What's best about Montana's small-town cultures and how can it be passed on to the newest generation of Montanans?"
This is the motivating question behind "The Next Generation," a community-based heritage project for Montana high school students. Developed and administered in cooperation with the Library of Congress, the project began its second year with a teachers' institute at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman on July 21-27. Twenty-three teachers and community leaders participated.
"Montana is changing rapidly and our young people can't remember and hold the best of what Montana has been if we don't find ways to share that past with them," said Project Director Michael Umphrey in his opening remarks. He also introduced and thanked project founders Art Ortenberg and his wife, Liz Claiborne. Mr. Ortenberg warned the teachers, community leaders and administrators not to congratulate themselves too much about the heritage project's successful first year; instead, they should look to avoiding certain obstacles in the second year. Cautioning against a "lessons learned" mentality, he stressed the need to keep the project flexible and open-ended: "Let it be a continuing voyage of discovery."
The keynote address at the opening of the teachers' institute was delivered by David Danbom, professor of history at North Dakota State University and one of the leading historians of rural America. He discussed the ambivalent views that Americans traditionally have held about rural life, such as having a "warm" feeling for farm life and the "community" it represents, while simultaneously moving from the farm to the city. He pointed out, for example, that from 1946 to 1970, 21.5 million people migrated from rural America to the cities and suburbs. Noting that "conformity is usually the price of rural life in America," he nevertheless feels that "rural America is still the field of dreams on which our hopes and aspirations are played." Mr. Danbom praised the Montana Heritage Project as an example of the type of "brokering" needed in rural areas to establish - and in many instances reestablish - a sense of individual pride and community responsibility.
On July 21, Sue Hart of the English Department at MSU- Billings presented "Montana: High, Wide and Hollywoodized," a program about the contradictory ways that Montana's heritage and literature have been depicted in Hollywood movies. Brief comments also were presented by Tom Wessel, chairman of MSU's Department of History and Philosophy; MHS director Brian Cockhill; Mark Sherouse, director, Montana Committee for the Humanities; Superintendent of Public Instruction Nancy Keenan; Liz Claiborne; Art Ortenberg; and Dr. Cole, who represented the Library of Congress at the institute.
The week's program included a mixture of discussions, research opportunities in MSU's Department of Special Collections and at the Montana Historical Society in Helena; museum visits, including the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman; walking tours in Helena and Townsend; and presentations by scholars, curators and community leaders.
Looking ahead, Michael Umphrey plans to build on the first- year experiences in Broadus, Chester, Corvallis, Libby and St. Ignatius and sees new opportunities with the addition of teachers and students from Red Lodge and Townsend. He also hopes to expand in the direction of building "online community archives" that would be shared over the Internet.
"Our teachers will be participating in an October meeting in Butte on creating local websites for online archives," he said. "I can envision a kind of 'Living Memory Community Archive' that would draw on and share resources from around the country and the world."
The concept of shared memory is at the root of his enthusiasm for the entire endeavor. "People are ready for this project," he says. "Our young people face so many choices about the future right now that we simply must pause and turn back a few pages with them to share our memory of where we've been and where we want to go."
Mr. Umphrey announced that in the coming year, schools in seven communities throughout the state (Broadus, Chester, Corvallis, Libby, Red Lodge, St. Ignatius and Townsend) will participate in the Montana Heritage Project's second-year program.
During 1995-96, the project's first year, six schools completed projects designed by community teams at the local level. Community educators in Broadus, Chester, Corvallis, Libby, Pryor and St. Ignatius guided young people through four main project stages. They asked broad questions about their communities; searched the historical record in libraries, archives and other sources; interviewed community members to compare the past and the present; and formed conclusions in final products and reports that could be given to their communities. Within this general framework, more than 350 high school students and 16 teachers completed a variety of projects. For example:
- In Libby, teacher Jeff Gruber organized a community self-study modeled after a Montana study from the 1940s, inviting community leaders to work with a few high school students for a 10-week period in asking and answering such fundamental questions about the town as "What kind of people are we?" "Why do we live here?" "What cultural resources do we have?" "How can we make life better?" "How does Libby fit into Montana?" "How does Montana fit into the nation?"
"The hardest part was patience," said Libby businessman Paul Rumelhart. "Along with our young people, we gained confidence in our ability to understand each other and the problems that we faced." But, he stressed, "it takes faith and time. The most difficult hurdle is to get over wanting immediate results."
The Libby "study group" is planning to turn the Old Memorial Gym into a multiuse facility with modern lighting and a sound system so that it can serve as a center for cultural events in the town.
Students of Gruber and teachers Rose Goyen and Bob Malevak worked all year organizing thousands of historical photographs in preparation for creating an extended photo essay of Libby's history during the coming year. Rose Goyen's senior English class conducted oral interviews with community elders about various aspects of logging, which has been the economic basis of life in Libby since its founding.
- Renee Rasmussen's junior English class in Chester studied the history of various buildings in the community, asking "How does the history of this building demonstrate the values of Chester and its people?" They began with documents from the local museum, the courthouse and the library, and soon began interviewing older members. They presented their findings at a Heritage Fair in the spring, attended by more than 500 people and featuring historical displays, presentations and activities by many community organizations.
- "We make history each moment we create and live," said Marta Brooks, whose senior class in St. Ignatius conducted both text and oral interview research to compile histories on a broad array of community topics. "My senior class made history, and in some small way changed the community." Her students studied and reported back to the community about the history of Fort Connah, the story of the nearby Jesuit Mission, the history of barns in the area and the role of huckleberries in the local culture and economy. Another project, developed in collaboration with the school's science and math teachers, investigated - with members of the freshman class - the historical, agricultural, scientific, literary and spiritual aspects of water.
- Students in Paula Nisley's sophomore English class in Broadus studied literature of World War II then conducted interviews with war veterans from the Powder River area. The biographies they wrote were placed in the Powder River Historical Museum. During the next year, they will study the Great Depression and its effects in Powder River country.
- Steve Fisk's students at Corvallis High School joined forces with the Bureau of Land Management to begin a comprehensive history of the abandoned gold rush town of Rochester, combining research at the Montana Historical Society with field archaeology and oral history interviews. This is a large-scale, multiyear project that requires slow and painstaking work, which gave the students a new perspective - and a dose of reality. Juliette Darnley pointed out that "we're not spoon-fed information. We try to figure things out - we interview people. We start to feel like this is real life. There are no limits. You can learn as fast as you want."
- In Pryor, Pat Stands's students traveled to area museums and libraries in conjunction with conducting interviews with community elders. Topics included studying the clan system among the Crow people, battles fought by the Crow, the coming of the railroad and the wild horse herds in the Pryor Mountains. The student's research was published in a booklet, "Reflections of the Past," and presented to the community at a barbecue attended by nearly 100 people at Plenty Coups State Park.
On May 2 Mr. Umphrey and two of the teachers, Marta Brooks and Renee Rasmussen, along with students from St. Ignatius (Louis Fleming and Jenny Phillips) and Chester (Brad Herron and Amy McConnell), visited the Library of Congress. A highlight was a meeting with Dr. Billington and the presentation of their reports to the Library. They also enjoyed presentations by specialists from the Prints and Photographs and Geography and Map divisions, and met with other Library officials, including Alan Jabbour, director of the American Folklife Center, and John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book.
Administered through the Library's American Folklife Center with cooperation from the Center for the Book, the Montana Heritage Project is funded by Madison Council member Art Ortenberg and his wife, Liz Claiborne. The Madison Council is a private sector advisory group to the Library. The Heritage Project also is supported by Montana cultural and educational agencies, including the Montana Historical Society, the Office of Public Instruction, the Montana Committee for the Humanities, the Montana Arts Council, Montana State University, the University of Montana, the Montana State Library and the Montana Center for the Book.
For information, contact Michael Umphrey, Montana Heritage Project, 2 Spruce Lane, P.O. Box 546, St. Ignatius, MT 59865, telephone (406) 240-5425, fax (406) 745-3097.
John Cole is director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. This article was prepared with help from Michael Umphrey and Peter Bartis of the Library's American Folklife Center.
