The fourth Convening Culture Keepers Conference was on Thursday, May 3 and Friday, May 4 at the Forest County Potawatomi Cultural Center, Library and Museum.
Day 1 – Thursday, May 3, 2012
This time around five members from the TLAM course were able to attend and help with many tasks. After meeting all of the presenters and participants, Mike Alloway, the Director of the Forest County Potawatomi Cultural Center, Library and Museum, provided a tour of the facility.
Mike used the murals around the walls on the upper part of the library (see the image above) to give us a brief, yet detailed history of the Forest County Potawatomi. Afterwards we went to the main hall for the conference to watch a presentation by Samantha Smith. The presentation was about the Forest County Potawatomi’s database that Sam has been working with for the past two years. The database contains over 6500 documents dated back from the 1800s. The database not only contained documents on the Forest County Potawatomi but also documents from other tribes and bands that reside in the state of Wisconsin. Sam’s work is amazing.
After Sam’s presentation, the Pigeon family led a workshop. Members of the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Pottawatomi Indians, Ed Pigeon and family taught us how to make Black Ash baskets.
With the hard work of the Pigeons, everyone at the conference was able to make their own basket. They premade the base part of the basket as well as dyeing the colored strips so we could add a little design to our baskets. Below are some images of the baskets that the Pigeons brought to display:
While we were making our baskets, Jim Thunder offered a welcome and prayer for dinner. We all took a break from basket making to receive his words.
Day 2 – Friday, May 4, 2012
The second day had an early morning start. Everyone gathered into the main hall again to have breakfast. There was a brief welcome and some very informative words by Jim Thunder. After absorbing his words, we broke into two groups for the presentations.
Just as previous conferences, we had quite the diversity of presentations.
Dan Bartlett
Dan Bartlett and Catie Anderson did a presentation titled: “Meaningful and Relevant: Interpretation for Museums, Libraries, and Archive.” We could learn many important issues in regards to audience and how to better write for museum exhibits. Below is what we learned:
- Topic vs. Themes.
- Interpretive Writing.
- Appropriate programming that fits certain audiences (e.g. People with special needs, adults, children).
Troy Reeves did a presentation titled: “Developing Your Oral History Program.” Troy’s demonstration covered everything that is needed to start and sustain an oral history project. Below is what he discussed:
- How to start an oral history project?
- How and where to store the data after it is done?
- How to sustain an oral history project?
- Why record and how to record?
- When interviewing it is important to ask questions after listening carefully to the speaker.
Sarah Wynn
Sarah and Dan did a presentation titled: “Advocating for your Institution.” Sarah and Dan, co-directors of the Rural Library Project, assist rural communities with library development. They discussed about advocating for an institution through these points:
- Knowing the non-elected decision makers of the community.
- Showing relevance to the community.
- Building coalitions.
- Sharing funding success stories.
At the end of the presentations, we had reflection led by Nick Reynolds from the Oneida Nation. Nick asked us to describe the conference in one word. This Convening Culture Keepers Conference words were: meaningful, connections, knowledge, valuable, community, informative, propel, energizing, refreshing, story, motivation, friends, connect, memories, renewal, togetherness, sharing, progress, family, diversity, power of sharing, together, and ideas.
All of these words and many more describe the conference and its success.
– Phillip Yocham