By Ruth Terry
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan
Reporting for the YES! Magazine-Kentucky News Connection Collaboration

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- By 1860, more than 40,000 plantations in the United States each had 20 or more enslaved Africans. Today, hundreds of those same plantations operate as museums, but only a handful tell the stories of the enslaved who lived, toiled, and died there. Meanwhile, lifestyle magazines tout plantations as a destination -- weddings have become the latest trend -- emphasizing their idyllic verdant settings and stately architecture.

The Whitney Plantation is the only plantation, of the 375 existing locations, expressly designed to center the narrative of slavery, but Black conservationists and historical interpreters such as Joe McGill are collaborating with plantation owners, government agencies, and the public to center the history of enslaved Africans at those historical 46,300 plantations, and broaden the discourse around slavery.

McGill initially founded the Slave Dwelling Project to protect the outbuildings that served as homes for his enslaved ancestors, which are the structures most at risk for being removed or falling into disrepair on a historic plantation properties. He had firsthand experience with the renovation of such structures while working as a historical consultant on the Magnolia Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina.

"They put together a team of experts to come in and evaluate the work that was being [done]... as they were progressively restoring them," McGill explains. "And that inspired in me the desire to ask the owners of the plantation... to spend the night in the cabins."

McGill, a Civil War reenactor inspired by the 1989 film Glory, about an all-Black regiment of northern soldiers, was already used to sleeping at historic battlefields. He had also slept in a slave cabin at Boone Hall Plantation, also near Charleston, for a History Channel documentary in which he participated.

But this felt different. "It had more purpose, and the purpose was to bring attention to these often-neglected dwellings," he says.

McGill anticipated this project would be "one and done," lasting only a year. Then he acquired a list of plantations from the Historic Preservation Office and discovered how many plantations with slave dwellings there were. NPR coverage of the project led to greater exposure, and McGill, who is based in South Carolina, started getting phone calls from other states.

"Even as immersed in the subject matter as I thought I was, I knew very little," he admits. "I had slavery in a box, you know: a [rural] southern plantation. ...I wasn't even thinking about urban slavery and, right there in Charleston, South Carolina, you could find hundreds of slave dwellings within the city limits."

He also didn't realize the depths of northern complicity in the institution of slavery. Not only did northerners own enslaved Africans, "they owned the banks, ... the insurance companies, ... the factories" that financially benefited from the cotton the slaves picked.

Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project 10 years ago, McGill has organized sleepovers in nearly 70 properties in states including New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and Wisconsin. He has also stayed at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, where, like 11 other U.S. Presidents, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence enslaved 400 people.

What's it like to sleep in a slave cabin?

"Weird," says Dontavius Williams, a historical interpreter who often partners with McGill. Williams uses humor and multisensory storytelling to portray an enslaved man named Adam, a powerful presentation he sometimes delivers on the mornings after Slave Dwelling Project sleepovers.

"My mind just began to race, and I began to think about how many people slept in the same place where I slept and pondered... What [was] life really like outside of this?" he recalls. "How do you in that moment, when you realize that you are a slave, how do you then sleep at night? Trying to figure out how to get away from this system [so] that you wouldn't get caught before you were free."

Like McGill, Williams' first sleepover was also at Magnolia Plantation, which, after many subsequent events, he says now feels "like home." But he says the cabins and even the night spent in them is not the most powerful aspect of the Slave Dwelling Project's work: "The difference is made in the campfire conversations."

White and Black participants both attend Slave Dwelling Project sleepovers. Before they bunk down for the night, the group engages in a conversation that seems to be equal parts learning, reckoning, and healing. In separate interviews, both Williams and McGill recount the same story at Magnolia Plantation, about a White woman who listened to the conversation but didn't speak until right before bedtime. She then opened up about her complicated and abusive relationship with her father, a Ku Klux Klan leader who was now dying of Parkinson's disease.

The Slave Dwelling Project's main goal is to protect tangible cultural heritage and to center the narratives of enslaved Africans by transporting Black and White participants to the place where they lived, communed, and slept after incessant days of back-breaking labor and vicious brutality.

And yet, Williams finds dignity and cause for celebration in their stories: "Our people were not a hopeless people," he says. "Although they seem like they were in hopeless situations, they thrived."

Ruth Terry wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @Ruth_Terry.


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The Wind River Water and Buffalo Alliance is looking for a graphic artist to develop a logo.

Before Europeans arrived, some 60 million buffalo roamed North America.

After the animal was slaughtered, in part to extinguish tribes that lived alongside buffalo for centuries, just 23 remained by 1900.

Wes Martel - senior conservation associate with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition - said the new logo should convey a message of hope and power, as the alliance works to restore buffalo and other key elements of indigenous culture.

"So now we're seeing a revival," said Martel, "we're seeing a new energy, we're seeing our young people now becoming educated in the modern technological ways and scientific ways that we need to protect what we have. And that's all we're trying to do, protect a way of life."

Artists are encouraged to submit logo designs by email to media@greateryellowstone.org by May 15. The top entry will be awarded $2,500, second place will receive $1,00, and third place gets $500.

Details on how to apply and the design specifications are online at greateryellowstone.org.

The alliance - based on the Wind River Indian Reservation at Fort Washakie, Wyoming - uses a community-centered approach to support food sovereignty, river restoration, buffalo restoration, advocacy, and education.

Martel said the reservation's landscapes are ideal for protecting the Indigenous way of life.

"We have everything at Wind River that Yellowstone has, except Old Faithful," said Martel. "All of the buffalo, and grizzlies, and wolves, and bighorn sheep, and elk, and deer, and antelope - and all these other relatives that we have on this earth, are with us at Wind River."

The project is an Indigenous-centered organization of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes working with elders, young people and tribal leaders.

Martel said he hopes the new logo can capture the sentiments and energy felt when tribes are blessed with buffalo, their spiritual connection, and the power they bring to lodges, ceremonies, and overall well-being.

"This whole movement that we're seeing now, of restoring buffalo and restoring our heritage and restoring our energy, our spiritual strength," said Martel, "that's really powerful."




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By Kate Mothes for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

In Norway, the hardingfele, or the Hardanger fiddle, is deeply woven into the nation's cultural tapestry. From the earliest known iteration made in 1651 by Ole Jonsen Jaastad, the instrument originates from its namesake region, the western district of Hardanger, where it was traditionally used to play wedding music, dances, and other songs.

A Hardanger fiddle looks at first glance like an intricately ornamented violin, with a fingerboard and tailpiece often inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, or bone. It is more lightweight, however, with four slimmer strings, ink decorations on the wooden body, and the scroll at the end often carved into the likeness of a dragon or wild animal.

Another key element of a Hardanger fiddle is the addition of sympathetic strings, which sit in a layer below those that the bow touches, vibrating when the instrument is played and adding a richness to the sound. "You are playing, generally, two notes at once whenever you play a Hardanger fiddle," says luthier Robert "Bud" Larsen, a side effect of the instrument's flat bridge.

Larsen, who is based in Brainerd, Minnesota, was introduced to the art of fiddle-making and restoration with the help of local violin-maker Gunnar Helland. Helland had emigrated to the U.S. from Norway in 1901. After stints in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, he established a shop in Fargo, North Dakota, to carry on his family's craft tradition.

"Our family moved into the same building where Gunnar had his shop," Larsen says. "We hung out a lot, and I was very interested in what he was building. When I was in the seventh grade, he gave me an old violin and helped me through the process of restoring it."

Larsen's lifelong love for the instrument was born. Over the next several decades, he would build at least 40 Hardanger fiddles and restore more than twice that many.

Preserving, and Evolving, Tradition

Troyd Geist, state folklorist of North Dakota, is a big fan of traditional culture and history. He focuses not only on the heritage of traditional arts but also sees the potential for craft to contribute to health and a sense of wellbeing. He heads an apprenticeship program where a master artist is paired with a younger person in order to pass along knowledge.

Geist is fascinated by how U.S. makers have gradually evolved the Hardanger fiddle over time. Though the instruments have maintained many of their recognizable features, their designs have become distinctly American.

"For instance, the fiddles in Norway would have different rosemaling designs and different flowers that they really focus on," Geist says. "And the head above the fret is often carved, in Norway, like a lion or a dragon. They do that here, too, but they also carve, instead of a lion or a dog head on the end of it, a buffalo head."

Larsen and others in the community who are passionate about the Hardanger fiddle liken the craft to being similar to language.

"We know that a language that is not willing to change will soon die," says Larsen, who was a linguist in Papua New Guinea for more than 20 years before turning to fiddle making. "If people say a language should be prescriptive and you should write it the way the dictionary tells you to, and speak it that way, then the language will die out because it can't change. And that's the same with Hardanger fiddle music. Because new music is being written, and it's being used in different genres as well, it will stay with us for a long time because the music has learned to adapt to people's interests and cultures."

Both Geist and Larsen agree that it's important to continue to teach others how to make the fiddles, which can sometimes take a novice apprentice up to two years to complete. Some makers seek to protect their secrets, but "if you're not willing to share broadly and freely, the tradition is going to die," Geist says.

A Generational History

First comes the making of a fiddle and then, of course, comes the playing. Arts Midwest's GIG Fund recently supported an event at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County (HCS) where more than 220 people attended a concert performed by the Fargo Spelemannslag.

A spelemannslag is a group of folk musicians, often dominated by fiddles.

The wintertime concert featured a song written two centuries ago by Eirik Medås. "Eirik's direct descendant, a high school student named Elsa Ruth Pryor, played a new song that she wrote herself, on a Hardanger Fiddle that she made herself," says Markus Krueger, programming director of HCS.

"Minnesota and North Dakota are the two most Norwegian states in America. For a lot of people in our community, this is the music of their childhood that they remember their parents and grandparents playing," Krueger says, reflecting on the significance of the event. "It's a symbol of Norwegian culture and heritage, and even more than that, it's a symbol of Midwest culture."

The concert featured performances by Bud Larsen and Loretta Kelley, the president of the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America. It was a meaningful showcase of a living tradition, passed down through generations.

"The immigrants brought their fiddles with them, and they kept playing them in America, says Krueger. "They kept making them in America. We still make them and play them today."


Kate Mothes wrote this story for Arts Midwest.

By Ann Thomas for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Natural light floods through large windows lining nearly every wall of the Trappist Caskets production facility in northeast Iowa, wrapping it in view of New Melleray Abbey's 3,400 acres, 1,200 of which are abundant in timber.

The storage racks at Trappist Caskets, designed and fabricated by master welder Brother Dennis, stretch six caskets tall between the concrete floor and the rafters that span the length of the shipping bay. This area manages the ebb and flow of production and shipping. The goal is to keep them full at all times. Today, there are several vacancies-demand has been very high.

At first glance, the racks are overwhelming for their enormity, and the realization that each space represents an individual awaiting preparation for burial adds more gravity.

A wealth of midwestern natural resources, combined with the Trappist monks of New Melleray's need to financially support themselves through their own labor and maintain a life steeped in prayer, inspired its entry into casket manufacturing in 1999.

Each casket crafted by monks and employees at this facility in Peosta, Iowa, captures unrepeatable characteristics in walnut, oak, cherry or pine grain. But one casket on the shipping bay's floor this Tuesday stands out. Its design and far deeper red draw the eye quicker than all other cherry caskets in the shelving.

The lone casket served its owner first as a coffee table, its cherry wood aging in open air for 20 years. Rings left by glasses mark the lid's finish. With upholstering completed this morning, and its lid newly reinforced, this old cherry casket is on its way to the funeral home so as to serve the priest in death who purchased it. He will be buried in it within the next few days. Paul Pankowski, Production Manager for Trappist Caskets, notes it isn't uncommon for caskets to be purchased and turned into bookshelves, wine racks, and coffee tables, then for owners to eventually be buried in them.

The design for these have evolved since the cherry wood one was built. Recent interest in green burials necessitates biodegradable joinery and alternate handles, meaning designs continue to evolve.

Pankowski oversees all aspects of production on the circuitous workshop floor, and can identify by eye where boards moving their way through originated. He points out lighter tones that range through black walnut of Wisconsin and Missouri. Iowa's distinguishes itself from all others by richness of its depth, and the incomparable hardness of central Iowa's oak dulls blades quicker than any other wood. The whiteness and clarity of pine harvested from the monks' own land is easily recognizable in contrast to pine sourced from other areas.

For Brother Joseph, it's hard to believe the growth of this work. From the production facility's modest beginnings in the monks' barns to the far reaching ties maintained through prayer and memorial tree plantings for those buried in Trappist Caskets and their families-the span is remarkable.

Brother Joseph, who began in those barns in 2006 and continues to work in varied roles from woodworking to upholstering in the new facility completed in 2007, recalls how cramped and dusty the barns were. He stresses how critical the employment of nearby community members is now - to meet the high demand for their caskets and to ensure the monks' freedom to maintain the rhythm of monastic life.

The monks' concern for land stewardship led Brother Joseph to pursue the hire of their full-time forester, John Schroeder, six years ago. Schroeder is initiating large scale prairie restoration and reforestation projects which prioritize the needs of New Melleray Abbey's land and creeks lying on the cusp of Iowa's Driftless region. It is an area spared by the grinding weight of glaciers moving out of the midwest around 12,000 years ago. This land's delicate ecological balance and exceptionally rich soil are responsible for traits found in the trees that grow here.

Among the most grateful customers Trappist Caskets serves are parents who must bury their children. The monks offer these caskets free of charge. Funeral homes and hospitals are quick to connect families in these tragic circumstances to the monks. The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule ensures that consumers are not limited to caskets offered by funeral homes for purchase and use, and anyone is free to contact Trappist Caskets, whose staff is always ready to guide families through meeting needs.

Trappist Caskets' employees can relate to this devastating experience. Production Manager Paul Pankowski and his wife lost a premature baby, and his first-hand knowledge infuses compassion in every step of the production process. His three-decade long experience within strict quality parameters of the custom kitchen cabinetry business prior to working at Trappist Caskets also informs his approach to all he does.

While the end goal of both industries is perfection, his purpose, as well as all who work at Trappist Caskets, is not to turn a profit, but rather offer an encounter with beauty and consolation during a time of grief.


Ann Thomas wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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