited advice: do not ever let your first horseback riding experience be several days on the edge of dizzying cliffs on the Continental Divide in Montana’s grizzly bear country with your dissertation advisor, who you were hoping would see you as a confident, adventurous, and roll-with-the-punches kind of research assistant.

Left: The remains of a barrel feature found at a historic elk hunting camp in Montana (M. Zedeno)
Right: Archaeological survey on horseback (M. Zedeno)

In addition to looking at plants under a microscope, we interviewed Mandan and Hidatsa elders about the cultural significance and traditional uses of particular plants. This allowed us to provide a report to the National Park Service to help them come up with resource management plans that are sensitive to the plant-related needs and beliefs of native communities. For a project about eagle trapping, we did not look for eagle bones in faunal assemblages. Instead, we visited eagle trapping sites with elders who still hold eagle trapping rights, and learned about why certain types of objects and features are found together. We also learned how those sites can be more respectfully managed.

Working with tribal consultants from Fort Berthold on the University of Arizona’s Missouri River ethnobotany project (M. Zedeno)

So while I love objects as much as the next archaeologist, a good part of my archaeological training has actually been in ethnography and interviewing. As all of my friends were creating GIS models or comparing radiocarbon dates, this used to find me mired in an angsty anthropological identity crisis (I’m an archaeologist! No, I’m a cultural anthropologist! I’m neither! I’m both! I’m an imposter! Ahh!). But I am over that. And to be frank, I am pretty darn excited about what I do these days.

Left: University of Arizona researcher Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeno and the Tribal Historian of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, Calvin Grinnell, revise a report at the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum (W. Murray)
Right: A viewing of the SHSND-produced documentary, People of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans at Fort Berthold Community College in New Town, ND (W. Murray)

There are lots of things to do at the SHSND that are right in line with this – whether we were working on developing the Early People’s exhibit, producing the Mandan documentary, interpreting our historic sites, consulting with tribes on the significance of particular objects, or conducting oral history interviews. Somehow they all involve the links between archaeology (the tangible stuff of the past) and ethnography (people’s worldviews, stories, practices, and traditions).

For example, we are currently collaborating with the Arikara Cultural Center to interview people about life in the bottomland communities (Elbowoods, Nishu, etc.) before the construction of the Garrison Dam in the 1950s. Now that these sites lie beneath the waters of Lake Sakakawea, the physical sites that would normally be a part of the archaeological record are gone. But documenting the collective memories of what it was like to live there are vitally important to the Fort Berthold community.

Left: Interviewing Dorreen YellowBird at the Arikara Cultural Center in White Shield, North Dakota about her memories of living in Elbowoods before the construction of the Garrison Dam (K.T. Kroupa)
Right: Artist Rob Evans worked with SHSND archaeology staff to create a depiction of the Double Ditch Indian Village as it would have appeared around AD 1550. Much of the detail derives from archaeological excavations and ethnographic records. At the request of Alyce Spotted Bear, we also included audio components throughout the exhibit (including this cyclorama) that allows visitors to hear people singing and speaking native languages.

When I moved here, I was afraid that a job in collections would be less about people, and more about things. Luckily, that is not even close to how it has worked out. Working in the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division of the SHSND on these and other projects has only cemented my belief that the present – native voices and perspectives on the past - is not peripheral to “real” archaeological work. It is, in fact, an integral part of it.

Going from pizza maker to tour guide was probably the most drastic job change I have made so far. I went from making pepperoni pizzas to speaking with guests from all over the world about nuclear missile launching procedures.

When I started working as an intern at the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site, which preserves a Cold War-era intercontinental missile launch site, I didn’t know what to expect. Before I saw the employment ad in the local paper, I had no idea this place existed. The first day on the job I drove up the driveway, past the rather intimidating gates with barbed wire, took a deep breath, and jumped head first into this strange new experience. I had no idea that when this site was active, it controlled 10 nuclear missiles, or that there was an underground launch control center five stories beneath the parking lot I had just driven over.

Standing outside the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site

If you have ever been on a tour somewhere in the U.S., I expect you have a pretty good picture in your head about what we, your tour guides, do. We dress in our uniforms, put a smile on our face, and lead visitors around our sites, educating hundreds of people. When I first started out as a tour guide, I had the same picture in my mind. As time progressed, I realized we are a lot more than friendly faces. We are comedians; we want our visitors to laugh and have fun, so we crack jokes. We are helping hands; I have helped more than one elderly person around the site by pushing them in a wheel chair. We are also friends and educators; at my site I sometimes get scared children who don’t like the elevator so I let them hold my hand as we go down. I lead lots of kids through our Youth Missileer Commander Program and include them in my tours as much as possible. I let them do everything from picking menu items in our kitchen to helping me open and close the elevator doors and having them take us below ground. I want the kids and teenagers to learn why this site was important.

Orientation Room at the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site

Being a tour guide also involves meeting and greeting people from all over the world. So far this summer, I have had people from India, England, Australia, Japan, South America, the Arctic Circle, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy! It’s an amazing experience when you get to share your culture and learn about theirs in return. It’s also a great learning experience when you talk about the different viewpoints on nuclear war with these visitors.

Along with all those roles, I also preserve and interpret history. Every year I come back to this site because I believe it is important to teach people about the Cold War and North Dakota's role in it; especially with all the nuclear weapon talks the United States is involved with right now. I don’t want the people who worked here to be forgotten; their jobs were critical to the success and defense of our nation during that tense U.S./Russia stalemate. As a tour guide, I am the one who takes older generations back to their “duck and cover” childhoods and I am the one who takes the current generation back in time for a history lesson.

Being a tour guide at the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site is not a job that I thought I would ever have. It is so unique and exciting! Check the blog in a few weeks, when I will give you more details about the site and what I do on a daily basis!

On July 1, the state of North Dakota acquired a new historic site, the Welk Farmstead. Much has been written about the pros and cons of such an acquisition, but now it is one of ours, meaning the people of North Dakota.

The Welk Farmstead was part of the Ludwig and Christina Welk homestead. They traveled halfway around the world to come here to start a better life. They came with other family and friends from Russia and built a community on the North Dakota prairie. One of their nine children, Lawrence Welk, left the homestead and became quite famous as a musician and TV personality.

Ludwig and Christina Welk home, built of mud brick in 1898. Photo by Thomas C. Linn

So what opportunities does this site provide?

The site gives us a unique opportunity to talk about homesteading on the northern plains, agriculture (the state’s number one economic engine), Germans from Russia (the largest ethnic group in North Dakota), as well as a famous North Dakota son, Lawrence Welk. The State Historical Society has conducted Community Conversations in conjunction with Tri-County Tourism Alliance meetings in Strasburg, Napoleon, and Ashley to get feedback from the local community on what they would like to see at the site for programming. The SHSND also presented a session at the recent Germans From Russia national convention held in Bismarck in July to gather similar information. The results of these meetings will help us form programs, events, and activities at the site in the coming years.

This year at the site will be a time of transition. We will finish out the 2015 tourism season with the same hours and days of operation as those already put in place by Pioneer Heritage, Inc. (the site’s former management group). We have added an information page for the Welk Farmstead to our website, history.nd.gov/historicsites/welk.

From the Community Conversations we have received a lot of great ideas about what can be done at the site. Look for fun things to happen next summer at the Welk Farmstead!

Occasionally as part of my duties, I give tours of collection storage to members of the public. We have a collection of 70,000 artifacts, 90% of which are in storage at any given time. When people see how many artifacts we have in storage, many ask, “What’s the point of having all of these things if you don’t put them in an exhibit?” I am so happy when they ask, because it gives me a chance to share what drives me to do what I do and what makes me passionate about my field.

So why do we have all that stuff back in storage? We work to create an official historical record for our state and our region, a body of objects that encapsulates what life was like in North Dakota in the past and what it is like in modern times. In the same way that an archives collects government records or personal letters, we collect the three-dimensional artifacts that make up our everyday life and that preserve stories from our past. We work hard to ensure that North Dakota’s story is around for centuries to come. I wanted to show you some of my favorite items from the collection that reflect the breadth of the stories we collect and preserve.

We do collect items from significant events in North Dakota history, whether it’s a battle, a change in government, or a natural disaster. You will find items such as sandbags from flooding in Fargo, voting machines, and suffragette banners, just to name a few. One of those significant events associated with North Dakota history is the Battle of Little Bighorn.

The battle occurred in southeastern Montana in July 1876, but Custer and his men departed Fort Abraham Lincoln south of Mandan, North Dakota, two months prior. There are many items in our collection associated with the battle, two of which you can see below.

Pictured here is a lead bullet and empty cartridge that were possibly dug up from the battlefield of the Battle of Little Bighorn. Custer’s men carried the “trapdoor” Springfield .45-70 carbine, which was the first standard issue rifle of the US Army that was not a muzzleloader or musket.

Today, the State Historical Society partners with the North Dakota Geological Survey to create places such as the Adaptation Gallery: Geologic Time in the North Dakota Heritage Center’s State Museum, and the NDGS is the caretaker of the state fossil collection. Before this partnership, the State Historical Society acquired and maintained a large collection of fossils from around the state. Below, you can see one of the fossils in our collection, which we acquired in 1943. Though the Historical Society no longer actively acquires fossils, they make up a moderate, though in my opinion, very cool part of our collection.

We also collect items from people’s everyday lives. Clothing, toys, games, food packaging—all of these things make up the fabric of our lives today, and it’s an important story to preserve in the historical record. As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, one of these everyday items that speaks to me in particular is a Lego set. As a kid, I spent countless hours playing with Legos, and it’s a common story for children of the last 40-50 years. It’s important to preserve this childhood story of creativity and imagination!

We are constantly collecting modern items, and contemporary technology is a big part of that. Purchased in 2009, this smartphone is one of many pieces of modern life that we’re trying to preserve. It’s a challenge to collect electronics because, by their nature, they’re disposable and replaceable. But how can you talk about life in the 2010s and not talk about smartphones? They’re everywhere!

I chose these four items to show you the breadth of the collection and the stories we’ve tried to preserve so far. But what stories can you add to the narrative? By donating an artifact to the State Historical Society, you not only help expand our collection, but add your voice and your story to the historical record.

Every historic site has its own unique story. It may be colorful. It may be weighty. It may even cover events of a controversial nature. If a site falls into this last category, how best do you present and interpret its history?

The history of Fort Totten deals with the interactions and conflicts between two different cultures, the Dakota and American. The interpretation we present to site visitors has changed and expanded over the last fifty years. When first opened to the public in 1960, our interpretation focused on the site being a well-preserved frontier military outpost. The fort was built to protect early Euro-American settlers of the Devils Lake Basin area, as well as Dakota tribes who had been convinced by the US Government to settle nearby. The fort’s role as a boarding and industrial school for hundreds of Dakota and Chippewa children for more than sixty years (three times the length of its life as a military post) was not integrated much at all in the interpretation, except in passing.

Children participate in a reenactment of a scene from the American Revolutionary War era, ca. 1908. (SHSND 0210-006)

Fast-forward fifty-five years and our interpretation of the site’s history now incorporates the military story, the school story, and the site’s role as a preventorium (a four-year program to teach about preventing the spread of tuberculosis). We also discuss the ways previous site staff have interpreted Fort Totten since we became a part of the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1960. To help visitors connect to the often painful and difficult experiences of Dakota children when they first arrived at the industrial and boarding school, we utilize oral histories of former students. These histories indicate that for most of its existence, the school meted out harsh discipline and focused on teaching students how to do manual labor. This was believed to help native students leave school as good citizens, farmers, and homemakers. Strict rules of discipline assisted the teachers in ensuring the students would cease to use their native language, learn to speak English, and fully embrace American culture. The goal was to remove all prior connection to their Dakota past.

Tipis gathered around outside of fort, ca. 1900 (SHSND 0420-008)

The exhibits we have designed and installed in several of our buildings put the visitor in the shoes of one of four composite characters of real people who lived, worked, or were stationed here. We present the history with this first-hand interaction and strategic use of the voices of former students and soldiers to ensure that when visitors leave Fort Totten they come away with a better understanding of this site’s unique history. More importantly, we hope we have interpreted the layered and nuanced history of the site in such a way that the visitor becomes an advocate for the site - to tell others of this significant place and bring new visitors here to learn about the complex history of Fort Totten; military fort and boarding school.

A tree house, a free house,
A secret you and me house,
A high up in the leafy branches
Cozy as can be house.
-Shel Silverstein

To me tree houses are the epitome of what childhood can be. Whether the tree house is a real structure in the backyard or made of pillows and blankets in the basement, it lives largest in the imagination. It’s a place to dream, to play, to read, to talk, to simply be. It’s safe and fun, and always carries the whiff of hot summer afternoons and the stickiness of melted cherry popsicles.

Almost four years ago we started planning how to take this ephemeral nostalgia and transform it into a museum space just for kids at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The old museum had an exhibit space called Dakota Kids. Although it was updated periodically, there were a number of elements that young parents remembered (fondly) from when they were kids. It was popular and had lots of repeat visitation, but it had drawbacks too. We wanted the new kids’ area – the Treehouse – to incorporate the beloved elements of Dakota Kids, but update it and correct problems.

So what did we do?

-Plan for the caregivers as well as the kids
Dakota Kids had only two chairs for caregivers and lots of nooks and crannies. The Treehouse will integrate multiple seating areas so caregivers can both keep an eye on their kids AND take a short rest. There will also be open sight-lines to easily keep track of active and fast-moving younglings. Adjacent to the Treehouse entrance will be cubbies for bags, hooks for coats, and parking space for strollers. 

-Emphasize exploration and imagination
For safety, many things in the rest of the museum can’t be touched. In the Treehouse we want kids to not just touch, but to push, pull, spin, steer, climb, and slide – in short, to touch and DO things. The Treehouse can provide the beginning, but the kids will tell the rest of the story. We’ll give you a plane to sit in, but only you and your co-pilot (maybe it’s Chewbacca?) will decide where it will fly, or if it’s a spaceship, or what adventures are encountered along the way.

-Make it fun and durable
No doubt, kids are hard on things. We want LOTS of kids to visit and use the Treehouse, so it’s designed to be tough and easily-repaired. You won’t find modern technology up in the Treehouse, but you will find timeless design and tried-and-true construction methods. Just like in Dakota Kids, we want today’s pint-sized visitors to bring their kids back in twenty years to the Treehouse they remember.

The Treehouse will open in about three months. We hope you are as excited as we are!

Artist’s rendering of the new Treehouse area.