2020 has been a year of isolation, social distancing, masks, hand sanitizer, and doing whatever necessary to stay sane whether that be going outside, learning a new skill or trying to figure out if Carole Baskin killed her husband. This past summer I was a Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Field Technician with Two Pines Resource Group, LLC along with two other Heritage Studies and Public History (HSPH) students, Kaytlyn Lundstrom and Laura Meier. I’m sure we all felt ecstatic to not only be doing projects outside where masks were not mandatory but also to not be alone since we haven’t seen our cohort much in person since March.

Traveling Tech
I had the opportunity to travel around the Northwestern and Western part of Minnesota during the summer. We traveled to Moorhead, Mahnomen, Alexandria, Detroit Lakes, and the Upper Sioux community/Granite Falls. Doing this type of travel during “normalcy” would’ve looked like us all meeting somewhere to take one large truck to the area, share hotels with each other, travel to the site in the same vehicle, and work in teams while screening soil. During COVID-19 however was much different. We all traveled in our own vehicles, had hotel rooms to ourselves, wore masks when we all had to be in the same vehicle, had labeled equipment, and sometimes ate alone. Each hotel we stayed at had a slightly different COVID-19 policy in place. One hotel we stayed at we actually had to come in through the casino, get our temperatures checked, show our ID’s, and receive a wristband for the day. Another basically allowed us to walk around as if no pandemic was occurring (it was like this until maybe the end of the week when they finally were forced to lay social distancing stickers down). We spent a great deal of time in the Upper Sioux community, really much of the summer, so the staff at the hotel we stayed in got to know us fairly decently. Their COVID-19 policy was a mixture of the other hotels mentioned. Our evenings were our own to do whatever. For the most part we’d grab some food and eat it in our rooms alone, but after a while that isolation became hard. 

Kaytlyn, Laura, and I would have “Adventure Wednesdays” where we finally felt social enough/cooped up to go out and explore or grab dinner somewhere that wasn’t the casino buffet. Of course, we’d still wear masks in the car while traveling because more food options were at least a thirty-minute drive. Because of the pandemic, most places only allowed take out so we would order our food and go sit in a nearby park rather than driving all the way back to the hotel. If it wasn’t just us three going out on some sort of adventure, it would be the entire crew going out to a nearby brewery or restaurant with patio dining and having a cold beverage. After a long day digging three-meter shovel tests or 1×1 meter units and being secluded in a hotel room, we all needed these days. 

Skills in the Making
Working with Two Pines allowed me to gain some hands-on experience in cultural resource management work. I have a background in Native American burial recoveries, but I had never attended a field school unlike everyone else on the crew. I was unsure of how to do shovel testing, pedestrian surveying, and digging units. Pedestrian surveying is probably the easiest. We walked large fields looking at the ground for any artifacts that might be on the surface. Shovel testing is where you dig a hole in an area where there is suspected archaeology and gather any artifacts that might be there as well as look at the soil composition. Shovel testing then determines where units should be placed to further examine for artifacts, features, and soil composition. Units are typically 1×1 meter squares where you shovel skim anywhere between 5-20cm at a time or go by natural soil changes. Completing units at the site we were working on was very interesting. We worked on opposite ends of the area from each other, not to best figure out the side of the feature we were looking for, but to best practice social distancing and allow us to not have to wear masks outdoors. We had some visitors come while we were doing units so if they came close to us then we would wear masks. 

All in all, working with Two Pines this summer was a great experience. I was able to learn more about CRM work and do archaeology that was different from what I typically do as a burial recovery field technician. 

Keyah Adams is a second-year student with the Masters in Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities following the Archaeology track. Her focuses are on preservation of archaeological sites and NAGPRA.

Researching the MNHS Button Collection

Contrary to popular belief, archaeology is not all in the flashy, grandiose finds. In fact, the most mundane of objects can often hold great value and reveal pertinent information about a site and the people that lived there. I observed this very phenomenon this past semester as an intern with the Archaeology Department at the Minnesota Historical Society, a partner of the Heritage Studies & Public History (HSPH) graduate program. What began as a conversation to help digitize the department’s Euro-American Comparative Archaeology Collection, resulted in a deep dive into a material we all take for granted: the common button.

Brief Background
The search for my final internship of my graduate career at the University of Minnesota began this summer, during a time when college students across the country quickly realized another online semester awaited us. While everything seemed so uncertain, I wondered: how can I complete an internship that incorporates my interests from home? What sacrifices will I have to make considering the extenuating circumstances?

To ease some of my anxiety, I sought guidance from a past supervisor, Nancy Hoffman, an archaeology collections assistant at MNHS. To my relief, Nancy described a potential project that would incorporate my interests within archaeology and collections management from the safety of my home. Together, we came to an agreement: I would spend the semester providing research and documentation remotely, to prepare MNHS’ Euro-American Comparative Archaeology Collection for its move online. 

While the decision to take on this project was a no-brainer, it was not without its learning curves. In addition to learning the ins-and-outs of EMu, MNHS’ collections management system, Nancy and I quickly realized that researching and documenting each object in a collection of over a thousand is just too great a feat for a few months time. In hopes that I may still be able to produce a complete product, we decided that I would, instead, focus on preparing a single material for upload. Buttons, being well-represented within the collection, though not yet well documented in the digital sphere, the choice was evident. 

What I’ve Learned
So, you might be asking, what is there to learn from a button? I admit that the same thought crossed my mind once or twice. That being said, after having researched button production history in Minnesota, I can now see its potential to tell a story much larger than itself.

Shell Buttons
While bone buttons are a common find on Minnesotan sites as well, the history of shell button production hits close to home. In fact, in the late 1800s, the freshwater shell button industry exploded here in the United States, with shells from up and down the Mississippi River Basin, including a variety of MN waterways, collected for their production. “Saw works”, as they were called, popped up on no other than Lake Pepin, Pokegama Lake, Cross Lake, and Snake River, where “blanks” would be cut from the shells. Like bone, these shell negatives can be found at archaeological sites, and are a key indicator of button production.

In addition to the industry itself, however, the history of shell button production has the potential to tap into a much larger story. Many accounts from Iowa and Wisconsin, for instance, recount the dangerous conditions for factory workers, especially for the women who would wash and decorate the buttons down in Muscatine (the “capital” of the pearl button industry). Such conditions, paired with unfair wages, led to many union strikes as workers demanded better compensation and a safer work environment. Button production, then, is yet another facet into our State’s labor history, activism, and gendered experience, each of which are intricately tied to one another.

Conclusion
Though I have much more to learn about buttons in Minnesota, particularly those outside of the bone and shell varieties, now having an appreciation for what even the most everyday objects can lend to archaeological interpretation, I can only imagine what else I may discover. Through my internship, I hope researchers, professional and non-professional, experience a similar sense of inspiration and, by using the comparative collection, are able to identify buttons in their own collections to expand our understandings of our state’s history.

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.  

Navigating a new experience is challenging without Covid-19. My HSPH program summer fellowship did not have a blueprint, and plans continuously changed. I want to explain the journey because anyone who feels unsure about their plans might find consolation in it. I came in with an open mindset and flexible goals. I wanted to 1) make a good impression with our collaborators, 2) make something I can be proud of, and 3) keep open communication. Something else happened in the back of my mind. Museum jobs do not look good since the pandemic hit, so I went into these projects understanding what a good recommendation can do for me when I graduate.

Greg Donofrio, the chair of our department, set up an introduction meeting with my student collaborators and a woman in charge of our project, Linnea Anderson. Linnea works as an archivist in the Social Welfare History Archives in Elmer Anderson Library at the University of Minnesota. She laid out the project. She needed a physical exhibit, Seeing Child Labor, to be made into an online exhibit. For more activities, we could consider programming or curriculum development. There were too many of us on this project, so I volunteered to hop on a different one. I can love a unique opportunity (making an online exhibit) and not get attached, rather than becoming fixated on an assignment. An open mindset is essential for a successful experience and professional growth.

I soon began on the second project. I worked with Rachel Neiwert, professor at St. Catherine’s University, and a leader for Welcoming the Dear Neighbor?. They are partnered with Mapping Prejudice, a Minneapolis project that uses crowdsourcing to map racial housing covenants from 1910 to 1955. Welcoming the Dear Neighbor is now working with Mapping Prejudice to map St. Paul’s racial covenants’ history. According to Rachel, they needed help creating a new website. My primary project became building a website for Welcoming the Dear Neighbor?, and my second project was creating an online exhibit for Seeing Child Labor. 

Did I have experience creating an online exhibit or a website? 

No. 

That is what a fellowship is for. 

Because of Covid, I worked from home. I was worried that working from home would make it difficult to focus. However, I did not have to worry about packing lunch, driving back and forth, or sitting in cold air conditioning. Each project met every other week via Zoom. We designated a project leader for each assignment to set up meetings and maintain communication. My classmate Simiyha was the project leader for Seeing Child Labor; I was in charge of Welcoming the Dear Neighbor?. Greg was available for meetings, suggestions, and facilitation. There was a clear line of leadership, and our collaborators made clear standards for an end goal. Both Linnea and Rachel offered detailed feedback. 

 I was excited to work on an online exhibit for Seeing Child Labor, but two group partners completed it instead. I asked, “What do you need from me?” Instead of creating an online exhibit, I helped with curriculum development, creating a teacher’s toolkit. This way, teachers can see the exhibit and teach their students about global issues of child labor. After we developed the toolkit, I set it up on Canva. 

Did I know how to use Canva? 

No. 

That is what a fellowship is for.

 I watched a few tutorials, put a triangle here and there (literally), and then posted the information from our original document. It was not perfect. I sent it to Linnea, and it turns out I had missed two errors. I also realized that making a black background is not practical for a printer, so I created a printable version.

At least the website came out perfect… just kidding. When I showed Greg, he had many critiques for the website, but I was grateful for it. He has more experience, and I felt like my website was off. I stared at the website too long to see what needed to change. He gave me fresh eyes to clean it up. I also signed up for WordPress workshops. It took a long time to make minor changes while I was getting adapted to WordPress, but soon I got the hang of it. 

I left the internship with a teacher’s toolkit and a website to be proud of. More importantly, our collaborators were impressed by the work we finished. I think they look great, but I also acknowledge this as my first project with online programs like Canva and WordPress. When my summer fellowship ended, I left with two completed projects, a variety of new skills, and a deeper understanding of our partnered organizations. I still want to learn more and do a better job in the future. What made this fellowship successful was flexibility, communication, strong leadership, and constant feedback.

Am I now a master of WordPress and Canva? 

No. 

That is what practice, determination, and career development are for.

Patricia O’Leary is studying for a Master’s in Heritage Studies and Public History from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She graduated from California Polytechnic University, Pomona, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. Patricia is dedicated to creating inclusive social change. History is living and changing; it is meant to live outside the walls of academia. She is working to make that happen.

Vacant buildings don’t just happen. Financial crises, job losses, absentee landlords, deferred maintenance, a global pandemic, or some combination of such factors can turn a once-thriving old building into an empty eyesore. 

Dark storefronts and “for rent” signs affect the economy and community culture, especially in rural places. The lasting impact of vacancies – and the obstacles to fixing them up—inspired my colleagues and I at Rethos: Places Reimagined to develop a new program called Buildings on Main. 

Vacant buildings don’t just happen, and they don’t magically get flipped either. This is the problem Buildings on Main will address. Small, rural, commercial buildings come with a unique set of challenges. It’s a long and winding road to rehabilitation. 

Picture This
You live in a small, rural community. Main Street runs through the center of town. It’s full of solid old buildings—many in use, others vacant. In the past few decades, your community’s economic center has moved to the industrial park on the fringes of town, or jobs have moved to another town entirely. But the soul of your community remains on Main Street. New companies have emerged, and long-standing businesses remain, and you want to be part of its growth and future. 

There’s a small, brick, two-story building in town that you want to buy, rehabilitate, and fill with a small local business. You have the money for the down payment. You even know some local contractors. You know people in the area eager to start a coffee shop, a bookstore, or a dental clinic, and you are confident plenty of people would benefit from those businesses.

But once you get the keys, then what?

This is the moment that stops many potential rehabbers in their tracks. The local bank refuses to lend money to a historic building rehab. Other financing options like grants and tax incentives are confusing or unattainable. Everyone else in town who has rehabbed a building did it in their way, with unique circumstances and connections. There’s no guidance, no blueprint. 

Our goal at Rethos is to draw that blueprint. Buildings on Main will connect rehabbers to the resources, information, experts, and financing opportunities they need to fix up and fill old buildings. We will prioritize supporting people who haven’t felt like they had a place in building rehab or haven’t had a voice in their community’s development. 

The premise of the program is to flip the traditional principles of building rehab on their head. We aim to:

• Change the narrative that small, old, vacant buildings are obsolete money pits.
• Power up and support new, young women, immigrants, BIPOC building owners, and rehabbers with the resources they need to do it.
• Explore and create new financing options so that rehabbers don’t have to convince traditional lenders and overcome discouraging narratives
• Include community members in the process of building rehab

Our Plan
Buildings on Main has three key components. First, Rethos will purchase and rehabilitate a downtown building in Waseca, Minnesota. In partnership with the city of Waseca and Lead for Minnesota, we envision opening up space to community members as often as possible during its redevelopment.

Throughout the building rehab process, Rethos will host engagement events, workshops, tours, training, and other opportunities for community members to be involved in and learn from the process. Community engagement events will help determine what kinds of tenants will ultimately occupy the space, based on local needs and interests. Hands-on workshops will teach critical building maintenance and rehab skills. Training for city staff and community developers will kickstart discussions about creating development-friendly downtowns. 

The rehab itself, combined with the education and engagement activity inside the building, will result in a toolbox: a comprehensive resource guide for future building rehabbers. The project team will collect all that we learned from our project and other projects around the state. 

Building rehab is happening in rural places, and we have a lot to learn from people who navigated the system before us. The toolbox will synthesize and organize the complex elements of rehab to provide a clear path forward for future rehabbers. 

After years of watching vacant buildings stay vacant due to complicated, inaccessible, and exclusive rehabilitation processes, the Buildings on Main team are committed to a new approach. 

Natalie Heneghan is the Education Manager at Rethos: Places Reimagined. At Rethos, she creates opportunities for people to learn about the buildings and places surrounding us, how they’ve evolved, and how to take good care of them. Buildings on Main is a new collaborative program she is creating alongside Rethos colleagues and partners. Since January, the Buildings on Main team has been planning, writing grants, developing partnerships, and envisioning the future of rural building rehab.

I typically come help set up for the Bell Museum’s Sensory Friendly Saturdays (SFS) about 15-20 minutes before we open. It includes placing directional signage, setting up the feedback table, and putting various sensory items (weighted blankets, headphones, fidget items, timers, etc.) around the museum.

The overall setup time for this program is relatively short (my role is at least) and it helps that my supervisor is extremely efficient and is constantly working on or completing four different tasks at once. She is also one of the fastest walkers I’ve ever met, especially at 7:30am.

Yet, during one of these early morning setups I thought to myself, why aren’t the sensory items stored in one location? We had to go to one spot for the weighted blankets, another for timers, and then another for fidget items. This question then led me to wonder, why aren’t they placed throughout the museum all the time?

Putting out the additional signage and feedback table for each event makes sense. The sign holders and tables are used throughout the museum for different exhibits/events and once visitors start coming in they can take up space. But the sensory items are small, can be easily stored, and are needed in various locations in the Museum for whenever a visitor may want to access them.

I asked my speedy supervisor about it and she explained that when they transitioned into the new museum space a year ago there wasn’t really a location designated for these sensory items (the Bell was originally located on the main Minneapolis campus before moving to its current location in Saint Paul). Having them available was the highest priority; determining a location and creating a process was something that was just going to have to be developed later.

Fair enough, I thought; having these resources available helps to serve the Bell’s approximately 5,500 visitors a year affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). While not all sensory disorders/sensitivities are associated with ASD, this estimate demonstrates a clear need for providing some type of inclusive resources.

Fast forward to October

I came in for my usual Friday shift, checked in with my supervisors, and was asked to write a grant. It wasn’t anything huge, a $500-1000 ask. When the opportunity passed across the desk of someone at the Bell, they thought of the sensory work we’ve already been doing. This, I think, is a great testament to the Bell’s desire to continue evolving their accessibility options.

We decided to ask for what my SFS supervisor and I had talked about months earlier – creating 12 Sensory Packs to store in strategic locations throughout the museum. These would include new fidget items, weighted vests, headphones, timers, and other items as needed. In the grant, we stressed the importance of having these resources available for people who may have felt unwelcome, uncomfortable, or marginalized in the past and therefore were unable to participate in the Museum’s experiences. We emphasized the need to create a welcoming environment to as many visitors to the Museum as possible.

This grant would only partially cover the costs of the packs (the weighted vests would need to be covered separately), but it would help solve some of the issues the Bell has been facing. For starters, the issue of having to go to multiple locations to find items is removed. Now each ‘station’ or exhibit space would already have its own pack. Secondly, since each space has its own, there is no need to borrow from other places and, when needed, items can be close by rather than downstairs or on the other side of the museum. Finally, the current items the Bell offers are from their old location and, due to use and normal wear-and-tear, they simply needed to be replaced.

We won’t find out if we get the grant until January and even if we don’t receive it, I find it encouraging that the staff at the Bell has these types of projects in the forefront of their minds. It also is a testament to their self-awareness that what they already offer can always be worked on and improved.

Over my two internship opportunities with the Bell I have appreciated their honesty and trust in  me. I am excited to continue my relationship with them as I move into my Capstone experience in spring 2020.

Elisabeth DeGrenier is a current graduate student in the MA Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota. She plans to continue working with the Bell Museum to pilot a digital 360˚ tour for visitors with sensory sensitivities for her capstone project.

Doing historical research can be a lonely affair—combing through archives in quiet libraries, spending long hours reading, and thinking through how you can best and ethically represent people who are long gone, in the service of those who are still around. In the spring of 2019, my classmate Simiyah Garrison and I undertook a study of the history of food provisioning in the neighborhood surrounding the Sabathani Community Center in hopes of drawing attention and resources to their Food Shelf. In October of 2015 the Seward Friendship Co-op, a natural foods cooperative, opened across the street from Sabathani at 38^th Street and 4^th Avenue. This site had formerly been the home of the Sabathani Mission Baptist Church, where the community center got its start in 1969. Since it has opened, demand for help at the food shelf across the street has continued to increase.

In order to develop a better understanding of how food provisioning happens today and to introduce myself and this project to people in the neighborhood, I spent the summer volunteering in the food shelf. My past experience working in grocery stores came in handy in sorting through produce and helping to organize the enormous deliveries that come once a week. It was a pleasure to get to know volunteers and take some of the pressure off of Sabathani staff in managing their workloads. Working in the food shelf also helped me understand how food shelves function, providing insights that I couldn’t gather from reading or research. Moreover, I learned much about the contemporary make-up of the neighborhood and the important role that Sabathani plays for lots of different people in the community. I also had the chance to talk with people about the project, to explain what we’re trying to do, to hear what people thought about it—and to get checked in some important ways. Spending time at Sabathani provided a welcome balance to research, as well as the project as a whole.

As a part of community outreach for the project, I also tabled at the Midtown Farmers Market, to gauge interest and let people in the wider community know about the project. We’re hoping to engage with Seward Friendship Co-op owner-members, and the farmers market was a good place to practice how to best present our research, get people interested in the project, and let them know about the work being done at Sabathani. I also had the opportunity to present my early findings at a symposium hosted at the University of Minnesota by Thinking Food: An Imagine Chair in Art Design and Humanities & the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop of Intersectional Feminist Food Studies and help host the opening reception in the Sabathani Community Center’s Community Gallery (which also houses the exhibit curated by fellow HSPH students Kacie Luccini-Butcher and Denise Pike, Owning Up). Being able to pursue the project through such different venues was invaluable in learning the diverse skill set needed to perform community-engaged, collaborative work.

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Jenean Marie Gilmer is in the second year of the HSPH program studying public history.

I am writing this post from what John Falk positions as the visitor’s experience in the book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. This book was written to enlighten museum professionals to examine the demographics of their visitors and then to address ways to increase attendance and revenue. However, I will use this same positioning to understand my temporary employment as a graduate intern and as an academic visitor at this institution. My personal drives, group identity, decision-making, memory, and leisure preferences were considered during my time at MNHS over the course of my research, internal meetings, and a presentation.

Background

In the fall of 2019, I had the pleasure of serving as the graduate intern for the 3D African American Collections at the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS). I am in the Heritage Studies and Public History Master’s program at the University of Minnesota (UofM) and I graduate in May 2020. I plan to work for an institution where community engagement and best museum practices are valued. While casually looking at job descriptions and obsessing about my future, I found that the majority of museum careers require experience in collections, which led me to apply for this internship. Aside from learning cataloging procedures and familiarizing myself with the 3D collections, my days were spent fulfilling the tasks outlined in a charter that my supervisor Hannah and I created together. My duties included facilitating access to the African American collection so that it could be better utilized by museum staff and shared with Minnesota African American communities.

Experience

Although I began this internship looking forward to learning cataloging procedures, engaging with MNHS staff was so much more exciting and rewarding. One of the deliverables for my internship was a presentation that showed how the museum’s current resources could be used to enrich and further develop a relationship with the African American community. One common theme from each meeting was a need to share more information, internally and externally. This internal and external process of data collecting, and sharing was done while fulfilling the MNHS mission, values, and vision.

Surprisingly, this internship endowed me with a sense of community. We often separate community relationships and institutional bureaucracies from one another or place them in opposition to one another.  At MNHS, I was greeted with enthusiasm by almost everyone at the site, from the staff at the front desk who often helped me to navigate the museum; to the staff in Department of Inclusion and Community Engagement (DICE) like Xia, Rebecca, and Amber, who helped me frame my thinking and expand on my ideas and epistemologies on institutionalized racism and community engagement. I was also welcomed by my supervisor Hannah, who was always incredibly positive and reassuring. Hannah made me feel as though I was not and am not as far away from my dreams, which had been contrary to my feelings.

In my own community, I’ve always been surrounded by empowering women who have set the bar for what is expected and can be accomplished. My time at MNHS has added to my community of female empowerment. I think that in today’s climate it is essential not only to recognize when this type of energy transpires but also to take the time to enjoy and dwell in it.

Takeaways

Through my internship, I also had the opportunity to attend a brown bag talk, which is an informal meeting to share experiences, knowledge, insights, and resources with colleagues. These brown-bag talks can be hosted by anyone and are open to all museum personnel. I had the pleasure of attending a brown-bag talk about on the International Council of Museums’ new definition of museums. It was interesting to hear diverse feedback from staff of different backgrounds, careers, and job titles. Although everyone was employed under one institution, people interpreted this new definition differently, which was refreshing to hear and motivated me to facilitate this conversation outside of the museum.

It was also intellectually stimulating to attend an acquisition meeting and witness the decision-making process and voting procedures among curators. I used this interaction as a learning experience on how to make my future cases for acquiring certain objects. The voting power on these objects was limited to curatorial staff, but the meeting itself was open to all MNHS staff. This meeting also gave me insight into the politics of museum work and further knowledge on why collections are or are not diverse. Who decides what is important to commemorate and preserve? How do underlining biases play into these decisions? Who has authority over collecting?

Conclusion

In conclusion, I enjoyed my internship in the 3D African American collections. I feel as though I have grown as a museum professional and am ready to emerge into the professional world of preservation, curation, and historical digitization. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to learn and navigate collections within this institution. I’m confident in accessing collections cataloging, collections management software, handling fragile historical objects, acquisition processing and am knowledgeable in museum standards and best practices.

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Simiyha N. Garrison is in her second year of the HSPH program studying public history.  

 

As a document- and pop-culture-obsessed Chicano nerd, it was so lovely to spend my summer internship among boxes of old newspapers, reports, and flyers that make up the University of Minnesota’s Chicano and Latino Studies’ department archive. When I was asked to intern in the archive, I was surprised to find out that the “archive” was really a few unsorted boxes in the corner of the directors’ office. But, as the summer went on, I dived into the material and learned more about the rich history of the program and the Latinx communities of Minnesota.

Moving from the coast to the Midwest was not an easy transition for me. Once here I felt isolated as I was accustomed to large Latinx communities with a large presence and I, unfortunately, live far from East Lake Street (the heart of the Minneapolis Latinx scene) and the campus itself doesn’t have a large population of Latinx people either. This isolation exasperated my depression, but the Heritage Studies and Public History program was very supportive and when I expressed the need to connect more to the Latinx culture on campus, they found me the perfect internship.

That is not to say that the internship itself didn’t come with its own set of mental strain. Reading about the terrible things in history is rarely a pleasant experience and I highly recommend that any Brown folks doing intensive history work be in therapy as well.

Over the course of the summer, the boxes that the director gave me were added to as staff members learned about what I was doing. I greatly appreciated that and the archivist at the University’s archives was also very helpful as I created an organizing chart to keep track of what was being sorted.

I also greatly appreciated that the project involved a lot of working on my own. As contradictory as it may sound, I learned that my favorite aspect of public history is possibly the least public aspect of it. Archives and what they lack have been used to justify the erasure of history—if it was important, it would be in the archive; if it happened, why isn’t it officially documented?—and I love that I’ve contributed to the preservation of communities that are often cut out of the Minnesotan identity.

Mexicans, Chicanxs, and other Latinx people have been an important part of developing Minnesota’s economy and culture and now there is a little more evidence to prove it. The archives provided evidence via newspapers, reports, photos, and flyers that Chicanx people protested against Nazism, were foundational to the feminist movement, and have occupied buildings on campus to demand space in academia.

The work is far from done (one summer was not enough time) but I have decided to continue it as part of my capstone project. My hope is that what I’ve done can be used to further expand the collection and contribute to future academic and cultural endeavors.

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Ernesto Moreno grew up in Southern California where his love of history was fostered by a family that linked historical knowledge with cultural pride. He grew up with history classes that emphasized the East Coast and South and essentially left the West and Midwest as lands conquered and subdued. One of his goals in life is to dismantle that ideology by building a microphone for those voices that have been quieted.

As an Archival Fellow at Tretter, facilitated by the Heritage Studies and Public History graduate program and the Minnesota Historical Society, I spent Summer 2019 developing a series of digital maps, which continued into the fall. The collective set of maps acts as, among other things, a visual, geospatial finding aid for locating Twin Cities metro LGBTQ-related periodicals.

Mapping queer geographies was always a goal of mine, even before starting my
fellowship. My area of study is the history of the built environment, namely heritage and historic preservation. I envisioned a map wherein I could help sketch out the many spaces and places in which LGBTQ-associated historic places are located, which I did eventually create.

However, other topics soon piqued my interest. Upon my arrival, Rachel Mattson,
Curator of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, showed me a box of old issues of After Dark magazine, a glossy, hedonistic monthly magazine of the 1970s and 1980s that has a very queer sensibility. I began exploring other queer-centric periodicals, starting with newsletters from two organizations that interested me: the Lesbian Resource Center and the City of Lakes Crossgender Community (CLCC).

After this, I imagined myself commencing a project that would—wait for it—attempt to
map the entire Tretter Collection, little by little. Can you imagine the hubris of this?! The collection has 3,500 linear feet of material.

Perhaps I would be the one to get it started, but maybe other fellows and interns could continue after I left, I reasoned with myself. It took a meeting with Rachel, Ryan Mattke, the Head of the John R. Borchert Map Library on campus, and his colleague, Melinda Kernik, Spatial Data Analyst and Curator, to get me to come to my senses. They all reasoned that it made more sense to narrow my scope geographically, temporally, and/or generically, which was a masterpiece of understatement. Ryan offered a few specific ways to focus the project, among them narrowing in on periodicals. I was transfixed, naturally.

After that meeting, I immersed myself in various LGBTQ periodicals. For this project, I use the term periodical broadly to describe any publication that was, or is, published serially, even if only one issue is extant. These include newsletters (bar none the most common form), magazines, newspapers, personals, business directories, physique catalogs (also known as beefcake), zines, comics, and literary journals. I read far and wide but decided to focus on the Upper Midwest. Places such as Milwaukee, for instance, have a robust queer community and very rarely do historians of queer history focus exclusively on this region.

However, as I began the data entry process, which entailed endless typing and formatting, I began to notice that the Twin Cities stood out on its own. Part of this is because of proximity. The Tretter Collection is in the Twin Cities, so, it stands to reason that many donations will come from the Twin Cities, too. But this wasn’t the only reason. The Twin Cities has one of the largest, robust LGBTQ populations in the United States, and it has produced scores of periodicals. My focus officially became local.

I used Esri’s ArcGIS online software to do most of the mapping. It’s a software that all UMN students have access to and it afforded me quite a lot of latitude in terms of putting it all together. I settled on a series of tabs: an introduction, an instructive guide on how to use the maps, and four maps. They feature a timeline that allows users to see the ebb and flow of queer periodical production in the Twin Cities since the 1960s.

The “Community Served” map delineates publications by the community served, which
includes ones that served gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans* people, and feminist audiences among others. The “Genre” map designates them by periodical genre. My favorite map is the one entitled “Neighborhood Publishing Hub,” because it highlights areas of high queer publication production. It features five amoeba shapes that designate various areas of robust publishing over the years. These hubs—which I’ve identified based partly on existing neighborhood designations and partly on my own re-imagining of neighborhoods—include Hennepin Avenue Corridor/Warehouse District, Wedge-Whittier/Loring, the Lake Street Corridor, University/Northeast, Midway-Merriam Park, and the 38th Street Corridor. I’ve also included two non-hub tabs. The finished maps are now available on the Tretter website.

Finally, there is a tab that put the publications in a binary: post office address or no post
office address. LGBTQ organizations and publications, especially in the earlier period from the 1960s to the 1980s, often faced discrimination, and so they did their publishing and/or business at community centers or peoples’ places of residence, using post office boxes to communicate with readers. One anomaly is Directory Services Incorporated, which published several physique catalogs in the 1960s. It had a business-post office box, but its production took place on Nicollet Avenue in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The project was not without its headaches. Having to redo a feature layer that contained
my data and having to recreate the timeline by manually inputting the dates were moments of tribulation. However, the end result, which is still being edited, adds yet another layer to LGBTQ history on the Twin Cities, the state, the Midwest, and the country. It’s been a pleasure working on it, and my hope is to continue this kind of work in the future.

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Eric Hankin-Redmon is in his second year of the HSPH program focusing on historic preservation.  

My work as a Native American Collections intern for the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) during the spring semester of 2019 provided me with an opportunity to interact with objects, the public, and collections in a manner I was not familiar with.

My first task was to research the cultural care of collections and the various perspectives and methodologies associated with collections. I read from various scholars working in an Indigenous framework, Western framework, and MNHS institutional policies. The play on words and impact simple changes in language can have when describing collection items is an understated and often overlooked part of working in collections and in museum spaces.

For example, the thought of changing the word “objects” to “cultural belongings” can cause a massive tear in the status quo and accepted norms in Western institutions. Clavir describes objects in a collection as living and relevant through an Indigenous lens, which contradicts our learned assumption and the almost involuntary impulse to think of objects as inanimate, in a desensitized manner.

The better part of my time spent at MNHS consisted of completing an object review by going through each page of the publication of A Bag Worth a Pony written by Marcia Anderson. MNHS has a pile of books they need to conduct object reviews of and I was fortunate enough to work with this publication that focused on Ojibwe bandolier bags.

The purpose of an object review is to compare the objects referenced in a published book to the metadata as well as any additional information kept in the collections database of an institution. If there are discrepancies in either the collection database information or the book then those need to be identified and addressed by the curators or collection specialists. To assist the museum professionals with this effort, I was tasked with reviewing information and cross-referencing the MNHS Collections Management System (CMS) records to determine if there are discrepancies between the publication and the MNHS CMS. I found words to matter on a level I had not anticipated going into this internship. There were many discrepancies; for example, the repetitive use of Sioux was implemented in the CMS but the publication used the word Dakota. Small changes in language matter. These changes humanize the belongings and the story that is told or associated with the collection.

Working Alongside Change Makers

The most rewarding takeaway from the internship was the opportunity to shadow and observe professionals working within their resources and means to create institutional change. Many of the professionals walked me through how they came to work for MNHS, many with diverse backgrounds, and what continues to motivate them. The network and insightful conversations that an intern experiences is the essence of what being a change maker is about—learning from your colleagues and collaborating in a way that will be efficient and effective in any discipline you are in.

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Tianna Odegard is a tribal member of Upper Sioux Community and is a second-year master’s student in the University of Minnesota’s Heritage Studies and Public History Program. Tianna also works for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council as a Cultural Resources Specialist. Her training is in legal studies and archaeology with focuses in regulatory standards for cultural resource management. She is committed to privileging the life experiences and knowledge sets that are not traditionally validated by academic settings to empower a future for the next generation.