The semester hasn’t been tumultuous, but rather a little bumpy. Every Friday morning I wake up at 8:30am to discuss our ongoing Lake Street Breathe  (LSB) project from the summer. With multiple facets of work going on at once, it yields multiple tasks every week. On one hand, myself and two others work on the website on WordPress. On another, we have two others, Jacob and Kylie, working with the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Gallery on an exhibit for the project in the future. Our advisors Kevin, Jigna, Kari, Juliet, Tracey, and Andre were working on a grant, and have received, I can share the news at this point, from the Mellon Foundation close to a sum of $5 million to continue the work for next three years. 

The LSB project focuses on narratives of Minneapolis and Lake St. denizens after the murder of Goerge Floyd on May 25th, 2020 in Minnesota. Part of our tasks were to capture pictures of Lake St. after the protests of the artwork and messages left behind by people involved. Another part was interviewing protestors and activists that participated in the Twin Cities or beyond. The pictures I’ll share are my own, and some of my favorite quotes from the interviews (names provided are pseudonyms):

In response to the media’s portrayal of the protests:

“These events can’t be explained in a headline. Books will be written. It can’t be something a highly paid anchor could say.” —Thomas

“Genuinely speaking, wrong. Local cable didn’t quite get it, they kept saying we understand the protest but the excessive looting. Then my favorite, FoxNews ‘the communists are coming!’” —Thomas

“I was scared for my life because of COVID but I felt like I didn’t have a choice but to be there protesting.” —Anton

“Seeing a sign that said. You know, ‘Hmong here for Black Lives Matters’ really helped me. You know, it showed me that I wasn’t alone in my own community.” —Wa Yang

“In regards to what lasting changes she would like to see : It shouldn’t have to take black people dying to talk about racism. The sensitive topics people are afraid to talk about are everyday life for BIPOC people so start talking about it.” —Eden.

Learning How to Make Websites
Being able to create a website is quickly turning into a necessary skill in order to promote ourselves in a quickly evolving capitalist society. My role this semester for my internship is to create a website for our portion of the project centering on mutual aid, and to promote any events hosted by my colleagues Acoma and Andrea. I mention this because it’s all a big continuation of one big project, with the project’s name still being debated. The first step was finding faculty to mentor me through the website creation. Kevin and I agreed to ask Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services (LATIS) staff, Colin McFadden and Shanna Crosson, both IT specialists. Colin boasts an impressive resume including creating the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) cell phone app, “Riddle MIA This” and serving as an instructor for the university. I previously had Colin as an instructor for a digital methods course along with Benjamin Wiggins, director of Digital Arts Sciences and Humanities (DASH). With this knowledge, I was quick to recommend him to serve as a mentor for my internship. Shana was a guest in our digital methods class, “Who Owns the Past” and our “Public Histories” class to help us brainstorm our digital projects.

We decided to use WordPress to create the website. From here we will continue to expand the tabs that are preloaded, such as “Home”, “About”, “Blog” and “Contact”. Andrea and Acoma will add blog posts related to and reflecting about the project and events. Perhaps there might be a more expansive take on it. My advisor Kevin and the rest of the Minnesota Youth Story Squad (MYSS) will handle the “About” tab, focusing on the project itself and being a part of a much more ambitious project encompassing more than just Lake Street, rather the Twin Cities and beyond. MYSS is a group of undergrad students at the University of Minnesota that work with Parkway Montessori (St. Paul) and Northeast Middle School (Minneapolis) to create digital stories, they hold workshops for students, fundraise. We worked in conjunction to document the transformation of Lake Street during the summer. 

Esteban Perez Cortez is a second-year HSPH student in the Public History track.

My Experience as a Fellow on the Mimbres Sites Reconciliation Project¹

“If we are truly interested in repatriation as a form of restorative justice, if we want to actually return these ancestors and objects to their appropriate places of origin, then we need to reexamine the people, processes, social relations, and knowledges that shaped these collections…” ²

Dr. Margaret Bruchac, Anthropologist & Coordinator of Native American & Indigenous Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Introduction & Background
This past summer, I had the opportunity to work on a project both months and centuries in the making. Personally, I became aware of the Mimbres Sites Reconciliation Project just last fall, during my first semester as a graduate student in the Heritage Studies and Public History (HSPH) program at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities (UMN). Realistically, though, this story began over 90 years ago, when the founder of the UMN Anthropology Department (my alma mater), Albert Jenks, and his graduate students exhumed hundreds of Native remains and artifacts from the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest. Initially funded by our very own Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), the majority of Jenks’ findings were transported to Minneapolis, where they were housed at the University of Minnesota, the MIA, and later the Weisman Museum, without consent from their living relatives. 

While the remains are now in the stewardship of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC), the majority of the funerary objects remain at the Weisman to this day – despite 1) the passing of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, and 2) the request for their return by associated tribes in 2014. The aim of the Mimbres Reconciliation Project, then, and my role within it, is to eventually return these ancestors and objects back home. In doing so, we hope to rectify not only the past 30 years of non-compliance, but also the injustices that occurred 100 years ago, and the centuries-old legacy of white-supremacy and extractive practices that underpin them.

Phase I: Navigating the Database & Creating a User-Guide
Like any project, the first portion of my fellowship involved catching up with the project’s history and previous contributions. In this endeavor, I was able to work closely with the Anthropology Department’s Lab and Collections Manager, Matt Edling. Via various Zoom meetings, he introduced me to the project’s newly-created Elevator database, which houses digital records of each bowl, artifact and burial exhumed by Jenks and his crew. The purpose of this database is especially important to the project’s mission as it serves as an accessible inventory of the collections, not only for the University, but for Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs)—key facilitators in the repatriation process. My role, then, was to make sure the database was both accurate and navigable before sending it their way.

Database Accuracy 
To ensure accuracy, I first compared the existing database records to the original excavation notes and the records of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. In doing so, I made sure each burial was accounted for, and marked any accompanying artifacts or bowls as “associated” or “unassociated” funerary objects. This is an especially significant distinction, as it identifies an object as having been placed with burials, and therefore, subject to repatriation under NAGPRA.

Database Navigability
Next up, I made sure THPOs could navigate the database with ease by creating a User-Guide. In the process, I made sure to reflect on my own experiences as a novice user, as well as gather feedback from my supervisors, Matt Edling and Professor Kat Hayes, along the way. In the end, the User-Guide turned into a 12-page PDF, divided into five sections: Sign-In, Home Page, Browsing Collections, Basic Searches, and Advanced Searches. Each section and subsection was bookmarked to ensure users could easily find their desired section. The document has since been linked to the database for easy access for THPOs and other approved users. 

Phase II: Working “Hands-On” (COVID-style)
Come mid-July, the University implemented in-depth processes so certain staff, faculty, and graduate students could access facilities in a safe manner. Archaeology being a rather tactile discipline, I too masked up and made my way to West Bank for the first time since March, to work in a secluded lab. Here, I went through bags of ceramic sherds (pieces of pottery), faunal remains (animal bones), and scanned many glass slide images photographed during the initial excavations. I performed these tasks in hopes of locating any missing funerary objects, remains, or, at the very least, any missing provenience information in the images that may help define objects as burial associated (or “funerary”).

On another note, this hands-on work allowed me to practice proper protocol for handling archaeological and archival materials, and I was especially grateful to be equipped with masks, gloves, disinfectant, and a personal working space to reduce exposure as much as possible.

Concluding Remarks
As someone who aspires to work in collections management, the opportunity to work on this project was paramount. On one hand, I learned alongside a collections manager, engaging first-hand in practical tasks related to the job. On the other hand, I was also able to participate in the eventual reckoning of an almost century-long wrong-doing, committed by the same institution I attend. Though I know there is much more that needs to be done within and beyond this project, I can go forth more prepared to undergo the tedious yet restorative process that is repatriation, while working to disengage from the extractive practices that brought us here in the first place.

NOTES:
1. “In NAGPRA (25 USC 3005 and 43 CFR 10.10) the term repatriation means return of possession or control of Native American cultural items to lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”  “Glossary.” Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, http://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/glossary.html. 

2. Bruchac, Margaret M. “Lost and found: NAGPRA, Scattered Relics, and Restorative Methodologies.” Museum Anthropology 33.2 (2010): 150.

Laura Meier is a second year graduate student in the Master in Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, following the program’s archaeological heritage track. Her research interests include the ethics of collections management, and the intersections of accessibility and knowledge sovereignty in digital platforms. 

2020 has been a whirlwind of events and pain. From Covid-19 to the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis has been struggling to catch its breath. Through the Heritage Studies and Public History (HSPH) program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, students and staff have been attempting to bring forth a narrative of the struggles relating to both the murder of George Floyd and the impacts thereof.

Partnering with the Minnesota Youth Story Squad (MYSS) back in June, Lake Street Breathe Project
(LSBP) began with trying to understand the layers of complexities that the numerous communities
around Lake Street and the surrounding areas have experienced since the murder of George Floyd on May 25th. Students from both HSPH and MYSS began where most would: by doing research and finding people to interview. For me, my ability to do the latter was full of challenges to say the least.

I am a full-time graduate student in the Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. But I’m also much more than that. I am a father and husband to a family with high medical needs that requires a large amount of my time and energy.

The largest obstacle I was facing when I got on board with this project was trying to protect my family from Covid-19. Having two immunocompromised children along with an immunocompromised partner, I was extremely hesitant to get out on the streets of Minneapolis to try and conduct interviews with people. While in everyday life I have practiced safe distancing, worn a mask, and had sanitizer on hand at all times, it was incredibly difficult to justify risking the lives of those that I love. Instead, I decided to try my hand at reaching out to people that I knew were involved with the protests. This in itself became a challenge, as many of those people did not want to discuss their experiences with the police and the white supremast regimes that were around. In addition, none of the people I spoke with felt safe having their photograph displayed in this future exhibit, which created another obstacle.

With the main goal of the project being to document the experiences of the communities around Lake Street and having difficulties being able to physically be in those spaces, for my part, I chose to immerse myself in finding out what the Indigenous communities in the area were experiencing, how they were reacting, and what steps they were taking to address the unrest and challenges associated with Covid 19 and the murder of George Floyd. By detailing how each Native organization was responding, it is my hope that I was able to shed light on communities that are too often overlooked. Each organization is against the police brutality that has taken place, offered some type of mutual aid, and offered assistance to help in other ways when they themselves were not capable of doing so.

Towards the end of my time working with fellow students on the LSBP, I did get a chance to get out into the community and take some photographs. My initial goal was to capture the solidarity that Lake Street had with standing up to the injustices committed by Minneapolis police officers. I was overwhelmed with what I had found: mural upon mural calling for justice for George Floyd. Thankfully there are other students from HSPH and MYSS who are still working on the LSBP, are continuing to document the events that have transpired, and will eventually (from my understanding anyways) be able to present LSBP through an exhibition.

Jacob Bernier is a second-year master’s student in the HSPH program.

When you’re my age, highways are such a part of your life that they’re almost invisible. Such a ubiquitous part of my life, highways more or less dissolved into the background through over exposure. A popular joke among Hoosiers in my home state of Indiana is that we’re the “Crossroads of America” because the most interesting thing to do in Indiana is drive through it. I had to drive down highways to get from my hometown in Indiana to my college. I drove on highways to get from one side of town to the other. And, when I moved up here to Minnesota, I drove on highways through four different states to a new chapter in my life. Highways, in short, have always been there, but have never been something I thought too deeply about.

I had an opportunity to challenge that outlook recently. This past spring and summer, I interned with the Cultural Resources Unit at the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The CRU, as they call themselves, has a daunting task: review all projects MnDOT undertakes and determine the effects they will have on historic resources. If a new road might change the view from a frontier cabin or dig up an archaeological site, for example, the Cultural Resources Unit brainstorms ways to mitigate damages to these sites. The job entails a lot of paperwork and a broad understanding of a variety of historic resources all over the state of Minnesota, including highways. My main task while I worked with the CRU was developing an online history of Minnesota’s Trunk Highway system.

My work with MnDOT made me completely reconsider many of the assumptions I had about highways. While they had become so ubiquitous in my life that I barely paid attention to them anymore, highways have an interesting and recent history. In Minnesota, the state Trunk Highway system is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. This sounds old, but even for the first twenty or more years of that history, many places in Minnesota still did not have paved highways. Dirt or gravel roads were common in some parts of the state even after World War II. This part of my life that I took for granted so much I barely thought about their existence would not have been a universal development even in my grandparents’ lives.

Besides its recency, the history of the Trunk Highway system in Minnesota is downright fascinating. In many ways, the creation of the system is a masterclass in local governance and how individuals can change state politics. One of the early promoters of a state highway system was Charles Babcock. Babcock primarily wanted to improve roads because he hated dust kicked up from dirt roads in his hometown. So, he bought a car himself, gave people rides around town, and then spoke in favor of improving roads to his captive audience. Eventually, Babcock’s advocacy got him promoted: from Sherburne County Commissioner to the first Commissioner of the Minnesota Highway Department, the forerunner to MnDOT. Babcock spent his political and personal life advocating for what he believed in, and his work helped create the Trunk Highway system.

Throughout the history of road building in Minnesota, there are countless other stories that are worth telling, and worth telling well. As I worked with MnDOT, I realized that more than we might think, everything in our lives has a story. Public history, in some ways, is telling those stories to people who do not know them. Whether this is done through a website or book or podcast, it’s our job as public historians and historic preservationists to help people uncover the complexity in everyday life and everyday things. There is beauty in those stories, in the tales of passionate people making a difference and shaping the world as we know it today.

I’ve thought about highways more ever since my work with MnDOT. I like to think I notice them a little more, when a traffic jam or particularly long bus ride gives me the time to think safely. My hope is that the history I wrote at MnDOT, and the work I can do going forward, helps other people consider the things they take for granted in their daily lives more too. What more can you ask as a historian?

Jacob Noble is a master’s student in the Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota. Part of the historic preservation track, he is passionate about making historic preservation programs understandable and accessible to diverse communities throughout the country. Currently, Jacob is helping research on “A Public History of 35W” and doing exhibit research for the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies.

Residents who lived along the path of 35W in South Minneapolis lost their homes, were displaced from their neighborhoods, and had their lives interrupted, or worse. Memories of the gaping slash of a dusty construction site where houses once stood, and remnants of the lives that were impacted by the freeway, faded away and were replaced with the buzz of traffic when the freeway opened in 1968. The freeway’s construction required the Minnesota Highway Department to condemn or purchase nearly 1,000 properties in South Minneapolis, most of them residential apartments and single-family homes. Exactly how many people were displaced by its construction is still unknown. 

 It was estimated that by the mid-1960s, freeway construction in the United States would “displace a million people from their homes before it was completed.”¹ By choosing to have the interstates rip through places that policymakers and highway engineers labeled as insignificant, entire vibrant communities were destroyed or flattened. Much like other areas of the country, the old Southside, home to a thriving Black middle-class community in Minneapolis, was one of these neighborhoods.

As part of the 35W team, most of my summer was spent determining who was most directly affected by the freeway’s construction, and how they were affected. The questions we still have to answer are: 

• What was it like to be displaced by the construction?
• How has it been to live adjacent to the freeway for the past 50 years? 
• How has 35W changed the neighborhood?  
• And, most especially, how has it impacted Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities in ways that might be similar to or different from white residents? 

The Scope of the Records
To begin answering these questions, I started with a map from the Minnesota Department of Transportation that depicts 35W’s “right of way,” the path it carved through South Minneapolis neighborhoods. Over seven feet in length, the map includes the names of every property owner in its margins. It was a good start but the map doesn’t indicate the addresses of the homes or the names of everyone who lived at that location. 

Next, I turned to cross-referencing the 1958 Minneapolis City Directory, which gives the names of heads of households along 2nd Avenue South and Stevens Avenue along the path of the freeway. Using the names, I matched the heads of households listed on the map with addresses listed on the directory. Older directories in many cities like Minneapolis were formatted in two ways: 1) with names and addresses listed alphabetically; and 2) with addresses listed sequentially down each street, showing who lived house by house, block by block. Once a name and address were found, I entered it into a large database.

Connecting the Records
Using the names and addresses, next I looked into census records (specifically, the 1930 and 1940 census), accessed through Ancestry.com. The census provides demographic information including birth date, race, occupation, spouse, family members, or possible descendants, if they owned their home, and its value. Other records that surface on Ancestry.com are from FindaGrave.com, which provides accurate birth and death dates, as well as the location and photograph of where the individual is buried. The process is complicated and time-consuming, and numerous challenges arise when searching for properties that were demolished long ago.

For example, there is a gap in time between 1957, when the freeway was being constructed and people were forced to move, and when we can locate them in the census (1930 or 1940). Since there is a 20-year gap, it can be difficult to track someone if they have moved or died. Of course, an accurate number and information from every single person that was displaced by the 35W freeway would help our team answer the questions that drive this project. The next step, which we haven’t started yet, is to determine where people relocated after they were displaced by the freeway. We plan to use city and suburban directories for 1965, searching for people by their last names. We know generally that people of color, due to racism in real estate and lending practices—such as redlining and racial covenants—had fewer options than white people in terms of where they could move. So we will be looking closely for these types of racial disparities in residential mobility.

Next Steps…
Locating individuals that were displaced by the freeway is a large part of the city’s history and in many ways the country’s history in this period. Understanding this process from a human perspective can show us what life was like for those people who lived through this period. More specifically, today the city of Minneapolis has the highest racial disparity in homeownership rates between Black and white residents of any city in the county. This isn’t natural and is not happenstance. Data that is collected could inform people of where their families have been, and reclaim a sense of community that was taken away by the freeway. Tracing thousands of people who lost their homes and their community shows how freeways, that were meant to unite the nation, became tools of displacement and trauma. 

Notes
1. Raymond A. Mohl, “The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt,” University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2002.

A Kansas native and former Nebraska Cornhusker, Jessica Carter is currently spreading Nebraska nice in the Twin Cities as a current Masters Student in the Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota. As part of that program, she joined the project “A Public History of 35W” in Fall 2019. Since then, she has been working to develop an exhibit as a capstone project about 35W, that aims to enrich history through multiple perspectives and to hold the field of history, a discipline she grew to know and love, accountable for being equitable and representative of all.

In which I, being the intern, am thrust into the middle of a project and try to find my niche; alternatively, the manner by which a highway project can destroy a neighborhood.

Most writers begin their stories somewhere in the middle, with dialogue and flashbacks to fill in the background. Journalists, it could be argued, write their stories at the beginning. Historians start at the end. 

Or do they?

I joined the Public History of 35W project in the fall of 2020. My first mission was to figure out what I could do. There’s always something that needs doing on big projects, but I have to be mindful of where I place my energy. Everyone has their strengths, and for me especially, some aspects of historical work are taxing, while others seem effortless. The initial goals I had in the project shifted as the semester progressed. 

My story didn’t end up anywhere close to where I thought it would, but that’s part of the fun of telling stories.

I have lived in the Twin Cities for the past 10 years and have traveled along 35W through South Minneapolis hundreds, if not thousands of times. I must admit, I’ve never really stopped to see what’s on the other side of the sound barriers. When travelling on 35W, there are no houses or shops to see, just a stinky, dirty ditch. These days, it’s full of construction equipment and backed up traffic crammed into narrow lanes. Prior to the initial freeway construction, it was a thriving residential neighborhood. With the sound barriers removed and heavy equipment working it looks and feels like a scar running straight into the heart of Minneapolis.

Every scar tells a story.
Initially, I wanted to find a way to highlight what South Minneapolis looked like before it was hurt. In the spring, I had taken a course on Spatial Humanities. I enjoyed working with Geographical Information Systems in the course and I wanted to become more comfortable with the technology. As part of the class, I had built a map of places of importance in the 1934 Teamsters Strike in Minneapolis. I did this work by hand, since there were few addresses listed in historical newspapers I consulted. For many of these I had to use historic maps overlaid onto a modern street map in order to locate the addresses. This is a slow and tedious process and doesn’t work for large datasets. 

All of the homes that were in the path of 35W through Minneapolis aren’t able to be found on Google maps because the street itself isn’t included in the geocoder. There are far too many homes to map by hand. While there has been effort to create a geocoder for historic Minneapolis addresses, I wasn’t successful in creating a map using it. This level of GIS work is far beyond that which I’ve worked with before, so even though I was, and still am, very excited about the prospect of mapping the unmappable, I needed to find something else to do with my time. 

After all, there’s more than one way to tell a story.

One of the things that sets stories apart from histories is that we have insight into what the character(s) are thinking and feeling. This sort of information is a lot harder to find, because, in its very nature, history is about the past. We don’t always have insight into how people felt about things. As part of the public history of 35W research this fall, we looked into the stories of individual families who were displaced by the freeway. I think it’s difficult sometimes for privileged individuals to really understand minorities’ experiences. I’ve learned through my work in museum interpretation that personal stories can connect history to the present. When presented with facts and statistics it’s easy for people to shut down and not really think about what those individual numbers represent. I spent the majority of time during my internship tracking down survey data from the 1940s through the 1960s on white Minnesotans’ attitudes about their Black neighbors. Publications on community, state, and even national studies have stripped the personal aspects of those surveys, and reduced public opinions to mere numbers. Most of the white people surveyed, in some fashion or another, held anti-Black racist beliefs. And while I may not be a part of this history, or have experienced this same hatred, I know the same thing that those Black Minnesotans knew and still know.

It hurts to be different.

It’s always been a struggle for me to fit into groups. Doing internships and public history work as an adult has been as difficult for me as classes and activities were in elementary school. It’s literally exhausting to try to work out what I should be doing, how I should act, and who I should talk to. I know many people my age feel similar when starting a new job or project. I know I am not alone in this experience but it doesn’t change my feeling alone. Impostor syndrome is so common that it could be considered normal, which is ironic for me because I have never been normal. It can be challenging to face your fears when facing anything new. 2020 has been a year of big changes for me and there have been countless moments where I doubted my abilities, my dreams, and my sense of self. My time in graduate school has been nothing like I planned, and even this blog post isn’t ending up where I expected it to when I started out writing. I have no idea where my future lies and I know I will face these same problems no matter where I go or what I do. Right now, I am in the middle of things, but already I can’t wait to see where this story ends. 

Chapter 2021, here I come.

Kas Fowler is a current Master’s student in Heritage Studies and Public History at the University of Minnesota. They also hold an undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the UMN. Kas is interested in the intersections of historic preservation and accessibility and how history education can adapt to a more diverse world. They draw from years working on the floor at various museums and historic sites, as well as a multitude of personal experiences tied to their identity and place in this world. In their free time, Kas enjoys a variety of textile arts, video games, and watching more Youtube than any human should.

When people hear the word archaeology, various images come to mind. Those images differ depending on a person’s relationship to the idea. What comes to mind when you think of archaeology? Artifacts, bones, dinosaurs, Indigenous history? One image many have in common is that of a man digging, trowel in hand, likely off in some far away place one considers “exotic.” Thanks Indiana Jones.

People are absolutely shocked when I tell them I work in archaeology … in Minnesota. “There is no archaeology here!” The implications of this way of thinking are beyond this particular post, but important to include. What does that say about the general understanding of North American history? This response additionally begs the question: How do people learn about archaeology in the first place? According to a survey done between 2017 and 2018 by the Society for American Archaeology, 56% of people learn about archaeology from television, 23% from college, and only 1% from either local archaeologists or historical societies and historical or cultural events. Admittedly I had my own misconceptions when I began to learn more about archaeology in Minnesota. I am grateful to my peers, mentors, and to the unique Heritage Studies and Public History (HSPH) graduate program I am participating in for helping me to shape and continuously evolve my own understanding, particularly with regard to contemporary implications of archaeological work.

Digging makes up a small portion of what real world archaeologists do. The multidisciplinary approach stressed within HSPH has allowed me to explore archaeology in ways that are not traditional to the field. Through one of the program’s required internships I was able to work as a research assistant on the renewal of the exhibits within Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote. Working within this space was challenging to say the least; it’s physically difficult for me to be there. The history of this place has touched, and continues to affect, numerous people’s lives today. I would encourage you to learn more about this history through either of the links provided.

What was unique about working in this position was that this structure exists today because of archaeological investigation. I was for the first time allowed to think outside of traditional archaeological inquiry, beyond how archaeology informed the building of the fort, and spend more time considering the larger implications such as: what does the reconstruction of this fort mean and to whom? Who got to make the final decision to go through with this when there were so many opposed to it? Why were the military structures saved while highway construction tore through the site of the St. Peters Indian Agency? And what does all of that mean today?

Alongside a team, I considered these questions through community conversations and archival research. I listened to how people felt at meetings first hand, and transcribed interviews from the Minnesota Historical Society’s digital archives from over 100 individuals. Their stories ranged from the Dakota experience, to the Japanese American, to European immigrants who were drafted during World War Two. I sifted through roughly 800 digitized artifacts recovered from the original excavations at the fort, visited the current archaeological exhibit, “Underneath the Floorboards,” and was able to meet with the current manager of the site to hear her experiences and hopes for the future.

Rather than working to answer a research question or work with a hypothesis as is “traditional,” I was able to talk with many groups of people who held a stake in this place to consider the bigger picture, and hear stories both in person and through the archives of how this place continues to impact people. While one of the most challenging and emotional experiences I have had to date, it is undoubtedly the most intimate and meaningful kind of research I have ever been able to participate in. I will always carry with me this experience and the words that people generously shared.

Learn more!
Bdote Memory Map. Minnesota Humanities Center. Retrieved December 03, 2020, from http://bdotememorymap.org/

Historic Fort Snelling. Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved December 03, 2020, from https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn

Kaytlyn Lundstrom is a second-year HSPH student in the Archaeological Heritage track.