A Visit to the Potowatomi Cultural Center

On Friday I went up to the Potowatomi reservation with the Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums class. It is a good drive from Madison to Forest County, near Crandon in the north of Wisconsin. Most of the trip went pretty smoothly. We did manage to get lost in Rhinelander and learn that Google maps is not always perfect. Our main stop was at the Forest County Potowatomi Cultural Center Library and Museum. We were given a tour by Kim Wensaut, the cultural center's librarian, and Mike Alloway, the cultural center's director. The facility that they have is very new and well-equipped, and the library is an expansion from a much smaller one. In fact, it is new enough that the library still has many empty shelves waiting for books. The collection actually shrank some in the move from the old library to the new because many books that were racist and inaccurate were weeded out. Their current objective is to carefully collect materials that tell the story of the Potowatomi from a Potowatomi perspective and serve the community's needs. The first step down this path was to devise their own system for organizing the materials. In the past year Kim has been hard at work in this task had has created a system that reflects the priorities of the Potowatomi today (at the very beginning under the "A" heading is languge, reflecting their efforts to revive spoken Potowatomi among the people-- this is also reflected in the mural in the library with Potowatomi words for each of the months next to images). The museum adjoining the library is also very modern with multiple interactive video displays highlighting dances, language, and oral histories. It includes high-quality dioramas and artifacts, some on loan from the Milwaukee Public Museum.

The main challenge for the center today is educating the public on the services it provides and developing programming to increase library use. There have already been some successful programs, such as a Summer Creative Writing Workshop and the ongoing Neshnabemwen, or language classes, and it is likely that the community will become more involved as the word gets out about the services the cultural center provides.

Social TLAM

A lot that has happened since my last post (hello new president!). The LAMP, AOF, and international students at SLIS had an end of the year potluck social. We had way too much food since we were the recipients of food that was left over from a retirement party for Dian Bobb just before our event. Too much food is way better than too little, isn't it though? Some other things that are underway as well include planning for the 2009 LAMP Summer Institute and discussions about a Webpage redesign.

Potluck Social Participants

Trying out the different dishes.

The single largest diversity project that I have been involved in lately, however, is an independent study with nine other students (it is ony an "independent study" on paper, since there are ten students, one professor, and two librarians working on this) where we are creating a Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums (TLAM) class. Our hope is that this will lay the groundwork for a class that could be offered next year as a regular topics course.Our focus has been on service learning, and one of our achievements already has been applying for a receiving a Kauffmann grant to help pay for trips and activities related to our study. One facet of our class has been to build on work that was done last year by three SLIS students (often referred to as the three Cs: Christina and Cat-- both of whom are in the current class as well-- and Chelsea). They conducted an assesment of the Red Cliff Reservation Community to determine whether it would be feasible to reopen their public library. Hopefully we will be able to help them take those first steps towards getting the doors open again, and eventually help lay a foundation that will lead to an entirely new library, since the existing facilities are inadequate. Other activities for this class have included numerous speakers visiting our class and getting ready to visit the TLAM at Oneida next Friday.

For more about our class experience please check out our class blog. I'll write more here in future as well. If you have any ideas or feedback, we'd love to hear from you.