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It’s the modest proposals that get you into trouble,
but here goes anyway. This one has to do with repatriation.
“Repatriation” is a word many of us on the plains have come
to know in recent years because of controversies over human remains. To
put the problem plainly, archeologists of the past were pretty indiscriminate
in how they collected, handled, and exhibited the human remains they excavated.
Respect for the dead, a fundamental value in ordinary human relations,
often was lacking in archeological matters.
Consequently American Indian leaders began to insist, generally with success,
that the remains of their ancestors be returned for respectful disposition.
This raised sticky questions as to whose ancestors were whose, but the
general cause was one of common sense and decency.
Here and now, though, I’d like to suggest repatriation of another
kind—the restoration of historic buildings to their proper place.
All over the plains certain individuals, organizations, and communities
have pulled in collections of buildings from the villages and countryside
roundabout. This has been part of the general collapse of rural society
in the region. Surviving towns not only have taken over the commerce and
service for large areas but also have sucked in historic buildings, establishing
little pioneer towns or historic villages.
Two things brought this about. First, people wanted to preserve the buildings
going to ruin in dying towns, so they brought them into a central place
for care. Second, they sought to create museum complexes that would attract
visitors. The daddy of them all is Harold Warp’s Pioneer Village
in Minden, Nebraska. For an example of the same general phenomenon carried
out in a more professional way, look just to the east at the Stuhr Museum
of the Prairie Pioneer. Or just look to some town nearby, because these
pioneer villages of relocated buildings are everywhere.
There are two reasons these things always have bothered me. The first
is that they are amusement parks, not that different from other theme
parks. They are no place real, but elaborate fictions. The other reason
has to do with the integrity of the buildings themselves. Taken away from
original locations and clumped into amusement parks, they lose the context
of place. That’s why the National Register of Historic Places, the
nation’s list of historically significant properties, generally disqualifies
any building that has been relocated. Such a moved structure is no longer
historic.
The compilation of synthetic historic villages has been part of the collapse
of society on the Great Plains over the past two generations—retrenchment
of a sort. In this time of regional renewal, however, it is time to put
the historic buildings back where they belong.
My modest suggestion: dismantle the theme parks and put the town halls,
bandstands, general stores, and all the rest of them back into their original
locations. They might serve local functions, or more likely at first,
merely constitute a grander museum extended across the landscape. The
foster parents of the buildings—those who gathered them in the first
place—should continue to exercise curatorship.
They also should serve as native guides, assisted by modern technology.
It cannot be long before all new vehicles come equipped with GPS, by which
navigation through a series of waypoints—historic sites, locations
of historic buildings—will be made simple.
My suggestion will put historical societies into the main stream of regional
renewal. Repatriation—I wonder what local group will have the faith
and courage to implement it.
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