The glaciers sculpted what we see in Cooper’s Glen today.
The rolling hills of steep moraines and glacial outwash plains
Forests, prairies, and wetlands emerged from the land so fair.
Walk with me, I’ll show you why we’ve learned to care.
—Verse from the Kalamazoo Nature Center Song ©2010 Foster Brown

A favorite spot at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, a hanging spring, boasts an explosion of marsh marigolds each spring on the Beech Maple Trail. Photo by Torrey Wenger, KNC

On a beautiful autumn afternoon, a solitary figure seeks refuge on a favorite trail that leads to an overlook above an old gravel pit. As she walks through a mature beech maple forest she thinks about the concerned citizens who, 50 years ago, rescued this lovely ravine from an expanding gravel mining company. Through their efforts, the Kalamazoo Nature Center was created.

Today, the nature center’s 1,136 acres include areas of beech maple forest, two reconstructed prairies, wetlands, river bottom lands, and farm land. This diversity of habitats is a legacy of the Wisconsinian glacial advances and retreats. At the height of the most recent advance, all of Michigan was covered by several thousand feet of ice. This ice contained huge amounts of soil and rock debris carried from more northerly parts of the state. As the ice melted, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, various types of hills and depressions were left behind.

As the individual continues her walk, she crosses a spring-fed stream at the bottom of a depression and then puffs her way up a gravelly hill. She is well aware of the variety of small rocks under her feet and of the larger erratic boulders poking up from the blanket of leaves. The boulders are primarily igneous granite and metamorphic gneiss, rocks formed more than one billion years ago and subsequently shaped and transported by ice and flowing water from sources as far away as Canada.

Naturalist Richard Chamberlin uses a spray bottle to highlight the definition on some KNC Gravel Pit rocks of the for some Mattawan third graders in 2010. Photo courtesy Kalamazoo Nature Center

At the top of the gravel pit she sits in an open area and studies the rocks in front of her. Soon she finds some fossil relics from 350 million years ago when Michigan lay under a warm shallow sea. Small corals patterned like honey bee combs, tiny rings from an unfathomable number of crinoids, pieces of fossilized shells, and even the plain grey limestone tell the story of an ancient ocean filled with invertebrate life. These fragments were also plucked from bedrock and carried by the ice.

In pre-settlement time this gravel hill was covered by a beech maple forest and stretched nearly one-fourth of a mile to the Kalamazoo River. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the demand for gravel grew. Many thousands of tons of gravel were removed from various sites at what was to become the nature center. One of the areas targeted for mining was very close to a lovely location that was popular with picnickers and college biology students. The alarm was raised and in 1960 the Kalamazoo Nature Center (KNC) came into existence.

A 1960s school group explores a glacial erratic at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Photo courtesy Kalamazoo Nature Center

Since then children of all ages have come to the old gravel pits for a glimpse of Michigan’s geologic past. Local school groups put together a scale model of a glacier (15 feet of PVC piping and a Monopoly house become ice a mile thick towering over your home) and push ice cubes through the sand to observe how ice plucks rocks. Cub and Girl Scouts search for fossil fragments, weathered limestone, and colorful granite as they work toward geology awards. College students and other visitors enjoy bird-watching from the deck that overlooks the regenerating forest.

The visitor walks across the aptly named Trout Run. This lovely stream rises in a wetland, another glacial legacy, and is fed by numerous springs. With great foresight and much persistence, the KNC has acquired all but a few acres of Trout Run’s watershed. Various trails accompany many sections of the stream, but the portion that flows from the gravel pit bridge to the Kalamazoo River is the most heavily used. For more than a half-century, students have recorded the tiny animals hiding under the stream-smoothed rocks. Middle school students create an artificial oil spill with popcorn and then discuss the impact on wildlife and people. The startling reality of this activity became evident when nearly one million gallons of oil poured into the Kalamazoo River upstream from KNC in July 2010.

A few hundred yards downstream she comes to a hanging spring where the water flows downhill into Trout Run. In the spring, scores of yellow marsh marigolds grow between the rocks but in late fall only the mosses show green. In a way, this spot summarizes the history of the area. Potawatomi people, pioneers, and early nature center campers drank the very cold water. Area farmers mined marl from a nearby seep. Picnickers came to enjoy the beech maple forest with its beautiful spring wildflowers and many nesting songbirds. Across Trout Run the very edge of the gravel mine looms under the fallen leaves.

The visitor walks to the deck overlooking the confluence of Trout Run and the Kalamazoo River. She tries to imagine what this river looked like 12,000 years ago, when it was perhaps a mile wide and filled with icy glacial melt water and tumbling rocks. What Pleistocene mammals visited here? What people paddled past here? She watches the clear water bubbling past and thinks about the nature center’s varied post-glacial topography and how it provides so many rich experiences for the nearly 5 million visitors that come each year.

A bald eagle flies overhead, a tribute to the returning health of the river. And thanks to the foresight of the nature center founders, this lovely spot will be preserved for both wildlife and for future generations of people. What a legacy!

Kal-Kalamazoo Nature Center is here for you…
Inspiring people to care for the land that we all share.
Gentle rolling hills, open prairies, and sparkling water views.
Kalamazoo Nature Center is here for you.
—Chorus from the Kalamazoo Nature Center Song ©2010 by Foster Brown

Sarah Hopkins is the senior interpretive naturalist at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Reach her at shopkins@naturecenter.org. Peter J.F. Stobie, CHI, is the education director at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Reach him at pstobie@naturecenter.org.

Some Native American tribes attribute the postpile of Devil’s Tower to the clawing of a giant bear trying to eat seven young women who fled to safety on the rock. Photo by Erik Marr

All organisms are profoundly shaped by the landscapes upon which they are born and live. Seedlings flourish in sheltered crevices, condors roost upon craggy aeries, and bighorn sheep elude predators on precipitous slopes. Geology is the foundation of every biotic landscape, and human landscapes are no exception. Civilization is constructed on the banks of rivers, lakes, and oceans, nourished by the fertility of the soils, and challenged in battles whose outcomes are dictated in no small part by the lay of the land and the contenders’ intimacy with it.

When we interpret geology, our task is to facilitate “emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and meanings inherent in the resource,” according to the NAI Definitions Project. Getting folks to think about rocks is simple, since geology is a science replete with stimulating concepts like deep time, evolution, and tectonic motion. Yet many interpreters struggle with the emotional dimension of geology interpretation. How do we get people to feel about rocks? How do we get them to recognize that something so apparently silent, slow, and sedentary could be relevant to our noisy, rapid-fire, mobile human lives?

This past summer, I sought to answer these questions for my masters thesis in resource interpretation from Stephen F. Austin State University. I traveled to 12 national parks and monuments, video-recording geology-themed interpretive programs, administering questionnaires, and conducting focus groups with visitors. What follows is research-based insight into how interpreters can help audiences consider rocks both in their minds and in their hearts.

Meeting Them Where They Are
When I asked visitors about their interest in geology, several common threads emerged. Many folks brought up fond childhood memories of rock-hounding or geode hunting. Both children and adults expressed fascination with fossils and dinosaurs. Finally, attachment to scenery back home or to a peak experience during travel to a geologically spectacular locale stimulated enthusiasm in visitors. This final thread, the aesthetic enjoyment of rocks as scenery, tended to provoke a general interest in how things got to be that way, which motivated most folks’ attendance of geology-themed interpretive programs.

You may recognize that the geologic interests expressed above are casual. The extent of most Americans’ formal geology education occurs during a semester-long earth science class in middle school. In terms of depth of understanding, this compares pitifully to the year-long biology (or physics or chemistry) courses taken in high school. Herein lies the challenge of geology interpretation. While interpreters can expect a general audience to understand the fundamentals of predator-prey relationships, the role of decomposers in an ecosystem, or the nuances of photosynthesis, they may not possess the same expertise when it comes to geology. Recalling that semester of middle school earth science, audiences can probably summon the names of the three rock types, and will know that earthquakes and volcanoes have something to do with plate tectonics, but they are ill equipped to look at a landscape and extract information about its origin.

The good news is, despite a lack of formal education, most park visitors’ casual geologic interests hinge on basic human curiosity. At Glacier National Park, a visitor framed it this way, “You’re in the mountains and you don’t have any basic knowledge or understanding of geology. It’s kind of like being in an art museum and all the names of the paintings and the painters have been taken off…. It’s pretty and nice, but you don’t have a good understanding.” Harnessing aesthetic appreciation for and curiosity about geologic scenery is a great place to start. Other techniques for stimulating emotions during geology programs include playing the extremes of geologic time, building a biophilia bridge, and situating visitors in their own geologic experience.

The Ephemeral and the Eternal

The spectacular formations at Badlands National Park are geologically ephemeral and will some day erode away. Photo by Stephanie Kyriazis

When gazing at the stone edifice of the Rockies, one is inclined to imagine the mountains have been around forever. Because so many people think of rocks as everlasting, park visitors are often surprised to discover that geologic phenomena can be ephemeral. At Badlands National Park, where an interpreter pointed out that rock formations are soft and the erosion rate high, one woman reflected, “I felt a little sad when I realized in approximately 500,000 years it won’t be here.” Conversely, the apparent eternity of geologic time also stirs feelings.

“I love that sense of insignificance you have,” a visitor declared at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Both of these statements highlight the dichotomy of geologic time—that it encompasses both the enduring and the fleeting—and the emotional responses that can result.

A Biophilia Bridge
In 1984, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson coined the term biophilia to describe “the innate tendency” of humans “to focus on life and lifelike processes.” He subsequently hypothesized that this tendency is genetically hardwired in our species, a supposition largely supported by more than a decade of research. Sadly, no analogous geophilia has emerged in the scientific literature. However, when discussing geology, an interpreter can leverage visitors’ biophilia to foster a connection to the rocks.

The spectacular formations at Badlands National Park are geologically ephemeral and will some day erode away. Stephanie Kyriazis

A preteen girl I interviewed at the Grand Canyon declared, “I don’t really like rocks, but I like what it does to other things, like habitats for animals…. A lot of animals like to live under rocks, and there are snakes and lizards that like to sun on rocks.” Interpreters at Craters of the Moon National Monument emphasized the protective quality of cracks in the lava rock, where nutritive soil gathers and seedlings hide from intense wind and sunlight.

A ranger at Zion National Park pointed out tiny snails that exist only on spring-drenched sandstone walls. In a lava tube at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, a guide explained that while the island’s porous basalt prevents rain from gathering at the surface, Native Hawaiians could collect drinking water as it dripped from cave ceilings. In each of these examples, geology equals survival, a powerful universal concept that stimulates empathy toward living organisms, and builds appreciation towards the rocks that support them.

Describing the intimacy between Native Americans and their geologic environment using mythology or oral history can also engage visitors emotionally. Most North American indigenous cultures consider rocks just as animate as living things. For instance, at Devils Tower National Monument, local tribes explain that seven young women pursued by a giant bear found sanctuary upon a rising rock. According to the story, the frustrated bear’s claw marks are preserved as the postpile ribs of Devils Tower. At Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, interpreters invoke Pele, the capricious volcano goddess to whom Native Hawaiians attribute the islands’ eruptive behavior.

Historical figures can summon a similar geologic kinship. At Wind Cave National Park, interpreters ask visitors to imagine themselves under the care of Alvin McDonald, the 16-year-old boy who led tourists on guided adventures through the caverns in the 1890s. MacDonald’s promotion of the cave at the World’s Fair and beyond ultimately led to the cave’s protection as a national park. Tragically, the young man died at the age of 20, but his legacy of speleological enthusiasm endures in the heart of every visitor who witnesses the cave. At Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, visitors connect emotionally to the story of volcanologist David Johnston, who died engulfed in the debris of the erupting volcano. As a young woman shared with me, “One of the things that has always touched me in terms of this spot in particular is this is the place where Johnston died for his job.”

Personal Geologic Experience
Geology-influenced natural disasters like landslides, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis afflict humanity with a frequency that fuels our news cycles. Consequently, almost everyone has an emotional reference to such events, from general mourning for victims to personal experience with a tragedy and its aftermath. Chances are, at least one disaster has shaped the geologic landscape of your site. Even if the event pre-dates human occupation, the associated feelings can still be used as a touchstone in an interpretive program. Emotion can even transfer from one type of disaster to another, as seen in this survey comment from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park: “Amazing that people got so close to active eruptions. Sad to see the town that was wiped out by lava flow—reminds me of Hurricane Ike (Galveston, Texas – 2008 – destroyed our beach house).”

Natural disasters may permeate our knowledge of the world, but not everyone can think of a geologic experience that touched them personally. Most folks are willing to visualize themselves embedded in different environmental circumstances, however, which inspires another technique: resource immersion, real or imagined. At the Grand Canyon, a ranger asked his audience to consider the process of personal fossilization, starting with giant dump trucks burying the audience alive in sediment.

“I gotta admit,” one man responded, “I hadn’t thought about what it’d take to be a fossil till today.” Similarly, on an exposed ridge at Mount St. Helens, the interpreter viscerally guided his audience through the eruption. “When you are out here and he starts telling you about…how the trees were mowed down, and this part was blown down and that part was shot-gunned, and that part was incinerated, it brings the shock of the thing to you,” a visitor pondered afterwards.

Cultivating emotional connections between visitors and geologic resources is fundamentally about shifting their frame of reference, from a world where rocks are merely a passive backdrop, to a world where rocks set the stage for all action—animal, plant, and human. Whether you start with scenery, invoke the mysteries of geologic time, leverage biophilia, or situate visitors in their own geologic experience, you provoke your audience to recognize that rocks are relevant contributors to human life, and worthy of emotional ties.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks the staff and visitors at the public lands in her study. She is also grateful for the support of her advisor, Dr. Theresa Coble, and NAI for a 2009 scholarship award.

Stephanie Kyriazis feels a strong emotional connection to rocks and hopes you do too. She is the education specialist at Death Valley National Park and an academically trained geologist. You can contact her at stephanie_kyriazis@nps.gov.

Geology tells the story of our past, establishes the foundations of our present, and reflects how we sustain our future. It provides the stage, furnishes the plot, and determines the cast for the episodic drama of natural and cultural history. This theme can help guide a holistic approach to interpretation by creating opportunities for a variety of audiences to find deeper meanings in the places they know and cherish.

The National Science Foundation recently published a list of Earth Science Literacy principles (www.earthscienceliteracy.org) that the public should know about our planet’s landforms, processes, and connections to society. One of the “Big Ideas” is, “Earth is a complex system of interlocking rock, water, air, and life.” This “Earth Systems” perspective is interpretive, as it highlights connections. Matter and energy move from one system, or sphere, to others and large changes in one sphere are likely to affect the other spheres. Ecosystem dynamics, climate change, landscape development, and human population movements can be understood by emphasizing how we affect and are affected by Earth’s spheres. We’re part of life (biosphere). We breathe and pollute air (atmosphere). We drink and contaminate water (hydrosphere) and live on a dynamic layer of rock (lithosphere) that shakes, breaks, erupts, and erodes to form inspiring landscapes.

Geology adds meaning and understanding to biology, ecology, and human history. It provides the foundation for formulating whole stories. An Earth systems-based theme such as “Geology sets the stage for life, ecology, and human history” can foster new perspectives to audiences at many parks, forests, historic sites, and heritage areas. Yet it is only one of many concepts that can be used to interpret a site’s geology and its deeper meanings to the visiting public.

Methods and Strategies for Incorporating Earth Features and Processes into Interpretive Programs
In many ways, interpreting geology is similar to interpreting any other topic: know the resource, understand the audience, make it relevant by employing interpretive techniques, and present a compelling story. Yet, interpreting geology offers some unique and challenging opportunities, as it may seem foreign compared to other natural or cultural history topics.

Geology can be put into social and cultural contexts by using real-world applications. Landscapes can be tied to universal concepts such as change, power, and time that are likely to resonate with most any audience. Rocks can be viewed as landforms and building blocks for landscapes. Rock layers represent an enduring history book. Every rock tells a story. Interpreters can help visitors find deeper connections to the meanings of their site by using methods and strategies that present geology as an integral part of the site’s natural and cultural history.

Interpret Geology as Part of a Larger Story: Geology is the study of landscape features and processes that make the Earth come alive; it is part of every story. Geology dictates climate and environment and determines what life can exist in an area. It tells us how Earth formed and changed over vast expanses of time, and continues to be modified in ways that affect us all. Such stories create interest using high drama, intrigue, life, death, action, change, speculation, and provocation.

Highlight Scenery: The visual impact of scenery can create a connection between geology and the visitor, even if the connection is not initially appreciated. Scenery is a main reason why people visit many parks, monuments, forests, heritage areas, and other special places. Scenery at many interpretive sites is dominantly geologic. If a site has scenery, it has geology! Tell the landscape story by revealing how geologic processes are responsible for scenery. This improves understanding, enhances meaning, and builds a more complete natural history for the site and its surrounding region.

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in northern Arizona reveals how geological processes impact society, ecology, and scenery. Volcanic eruptions 1,000 years ago disrupted lives, changed ecosystems, and left behind a picturesque cinder cone. Photo by Bob Lillie

Invoke Sense of Place: Fostering a sense of place, or an appreciation of the meanings and attachments that people assign to locales, is at the heart of interpreting geology. It ties cultural and spiritual values to geological features and processes. An awe-inspiring and continuously active landscape captivates with its beauty, power, energy—and sometimes danger! Interpretation should address the whole person. In order to accomplish this we first must address the whole story, including the sense of place represented by geological processes and their bearing on landscape development.

Relate, Relate, Relate: The use of analogies, similes, and metaphors can draw on visitors’ personal experiences to help them understand and connect to the deeper meanings of geological features and processes. We can compare geological processes and rates to known ones. For example, tectonic plates move at about the rate your fingernails grow; cinder cone eruptions are “volcanic fire works”; lava flows like honey and can crust over like ice forming on a river in winter. Sedimentary layers are stacked like pancakes—the oldest (first made) are at the bottom and the youngest are on top. People living near faults have natural seismometers hanging from their walls—photos that move during earthquakes.

Interpret Deep Time: Earth’s history spans 4.5 billion (4,500 million) years. Such “deep” geologic time can inspire a sense of awe and wonder, and is hard for many people to cognitively appreciate. Geologic time can be put into perspective by comparing the age of the Earth to a day, a year, a yardstick, or other measurement tools.

Present Geology as Part of Human History: Geological features and processes often determine transportation corridors, influence the outcome of battles, dictate cultural activities, and guide humankind’s responses to natural disasters. For example, New York was destined to become a great city because of its outstanding harbor. Much of the history of the American West has been influenced by the region’s great mineral wealth and semi-arid to arid climate. San Francisco is attractive because of the beauty of its natural landscape—but the same geological forces that form the landscape also cause devastating earthquakes.

Demystify Geology: Geology reveals hidden stories. Interpreters should strive to explain the scientific understanding behind statements of geologic facts and theories. Incorporating answers to common visitor questions—such as explaining geologic dating techniques, identifying the sources of knowledge about Earth’s interior structure and composition, and techniques to interpret the climatological history of the planet—help visitors form meaningful connections to a site.

The landscape of Yosemite National Park provides clues for a geological detective story. The large mineral grains within the granite must have formed slowly as magma cooled deep within the Earth. Miles of overlying rock—including ancient volcanoes fed by the magma—were removed by erosion as the Sierra Nevada rose. U-shaped valleys reveal that Ice-Age glaciers are a recent contributor to this process. Photo by Bob Lillie

Connect Geology to Life: Connections may be demonstrated by starting with living things and linking them to the landscape or starting with geology and linking it to living things. Rocks are habitat—home to plants, animals, and people. On a larger scale, Earth itself is home. Rocks provide material resources. They provide raw materials we use in our daily lives. The incredible biological diversity of the Grand Canyon, which contains the greatest number of species of vascular plant of any national park, is a result of geology. Ecosystems ranging from the Sonoran desert to boreal forest are found in the park from river to rim.

Geology-ecology relationships can make geology more relevant. The 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake was a factor in the establishment of national wildlife refuges in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Sudden movement of the Pacific tectonic plate during the earthquake raised parts of Alaska’s Copper River Delta, leaving much of the wetland nesting ground for the dusky Canada goose high and dry. Habitat for this species was expanded by developing William L. Finley, Ankeny, and Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuges along their flyway in Oregon.

Highlight How Geology Continues to Affect Our Lives: Geology is not something that happened long ago and is now finished. Many of the same processes that formed a site’s landscape and its rocks are still affecting the site today. For example, rivers carrying sediment eroded from the Appalachian Mountains deposit sand that forms the beautiful beaches of Cape Hatteras and other national seashores along the Atlantic coast. Landscapes such as the Grand Canyon are still being shaped by erosional processes and agents, such as the powerful Colorado River, the rush of flash floods and debris flows in side canyons, and the suddenness of massive rock falls. All of these processes continue today, maintaining the beauty of places we cherish. Interpretation can infuse the sense of wonder about ongoing geological processes and how human activities might upset their balance and adversely affect the landscape.

Present Geology in Emotional and Poetic Terms: Interpreters can use emotion and poetry to help visitors appreciate geology in more human terms. Geology programs can include beauty, discovery, and excitement; visualizations of a dynamic Earth; and fun! A program might revolve around the concept of “Beauty and the Beast,” with a potential theme: “The same tectonic forces that threaten our lives with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides also nourish our spirits by forming the magnificent mountains, valleys, and coastlines of the Pacific Northwest.”

In Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth, Marcia Bjornerud wrote, “Unfortunately, stone has an undeserved reputation for being uncommunicative. The expressions stone deaf, stone cold, stony silence, and simply, stoned, reveal much about the relationship most people have to the rocks beneath their feet. But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated texts, telling gothic tales of scorching heat, violent tempests, endurance, cataclysm, and reincarnation.”

Example of an Interpretive Program that Integrates Geology, Ecology, and Culture
Hayden Valley—Life above a Hotspot: A crisp summer morning in Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park is a nice setting for a family hike. Adding a park ranger into the mix only improves upon the perfection of a perfect morning! The topic of the ranger program is geology. However, the family is surprised by so much conversation about grass-covered wetlands, lodge pole pines, bison, elk, and even the comings and goings of people.

The ranger poses a question: What is it about Yellowstone that has resulted in such breathtaking scenery, fascinating ecology, and intriguing human history? At 8,000 feet above sea level, Hayden Valley’s climate is more like northern Canada than the continental USA. During the past ice age, a mini-ice sheet covered the entire Yellowstone Plateau. Trees along the edges of Hayden Valley outline an ancient glacial lake. Yellowstone has long attracted people as fertile ground for hunting, fishing, recreation, and obsidian tools. Only its lofty elevation prohibits year-round habitation.

Another question: Why is the Yellowstone region so high? Yellowstone has a high elevation because it lies above the Yellowstone Hotspot, a region of Earth’s mantle that is so hot that it expands like a hot-air balloon and lifts the Yellowstone Plateau half a mile above the surrounding region. Expansion of the hot mantle also causes rock to melt. This process created the Yellowstone Supervolcano, a feature so vast and subtle that it was not recognized until satellites provided the needed perspective. The short growing season at high elevations and acidic soils from weathering of volcanic materials make Yellowstone a prime landscape for lodgepole pine trees. Particles of sediment deposited on the glacial lake bed are both large and small, so that water can’t easily seep through—standing water on the floor of Hayden Valley thus provides rich wetland habitat for abundant wildlife.

And a most-intriguing question: Does anyone feel the urge to play golf? The game of golf was developed in Scotland, and most courses mimic Scotland’s glacial landscape. A trip to Yellowstone is like going to Scotland. The rise in elevation above the Yellowstone Hotspot is equivalent to traveling that far north. Hayden Valley’s golf-course appearance—long grassy fairways running through trees, with small ponds and pockets of sand—formed as Yellowstone’s ice sheet melted.

The ranger concludes by explaining how geology sets the stage and creates the roles for all life, ecology, and history. If the stage were different, the play would be different and it would attract a different set of actors. Without high elevation and volcanic activity—products of the Yellowstone Hotspot—all aspects of Yellowstone’s life, ecology, and human history would be different.

Robert J. Lillie is a professor of geology and Certified Interpretive Trainer at Oregon State University. Reach him at lillier@geo.oregonstate.edu. Allyson Mathis is the science and education outreach coordinator with Grand Canyon National Park’s Division of Science and Resource Management. Reach her at Allyson_Mathis@nps.gov. Roger Riolo is a Certified Interpretive Trainer and owner of InterpTrain Interpretive Training & Consulting. Reach him at rlriolo@bendcable.com.

The opportunity to produce a new interpretive film in the National Park Service doesn’t come up very often. So when Lincoln Home National Historic Site was provided with the funds for a new film, we were excited about the project but at the same time conscious of the importance of what we were undertaking. We had one shot at this and whatever the final product, it would be shown for years to come to hundreds of thousands of visitors. We knew that this film would be around for a while because it was replacing a film that was produced in 1976. We were going to produce a digital, high-definition film to replace one that was shown on a 16mm film tree. (Thank goodness for both the opening of the high-tech Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum several blocks away and a Lincoln bicentennial to help get our need noticed and funded!)

This posted promoted Lincoln Home National Historic Site’s interpretive film Abraham Lincoln: A Journey to Greatness, which premiered in February 2009, just in time for the Lincoln bicentennial.

Lincoln Home National Historic Site preserves and interprets the Springfield home of Abraham Lincoln. It is the home that he, his wife Mary, and nine-month-old son Robert moved into in the spring of 1844 and where they lived for the next 17 years. It is the home that saw the birth of their next three sons, Eddie, Willie, and Tad. And it is the place where three-year-old Eddie died of tuberculosis. It was where Lincoln lived while earning a living as a successful attorney. It was where he lived during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; where he lived when he gave his famous Cooper Union Speech in New York; where the Republican Party informed Lincoln, in May 1860, that he was their candidate for the presidency; and, where president-elect Lincoln was when South Carolina seceded from the Union. The Lincoln home itself is restored to the 1860 time period and contains a mix of original and period artifacts throughout the two-story house. Lincoln Home National Historic Site contains 14 historic structures that surround the Lincoln home, evoking the Lincoln time period for visitors.

One challenge in telling the story of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield is deciding which story to tell. Do we present the story of Lincoln the family man? Lincoln the lawyer? Lincoln the politician? President-elect Lincoln on the eve of civil war? And, if we try to combine any or all of those elements, how do we do it within the time allotted for a typical visitor center orientation film? Our 2004 long-range interpretive plan provided some guidance, including our interpretive themes, but no specifics:

The goal of this 15-minute program will be to inspire, excite, and motivate visitors to the very personal connections between Lincoln the man, his family, home, community, and belief system as they relate to major events in America’s history.

In Mr. Lincoln’s Springfield, a photographer played by Stuart Germain tells viewers about Lincoln’s hometown.

An inquiry of our staff was helpful, but still brought a variety of responses based upon the areas of the Lincoln story that most interested them. Ultimately, the solution lay in developing a rule of thumb that helped in a variety of instances throughout the film project. Consult the experts, then trust the process! We were fortunate in our project to have the benefit of the expertise of the staff of the National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry Center, the office that produces and/or coordinates most media projects for the National Park Service. Harpers Ferry Center managed the film contract, which included providing a list of filmmakers that had already been vetted through their indefinite quantities contract process. Harpers Ferry Center staff spent many hours reviewing proposals and submittals from many filmmakers who wanted to be on the National Park Service “IDIQ” list. So, who are we, as historic site staff with no particular background in film making, to question the abilities of the experts who have been determined to be the best in their field? Through guidance from our Midwest Regional Office and Harpers Ferry we selected an excellent filmmaker.

We then provided the filmmaker with a great deal of background material on Lincoln in Springfield and, with our guidance—including our interpretive themes, etc.—we had them develop a film plan that they felt could be accomplished within the given time frame and within the available budget, and that would be compelling to the visitor. The filmmakers had two advantages: They knew how to make a compelling film and they were not Lincoln experts. They knew what a “non-Lincoln” person would be interested in because they were in that group. It is relatively easy to reach an audience who already appreciates Lincoln; we need to reach those who don’t. For that reason, you probably would prefer not to have a Lincoln historian make a Lincoln film. Serve as a consultant, yes; drive the story, perhaps not. While there were certainly some back-and-forth discussions on elements of the story, we ended up for the most part with the outline they envisioned. We also avoided the pitfall of wanting to primarily tell the story of the place that we manage, the Lincoln home, to the possible exclusion of a better broader Lincoln story, a story that more visitors could connect to. And, ultimately, visitors will connect more to the Lincoln home if they can better connect to Lincoln. The final product was a film that told a balanced, multifaceted story of Lincoln in Springfield.

In a Lincoln-Douglas debate scene from Abraham Lincoln: A Journey to Greatness, Stephen A. Douglas was played by Rick Dunham and Abraham Lincoln was played by Fritz Klein.

Letting the filmmakers ply their craft freely wasn’t always easy, however. The trick for us was to know when to step in to make some corrections and when to remain silent for the sake of the story. For example, does it really matter that, in a scene showing Eddie’s death, the wallpaper design in the background is a little too late for that time period? Or is it the feel of the room and the emotion of the scene that is most important? We kept quiet on the wallpaper issue. In staging the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the filmmaker wanted to show a “historic” building in the background because it “looked better.” We knew that the building was too modern, that in most cases the debates were held in open areas, and that this change was relatively easy. We held firm on that issue.

Another consideration on this project was limitations due to budget constraints. On February 11, 1861, Lincoln gave his famous farewell speech to the citizens of Springfield. In 2007, because we could only afford one trip to Springfield for filming, our Lincoln gave his speech in August. The result was a rather green leafy February in our film. We were able to “hide August” somewhat thanks to the magic of computer graphics, which populated the scene with buildings to mask some of the leafy trees and grass, but not all. Again, the ultimate goal was a portrayal of Lincoln’s emotional farewell to Springfield on his way to the presidency.

While we let the filmmakers tell the story, we ensured that the film was reflective of current scholarship and interpretation, in this case, interpretation of antebellum American society and the causes of the Civil War. This was certainly one of the areas in which our old film really looked old. Our 1976 film, Mr. Lincoln’s Springfield, was set in Springfield just after Lincoln’s election and features a “photographer” who takes us into the Lincoln home and around Springfield, and while taking photos, describes the Lincoln family and the Springfield community that they live in. In his description of Springfield, the photographer summarizes Springfield’s African-American community in only four sentences.

Just down the street is Jessie Jenkins’ place. His wife takes in laundry, he drives the dray wagon. He took the Lincolns to the depot when they left. Then there’s William Floureville, he, like Jessie, is black.

And, while someone viewing the film would learn about Lincoln’s family, see his home, and know that he was elected to the presidency, the viewer does not get even the slightest indication that there was a growing national crisis over slavery, that it was that issue that propelled Lincoln to the White House and the nation to war.

In the new film, we mention the diversity of Springfield but leave a more in-depth discussion of that to our exhibits and other media. We do devote a good deal of film time to the national issues and debate over slavery. We have a scene from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates that illustrates the extreme views of the nation through the use of Stephen A. Douglas’s more inflammatory rhetoric about the place of African Americans in the nation.

I hold that a negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis, by white men, for white men and their posterity forever.

There was some hesitation about inclusion of this line in the film—namely a concern that some in the audience might take offense. A problem of past National Park Service media such as exhibits and films was the sanitation of certain elements of history for the sake of visitors’ sensitivity. National Park Service media at historic sites and museums now include uncomfortable chapters of the past to tell a better, more accurate, and more compelling story.

Ultimately, the success of our film, Abraham Lincoln: A Journey to Greatness, can be largely attributed to open dialogue, trust, and true partnerships with the filmmaker, the local community, and the National Park Service community in every step of the filmmaking process, from location scouting to final editing. We hope that this film doesn’t have to be shown for as many years as its predecessor did, but if it does, we think that the visitor will be well informed and entertained.

Timothy P. Townsend is a historian at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Contact him at tim_townsend@nps.gov.

A storyteller uses whatever method is available and relevant.

On paper, I am a television producer. But my job at the Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN) entails much more than leading a production crew. I am tasked with researching a subject, creating a project around it, and deciding what formats would best convey the information. Sound familiar?

Textbooks tend to lose their audiences rather quickly, especially when those audiences are tech-savvy and want more visual information. For the sake of keeping students, and sometimes teachers, from nodding off in third-period history class, I get to interpret Arkansas’s past and present by producing videos and virtual tours for those classrooms. Long gone are the days of the old frame-by-frame, crank-it-yourself filmstrip. Documentaries and instructional presentations that are broadcast or streamed online make learning more enjoyable and easily consumed.

Video

Arkansas’s First People features an interview with a Choctaw Nation elder in Antlers, Oklahoma. Courtesy of Arkansas Educational Television Network

In public television and some cable networks, video featuring curriculum-based subjects is created specifically for education and scheduled outside of the primetime lineup meant for the general public. These schedules, usually overnight, allow for odd lengths in programming, like 10- or 15-minute clips on whatever subject fits with a teacher’s lesson plan.

One of my first projects for AETN was a series of classroom video clips, funded in part by the Arkansas Environmental Federation (AEF), eventually named “Environmental Educator’s Book.” I worked with scientists, business people, and one teacher, but I had to guard against losing sight of my audience, middle school students. That age group has enough complexity in its collective life without having to memorize dry statistics about water, air, recycling, and energy. So, animation seemed like a good format.

AETN and AEF wanted videos that would be fun and colorful, short and informative. Each clip has a character or characters who explain what the subjects are and why a teenager should care. The animation is mixed with live-action video so that the realism doesn’t get lost. The resulting clips are different lengths and teacher’s guides are available.

Arkansas’s First People’s chief videographer Chuck Durham shoots video of an Osage Nation storefront in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Courtesy of Arkansas Educational Television Network

Long-form video projects are an interpretive challenge. Unlike an interpretive talk, where each time you present, you can tweak something and improve, video is concrete. You have one chance at telling the story. Once it’s fixed in the final edit, that’s it. Like a lot of things, there are the “would’ve, should’ve, could’ve” moments. Suddenly, you realize that a particular emphasis or image would make the video much better. Maybe lack of time or budget prevented those additions. On the other hand, the video that was created will probably be seen by thousands of people.

Virtual Tours
The Internet has really enhanced interpreting to the masses. Virtual tours can be a primer for a visit to a site, an electronic field trip, or both. For a teacher, this is invaluable. Lesson plans benefit from the addition of images and information. The school’s budget may benefit from giving students the chance to experience a place without having to spend money on transportation. For the park or museum, its services are being utilized and in the future, the site might be visited when school funds are available.

The first virtual tour I had the pleasure of working on was about the Little Rock Central High segregation crisis. The project became a website, not just a virtual tour. Touring a Time: Little Rock Central High School 1957 Crisis features what is now the former visitor center, the high school campus, as well as the neighborhood, timeline, key players, historic images, and documents. The site is linked to the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site lesson plan page through the National Park Service.

The original idea for the virtual tour was to provide a glimpse into the past with words and images. There is no video involved. The narrative in some areas reflects the vernacular of the time. Students’ thoughts are shared through journalism class assignments. Propaganda examples show the tension in the community. Each biographical sketch has a notation of where each of the Little Rock Nine ended up after 1957. This is the closest to living history as a producer can get without donning a costume.

Courses
Teachers are required to have a specific number of professional development credit hours. My job is centered on providing course video for Arkansas teachers via Arkansas Internet Delivered Education for Arkansas Schools (Arkansas IDEAS). Recently, it has evolved into building courses with video, assessment questions, and any other materials that would enhance the subject. At first glance, this may not sound like interpreting, but it is. The courses are transferred to the students either by a teacher improving his or her skills or by literally using the course elements in classroom lesson plans.

Arkansas’s First People is a good example of a course. This project began as a grant application on its way to the garbage can until a coworker, who knew of my interest in Native cultures, rescued it and brought it to me. I made my case for applying for the grant and completing the project as a course. There was an absence of extensive material in Arkansas history classes regarding indigenous people. I received permission to apply. Three of us formed a grant team, applied, and received one of 15 positions in the “American Experience: We Shall Remain Native History of America Community Coalitions Initiative.”

Arkansas’s First People would include five half-hour videos centering on various time periods, a website, virtual tours, resource links, outreach events, an exhibit, and assessments. AETN would provide these elements with the guidance of a coalition of experts—and I knew that didn’t mean some books and a historian. I contacted the modern nations of the American Indian tribes who impacted what is now known as Arkansas. The majority of nations responded and allowed us to visit their Oklahoma headquarters. Also on the list of invited experts were the Arkansas Archeological Survey, Arkansas State Parks, Arkansas Tech University Museum, Historic Arkansas Museum, Sequoyah National Research Center, American Indian Center of Arkansas, Trail of Tears Association, and the University of Arkansas Museum Collection. All of these organizations would have some part in the completion of this massive, delicate project.

As I looked at the scope of Arkansas’s First People, I thought back to my two seasons as an interpreter at Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park. Two things stood out: These are stories to be handled with the utmost respect, and information should come from as close to the original source as possible.

When you are interpreting a site, you work diligently on your presentations, whether they are print, audio-visual, or first-person. You do careful research and craft the story with respect. You typically know your audience.

To interpret for mass media, you work diligently on your presentations, perform careful research, and craft the story with respect. You don’t always know your audience when the stories you are attempting to tell are fractured by scattered documentation, mishandling, and bias. These stories aren’t your own. This seemingly ancient history still impacts the living. An American Indian author friend of mine told me to stick to the basic principles I learned at Toltec. Arkansas’s First People resulted in all the elements promised in the grant application and was also edited into a 90-minute broadcast documentary. No project has had more of an impact on me as a producer or interpreter.

Pros and Cons
There are two downsides to being a television producer and not a frontline interpreter: Your audiences don’t get to have a tactile experience with what you produced as they would if they visited a site, and you typically don’t get to meet your audience. On the positive side, you produced something that can be seen multiple times and at the audience’s convenience.

I used to think that I wasn’t an interpreter because I wasn’t at a park. Then thanks to my former Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park co-worker Shea Lewis, I thought better of it. During production of Arkansas’s First People, he said, “I can’t wait to see the end product. You know you are still an interpreter, just on TV!”

Stephanie R. Lewis is an education producer at the Arkansas Educational Television Network and a freelance writer/photographer. She can be reached at srlewis@hotmail.com.

At a June 2009 taping of the public television show Outdoor Elements, host Evie Kirkwood discusses identifying toads with Jill McDonald and her son Sullivan Rudolph. Photo courtesy St. Joseph County Parks/WNIT.

Neither rain, nor snow keeps us from taping the TV show, but airplanes and lawnmowers do. For 10 years, I’ve hosted Outdoor Elements in partnership with WNIT Public Television in South Bend, Indiana. The show airs in 22 counties in north-central Indiana and southwestern Michigan. We produce 13 shows a year, each with three segments. Working on the show is like facilitating 39 mini-interpretive programs. I say facilitating, because as host, I don’t do much of the interpreting. That is the role of each segment’s guest and the creative efforts of the production team. My role involves coming up with the guests, topics, and locations, and guiding the segments through the questions I ask.

Outdoor Elements began as a segment within a different show produced by WNIT called “Open Studio,” highlighting local towns and communities. As a volunteer and board member for the station, I occasionally served as a substitute host for that show. Eventually Outdoor Elements spun off into its own show. In the 10 years we’ve produced the show, we’ve covered topics ranging from carving ice fishing decoys to mountain biking, from making garlic mustard pesto to tagging monarch butterflies.

To help viewers understand the chemical reaction that creates acid rain, University of Notre Dame graduate student Michelle Bertke replicates the reaction in the lab. Kelsy Zumbrun works the camera. Courtesy WNIT.

In its early years, the show was produced entirely in the studio, back-dropped by a kitchen or a den set built for another local show. Guests carted in boxes of props in our attempt to bring the outdoors in. Eventually we moved first one, then all three segments of each half-hour show outdoors, on location. Many are taped at parks and nature centers. We’ve also taped at gravel pits, archeological digs, grist mills, university campuses, medical complexes, and a LEED-certified bank.

Nothing halts a taping like the drone of a lawnmower, someone walking their dog into the shot, or loud hikers nearby. Those sounds and images would be filtered out by an audience if we were presenting a program to them directly, but when the audience is experiencing your program through the television screen, these interruptions become confusing distractions. That’s just one way working in television differs from a live interpretive program.

Usually when delivering your interpretive programs, you control most facets of your presentation. In a television production, however, control (or sometimes lack of it) is shared between the host, the guest, the site, the weather, and the production team. That can result in some unexpected and amusing situations.

We tape segments year-round in a variety of seasons and weather conditions, but even the viewers found it a bit comical when we did a segment on how snow guns work—in the middle of a snowstorm.

For a segment on daylilies, we couldn’t quite heat the oil enough over the outdoor charcoal fire to make crispy daylily fritters, so we sampled limp, soggy ones and pretended they were delicious.

When I asked a colleague to tape a segment with me on why gulls gather in parking lots, we met near a fast-food restaurant where a few dozen birds always hang out. The gulls apparently missed the casting call. One ring-billed gull showed up.

We traveled to Indiana’s Potato Creek State Park to do a segment on methods to reduce nuisance Canada geese. Ironically, a dog and its owner walked through the flock, shooing all of them away before we arrived.

As an interpreter presenting a program, planning is followed by your program delivery and cleanup. For Outdoor Elements, each seven-and-a-half-minute segment takes about an hour to tape, excluding travel time to and from location. Kelsy Zumbrun and Brenda Bowyer, the talented producer/directors from WNIT, get close-ups, supplemental footage, and different shot angles. The planning and shoot time pales to editing, which can take as long as three hours for each segment.

To minimize editing time, we try to tape each segment with few re-takes. That also keeps it conversational. We don’t use a script, but I do chat with the guest a few days before the taping to discuss what we want to cover and what questions I might ask to frame the segment.

Sometimes the guest’s agenda is different from what I expected. A local energy cooperative built a new “Energy Park” with solar and wind energy systems on display. I figured it would be natural to do a segment on residential alternative energy options. While discussing the segment prior to taping day, it became clear the goal for the guest was to emphasize that alternative energy systems are currently too costly to feasibly re-coup the capital investment. We were able to work out a series of questions to cover both the environmental benefits and the cost-benefit analysis to facilitate a well-balanced segment.

Facilitating the segments also requires the art of listening to the guest’s answers while simultaneously planning the next question. Sometimes I fail miserably. During a segment on attracting hummingbirds, the park interpreter at a city nature center mixed a batch of homemade nectar. “What’s the recipe you use?” I asked.

I was already planning my next question about cleaning feeders and didn’t really hear his answer. Viewers emailed me after the show aired. Their message: “Your guest said to use three parts sugar to one part water!?”

He’d flipped the ratio around, providing a recipe that would result in a sugary sludge. We re-taped the audio portion before the show aired again.

Putting together the guests and segments allows us to highlight amazing things in the many communities we travel to. I learn about so many topics from knowledgeable guests whether chefs, bryologists, or park interpreters. Occasionally, I get so caught up in it, I forget to mention something significant.

I listened with great interest as the park interpreter explained the composition of the brownish scat I held in my hand during a segment on bobcats. I forgot to tell the viewers it was fake scat. Fortunately, in post-production, Kelsy added a pop-up graphic that flashed, “Not real scat!”

A television audience is non-captive and with a push of a remote button, you are gone from their living room. It’s Kelsy’s production wizardry that makes the show visually rich by selecting interesting (but not distracting) backdrops and securing critical closeups. In the editing process, he tightens up the segments so they don’t lag, and assembles them with the most dynamic at the beginning of the show to draw in viewers who might be channel surfing.

Each show opens with, “Hi, I’m Evie Kirkwood from St. Joseph County Parks. Join me as we experience nature together.” The park department logo and list of parks appear on screen, positioning our department as the go-to place for nature knowledge and resource-based outdoor programming.

To extend the viewer experience, each show usually offers a downloadable PDF with a hands-on activity available on the Outdoor Elements web pages. The entire show can also be viewed there as well. In a partnership with Amazon.com, we list related books. The Outdoor Elements web pages are the most visited in WNIT’s suite of online program-related offerings, making our web master, Matt Norris, an important part of the interpretive team.

The great benefit of the television medium is the broad-ranging audience you can reach. Unlike a live interpretive program, though, you really have no sense of the impact of your program. I have, however, been pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of people, from school kids to elders, who stop me at the grocery store or gas station, to say, “Hey, you’re that nature lady on TV!”

The most rewarding comments are like those from a dad and daughter I met at a fall program at one of our parks. “We watch your show together and it’s inspired us to do all sorts of things outside!”

Evie Kirkwood is director of St. Joseph County Parks in Indiana, and past president of NAI. Reach Evie at ekirkwood@sjcparks.org. Outdoor Elements won first place in the 2010 Hoosier Outdoor Writers competition in the broadcast division. Find it online at www.wnit.org/outdoorelements.

As an interpreter, have you ever dreamed of sharing your stories on TV, or better yet having your own TV show? With the explosion of video technology and distribution choices, it’s never been more possible.

Small, affordable camcorders can take quality video that is fine for TV and the Internet. Photo by Tony Ingraham.

We interpreters are in show biz. We are driven to share our love of a place, a story, or a subject with an audience or participants in our program. We usually employ objects, props, performance, word craft, or “illustrative media,” as Tilden summarized it.

It’s generally agreed that personal interpretation is ideal—participants being present with a live person who helps reveal wonders in a real place or with real objects. All the participants’ senses get involved at the site, and, my goodness, they even can ask questions. And there is no substitute for infectious, in-person enthusiasm.

But when the 14 people who attend your program applaud and go home with your spark in their hearts, your show is over. You’ve given the world quality, but not necessarily quantity. The 300,000 other people who visit your site were not there; nor were the millions of others who have yet to come. Meanwhile, administrators have faced up to fiscal realities and have decided to reduce your site’s interpretive staffing budget.

That’s when many of us begin thinking more about nonpersonal interpretation to reach our audiences. Meanwhile, the world is exploding with video.

New York State Park interpreter Sarah Fiorello explains the geology of Cavern Cascade in a video of her guided walk in Watkins Glen State Park during the celebration of the park’s centennial in 2006. Photo by Tony Ingraham.

Being Seen in Public
It’s difficult to keep up with all the changes in video distribution, access, and personal video production. If you have a portable device, you can watch nearly anywhere, anytime. You can stream video to your widescreen TV from the Internet, or record your favorite show on cable with your DVR to watch later. Meanwhile, the latest movie just released on DVD is headed your way in the mail; or maybe it’s part of your cable subscription. You can watch short videos on your favorite website.

At this point, some interpreters may get nauseated. Many of my friends don’t get cable TV because they want to limit their immersion in mass culture that spends billions to mold us into distracted consumers. But let’s face it—we live in a video culture. If you want to be seen, you get on the screen.

Okay, you’ve decided you are interested in using video as one tool to extend your interpretation to a larger audience than you otherwise are able to. But you’ve watched many mainstream nature and history shows and are intimidated by the enormous production team lists that roll at the end. There is no way you can assemble the resources and professionals to put on anything like that. Fortunately, you don’t have to.

Ever since high school in the 1960s when I had a home movie camera, I’ve wanted to get back into making short interpretive films. Back then, I shot footage of hikes with my father in the mountains to show to family members. Then I became an adult and life got busy. I didn’t return to my interest until many years later.

The author is about to go on live with his show, Cayuga Lake Heritage, in the mini-studio at Ithaca’s public access TV station. Photo by Lauren Stefanelli.

I had a career with New York State Parks in charge of environmental interpretation in the state’s gorgeous Finger Lakes region. I bought a VHS camcorder to record programs and events for training and documentation. I made a couple of training videos, one for interpretive content, and another for general seasonal employee orientation for all the parks in the region. I received an agency regional award for the latter, and then was scolded by my boss for the amount of my time the project had consumed! I laid my camera aside once again. (That was in 1994, and I’ve been told that park managers are still using the staff orientation tape.)

The years rolled by and I took advantage of an early retirement incentive to leave and pursue some deferred dreams. My wife and I published a couple of interpretive books (including A Walk through Watkins Glen—Water’s Sculpture in Stone, the 2009 NAI Media Award winner in the small book category). And I bought a video camera.

In fact, I had subscribed to Videomaker Magazine (a great resource) and salivated over the possibilities for a year before I actually bought the camera. And I took a month-long class on TV production at my local cable TV public access station. That led to my first interpretive TV series, Nature Nearby.

The Miracle of Public Access
Many communities across the country have “PEG” (public, educational, and government access) television channels. Local municipalities can require a cable television franchise agreement to include channels for ordinary citizens, schools, colleges, and local government to “cablecast” their own content. They may also include studios and equipment for use by local producers.

Ithaca, New York, has had a PEGASYS (PEG Access System) station for many years. Area colleges provide regular programming on the educational channel. Municipal meetings are aired on the government channel. And local citizens who have passed a certification course can produce their own content for the public access channel. Use of the equipment and studio are free. All programming must be noncommercial.

PEG channels, where they are available, provide a great opportunity for interpreters to reach out to larger audiences. In Ithaca, that is potentially at least 67,000 viewers, and the numbers are much greater for larger communities. Granted, in the channel-flipping universe, PEG channels have a hard time competing with regular, professionally produced programming. But I have been surprised by the number of people who have come up to me and said they have seen my show.

Rolling Your Own
In my Nature Nearby series, I generally have used my own camera, but I didn’t need to. The station has a number of high-quality camcorders to borrow, along with other accessory equipment for sound and lighting. Indeed, it seems that most of the amateur producers use the station’s equipment. If your community has such a station, you could produce local television programming with virtually no cost for equipment. Not all public access stations, however, have equipment to loan.

Owning your own equipment and editing software gives you total flexibility as to when you shoot and when you edit. It’s now possible to buy a small, high-quality, high-definition camcorder that is adequate to the purpose for just a few hundred dollars. I carry an affordable HD “pocket camcorder” on my belt at all times and I catch much more footage for my show than I would were I deliberately heading out for a shoot. I can do unplanned, on-the-spot interviews, or just have the camera handy at some event or location on the chance that I might be inspired to capture something. There is a down side to owning your own, however; if your equipment or software malfunctions, you must get it repaired yourself, if service is even available.

Many new public access producers have grand ideas about the shows they will create, only to find they are in over their heads. Video production (shooting), and post-production (editing) eat time! There are lots of learning curves with equipment, editing software, and the art of producing a program that audiences actually will want to watch.

Citizen producers commonly are too ambitious and make a show too long or more frequent than what they actually have time for. I’m retired and sometimes I still struggle for time to produce my episodes. Some produce shows on no particular schedule and submit them for cablecast when they are ready. Others host a new episode every week.

Using a Team or Going it Alone
A nature center, museum, or organization can create its own show. Small teams of volunteers can divide up the tasks with several people available for videotaping events or speakers, for instance, and others dedicated to mastering the editing process.

For Nature Nearby, I produced a variety of natural history episodes up to an hour in length for local cablecast. Some were easy—recording a presentation and putting it on TV. Others were created over several years and involved a small team. With the Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park, I produced The Treman Show using four narrators and their research, writing, and image resources. Another episode followed the discovery and archeological excavation of the site of the 19th-century Enfield Falls Hotel in the same park over a four-year period. Yet another show featured the confrontation between an environmental group and the National Forest Service over a planned timber sale.

Recently, our PEGASYS station created a “mini-studio” that requires only one person to operate for live, on-air programming. I have started a new biweekly, half-hour show called Cayuga Lake Heritage, featuring the natural and cultural heritage of the 38-mile-long Finger Lake that begins at Ithaca. This frees me from needing a production team, and it’s a bit like a one-man band. I can employ video clips, stills, music, DVDs, and my live presence on air to tell my stories. I love it.

Telling the World
When my show is ready, I send out an email announcing the show and its schedule, and I post it on Facebook. Some people write back and complain that they don’t get the channel. For these folks, I have posted entire episodes on a video hosting site such as Blip.tv or Vimeo. These are free and they produce good quality reproduction accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. And sometimes I just post a clip that I included in the show on YouTube. I will also commonly embed these online clips in a website and on Facebook, or create a link to the full episode.

You can see The Treman Show, for instance, by following a link at http://friendsoftreman.wordpress.com.

It was designed for an interactive video kiosk in the park’s historic grist mill, where visitors can select three-minute segments on several park topics. If the video equipment malfunctions, at least the entire show is viewable online. And the video also may be made into an interpretive product for sale at the park. Though it is an amateur production, The Treman Show won awards as the best show produced in 2008 for Ithaca’s PEGASYS channels. Some area educators have obtained copies for use with their classes.

With public access television and online video hosting sites, there is an expanding opportunity for you to tell your stories to the world. And it’s fun!

Tony Ingraham is a life member of NAI. In the mid-1990s, he was director for Region 1.

Being an interpreter is not my first career choice. I started in public radio and was there for 10 years. Most of that time was at WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. During that time I produced a number of short features for a local news/cultural affairs magazine. Several of my stories were based on topics of historical significance to our broadcast area. I was drawn to stories of that nature.

Well, it happens sometimes that we get the itch to move on to something new. In my case I knew that although I loved public radio, I did not want to make it my full-time career. As I searched my soul for what else I could do for a living, I found that my interests (teaching and history) meshed well with this career field called public history. So I went to graduate school. But I never really left public radio. It was something I planned on returning to in some fashion as part of my new career path.

The author interviews Shaker scholar Dr. Carol Medlicott in the last remaining building of the Shaker village of Watervliet, Ohio.

Now, five years into my new career, I have begun to produce radio stories once again. I see this endeavor as a natural extension of the interpretation I do professionally for Dayton History, a historical organization that owns and operates a number of historic sites throughout Dayton, Ohio. I see myself as a radio interpreter as well as a cultural heritage site interpreter.

The NAI definition of interpretation says that it “is a mission-based communication process that forges emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and the meanings inherent in the resource.” Using radio or other mass media for interpretation almost seems counter-intuitive to that definition and what interpretation is vis-à-vis historic sites, parks, zoos, museums, nature centers, aquaria, and botanical gardens. The traditional understanding of interpretation is that it takes place at the site of the resource through the interaction of interpreters or interpretive media and the site’s visitors. But with mass media there is no contact with an audience. There is no direct interaction with people. The audience is somewhere out there in the ether.

I believe, however, that the definition of interpretation can and does work within the realm of mass media. The mass media are just another form of interpretive media. They just use a different mode of relaying information outside the setting of a park, zoo, museum, nature center, aquarium, botanical garden, or historic site. It is looking at what interpretation is and how it is conducted from a different perspective.

There are practical reasons for using radio for interpretation, such as the numbers of people you can reach with your organization’s stories (for example, there are 2,000 people listening to WYSO at any given time during the day). But, for me, it is the nature of radio that offers the most enticing reason.

Radio is a very intimate and personal medium. The audience usually does not gather in groups to listen like they do to watch television. Listening to the radio tends to be a solitary process. Even though the radio signal is reaching tens of thousands of people, you as the teller of the radio story, as the interpreter, are speaking to only one person—the listener in his/her car, home, or wherever he/she may be.

This intimacy can engage and draw the listener into a story. The intonations of the voice, and the use of words and sounds in a story on any subject can stir the intellect and foster an emotional connection with the subject matter. If you are excited about what your organization has to offer the public, then that will be evident in your production.

This power to engage the listener also makes radio a very “visual” medium. A well-produced story can take the listener, through his or her imagination, to your natural or cultural heritage site. This can encourage people to come to your site for the first time or for a return visit, so they can see firsthand what they heard.

This “visual” nature of radio presents a challenge in using radio to interpret. The audience cannot literally see what it is the radio interpreter is talking about. Writing for radio requires one to employ descriptive and engaging language written and delivered in a conversational tone in order to grab and hold the listener’s attention and make him/her “see” what is being described in the radio story. This can be a challenge and difficult to do well, but this should be right up our alley as natural or cultural heritage interpreters. We use economical and engaging language every day in our jobs.

Another challenge of using radio to interpret is that, on the surface, it seems there are no opportunities for the radio audience to interact with the radio interpreter and vice versa. This seems to go against the interpreter’s nature. True, there is no direct or immediate means for the audience and the radio interpreter to communicate (unless it is a call-in program, a radio format I do not care for). But in today’s digitally connected world you can communicate with the audience in any number of ways almost instantaneously: Twitter, Facebook, email, chat rooms, etc. You could even have an online chat with your audience as the story is airing.

So, how does one go about producing interpretive stories for the radio? I do not have experience with commercial radio, only public radio, so I will address this question from that perspective. First, start building a relationship/partnership with the public radio station(s) in your area. Talk to the program director or general manager about what it is you would like to do. They can tell you if what you want to do will fit with the station’s programming. They also may be willing to train you on how to produce (record, edit, and mix audio) and write for radio. Another good resource for learning the art of radio is the Association of Independents in Radio (www.airmedia.org).

How to produce a radio story is beyond the scope of this article. However, there are a couple of issues I will address that I consider to be the most important part of a well-produced, engaging radio story: whom and where you record. Do not record only yourself talking about the natural or cultural heritage resource at your site. Bring professionals, scholars, professors, or other experts in the field into the story. They can bring additional perspectives and information to the story. Also, having more than one voice is much more interesting for listeners.

Do not record the people you interview for the story in the studio or over the phone. Instead, interview your subjects in the location where your resource is. For example, Dayton History has in its collections the last remaining building from the former Shaker village of Watervliet, Ohio, near Dayton. When I produced a story about the Watervliet Shakers, I interviewed a Shaker scholar in that building. I took another Watervliet Shaker scholar to the site of the former village and interviewed him outside. Interviewing these people at the location of the subject of the story takes the listener there—it brings the listener to your natural or cultural heritage site. The listener will “see” where you are in their mind; doing this will make your story much more compelling. The natural sounds of the environment in which you interview people will help paint the picture of the location in the listener’s mind.

In order to record and produce a radio story you need equipment. The radio station might have audio equipment you can use. If not, do not worry. The beauty of radio is that it is inexpensive to produce stories. We all have computers. Good software for recording, editing, and mixing audio is inexpensive, or even free. A digital recorder, microphone, microphone cable, and headphones can all be purchased for around $400. That is all you really need to get started. Of course, if you want to set yourself up with a soundproof studio, that will cost quite a bit more, but is not necessary to get started.

It is a lot of work producing good radio stories, but the benefits are worth the effort. For one, your organization can develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the public radio station(s) in your area. The reach of their signal often covers a great geographical region that can encompass tens of thousands of listeners and potential visitors to your site. Also, using radio can be another tool in the interpretive process. By producing a compelling interpretive radio story, you can forge “emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and the meanings inherent” in the resources at your natural or cultural heritage site, thereby making your site a greater resource to the wider public.

Steve Lucht is the lead interpreter at Carillon Historical Park, a property of Dayton History in Ohio. Reach him at sdlucht@hotmail.com.

The Petit Jean Mountain Plateau, as seen from Carden Bottom, may have once been the village of Tanico. Photo by Don Higgins.

Early in May 2010, I spent time during a sunny afternoon strolling with Dr. Skip Stewart-Abernathy of the Arkansas Archeological Survey Station based at the “Archeology Barn” of the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, Petit Jean Mountain (Arkansas). Dr. Skip, as I call him, postulates, theorizes, and makes statements based upon broad experience. “Native Americans who created arrowheads,” he said, “didn’t make bad strikes when knapping stone. They only had the misfortune of occasionally striking imperfect stone for making arrowheads.”

As we walked along, Dr. Skip went on from one topic to another: from rock art meanings to the cosmos of Mississippian Native Americans and their belief in the entity of evil or lack thereof. I construct some of my best interpretive background information regarding ancient cultures from listening to Dr. Skip in these very informal interactions, though I’m not sure that he is aware of it. Hanging out with an archeologist helps me bring life into programs that might otherwise lean toward simple information telling.

Maybe it is obvious that time spent with an authority discussing an area of interpretation is time well spent. But I have found, by chance really, that developing a casual friendship and spending time together “off the professional clock” brings the richest rewards in meaningful interactions with park visitors later on.

The 2009 archeological excavation site at Carden Bottom. Photo by Don Higgins.

For example, several years back, preceding our Petit Jean State Park’s annual Archeology Day, it was Dr. Skip who made all the difference when we planned to offer some authentic Mississippian-era food for park visitors to sample. Eastern woodland bison, extinct by the early 1800s, was impossible to put on the menu, and even boiled turtle seemed a little out of the average park visitor’s comfort zone. So we targeted the crops known as the “three sisters” of squash, beans, and corn: a vegetarian menu for the day. “The idea is to make it as boring and bland as possible,” Dr. Skip said laughing. “The Mississippian culture was salt-poor. They craved salt constantly and were seldom able to add it to their cooking—so no salt in the food.”

By midmorning on Archeology Day, our park interpreters were serving up a fresh squash and corn mush accompanied by cooked bean balls—all appropriately bland and visually unappealing. Oddly enough, most of the visitors really liked it—even more so once they were allowed to remove authenticity by adding the modern luxuries of salt and spice. Perhaps most importantly, the menu offered a venue for discussing the extent to which time may change the values that humans place on a simple mineral such as salt. It was once hard-won, a vital substance then-and-now critical to human health, and used as a food preservative—a commodity that humans fought over. By the 20th century, the technology of refrigeration had relegated salt to the commonplace. Indians from 1,000 years ago would be amazed that people from our present culture have problems removing it from our diets.

Another rich resource person, also luckily there for us in our local community, is retired United States Air Force Colonel Donald P. Higgins, whose avid pastimes are learning about the natural world, local history, and archeology. Don, as we call him, brings professional expertise to his local research and is able to offer us a wealth of insight when we ask him. He has located Mississippian rock art in numerous locations in our park, as well as other locations on our plateau in the Arkansas River Valley. If I spend an afternoon on a ramble through our park’s Seven Hollows area with Don, I will head home much richer in interpretive readiness than if I had spent the same time getting information via the Web.

Dr. Skip Stewart-Abernathy photographs artifacts at the Carden Bottom site in 2009. Photo by Don Higgins.

Both Dr. Skip and Don have been of great help in reconstructing “behind the scenes” glimpses into the lives of indigenous cultures who inhabited our region. Both are active in local archeological digs, bringing new knowledge to light every few years. Both offer their own programs as special guest speakers to our park. Both have helped me to re-create a “day in the life” of any member of an ancient culture, usually while engaged in an informal conversation in a quiet study surrounded by shelves of books or on a walk among park canyons. Both are thoroughly familiar with Petit Jean State Park, a great place for archeologists. The park is both a natural area—contained within a rare plateau in the Arkansas River Valley, cloven by a rugged canyon containing a 70-foot-high waterfall—and a place rich in archeological heritage, with artifacts dating back to Paleo-Indian times (9,500 BC–8,000 BC). And there is a much richer heritage in artifacts and in rock art dating from Mississippian Native American times (900 AD–1541 AD).

Historians and scribes from Conquistador Hernando De Soto’s expedition through what is now Arkansas in 1541 recorded a province in the area of Arkansas along the Arkansas River in the vicinity of Petit Jean Mountain. Archeological digs in Carden Bottom, just west of the mountain, suggest that the area may well have been what DeSoto’s scribes called the village of Tanico, a loosely fortified settlement within the province of Cayas along the banks of the Arkansas River. Further speculation from our state’s archeologists suggests that Petit Jean State Park’s archeological site, a large bluff shelter known as the Rock House Cave, was a sacred place for rites of the Tanico villagers. Today, rock art, Native culture, and Arkansas history are often interpreted at the Rock House Cave site.

Because of insights provided by such people as Dr. Skip and Don Higgins, a visit to Rock House Cave today may lead to a variety of interpretive opportunities. We might use our imaginations and follow the life of a young boy, a villager of Tanico:

He lived in a world large and beautiful beyond modern reckoning. By the time he was five or six years of age, he knew every plant and its value to his people. He tended to his younger sibling and stayed out of his mother’s way when she worked. He also steered clear of important people wearing headdresses and shell gorgets. Later, he was valuable for scaring crows away from the village’s crop land. He learned the fine art of net making from his mother’s father—his primary male teacher. There were seven different plant fibers that went into cordage used in net making. His people were masters at making and using nets, both for fishing and catching waterfowl. With cold weather coming on, he wore a coat made of deerskin lined with rabbit fur. He traveled with his mother on salt-making excursions—boiling brackish water from fissure-fed ponds and creating the valuable white crust to be scraped away from the large pot. When he could, he practiced with hunting weapons—bow and spear. In the village, a cooking pot was going all the time, and he contributed all that he was able. There were meals and there were naps in the open breeze. He served a function for his people and was valued. He listened to stories told under the stars at night, and when he was old enough he was allowed to attend rites at the sacred, high place.

Visitors today may see the visual remnants of the storytelling that accompanied those rites: a net and paddlefish pictograph; a horned animal, either bison or mythical beast; and a symbol whose meaning has been lost in time.

Arkansas is fortunate to have archeological survey stations located throughout. The concept is to put “an archeologist in every person’s back yard,” and it has worked. Other states have similar resources. Archeologists may be found in nearby universities, the national parks, the Corps of Engineers, the United States Forest Service, or State Historic Preservation Offices, for example.

Some question the relevance of archeology at all. Why look back at the past? Isn’t the future what is important? How interesting can dead people be? Those of us who work for parks and museums know that observing the tragedies and triumphs of the past are keys for having a future that is not dismal but bright. There is a load of wisdom hidden in the earth.

If you can, become casual friends with your local archeologists or historians. If you are able, find some off-time for sitting in a study, taking rambles through natural areas, or volunteering for an archeological dig. What you learn along the way will be well worth your while when park visitors arrive and you go to work. What has been particularly interesting for me is that, after I gain new insights from either Dr. Skip or Don Higgins, the interpretive experience is often as new for me as it is for my group of visitors. Chatting with an archeologist one spring afternoon has helped lead to a changed way of seeing our park’s archeological treasures for everyone.

BT Jones, CIG, is a park interpreter at Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas.

This is where the world began for my people.
Seattle has a river. It’s named for my people.
This is our place where there is a river.
This is the place given to us by the Great Spirit.
This is our place.
—James Rasmussen, Director, Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center

The Duwamish people have struggled to maintain their identity ever since their longhouses in early Seattle were torched over a century ago. Their new longhouse, opened January 3, 2009, is a step toward rebuilding their identity as a people with a history. It serves as a tribal headquarters, an educational center, and as meeting, ceremonial, gallery and exhibit space. Built near a debris-choked riverbank alongside the site of a burnt longhouse, the new longhouse provides the Duwamish Tribe, denied federal recognition, a place to emphasize their history and to show their Puget Sound neighbors and visitors that they are a part of the community.

Tribal leader Cecile Hansen speaks at the longhouse ribbon cutting in 2009, welcoming tribal members and the community to the celebration. Photo by Jonathan L. Gitlin.

Celebrating the new longhouse, Duwamish leader Cecile Hansen said, “This is such a glorious moment in our history.” She is a descendant of Chief Si’ahl, after whom Seattle is named. Since Ms. Hansen was elected to the lifetime position of head of the Duwamish Tribal Council in 1975, she has led the dual efforts to build a longhouse and win tribal recognition. She told a radio news reporter that without federal recognition the Duwamish have “nowhere to go, so this is our place.” Remembering her famous ancestor, Hansen said, “I think he would be very proud that he finally has a home next to the river.”

Before leaving office in late December 2001, President Clinton issued a formal recognition of the 600-member Duwamish Tribe. Their tribal status had been denied since the early days of federal Indian governance due to procedural questions about tribal organization in the 1920s. Only a few days after the Clinton administration’s recognition the Duwamish got the bad news that recognition had been overturned by newly inaugurated President Bush, as he tossed out all of Clinton’s final actions in office.

Since then the Duwamish have intensified their fundraising to build a new longhouse as a rallying point for their unrecognized tribe. James Rasmussen, longhouse director and third-generation Duwamish Tribal Council member, told The Seattle Times, “Our longhouses were burned to move Indians out of here. This is an important step to be able to bring our culture and our people together again.”

Support for the $3 million project came from the city of Seattle and King County as well as state and private funds. Perhaps the most memorable funding source was the donor group Coming Full Circle, organized by Amy Johnson, a great-great-granddaughter of one of Seattle’s founders, David Denny. The group gathered donations from descendants of Seattle’s settlers to support the Duwamish Tribe’s longhouse project in an effort to try to right the wrongs done to them since Seattle’s European settlers arrived in 1852.

The Duwamish longhouse sits on the shores of the Duwamish River. Photo by Jonathan L. Gitlin.

Once the Duwamish were recalled as a story out of Seattle’s early history, as the people who welcomed the first settlers arriving in the winter of 1851 on the beach near the Duwamish longhouses. Later the Duwamish were considered a vanished people with a few survivors here and there, blending into the world around them. With their new longhouse the Duwamish now have a tribal identity gained through efforts to build not just a building, but a possibility. They reinterpreted themselves, first to each other as a cohesive people with an ancient tribal identity, and then to their neighbors in the city that they helped establish.

According to University of British Columbia history professor Coll Thrush, “Native people made the town possible.” Amy Johnson said, “Our forefather wouldn’t have survived without their help.” Thrush recounts how the Duwamish “helped the first settlers through a rough winter and then worked alongside them for several years in fisheries as builders, in land clearance, and as mill workers.”

Despite this cooperation Seattle’s pioneers petitioned the federal government in the 1860s in opposition to a Duwamish reservation south of Seattle. Some say they feared the loss of a ready cheap labor force. Others say a coal discovery near the proposed reservation provided impetus for the opposition.

Land promised to the Duwamish in an 1855 treaty was never provided. Thrush tells how the Duwamish, Seattle’s local tribe, faded from their central place in early Seattle as laborers and neighbors. But, he writes, “Though their landscapes disappear, native presence remains.”

In the words of James Rasmussen:

I represent the oldest government in King County.
This is my home.
Generations and generations of people have been here.
I can feel their presence. They are among us.

Our vision of indigenous peoples guides our interpretation, but interpreting indigenous cultures requires listening to their own interpretation. The Duwamish longhouse’s story is more than a historic recount. It is a living statement of presence on the land. The longhouse itself, in its structure, people, and activities, is a living act of interpretation.

The longhouse translates the Duwamish people’s struggle for tribal recognition from a dream to a place where the dream can be realized. The longhouse is a place where the Duwamish can interpret their experience and struggle to the surrounding community.

The Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center is next to the sites of two burnt longhouses; they were known to their inhabitants as “Where there are Clams” and “Herring House.” Herring House was the last longhouse to burn, in 1893. Some say the arsonist desired the land, across the Duwamish River from downtown Seattle by the riverfront, for real estate development.

The Duwamish River running by the new longhouse is a sacred place for the tribe. A small Seattle city park on the riverfront at the Herring House longhouse site is named “Herring House Park” in memory of the burnt longhouse.

With the new longhouse, the tribe says, they “reclaim space to revitalize [their] culture and preserve our living heritage.” As they approach the longhouse, visitors can see the river and the ancient longhouse sites. As they enter the longhouse, tribal members are in a ceremonial space. Upon entering they say their Indian names and then their ancestors’ names.

The Duwamish want “to be able to tell [their] story to the people who live here to let them know what this place used to look like,” said James Rasmussen. He said to the people of Seattle, “You are the ones that write the history of this area…. It’s up to you to remember the history of the land goes beyond the founding of the city.”

Interpreting indigenous cultures means letting this human resource speak for itself. The Duwamish interpret their tribal experiences to visitors. Their longhouse is a living interpretation of the tribe’s history and status.

To educate the community about their heritage, the longhouse contains the Duwamish archives, displays archaeological materials gathered from the site of the burnt longhouses, and operates a resource center for researchers, students, and teachers. Duwamish language and dance group meetings are held in the 6,000-square-foot building and movies about Duwamish history are shown. Native storytelling and Native hip-hop workshops are held for Indian youth.

The yellow Alaskan cedar post-and-beam structure includes a 2,200-square-foot meeting room with tiered benches to accommodate hundreds of visitors for meetings and cultural events. Yellow cedar that once grew in the Seattle area was a common building material for the Duwamish, but was logged out by the settlers.

A full kitchen in the longhouse provides the Duwamish a resource for fundraising and community building. They hold “Salmon Bake and Fry Bread for Justice” events to raise funds toward their effort for federal recognition. The Duwamish need $128,000 to hire anthropologists to establish before the Bureau of Indian Affairs their continuous tribal status through the years questioned in the 1920s.

The Duwamish were not included in a 1974 federal district court decision awarding 50 percent of the annual Puget Sound salmon harvest to the landed tribes. The 50 percent share was guaranteed by the 1855 treaty but because they had no land of their own, Judge George Boldt ruled that the Duwamish were not a political entity and could not share in the award.

The Boldt decision rallied the national movement toward defining modern Indian identity. However, the Duwamish, who had provided salmon to the newly landed Denny party in the winter of 1851, and whose ancient culture revolved around the gathering and preparing of Puget Sound salmon, received no benefit—they were denied access to their lifeblood.

Fire burnt the Duwamish longhouses over a century ago, but the tribe still longs for official recognition. Today’s new longhouse does not replace the old ones; rather the Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center embraces the spirit of the generations that came before and those to come. In the words of James Rasmussen:

We are still here.
We did not leave.
We are very proud of that fact.
Our sovereignty is very important to us.
It is not something I can give to you.
It is something you have yourself.

Interpreting indigenous cultures means accepting indigenous peoples as contemporary inhabitants of this land, worthy of respect and consideration.  The tribes are more than willing to tell their story, their history, and their experience as a people and on the land. It is up to those who would interpret their message to listen and seek out opportunities to learn more about their Indian neighbors and predecessors.

To interpret Indian culture requires looking at the world through the eyes and experiences of an Indian. Concerned for their cultural survival, the Native Americans see a new people living on the land of their ancestors. Their culture, where it survives and strives for progress, represents an ancient tradition, while their world was made “new” by the European immigrant.

How do you interpret the Indian effort for cultural survival? It is as natural as that of any people in a challenging environment. Resources are sought, defense mechanisms developed and strengthened. And in many cases the drive is weakened or is failing.

An understanding of Native history before Europeans arrived opens the possibility of a richer knowledge of our land’s history, as told by the people who were here. We can be enriched by the cross-cultural exchange that could result from a wider effort to understand and interpret this rich history.

Listen to this ancient human resource. Let the Indians tell the story of their long history of life before and after their world was changed by the new population. To interpret their culture is to know and to tell that story.

Jonathan L. Gitlin has a masters degree in regional planning from Cornell University. He lives in Seattle, where he is building Greenbespoke, a green household goods online store. He can be reached at jonathg@seanet.com. The Duwamish tribe can be found online at www.Duwamish.org.