NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

September 16, 1999

Plains Folk: Building Backward, Repatriating the Past

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1999 Plains Folk

It's the modest proposals that get you into trouble, but here goes anyway. This one has to do with repatriation.

"Repatriation" is a word many of us on the plains have come to know in recent years because of controversies over human remains. To put the problem plainly, archeologists and anthropologists of the past were pretty indiscriminate in how they collected, handled and exhibited the human remains they excavated. Respect for the dead, a fundamental value in ordinary human relations, often was lacking in these archeological matters.

Consequently, American Indian leaders began to insist, generally with success, that the remains of their ancestors be returned for respectful disposition. This raised sticky questions as to whose ancestors were whose, but the general cause was one of common sense and decency.

Here and now, though, I'd like to suggest repatriation of another kind--the restoration of historic buildings to their proper place. All over the plains certain individuals, organizations and communities have pulled in collections of buildings from the villages and countryside roundabout. This has been part of the general collapse of rural society in the region. Surviving towns not only have taken over the commerce and service for large areas but also have sucked in historic buildings, establishing little pioneer towns or historic villages.

Two things brought this about. First, people wanted to preserve the buildings going to ruin in dying towns, so they brought them into a central place for care. Second, they sought to create museum complexes that would attract visitors. The daddy of them all is Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, Neb. For an example of the same general phenomenon carried out in a more professional way, look to the east at the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island. Or, just look to some town nearby, because these pioneer villages of relocated buildings are everywhere.

There are two reasons these things always have bothered me. The first is that they are amusement parks, not that different from other theme parks. They are no place real, but elaborate fictions.

The other reason has to do with the integrity of the buildings themselves. Taken away from original locations and clumped into amusement parks, they lose the context of place. That's why the National Register of Historic Places, the nation's list of historically significant properties, generally disqualifies any building that has been relocated. Such a moved structure is no longer historic.

The compilation of synthetic historic villages has been part of the collapse of society on the Great Plains over the past two generations--retrenchment of a sort. In this time of regional renewal, however, it is time to put these historic buildings back where they belong.

My modest suggestion: dismantle the theme parks and put the town halls, bandstands, general stores, and all the rest of them back into their original locations. They might serve local functions, or more likely at first, merely constitute a grander museum extended across the landscape. The foster parents of the buildings--those who gathered them in the first place
--should continue to exercise curatorship.

They also should serve as native guides, assisted by modern technology. It cannot be long before all new vehicles come equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, by which navigation through a series of way points--historic sites--will be made simple.

My suggestion will remove historical associations from the backwaters and put them right into the main stream of regional renewal. I wonder what local group will have the faith and courage to implement it?

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136

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