It's a pleasure to be here tonight and be part of this symposium. I appreciate the chance to share some ideas about the tremendous opportunity the new Keweenaw National Historical Park offers for efforts to preserve and interpret the heritage of this region. I remember coming up in December of 1987 to meet with the Park Service team that prepared the initial options study and have followed the progress of events ever since. It is very gratifying to see that dream well on its way to becoming reality.

My assignment tonight is somewhat more ambiguous and amorphus than those of the others. While it is not quite "everything else" there is a tremendous range of resources that remain to be discussed. I will try to suggest what they are and how they can be preserved and interpreted, but I make no claim to be exhaustive and hope the question and discussion period will bring other resources to the surface and other suggestions as to how they should be preserved.

There are several basic points, I think, that need to made at the outset and stressed throughout this series and in the development of the Park. These all begin by understanding that the "resource" is far more than the several landmark districts that have been designated and which form, at most, the core of the "resource." From Isle Royale to Old Victoria we are surrounded by vestiges of thousands, not hundreds, of years of human history. All of this merits attention to preserve and interpret it for both residents and visitors. In addition to its physical expanse the resource includes far more than land and buildings - the real resource is human. The people who came to the Keweenaw to mine copper, but also to build lives for themselves and their children. They built the structures, worked in the mines, developed communities, and left behind a tremendous legacy as they struggled to provide for their families and remain true to their heritage in what was, for almost all of them, a strange and distant land. We also need to be careful not to overlook the most basic resource, the one on which the history of the area literally grew, the geology of the Keweenaw. Whatever else is done to preserve and interpret the history of the area we must be sure that visitors are given a chance to appreciate and understand the nature of the mineral resource that provides the foundation for all else that happened here. In locating a mine there is one overarching concern - you put a mine where there is sufficient ore to justify the expense of extracting it. Communities follow and wax strong as the mine grows and wane as it declines. It is sometimes easy to overlook something so basic, but in this case the results would be particularly devastating.

Fortunately, the geology of this area is well studied, having attracted attention as early as the 17th century when French Jesuit missionaries included information - some real and some fanciful - about the area's copper. Many early explorers searched for and commented on the resource, particularly spectacular examples such as the Ontonagon Boulder. (I still have a picture of me and the Boulder from its return visit during the sesquicentennial in 1987.) Due to their efforts, carried forward by the geologic research of the mining companies and academic geologists, this part of the area's heritage is well documented. Because of the efforts over many years at the Seaman Museum, not far from here, it is also accessible to the public in an informative and exciting way. I'm not here tonight to talk about rocks or minerals, however, but about people.

The economic opportunities provided by the Keweenaw mines attracted a tremendous variety of people to live and work here. Each group brought a great deal with it. Language, religion, folk practices and lore, recreations, foodways, skills that were useful, and muscle that was needed. Over time each group faced the uniquely North American challenge of becoming a part of their new environment without giving up too much (never easy to define or measure) of their heritage. Each generation has answered this challenge in its own way and their answers are a major part of the history and heritage the new Park seeks to preserve, interpret, and present to the public.

It is our challenge to preserve this heritage because it is more fragile than almost any other resource we discuss tonight. While the Keweenaw winter is hard on buildings once they have passed from active use and are no longer maintained, many, as we know endure, and others survive as archeological sites or in photographs or other descriptions. We can in various ways recapture them, and even, if funds are available, (although they rarely are these days) recreate them. Similarly, archival records are fragile, but even under poor storage conditions paper can last for many years and with proper storage and microfilming even the most fragile paper - or at least the information it contains - can last for five hundred years or more. But human resources are human and their endurance is finite - basically put, people die and they take their memories, which are our heritage, with them. I remember discussing this with Rev. Bob Langseth a few years ago and he put it very succinctly when he said that every week he buried part of the history of his church. Whole cultures can be lost and have been lost. For a time in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, for example, there was no living person who spoke the Cornish language in the world and Gaelic was nearly lost as well. So, this does not only happen far way when primitive cultures are overwhelmed by more advanced, (I'll never admit that English culture is more advanced than Irish) but it happens all around us as one generation's answer to the challenge of combining its heritage with being American gives way to another's.

Traditional crafts, foodways, and language are a fragile resource we need to work actively to save. How often do we hear, for example, that the young people don't eat lutefisk? Is this just good judgement on their part, or are we losing something? In my own family, turnips separate the generations. But, the problem is even greater when we think of what history really is. History does not only happen to great white men far way or long ago, it happens to each one of us and we all make history as we live our lives. I always come back to a conversation I had with my grandmother quite a few years ago now. She was born late in the 1880s and lived into the mid-1970s. She saw, or read about, both the Wright Brothers and Neil Armstrong and many other great advances and famous events. I asked her once what she thought was the greatest invention she had ever seen. She hardly hesitated a minute before she said "running hot water." I said, "Gramma, what about the airplane or space travel" and she very calmly said, "I raised four boys in a cold water apartment in the South Bronx, running hot water made my life a lot better."

When you stop and think about it, what has made more people's lives better, running hot water or the airplane? When we try to preserve and document the history of the Keweenaw what is more important, how to operate a steam hoist, or how to feed a family on a miner's pay? How blasting holes were drilled, or just what Cornish wrestlers did? The process of smelting copper, or recipes for pasties, saffron buns, and the countless ethnic dishes that fueled the mines just a much as the coal or wood for the boilers did. There is, of course, no correct answer - it is all important and what is most important depends on what we want to know at that particular time. But, remember, the more common and everyday something is, the more easily it can be lost. These are among the countless things that don't get written down because they are the things everyone knows.

But, all of this said, how do we protect the most fragile resource of all - the living cultures of this region, or any region for that matter? Much, alas, has already been lost and may never be recreated. Can we really do little but mourn its passing, or can we steel our resolve to stop further losses by action? Obviously, I wouldn't be here tonight if I didn't think there were things we can do and I would like to talk about some of them. Some things we may recover through research in diaries and letters and old newspapers and still others through archeological excavations. And then, much as Cornish is once more spoken on this earth, we may see, hear, and taste parts of the past. Larry and Priscilla Massie's marvelous cookbook of historic recipes from all parts of Michigan, Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cakes, published by Wayne State University Press, is a wonderful example of what can be done in one of these areas. (I've had a walnut pickle and not everything old is worth recreating!)

However, research in printed sources, no matter how thorough, will never be fully sufficient. There is a great deal that never gets written down, not because it isn't important, but as I've already said, because "everyone" knows it. Folk practices, work skills, games, the list can go on and on, are not necessarily passed down in writing but orally or even, I think most commonly, by a form of osmosis. The young watch, participate, and absorb and then, at some almost impossible to define moment, they are in turn watched by the next generation and thus the process continues. How many families have an adult table and a children's table at family events? Is there a greater right of passage than the movement from one table to the other? What is served every year - and who makes what? What does it mean when the father asks his oldest, now adult, son to offer the grace he has always offered before the meal? Who writes any of this down?

We must, it seems to me, do two things.

First, we must realize that our own lives are historic. What we do and how we do it are the culmination of a long interaction between our ancestors' values and cultures and the America they lived in. We, each generation, will add to or modify all that we have inherited from our ancestors because our America is different from theirs - in large part because of them - and pass it on to our descendants who will add their part to a still different - because of us - America. Cumulatively, this is how society happens, I think. Not by great events, but a long and complex series of interconnected small events. Everyday things as easy to take for granted as running hot water, but powerful agents of social change. Each generation comes to peace with what it means to be American and still remain true to the culture they have inherited (their ethnicity, if you will).

We need to move to the second step - saving what we now recognize as valuable - quickly, before more is lost and actively seek to save the memories of previous generations. The main method for doing this is called oral history, but I think we need to expand substantially what is generally understood by that term. I think the current buzz words are "push the envelope."

So, let's push the envelope. We can record people's memories not just in writing, but in their own words, complete with the cadence and timber of their speech and the richness of local pronunciation and vocabulary. [Who hasn't guessed by now that I'm not from around here just by listening to me? Accents, not that I have one, are important, and endangered, parts of our culture.] Oral history can preserve all of this. What things are called and how words are pronounced are parts of our culture that are very hard to preserve in print. You need to hear it. For example, when I went from New York City to central Massachusetts to go to college it was several months, at least, before the guys from Massachusetts and Rhode Island (who did have accents, by the way) stopped bringing things by or pointing things out and saying, "what do you call that?" or asking pointed questions like "what do you do with your car (pronounced caaah) when you are (aaah) done driving it?" and then laughing hysterically at the response. [This cannot be adequately conveyed in print, ya hadda be dere, as we say in New York, or have it on tape, which is the point (in Brooklyn, "pernt").] The Keweenaw is a rich ethnic stew - if someone named Mulligan dare refer to a stew - and language, both the various ethnic languages and the ways in which English is spoken will tell us a great deal about our, and any, local culture. A major part of the local accent (yes, you have accents, like the people from Massachusetts) is clearly related to the fact that in Finnish all words are accented on the first syllable.

I could go on about this, but my time is limited. Recording people's memories of the events, both great and small, they have experienced should be a high priority for all groups that want to preserve their part, or any part, of an area's heritage. All it takes to get started is a tape recorder, some interest, and enough nerve to ask someone if you can interview them - and enough guts to show up and do it. There are how-to manuals available and several excellent videotapes to provide guidance, but the most important step is simply to decide that something must be done to reverse the inexorable loss of our local cultures and go out and do it personally. You will learn as you go and get better with experience, but you won't by waiting until things are perfect. And remember, each and every day we lose another part of our collective memory. Sound recording offers many advantages and oral history is premised on dialogue, not question and answer. When you interview someone, you should listen to what they say, follow up on unexpected revelations, and simply have a good long talk. While you should have done some research and have a plan and some prepared questions, the best oral histories are conversations ranging widely over the terrain of the subject's life.

This openness to the unexpected is one of oral history's great strengths and it, too, is fragile if bound too tightly by a script. Some years ago I was working with a group of hourly auto workers who were writing a history of their plant, Saginaw Steering Gear's Plant One, before it was closed by GM. We were interviewing retired workers one day and they were going on about how great it was in the plant in the old days. Finally, I asked, why, if it had been so good, had the union come in? The most distinguished of the group we were talking with suddenly turned red in the face and slammed his fist down on the table and said it was those @#$%^&* chicken-bringers. Now, the next question on our list had nothing to do with chicken-bringers, but I had to ask what they were and I did. This got us into the other side of life before the union, when people would get favors from supervisors by bringing in produce and chickens for them. If we had stuck to the script we might have missed out on the whole story of life in the plant before the UAW.

We need, however, to be clear on what we are capturing. People's memories are imperfect, but they are what people act on. Small details of date and place are easily corrected if misremembered and not really the purpose of oral history. We don't need to interview someone to find out that Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, but if we want to know what his inauguration and his presidency meant to the average American, there are few better sources than asking average Americans, even now sixty years later. What we really want are glimpses into the things everyone knew so well they never got written down and what life was like for people who did not write books or even keep diaries, but who have memories. In many cases all that is left are these memories. There is a great deal more that can be said about oral history, but there is probably not the time right now.

We can already speak of a "traditional" oral history which relied on tape recorders because new technology now offers far richer opportunities. This, of course, is video tape. As costs of cameras and players - and editing equipment - keep coming down, video equipment is all but ubiquitous. Few organizations of any size won't have at least one member who is "into" video. A friend, who is one such person, uses the word "vidiot" but I'm not sure that is going to catch on. Video adds an important element to traditional oral history and expands the arsenal available in the battle to save our heritage. [As many of you know from hearing me speak before, I do see it as a battle.]

Just as the audio tape recording of an interview gave a new, greatly expanded, dimension to written transcripts - as well as tapping into memory more effectively - video offers several new strengths. First, there is now a person to go with the voice, as well as facial expressions and gestures to add to what what is being said means. Something said with a smile or a twinkle in the eye has an entirely different meaning than the same thing said with a frown or a grimace. So, I can see reasons to tape even the most straight forward interview. But suppose we are interviewing someone about how Norwegians decorated their homes for Christmas, or how a steam hoist was operated, or how lutefisk was prepared. We can now do more than record people talking about how they made holiday decorations, worked, or prepared ethnic foods, we can record them actually doing it. Now you might say, we could always do that, at least since the home movie camera, but there is a considerable difference between the two media. One of the most important of which is the far greater ease with which video tape can be edited and copied.

There are many examples I could cite, but, in the interest of time, I will only refer to two projects by Jocelyn Riley who works out of Madison, Wisconsin. She has done a number of excellent videos documenting women's lives in various ways and two stand out in my mind. One is on Native American women talking about the traditions they have received from their mothers and grandmothers, intercut with images of the traditional crafts and food dishes they are discussing as well as pictures of the people they are talking about, the overall effect is very powerful and tremendous-ly effective. The second is on the Norwegian folk art of rosemailing and features an artist and her works. The art is discussed as it developed historically, but also in terms of what it means for the particular artist. These videos can serve as useful models for how to preserve the many aspects of our culture we need to be busy saving from the ravages of time and age. "Field tapes" or long recordings can be edited to various lengths to serve any number of purposes and copies of videos are easy to make and share, or sell to help pay for a project.

It is all "doable" if we take the time and make an effort to do it before too much more is lost. So, what should be done?

Simply put, we need first to expand our definition of what history is to bring in the commonplace, the everyday, the things everyone knows. We need to accept the fact that our lives are historic. We need to view the customs, practices, traditions, and words of our ancestors as a resource that is in peril and which we need to save for the future of America. We can do this by identifying carriers of these traditions (in Michael Luokinen's words "tradition bearers") and recording these practices, memories, and traditions and then making these recordings as widely available as we can in local museums and historical societies and in our schools. And, we need to do it as if our lives depended on it, because, I would suggest, they do. One of the other speakers said that history can't offer a cure for cancer and it can't. But, one of the strongest influences on my life has been a man I never met. He fought against oppression and came to America wanted for high treason in Ireland, then under British rule. He had carved on his tombstone in the Old St. Raymond's Cemetery in The Bronx "May This Monument Outlast British Rule in Ireland." His daughter taught me the importance of the everyday, but I also learned a great deal from my great-grandfather John Carty, or perhaps more accurately from some of his descendants who passed on what he had given them. If we lose our traditions we are at far greater risk than if we have cancer, because we face the loss not of our lives, but of our souls, the very thing which makes us fully human. And, if we lose that, what of value do we have to pass on to those who come after us that will give direction and meaning to their lives?

Thank you.

© William H. Mulligan, Jr., 1993.

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Mulligan Presentations

Comments: Bill.Mulligan@murraystate.edu