I think that it may be possible to remove the Ohio Historical Connection, a.k.a. the Ohio Historical Society , from the control of both Ohio's Shawnee/Cherokee ancestral native sites as well as Ohio's native history.
These are just some work notes on the local situation, and they will be updated over the next few days, with many more "juicy" tidbits added.
I feel success in this is possible,
as it is not so much a question of law,
as it is simply the fact that the local officials are pretty much fed up with the OHS management of Ohio's cultural resources in their own areas.
At least that is the feelings that have been expressed to me
from Wheeling to Marietta to Cincinnati, along the western edge of Ohio, and along the Hocking River.
Based on this sample, I suspect that this frustration and irritation is nearly universal among the local officials in every county Ohio.
Gov. Kasich 's slogan is "Ohio Works";
but the current private-public partnership from the 1890's does not work, IMO,
and can not be made to work.
BACKGROUND
Here in Ohio, many remains were destroyed by the settlers.
At first, the settlers did not want any "Indians" returning to visit their ancestral sites.
Later, they did want any signs left that the lands they had settled on were taken from the "Indians".
The only way any remains would be preserved was if they were assigned to mysterious "Moundbuilders",
who bore no relation to the contemporary Shawnee (or part of the Cherokee ancestors - the Cherokee had 16 "divisions").
The Ohio Historical Society was and is a group of private antiquarians (they are not a branch of the government of the State of Ohio) who promoted the Moundbuilder myth.
The thinking among local descendants has been "We don't care who they say built them, as long as they are preserved",
and the Ohio Historical Society not only tolerated but actually encouraged promoting the "Moundbuilders" myth.
Times have changed, and the Ohio Historical Society did as well.
Unfortunately, what started off as a group of well meaning antiquarians has turned into a group of people feeding off the tax paying people of State of Ohio, while not being under their control. or responsible to them for their actions.
And in sum, the settlers, having removed the "Indians" from Ohio, are now trying to remove Shawnee and Cherokeer history, and therein lies the problem.
TIMES CHANGE
Once again, the Ohio Historical Society is a private organization;
Brad Lepper and his closest associates are professional archaeologists whose status depends on controlling sites.
I need to state clearly here that I bear Dr. Bradley Lepper no personal ill will.
I just am of the considered opinion that he is seriously incompetent and needs to find a different line of work.
[One way to think of it is that a guy who started off as a nice young archaeologist who fell in with the Dark Side.]
One of the ceremonial complexes here at in Newark was gifted to the Ohio Historical Society by the citizens of Newark so that it would be preserved and people could visit it.
Originally, back during the Great Depresssion, the Ohio Historical leases that site to a golf course,
as they had no money to keep it up.
But back in 1992 the Ohio Historical Society renewed that lease to a golf club for 100 years.
To my knowledge, Brad raised no objections.
Now consider that in 2013 the Ohio Historical Society received a grant of $40,000 from the federal government to plan an exhibit on the removal of the 10 historical tribes from Ohio.
Did they hire a historian to assemble in one place the colonists' records of when the Shawnee showed up in other areas to try to get guns to counter the guns of the Five Nations?
No.
Instead Bradley Lepper, an archaeologist who is not a historian, wrote this paper:
http://ohioarchaeology.org/documents/Le ... -final.pdf
Those of you familiar with David Cusick's "Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations" may compare the Five Nation's memories with Dr. Lepper's summary of them,
along with Lepper's rather complete lack of knowledge of the relations between the Five Nations and the Shawnee.
For some reason Lepper also did not include Tenskawata's rather confused account in his study
As I mentioned earlier, some people appear to be unable to understand straight forward English.
Further, it appears that sometimes they get together with each other to confirm their confusion, and then to share it with others.
Consider "Ancient Aliens", for example -
it is the same thing here, just not as entertaining
In regards to Dr. Lepper, I would be remiss not to mention here one of his earlier books, an overview of the archaeology of Ohio.
This work of his contains striking exact extended parallels with an earlier book by Bob Converse, the former President of the Archeological Society of Ohio.
I would be remiss not to mention that the Ohio Historical Society did not allow Bob Converse to sell his book in any of "their" properties, in other words the First Peoples' ceremonial sites.
I need to add that Mr. Converse's analysis of the imagery on the "Adena" tablets was and is groundbreaking work.
He deserved far better.
As far as Native connections goes, Lepper and his associates will bring in anyone except Shawnee or Cherokee in their efforts to muddy up the issues.
Last year, there was a fund raising powwow held at the large ring at Newark to benefit NAICCO of Columbus, Ohio.
As NAICCO largely provides support for Sioux who have come to Ohio, this powwow was a good thing (they aren't called "the Bad Lands" for nothing).
The founder, Mark, has passed on, but the work continues.
The catch is that NAICCO's host was the Newark Earthworks Center of Ohio State University at Newark, which should be considered as an agent for the Ohio Historical Society, who actually claim title to the ring.
The Ohio Historical Society did not allow powwows to be held at any of "their" sites,
up until one of their close associates worked to bring in Sioux to one of White Hawk's rings here at Newark.
I am pretty certain that many Sioux youths at the Powwow were confused by them, and I view this as a problem for the Dakota, Oglala, Lakota, Nakota and other Siouxian leadership to correct.
It appears that they are now going to try to steal your history, and give you the Shawnee and Cherokee's.
This reminds me of how the Choctaw lands in Oklahoma were given to other peoples;
I feel that the Siouxian peoples should not let their history be stolen by them,
as much as I resent the attempts to steal the Shawnee (and Cherokee ancestors ) history here in Ohio.
Brad's allies in include the Squirrel familly, the descendants of moonshiners who have been refused casino licenses in both Oklahoma and Kansas,
(and I note that as the state of Oklahoma has its original name "Indian Territory" on its license plates,
being turned down by them is a petty strong)
as well as the Squirrel family's new hire: a Manager of a Lenape Casino.
As a separate issue, I intend to do my best to prevent the Squirrel Family from gaining casino licenses in both Ohio, as well as Maryland.
Based on their actions it looks to me that the Ohio Historical Society is trying to use the old European trick of playing one nation against another.
Now I must speak about some of the individuals involved in the Ohio Historical Society.
Last year, to the astonishment of many of them,
Chief Glenna Wallace told Dick Shiells at the Great Ring that the Golf Course would have to move from ceremonial remains where it is now located. You may hear her words here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pEh9n5_D7k
Barbara Crandell (Cherkoee descendent) objected to Chief Glenna conducting a social dance outside of the ring after she made her statement. I replied:
"Hello Barbara -
"While perhaps the original structure under "Eagle" Mound in the center of the Great Ring may have been a place for preparing the bodies of notables for internment, most people then were cremated.
"As I have tried to explain to you, the rings were used at the fall Bread Dance to teach the night sky, the story of Grandmother (Kokumthena) and the two boys (Venus and Mars).
[I need to add here that I now know that "Grandmother and the Two Boys" was the advanced lesson, while at the ring White Hawk taught the constellations to everyone.
While I suspect that The Shawnee "White Hawk" may be identical with the Cherokee "Man who married Two Star Maidens", but it would be better if a Cherokee were to comment on this.
Returning now to my reply to Grandmother Crandall:]
"The social dances were absolutely appropriate.
"I am pretty sure that Marty and many people were stunned by Chief Glenna Wallace's blunt declaration that the remains were built by Shanwee ancestors.
"I myself was stunned to hear Brad Lepper and Dick Shields cede the point in their remarks."
Bur their later actions did not indicate any acceptance of them.
Over the next several days I will be attempting here to demonstrate their truth.
Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
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E.P. Grondine
Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
Last edited by E.P. Grondine on Mon May 16, 2016 2:37 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
The ceremonial complex here at the golfcourse in Newark was gifted to the Ohio Historical Society by the citizens of Newark so that it would be preserved and people could visit it.
Back in 1992 the Ohio Historical Society leased out the other ball court-ring complex to a golf club for 100 years.
To my knowledge, neither Lepper nor Shiels raised bjections.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83606276/
Golf 'incompatible' with world recognized Earthworks
Kent Mallett, Reporter 12:03 a.m. EDT April 28, 2016
moundbuilders country club great octogon earthworks stock artBuy Photo
(Photo: Gannett Ohio file)
Story Highlights
Moundbuilders Country Club has a lease on the Ohio History Connection-owned land until 2078.
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, which includes the Newark Earthworks, is a World Heritage nominee.
Newark Earthworks could become a World Heritage site as early as 2018, when tourism would increase
NEWARK – Moundbuilders Country Club and the Octagon State Memorial have co-existed in Newark since 1910, but that relationship could change if the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks receive designation as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Ohio History Connection CEO Burt Logan said Wednesday if Newark Earthworks achieves such worldwide recognition, changes would be appropriate, although the club has a lease on the state-owned land until 2078.
"At some point, when World Heritage inscription comes, it probably would be incompatible with the playing of golf," Logan said. "It's just one of the matters we're talking through. The lease is a binding document and it takes agreement by both signatories to find agreeable solutions."
State history officials said the country club has been critical in preserving the site, but World Heritage status would attract tourists and change the need for access.
The Newark Earthworks, the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world, includes the Octagon, The Great Circle at 455 Hebron Road in Heath, and the Wright Earthworks. The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks includes the Newark Earthworks, Fort Ancient between Cincinnati and Dayton and the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe.
"Everyone that has seen these earthworks regards them as the largest concentration of the work of the pre-European contact civilization in the world," Logan said. "It's unanimous these sites are of World Heritage quality."
Joseph Moore, general manager and chief operating officer at Moundbuilders Country Club, responded to Logan's comment.
"We plan on running a private club," Moore said. "We have a great relationship with the Ohio History Connection and a lease until 2078. Our plan is to run a country club."
In 2008, the Ohio Historical Society, predecessor to The Ohio History Connection, considered buying out or terminating the lease, in anticipation of seeking a World Heritage designation. In 2002, the club looked into the costs of relocating after criticism about a lack of access to the historical site. The OHS renewed the lease in 1997 for an additional 50 years, until 2078.
Logan would not say what would happen if World Heritage status is achieved for the sites.
"We're fortunate the club has occupied the site since 1910," Logan said. "We're continuing to build this working relationship, and we see them as one of the partners in this process."
Todd Kleismit, the OHC director of Community and Government Affairs, said part of the process in preparing the final nomination document is also preparing for the tourists if World Heritage status is achieved, possibly as early as 2018.
"We are putting together the plan now for when we are designated," Kleismit said. "We want to be prepared, talking to community leaders to plan for the infrastructure to accommodate large visitation."
Preservation of the site has been the reason for changes through the years. The city of Newark bought the Octagon Earthworks in 1892 to preserve what remained after urbanization destroyed many of the mounds. The site was leased to the country club in 1910 to continue the preservation.
Again, the goal of preservation could trigger more changes.
Newark Earthworks Center Director Dick Shiels said, "The whole World Heritage program is about preserving the most important sites in the world. The first reason to seek inclusion is preservation."
[end article]
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83075070/
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83075070/
NEWARK - Golfing at Moundbuilders Country Club yields to an open house and tours of the Octagon State Memorial on Sunday and Monday.
And supporters hope a historic designation could lead to even larger crowds at the site in the future.
The country club and Ohio History Connection have agreed to four non-golf days annually to allow for viewing and guided tours of the Octagon Earthworks, located on the Moundbuilders Country Club golf course, 125 N. 33rd St., Newark. The other days are May 31 and Oct. 10.
The Octagon Earthworks is part of Newark Earthworks, the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world, including the Great Circle Earthworks and Wright Earthworks, built by people of the ancient Hopewell culture between 100 B.C. and 500 A.D.
The Newark Earthworks is part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, nominated to receive designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
"I really do look for this (open house) to be the biggest ever," said Bill Weaver, a member of the committee pursuing the World Heritage designation.
The Octagon site is open from dawn to dusk both days, with tours from noon to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, beginning every 30 minutes. Tours can be scheduled for Monday by calling Newark Earthworks Center Director Dick Shiels at 740-366-9249.
The Great Great Circle Museum, which also houses Explore Licking County at 455 Hebron Road, Heath, will be open 12-4 Sunday, in addition to its regular weekday hours of 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday.
Joseph Moore, general manager and chief op
Operating officer at Moundbuilders Country Club, said the club works well with the state for operation of the site, and everybody understands no golfing is allowed on the selected days. The country club has a lease for the site from the OHC until 2078.
"We've always had a great relationship with the OHC and continue to work on a partnership with them," Moore said. "We always work in cooperation with them."
Shiels said tourism could increase dramatically if the site achieves the World Heritage designation, possibly as early as 2018. He compared the local site to two on the World Heritage list: Cahokia Mounds, in Illinois, visited by 500,000 annually, and Poverty Point, in Louisiana, which is remote and receives few visitors.
"The potential for Newark is more like Cahokia than Poverty Point," Shiels said. "That's the impact this can have. World class interpretation centers may be built. Our site is 1,000 years older than Cahokia. The whole World Heritage program is about preserving the most important sites in the world. The first reason to seek inclusion is preservation."
[end article]
That ceremonial complex here in Newark was gifted to the Ohio Historical Society by the citizens of Newark so that it would be preserved and people could visit it,
and not so that the wealthier people could play golf.
Back in 1992 the Ohio Historical Society renewed the leased out the other ball court-ring complex to a golf club for 100 years.
Local activist Barbara Crandall went to jail over this, with the OHC being the complaining party.
As a private organization, OHS can not be held to federal law, neither NAGPRA nor NARFA
Neither Lepper nor Shiels nor anyone else from the Ohio Historical Society has ever apologized for this.
Note that none of these articles give the amount of money $ that OHS receives from that lease.
That is because the Ohio Historicqal Society is a PRIVATE organization.
How much they receive from other than state sources and how they spend that money are entirely private as well.
We'll be taking a look at some of those activities over the next week or so.
Back in 1992 the Ohio Historical Society leased out the other ball court-ring complex to a golf club for 100 years.
To my knowledge, neither Lepper nor Shiels raised bjections.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83606276/
Golf 'incompatible' with world recognized Earthworks
Kent Mallett, Reporter 12:03 a.m. EDT April 28, 2016
moundbuilders country club great octogon earthworks stock artBuy Photo
(Photo: Gannett Ohio file)
Story Highlights
Moundbuilders Country Club has a lease on the Ohio History Connection-owned land until 2078.
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, which includes the Newark Earthworks, is a World Heritage nominee.
Newark Earthworks could become a World Heritage site as early as 2018, when tourism would increase
NEWARK – Moundbuilders Country Club and the Octagon State Memorial have co-existed in Newark since 1910, but that relationship could change if the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks receive designation as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Ohio History Connection CEO Burt Logan said Wednesday if Newark Earthworks achieves such worldwide recognition, changes would be appropriate, although the club has a lease on the state-owned land until 2078.
"At some point, when World Heritage inscription comes, it probably would be incompatible with the playing of golf," Logan said. "It's just one of the matters we're talking through. The lease is a binding document and it takes agreement by both signatories to find agreeable solutions."
State history officials said the country club has been critical in preserving the site, but World Heritage status would attract tourists and change the need for access.
The Newark Earthworks, the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world, includes the Octagon, The Great Circle at 455 Hebron Road in Heath, and the Wright Earthworks. The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks includes the Newark Earthworks, Fort Ancient between Cincinnati and Dayton and the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe.
"Everyone that has seen these earthworks regards them as the largest concentration of the work of the pre-European contact civilization in the world," Logan said. "It's unanimous these sites are of World Heritage quality."
Joseph Moore, general manager and chief operating officer at Moundbuilders Country Club, responded to Logan's comment.
"We plan on running a private club," Moore said. "We have a great relationship with the Ohio History Connection and a lease until 2078. Our plan is to run a country club."
In 2008, the Ohio Historical Society, predecessor to The Ohio History Connection, considered buying out or terminating the lease, in anticipation of seeking a World Heritage designation. In 2002, the club looked into the costs of relocating after criticism about a lack of access to the historical site. The OHS renewed the lease in 1997 for an additional 50 years, until 2078.
Logan would not say what would happen if World Heritage status is achieved for the sites.
"We're fortunate the club has occupied the site since 1910," Logan said. "We're continuing to build this working relationship, and we see them as one of the partners in this process."
Todd Kleismit, the OHC director of Community and Government Affairs, said part of the process in preparing the final nomination document is also preparing for the tourists if World Heritage status is achieved, possibly as early as 2018.
"We are putting together the plan now for when we are designated," Kleismit said. "We want to be prepared, talking to community leaders to plan for the infrastructure to accommodate large visitation."
Preservation of the site has been the reason for changes through the years. The city of Newark bought the Octagon Earthworks in 1892 to preserve what remained after urbanization destroyed many of the mounds. The site was leased to the country club in 1910 to continue the preservation.
Again, the goal of preservation could trigger more changes.
Newark Earthworks Center Director Dick Shiels said, "The whole World Heritage program is about preserving the most important sites in the world. The first reason to seek inclusion is preservation."
[end article]
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83075070/
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/new ... /83075070/
NEWARK - Golfing at Moundbuilders Country Club yields to an open house and tours of the Octagon State Memorial on Sunday and Monday.
And supporters hope a historic designation could lead to even larger crowds at the site in the future.
The country club and Ohio History Connection have agreed to four non-golf days annually to allow for viewing and guided tours of the Octagon Earthworks, located on the Moundbuilders Country Club golf course, 125 N. 33rd St., Newark. The other days are May 31 and Oct. 10.
The Octagon Earthworks is part of Newark Earthworks, the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world, including the Great Circle Earthworks and Wright Earthworks, built by people of the ancient Hopewell culture between 100 B.C. and 500 A.D.
The Newark Earthworks is part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, nominated to receive designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
"I really do look for this (open house) to be the biggest ever," said Bill Weaver, a member of the committee pursuing the World Heritage designation.
The Octagon site is open from dawn to dusk both days, with tours from noon to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, beginning every 30 minutes. Tours can be scheduled for Monday by calling Newark Earthworks Center Director Dick Shiels at 740-366-9249.
The Great Great Circle Museum, which also houses Explore Licking County at 455 Hebron Road, Heath, will be open 12-4 Sunday, in addition to its regular weekday hours of 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday.
Joseph Moore, general manager and chief op
Operating officer at Moundbuilders Country Club, said the club works well with the state for operation of the site, and everybody understands no golfing is allowed on the selected days. The country club has a lease for the site from the OHC until 2078.
"We've always had a great relationship with the OHC and continue to work on a partnership with them," Moore said. "We always work in cooperation with them."
Shiels said tourism could increase dramatically if the site achieves the World Heritage designation, possibly as early as 2018. He compared the local site to two on the World Heritage list: Cahokia Mounds, in Illinois, visited by 500,000 annually, and Poverty Point, in Louisiana, which is remote and receives few visitors.
"The potential for Newark is more like Cahokia than Poverty Point," Shiels said. "That's the impact this can have. World class interpretation centers may be built. Our site is 1,000 years older than Cahokia. The whole World Heritage program is about preserving the most important sites in the world. The first reason to seek inclusion is preservation."
[end article]
That ceremonial complex here in Newark was gifted to the Ohio Historical Society by the citizens of Newark so that it would be preserved and people could visit it,
and not so that the wealthier people could play golf.
Back in 1992 the Ohio Historical Society renewed the leased out the other ball court-ring complex to a golf club for 100 years.
Local activist Barbara Crandall went to jail over this, with the OHC being the complaining party.
As a private organization, OHS can not be held to federal law, neither NAGPRA nor NARFA
Neither Lepper nor Shiels nor anyone else from the Ohio Historical Society has ever apologized for this.
Note that none of these articles give the amount of money $ that OHS receives from that lease.
That is because the Ohio Historicqal Society is a PRIVATE organization.
How much they receive from other than state sources and how they spend that money are entirely private as well.
We'll be taking a look at some of those activities over the next week or so.
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
CULTURAL GENOCIDE:
THE MYTH OF THE WANDERING SHAWNEE
Consider this little bit of nonsense from the Squirrel Family's Lanape Casino manager:
"There never was a "Shawnee Nation". The villages were scattered across 20+ states at any given time.
They were connected through language, beliefs and religion, but not in Government.
The tribal towns were autonomous and made there own decisions and allied with whom that group thought best at the time, eg. Lewistown shawnees."
First off, let's deal with the 20 states.
The Shawnee were attacked by the Five Nations armed with guns,
(apparently provided by the Puritans thorough their Dutch connections)
Theses attacks are documented in the Jesuit Relations, beginning in 1672.
The Shawnee arrival in Savannah is documented in "Red Carolinians".
Materials concerning the Shawnee arrival in Illinois at the French outpost at Starved Rock are more easily available at Dickson Mounds than at Starved Rock.
The Shawnee arrival among the Creek was covered by Swanton, and in "Colonial Mobile", and in the early papers concerning Nashville.
I do not know of a solid collection with firm dates for the Shawnee arrival among the Cherokee, but the fact of that refuge is well known.
Those are European written records,
not oral materials.
The gathering and return of the Shawnee by Martin Chartier is also well documented in European records.
The essential point as this concerns you personally is that the Squirrel family and you may be able to claim casino rights in only 5 states:
Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
If you try to claim casino rights in any of those other 14 states,
the tribal historians of the peoples of those states will make this crystal clear for you.
As you have already been turned down in Oklahoma and Kansas,
that leaves Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
You now have no friends in Ohio aside from those involved with OHS.
The government of Pennsylvania has already set up casinos,
and though I would endorse the Wolf Division of the Lenape having a casino either at Kitianung,
or at their earlier reservation in south western Pennsylvania.
it is unlikely that the state government would encourage competition for their existing casinos.
Remember that the Thawighlia divisions village site is now secure for future generations.
I will do my best to see that you and the Squirrel family are denied casino rights in Maryland.
PS - The attorney who I wanted to use to sue you is now working for the BIA,
and can no longer take on personal legal matters. He did spare me a few minutes and concluded that I have an excellent case.
As far as me being a journalist many years ago goes,
I sold to Defense Daily, which was sitting on the desk of many industry and government leaders every morning.
Given the amounts of money involved, the reporting had to be accurate.
THE MYTH OF THE WANDERING SHAWNEE
Consider this little bit of nonsense from the Squirrel Family's Lanape Casino manager:
"There never was a "Shawnee Nation". The villages were scattered across 20+ states at any given time.
They were connected through language, beliefs and religion, but not in Government.
The tribal towns were autonomous and made there own decisions and allied with whom that group thought best at the time, eg. Lewistown shawnees."
First off, let's deal with the 20 states.
The Shawnee were attacked by the Five Nations armed with guns,
(apparently provided by the Puritans thorough their Dutch connections)
Theses attacks are documented in the Jesuit Relations, beginning in 1672.
The Shawnee arrival in Savannah is documented in "Red Carolinians".
Materials concerning the Shawnee arrival in Illinois at the French outpost at Starved Rock are more easily available at Dickson Mounds than at Starved Rock.
The Shawnee arrival among the Creek was covered by Swanton, and in "Colonial Mobile", and in the early papers concerning Nashville.
I do not know of a solid collection with firm dates for the Shawnee arrival among the Cherokee, but the fact of that refuge is well known.
Those are European written records,
not oral materials.
The gathering and return of the Shawnee by Martin Chartier is also well documented in European records.
The essential point as this concerns you personally is that the Squirrel family and you may be able to claim casino rights in only 5 states:
Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
If you try to claim casino rights in any of those other 14 states,
the tribal historians of the peoples of those states will make this crystal clear for you.
As you have already been turned down in Oklahoma and Kansas,
that leaves Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
You now have no friends in Ohio aside from those involved with OHS.
The government of Pennsylvania has already set up casinos,
and though I would endorse the Wolf Division of the Lenape having a casino either at Kitianung,
or at their earlier reservation in south western Pennsylvania.
it is unlikely that the state government would encourage competition for their existing casinos.
Remember that the Thawighlia divisions village site is now secure for future generations.
I will do my best to see that you and the Squirrel family are denied casino rights in Maryland.
PS - The attorney who I wanted to use to sue you is now working for the BIA,
and can no longer take on personal legal matters. He did spare me a few minutes and concluded that I have an excellent case.
As far as me being a journalist many years ago goes,
I sold to Defense Daily, which was sitting on the desk of many industry and government leaders every morning.
Given the amounts of money involved, the reporting had to be accurate.
Last edited by E.P. Grondine on Mon May 16, 2016 2:40 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
Whioe no clear numbers on the OHS budget have been released, we do have this:
http://www.lsc.ohio.gov/fiscal/greenbooks130/ohs.pdf
Typically, OHS derives over half of its funding from state appropriations,
with the remainder coming from non state sources
.
In FY 2012, OHS reported total revenue and support of $17.4 million, ,
of which state funds comprised $9.7 million (55.8%), including dollars appropriated through
the Cultural Facilities Commission in the state capital budget.
Nonstate income is derived from federal grants and contracts and private contributions,
as well as operating revenues such as admissions and parking fees,
program service charges, sales, memberships and subscriptions, fees for special
events and the use of facilities, and other sources.
end quote
$17.4-$9.7= $8.7 million dollars.
Given the revenues from the other sources, that means that the Ohio Historical Society must be receiving millions of dollars in rent from the golf course every year
.
http://www.lsc.ohio.gov/fiscal/greenbooks130/ohs.pdf
Typically, OHS derives over half of its funding from state appropriations,
with the remainder coming from non state sources
.
In FY 2012, OHS reported total revenue and support of $17.4 million, ,
of which state funds comprised $9.7 million (55.8%), including dollars appropriated through
the Cultural Facilities Commission in the state capital budget.
Nonstate income is derived from federal grants and contracts and private contributions,
as well as operating revenues such as admissions and parking fees,
program service charges, sales, memberships and subscriptions, fees for special
events and the use of facilities, and other sources.
end quote
$17.4-$9.7= $8.7 million dollars.
Given the revenues from the other sources, that means that the Ohio Historical Society must be receiving millions of dollars in rent from the golf course every year
.
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
About the myth of the wandering Shawnee, the Lenape version of Shawnee history, and unstated biases:
columbusfreepress.com/article/“ghost-mounds”-call-columbus-“get-it”
"Brad Lepper is the Ohio History Connection’s most public archaeologist, and when he posted a top-ten list of Ohio’s greatest earthworks,
an anonymous Native American called out the entire state. Keep in mind many of his ancestors were forced to leave the state during the “Ohio Removal”
years of the early 1800s.
“As a person of Native American ancestry, I believe that Ohio can and should do a lot more about educating Ohioans, and everyone else,
about the wonderful history that is held within this state’s boundaries,” he wrote.
“There are numerous places where historical Native American events took place that are either poorly marked, or not marked at all. Come on, OHIO! Get with it!”
Before giving him any more money, one needs to ask what nation Lepper claims ancestry from.
Huron?, Ottawa? Miami? Shawnee? or LENAPE?
columbusfreepress.com/article/“ghost-mounds”-call-columbus-“get-it”
"Brad Lepper is the Ohio History Connection’s most public archaeologist, and when he posted a top-ten list of Ohio’s greatest earthworks,
an anonymous Native American called out the entire state. Keep in mind many of his ancestors were forced to leave the state during the “Ohio Removal”
years of the early 1800s.
“As a person of Native American ancestry, I believe that Ohio can and should do a lot more about educating Ohioans, and everyone else,
about the wonderful history that is held within this state’s boundaries,” he wrote.
“There are numerous places where historical Native American events took place that are either poorly marked, or not marked at all. Come on, OHIO! Get with it!”
Before giving him any more money, one needs to ask what nation Lepper claims ancestry from.
Huron?, Ottawa? Miami? Shawnee? or LENAPE?
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
http://www.columbusmonthly.com/content/ ... story.html
Christopher Maag, who writes frequently for theNew York Times, is a freelance writer.
This story appeared in the October 2009 issue of Columbus Monthly.
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Carolyn Mackey loves First Congregational Church. Her great-great-great-grandfather, Elizur Wright, helped build the church in Tallmadge, just east of Akron, in 1825. Seven generations of Mackey’s family have been baptized, married or memorialized here. “This is sacred ground,” Mackey, 77, says, looking with loving eyes at the church balcony, where she attended Sunday school as a child.
But for anyone without deep roots in Tallmadge, the little white church is just another building. To discover that it’s one of the oldest churches in Ohio, you must somehow escape the heavy traffic buzzing along the Tallmadge roundabout, park the car, walk across a wide field and read the faded gray sign beside the church doors (which are locked for all but two hours a month).
Only a handful of people attempt this tortuous path, mostly brides-to-be scouting romantic wedding spots. “The people who come here aren’t exactly history buffs,” says Fred Wybenga, the president of the Tallmadge Historical Society.
So why does the Ohio Historical Society own it? Over the last 20 years, historical agencies in most states shifted away from small buildings such as Tallmadge’s church to focus on alternative ways to attract tourists and jobs.
History has left “the museum and the classroom and now walks with developers, architects, television producers, planners and builders,” according to a report on the society prepared in 2006 for the Strickland administration. The society “just has not noticed that it’s gone.”
Back in 1976, the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) was considered one of the premier groups of its kind in the nation, working hand-in-hand with the Smithsonian Institution to create top-tier exhibits. It had a state-of-the-art museum and a strong network of historic sites throughout the state.
Today, the society can’t afford to keep the state archives open to the public more than three days a week. In January, it will close its main museum in Columbus for more than a year; plans about its renovation are fuzzy at best. With a diminished national reputation, it’s shut out of the state’s political process and struggles to raise private donations and federal grants. The society increasingly finds itself out of funding and out of options.
“The public has to ask how things were allowed to deteriorate so far and so fast,” says John Fleming, a historian who worked for 20 years as director of the society’s National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce.
OHS leaders say they’ve learned from past mistakes and are turning the place around. That process continues despite the sudden death this summer of Bill Laidlaw, the society’s executive director, who was widely praised for making difficult decisions to cut the society’s budget and modernize some of its operations. In September, the society named Burt Logan, president of the USS Constitution Museum in Boston, as its new leader. “We have the right agenda, and we’re moving forward,” says interim director James Strider.
Previous directors have made the same claim, however. Each time, sliding museum attendance and falling state appropriations proved them wrong. Will OHS fail to meet its new goals this time?
“I’d bet on it,” says Amos Loveday, who worked for OHS for 31 years, including a stint as chief curator. Loveday wrote the report for Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration in 2006 that investigated the society’s ongoing crisis. “I really hope I’m wrong,” he says. “But I think they’re going to fail because they really don’t comprehend the environment they’re in.”
Imagine Ohio without history. An Ohio where citizens can’t research their government’s decisions because all the documents have been lost or destroyed. An Ohio that bleeds jobs and loses its young to other states, which use historic neighborhoods to attract successful new businesses.
“The problems are very serious,” says Nancy Hollister, a former state representative and lieutenant governor who co-led a special committee to investigate OHS. “I think the whole thing could implode.”
A history of trouble
For years, the Ohio Historical Society was a very big name attached to a very little organization. With support from former president Rutherford B. Hayes, a native of Delaware, the society was founded in 1885 to look after the Statehouse museum room, which contained priceless Civil War battle flags.
From the beginning, the line between state power and OHS prerogative has been blurry. The society was, as it remains today, a private nonprofit group that reports to its own board of trustees, not the governor. Ohio is the last large state in the country to follow this public/private model, Loveday says, leading to the wide misconception that OHS is a state agency. “We are nothing if not confusing,” says Kim Schuette, the society’s spokeswoman.
The relationship remained informal until 1965, when Gov. James Rhodes decided history would play a crucial role in his plan to expand Ohio’s infrastructure of highways and state universities. For the second (and last, for now) time in its history, OHS had friends in high places. Erwin Zepp, the society’s longtime director, ate lunch with Rhodes several times a week.
The result was a law, Ohio Revised Code 149.30, creating a contract between the state and the Ohio Historical Society. OHS agreed to own and operate the state’s historic sites and museums, manage state archives, collect privately owned artifacts, publish research about Ohio history, help public school history teachers and act as a consultant for local historical societies. Somehow, it also would find time to hire an artist to paint a portrait of every outgoing governor.
“OHS tries to make too many people happy,” says Charlie Arp, who worked for OHS from 1991 to 2003, including his last two years as Ohio’s chief archivist. “They have too many obligations under state law. They can’t do it all.”
Ohio’s only responsibility: Give OHS enough money to perform the state’s duties. That never happened. “Ohio’s leaders have always allocated lots of money for buying and building new things,” Loveday says. “But they’ve never given OHS the money it needs to operate all those new buildings.”
For a decade, a building spree masked the problem. With political backing from Rhodes, OHS spent millions to buy dozens of properties in the 1960s and ’70s, creating a network of 62 historic sites (later reduced to the current number, 58).
One new site was the Ohio Historical Center, the society’s new headquarters and museum, which opened just off I-71 near the state fairgrounds in 1970. Later compared unfavorably to a crash-landed spaceship, the building’s innovative use of cables to support massive cantilevers won architecture awards and solidified the group’s reputation as a player on the national stage. “OHS was widely regarded at the time as among the best.” says Loveday, who went to work for OHS in 1971.
But inside the crashed spaceship, employees saw danger ahead. With all the money for construction, there wasn’t enough to cover operating expenses. “I would agree that the expansion of the site system in the ’60s and ’70s sowed the seeds of our problems today,” says Strider, who has worked for OHS since 1981.
The society became home to the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, which in most other states is a government agency responsible for using historic tax credits to spur economic development. (One such project in Texas turned a closed hospital in a gritty section of downtown Houston into the Elder Street artists’ lofts, which have anchored a neighborhood revival since they opened in 2005.)
Because Ohio’s office is part of a nonprofit group, its power to create jobs remains limited. “Keeping the preservation office inside OHS is really outdated,” says Loveday, who directed the office for six years until 2002. “Ohio has suffered remarkably because the society and the state refuse to look at that relationship.”
Ostensibly a statewide group, OHS ceded the vast urban areas of Cleveland and Cincinnati to those cities’ historical societies, making it difficult to win support from urban legislators. “It was never a politically savvy operation,” says Donald Hutslar, who worked at OHS in various capacities, including as a curator, before retiring after 37 years.
What little support the society did have waned after Rhodes left office in 1971. The apparent lack of respect among OHS trustees for the history of Ohio’s non-white cultures appears to have complicated matters. Incoming Gov. John Gilligan pushed OHS to open urban sites dedicated to the state’s rich African-American history. During a meeting at the governor’s mansion, Loveday watched Gilligan lecture the trustees—all of them white, mostly men, mostly from rural counties—for not being representative of a state with so many cities and so much racial diversity.
After the governor’s dressing-down, “One trustee actually said something like, ‘Those n-words wouldn’t come to a site even if we spend money on a museum,’ ” Loveday remembers from a conversation with the trustee.
The society eventually relented, agreeing to build the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce. Yet, even today, OHS remains a nonpresence in two of Ohio’s three big cities, home to the state’s largest African-American populations. Historical societies in the Cleveland and Cincinnati metropolitan areas “serve 60 percent of the state’s population,” says Douglass McDonald, CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center.
Society trustees were equally indifferent to the politicians who funded them. In the 10-year plan that OHS submitted to the General Assembly in 1974, the society wrote that only by using a private organization—not a state agency subject to the whims of politicians—can “history be collected and interpreted without partisan bias.”
Thirty-five years later, the society still finds communicating with lawmakers difficult. “I don’t think the case has ever been made very well that history is important to the state for economic development,” says Tyrone Yates, a Democratic state representative from Cincinnati.
As its political support diminished, the society never found it easy to replace shrinking state appropriations with private funds or national grants. As early as 1973, OHS reported to the legislature that many Ohioans were reluctant to donate money to what they believed to be a taxpayer-funded agency. That misconception continues to dog the society, Loveday says.
Meanwhile, OHS laid off hundreds of employees over the years, many of whom found jobs in top-caliber museums, historical societies and government agencies around the country. So whenever OHS applies for a grant from the federal government or a major national foundation, it’s almost inevitable to find embittered former society workers or their friends sitting on the boards that make funding decisions. Which means that whatever progress the society makes now, its ability to raise money in the future is limited by its past of mismanagement and bad decisions. (OHS isn’t entirely out of the running, though; it recently won two federal grants for $300,000.) “Probably the most important thing OHS could do would be to reach out to its former employees and try to make peace with them,” Loveday says. “Because those people are out there every day, speaking badly about the organization.”
The society also alienated natural allies. Its archives are a treasure trove for people interested in tracing their family trees, but the lack of staff needed to process new records and keep the archives open more than three days a week have angered some people. “We get lots of people in here who are really unhappy that they drove all the way to Columbus only to find the archives closed,” says Tom Neel, librarian at the Ohio Genealogical Society.
Efforts by the society’s leaders to keep possession of an archive program that even they concede is failing frustrates their colleagues around the state. “It just doesn’t make sense to have three state archives—the OSU library, the State Library of Ohio and the Ohio Historical Center—all within three miles of each other,” says Raimund Goerler, Ohio State University Libraries’ chief archivist.
A crisis builds
By the mid 2000s, OHS found itself isolated from public and political leaders. Its exhibits, once among the best in the nation, no longer attracted much interest. In 2007, the society hosted a show called Once Upon A Dime about American currency. “It was idiotic,” says Mark Passerello, a former OHS Statehouse tour guide who brought his children to the program. “It had nothing to do with Ohio. My kids were bored in five minutes.”
Society leaders admit that Once Upon A Dime bombed. But breaking attendance records wasn’t their intent. “That exhibit was part of our experimentation process,” says Sharon Dean, collections director at OHS. “It helped us learn how modern audiences want to interact with us.” That effort appears to have succeeded. During recent exhibits, such as Rockwell’s America and Capture the Moment, a show of Pulitzer Prize-winning photos, attendance at the Ohio Historical Center jumped by as much as 105 percent over the same time periods from previous years.
That success, though, couldn’t begin to make up for its lost clout with a select few politicians. “When you had term limits in the legislature, OHS lost a great deal of power with legislators who had been longtime supporters,” Hollister says.
It’s no surprise, then, that whenever Ohio’s state budget falls on hard times, OHS is among the first on the chopping block. “We’re operating under Maslow’s hierarchy of need,” says Gene Krebs, a former state representative who works with OHS as co-director of Greater Ohio, a nonprofit group focused on smart growth. “I can either give money to a food bank to keep people from starving, or I can give money to the Ohio Historical Society to show people how Ohioans used to buy food. Putting food on the table wins.”
State budget cuts had a massive impact on OHS. Strickland’s approved budgets slashed the state’s appropriations to OHS from $13.6 million in Fiscal Year 2008 to $7.9 million in 2010, a 42 percent drop in just two years. The society was forced to lay off more than half its staff during this decade, reducing the number of full-time employees from more than 400 in 2001 to 184 today. “It really decimates us,” Laidlaw told the Associated Press in June. “These budget cuts really cut very deeply into the bone of this organization. We’re cutting off limbs.”
Laidlaw threatened that unless OHS found partners to operate historic sites, many would close. By the beginning of August, the society had contracted with local organizations to take over operations at 37 sites, and it was negotiating with other groups to assume control at another 10.
Desperate to cut costs, Laidlaw even stopped OHS employees from giving tours of the Ohio Statehouse, one of the society’s most prominent and best-attended sites—instead handing that function over to the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.
Then there’s Ohio Village, the society’s re-created 19th-century town that was closed to the general public in 2002, but remained available for tour groups and private functions. Starting in January, the village will open just for the occasional school field trip.
And at the beginning of 2010, public access to the state archives will drop from three days a week to one. “That’s an embarrassment,” says Goerler, the chief archivist for the OSU library. “Records hold public officials accountable. They’re fundamental to our democracy.”
A turning ship, or a sinking one?
The Newark Earthworks are some of the greatest construction projects of the ancient world. And unless you’re a serious history buff, you’ve probably never heard of them. The Hopewell Native American tribe spent 600 years building the mounds over four square acres, making the earthworks the world’s largest lunar observatory.
The Ohio Historical Society has owned the earthworks since 1933. It always has leased them to the private Moundbuilders Country Club, which maintained most of the mounds as part of its 18-hole golf course and occasionally allowed public access to them.
“This place is one of the premier cultural sites in the world, and the Ohio Historical Society basically ignored it,” says Richard Shiels, an associate history professor at Ohio State and director of the Newark Earthworks Center. “They simply didn’t understand the importance of this site.”
That changed in 2005, when Newark residents demanded better public access to the golf course. After ignoring Shiels’s phone calls for months, Laidlaw drove to Newark to see the mounds himself. He seems to have been transformed. Laidlaw directed OHS staff to nominate the mounds to UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, as a World Heritage Site. (UNESCO could announce its decision at any time.) He won support from the U.S. Department of the Interior for the bid and persuaded the department to consider turning the mounds into a national park. (That study has not yet begun.)
Laidlaw gave Shiels his private cellphone number, urging Shiels to call him concerning any problems with the golf club. “Bill realized what an incredible site it is,” Shiels says. “He became one of our best allies.”
But it may be the classic example of too little, too late. Given their size and condition, the mounds could attract tourists from around the world. But in 1997, the society extended the country club’s lease, denying access to outsiders until 2078.
As recently as five years ago, OHS had seven employees looking after a smaller cluster of mounds not leased to the golf course, and it was coordinating maintenance projects with the country club. Due to budget cuts, that number was cut to zero. “The society has some of the most significant historical properties in the nation, and I don’t think people realize that,” says Fleming. “Can they turn that around? I don’t know. It may be too late.”
The society’s turnaround attempts were complicated by tragedy in August, when Laidlaw, who was planning to retire at the end of the year, died while vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard. Strider believes Laidlaw had the society headed in the right direction, and he plans to continue the former director’s agenda until the new one takes over in mid December.
“I agree we’re doing too much,” Strider says. “But we’re changing. We’re improving.” The society will cut Timeline, its expensive membership magazine, unless it can find private funding. OHS is preparing to build new history exhibits that will tour the state, educating students and improving the society’s visibility. To make its collections more accessible, OHS paid $70,000 for a high-tech camera to take photographs of its vast archives and load the images onto the Internet.
After years of criticism, the society finally has begun to mend relationships with legislators and other history groups. “The problem they faced is they centralized so much on Columbus that they forgot they had a statewide role to play,” says Greg Myers, president of the Ohio Association of Historical Societies and Museums. “I think OHS is on a healthy track. It’s become much more collaborative.”
By far the society’s most visible change was its decision to turn maintenance of historic sites over to local organizations. “OHS was stretching itself thin,” says Crystal Marvin with the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System, which recently took over management of Fort Ancient, an important ceremonial site of the Hopewell Indians located just off I-71 north of Kings Island. “Local people have more passion for these sites than a statewide organization because this is our backyard.”
Others wonder how much damage OHS caused itself by holding onto the sites too long. “We started saying 20 years ago, ‘Look, you can’t continue maintaining all these sites,’ ” Hollister says.
Change is coming to the spaceship, too. In January, OHS will close the Ohio Historical Center for 15 months to construct what it calls a collections learning center. The idea is to put the society’s vast collections into a high-density storage system of shelves, drawers and cabinets that will be open to the public, with only limited space devoted to displays explaining the artifacts’ significance “In the future, there may not be any glass between you and a stuffed river otter,” says Connie Bodner, education director at OHS, standing beside one such otter in a museum diorama. “You’ll be able to come with other experts and may be able to handle the otter itself.”
It’s this plan, which hasn’t yet received much public attention, that has bewildered curators and museum experts. How does OHS plan to keep all those priceless artifacts secure from theft? Most historic artifacts are delicate; if OHS allows people to handle them, how can it prevent the objects from being damaged or destroyed? With few interpretive signs, how will OHS explain the collections’ importance to visitors accustomed to the Internet’s explanation overload?
“We’re just in the very beginning stages of figuring all this out,” Bodner says.
Once all the current exhibits are removed, society leaders have different visions for what will replace them. Strider, who until Laidlaw’s death served as director of historic preservation and outreach, believes the museum will no longer cater to its traditional audience of elementary school field trips. “People using this building will be aficionados of quilts, glass, gun collections—people who in many cases know more about these objects than we do,” he says.
Others at OHS seem to disagree. “If we do it right, a fourth-grader comes here, gets intrigued and then keeps coming back as a seventh-grader, a high-schooler and an adult,” Bodner says.
“We’re still developing the vision,” says Schuette, the OHS spokeswoman. “But we’ve got a really good start.”
Perhaps the most important concern: How will OHS pay for this? The society plans to spend $2 million building the learning center, which will occupy most of the museum’s 20,000 square feet of exhibit space. The average new history museum exhibit occupies a fraction of that space, Loveday says, and still costs $40 million to $50 million to install. “Two million dollars in this business is chump change,” he says. “They’re trying to reach out. But they’re so far behind they don’t even realize that they have no idea how to do it.”
History’s muddled future
In 2002, Hollister led a special committee of concerned legislators to find possible solutions to the society’s ongoing crisis. Suggestions included forcing OHS to relinquish control over the Ohio Historical Preservation Office and possibly turning the entire society into a state agency.
“The [OHS] director has to report to both a very private board and a very public board—the state legislature. That person serves too many masters,” Hollister says. “It’s not a disaster that’s waiting to happen. It’s happening now.”
Many lawmakers believed the society’s reaction to the committee’s findings was inadequate. “The response from OHS was, ‘We have no problems. Everything’s fine here,’ ” says Krebs. “People around the Statehouse found that profoundly alarming.”
Talking recently in the conference room connected to his office, Strider bristles when asked about these concerns. “Like Mark Twain said, ‘Rumors of our demise are premature,’ ” he says. “I frankly get tired of hearing how bad things are at OHS.”
Nevertheless, it’s hard to see how the society can emerge from its crisis without fundamental change. Some observers describe the society and the state as having a dysfunctional, codependent relationship: Both sides get abused, and neither gets what it needs. Society employees work diligently, under constant threat of layoffs, doing historic preservation work that most other states consider to be a basic government function.
Ohio taxpayers spend $10 million every year for the preservation of historical sites, museums and archives, many of which are poorly maintained and rarely open. Perhaps, some longtime observers argue, it’s time for this marriage to end. “I came to the conclusion a long time ago that until the state and OHS revisit their legal arrangement, nothing is going to change,” Loveday says.
“I don’t think they need a divorce,” says Hollister, “but they need a separation.”
Maybe Strider is right, though. Maybe OHS has turned the corner on its problems without structural changes. Or maybe not. True, the city of Tallmadge now is responsible for cutting the grass outside First Congregational Church. But OHS still must install a costly new heating and cooling system, says Penny Shonk, who manages the church for the Tallmadge parks department. The work was supposed to have started this summer, but the project was postponed. Facing an $80 million backlog in critical repairs, the Ohio Historical Society just didn’t have enough money.
“I despair over what’s happened to OHS,” says Arp, the former state archivist. “The issue isn’t the people. The institutional model is the problem.”
Christopher Maag, who writes frequently for theNew York Times, is a freelance writer.
This story appeared in the October 2009 issue of Columbus Monthly.
Christopher Maag, who writes frequently for theNew York Times, is a freelance writer.
This story appeared in the October 2009 issue of Columbus Monthly.
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Carolyn Mackey loves First Congregational Church. Her great-great-great-grandfather, Elizur Wright, helped build the church in Tallmadge, just east of Akron, in 1825. Seven generations of Mackey’s family have been baptized, married or memorialized here. “This is sacred ground,” Mackey, 77, says, looking with loving eyes at the church balcony, where she attended Sunday school as a child.
But for anyone without deep roots in Tallmadge, the little white church is just another building. To discover that it’s one of the oldest churches in Ohio, you must somehow escape the heavy traffic buzzing along the Tallmadge roundabout, park the car, walk across a wide field and read the faded gray sign beside the church doors (which are locked for all but two hours a month).
Only a handful of people attempt this tortuous path, mostly brides-to-be scouting romantic wedding spots. “The people who come here aren’t exactly history buffs,” says Fred Wybenga, the president of the Tallmadge Historical Society.
So why does the Ohio Historical Society own it? Over the last 20 years, historical agencies in most states shifted away from small buildings such as Tallmadge’s church to focus on alternative ways to attract tourists and jobs.
History has left “the museum and the classroom and now walks with developers, architects, television producers, planners and builders,” according to a report on the society prepared in 2006 for the Strickland administration. The society “just has not noticed that it’s gone.”
Back in 1976, the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) was considered one of the premier groups of its kind in the nation, working hand-in-hand with the Smithsonian Institution to create top-tier exhibits. It had a state-of-the-art museum and a strong network of historic sites throughout the state.
Today, the society can’t afford to keep the state archives open to the public more than three days a week. In January, it will close its main museum in Columbus for more than a year; plans about its renovation are fuzzy at best. With a diminished national reputation, it’s shut out of the state’s political process and struggles to raise private donations and federal grants. The society increasingly finds itself out of funding and out of options.
“The public has to ask how things were allowed to deteriorate so far and so fast,” says John Fleming, a historian who worked for 20 years as director of the society’s National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce.
OHS leaders say they’ve learned from past mistakes and are turning the place around. That process continues despite the sudden death this summer of Bill Laidlaw, the society’s executive director, who was widely praised for making difficult decisions to cut the society’s budget and modernize some of its operations. In September, the society named Burt Logan, president of the USS Constitution Museum in Boston, as its new leader. “We have the right agenda, and we’re moving forward,” says interim director James Strider.
Previous directors have made the same claim, however. Each time, sliding museum attendance and falling state appropriations proved them wrong. Will OHS fail to meet its new goals this time?
“I’d bet on it,” says Amos Loveday, who worked for OHS for 31 years, including a stint as chief curator. Loveday wrote the report for Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration in 2006 that investigated the society’s ongoing crisis. “I really hope I’m wrong,” he says. “But I think they’re going to fail because they really don’t comprehend the environment they’re in.”
Imagine Ohio without history. An Ohio where citizens can’t research their government’s decisions because all the documents have been lost or destroyed. An Ohio that bleeds jobs and loses its young to other states, which use historic neighborhoods to attract successful new businesses.
“The problems are very serious,” says Nancy Hollister, a former state representative and lieutenant governor who co-led a special committee to investigate OHS. “I think the whole thing could implode.”
A history of trouble
For years, the Ohio Historical Society was a very big name attached to a very little organization. With support from former president Rutherford B. Hayes, a native of Delaware, the society was founded in 1885 to look after the Statehouse museum room, which contained priceless Civil War battle flags.
From the beginning, the line between state power and OHS prerogative has been blurry. The society was, as it remains today, a private nonprofit group that reports to its own board of trustees, not the governor. Ohio is the last large state in the country to follow this public/private model, Loveday says, leading to the wide misconception that OHS is a state agency. “We are nothing if not confusing,” says Kim Schuette, the society’s spokeswoman.
The relationship remained informal until 1965, when Gov. James Rhodes decided history would play a crucial role in his plan to expand Ohio’s infrastructure of highways and state universities. For the second (and last, for now) time in its history, OHS had friends in high places. Erwin Zepp, the society’s longtime director, ate lunch with Rhodes several times a week.
The result was a law, Ohio Revised Code 149.30, creating a contract between the state and the Ohio Historical Society. OHS agreed to own and operate the state’s historic sites and museums, manage state archives, collect privately owned artifacts, publish research about Ohio history, help public school history teachers and act as a consultant for local historical societies. Somehow, it also would find time to hire an artist to paint a portrait of every outgoing governor.
“OHS tries to make too many people happy,” says Charlie Arp, who worked for OHS from 1991 to 2003, including his last two years as Ohio’s chief archivist. “They have too many obligations under state law. They can’t do it all.”
Ohio’s only responsibility: Give OHS enough money to perform the state’s duties. That never happened. “Ohio’s leaders have always allocated lots of money for buying and building new things,” Loveday says. “But they’ve never given OHS the money it needs to operate all those new buildings.”
For a decade, a building spree masked the problem. With political backing from Rhodes, OHS spent millions to buy dozens of properties in the 1960s and ’70s, creating a network of 62 historic sites (later reduced to the current number, 58).
One new site was the Ohio Historical Center, the society’s new headquarters and museum, which opened just off I-71 near the state fairgrounds in 1970. Later compared unfavorably to a crash-landed spaceship, the building’s innovative use of cables to support massive cantilevers won architecture awards and solidified the group’s reputation as a player on the national stage. “OHS was widely regarded at the time as among the best.” says Loveday, who went to work for OHS in 1971.
But inside the crashed spaceship, employees saw danger ahead. With all the money for construction, there wasn’t enough to cover operating expenses. “I would agree that the expansion of the site system in the ’60s and ’70s sowed the seeds of our problems today,” says Strider, who has worked for OHS since 1981.
The society became home to the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, which in most other states is a government agency responsible for using historic tax credits to spur economic development. (One such project in Texas turned a closed hospital in a gritty section of downtown Houston into the Elder Street artists’ lofts, which have anchored a neighborhood revival since they opened in 2005.)
Because Ohio’s office is part of a nonprofit group, its power to create jobs remains limited. “Keeping the preservation office inside OHS is really outdated,” says Loveday, who directed the office for six years until 2002. “Ohio has suffered remarkably because the society and the state refuse to look at that relationship.”
Ostensibly a statewide group, OHS ceded the vast urban areas of Cleveland and Cincinnati to those cities’ historical societies, making it difficult to win support from urban legislators. “It was never a politically savvy operation,” says Donald Hutslar, who worked at OHS in various capacities, including as a curator, before retiring after 37 years.
What little support the society did have waned after Rhodes left office in 1971. The apparent lack of respect among OHS trustees for the history of Ohio’s non-white cultures appears to have complicated matters. Incoming Gov. John Gilligan pushed OHS to open urban sites dedicated to the state’s rich African-American history. During a meeting at the governor’s mansion, Loveday watched Gilligan lecture the trustees—all of them white, mostly men, mostly from rural counties—for not being representative of a state with so many cities and so much racial diversity.
After the governor’s dressing-down, “One trustee actually said something like, ‘Those n-words wouldn’t come to a site even if we spend money on a museum,’ ” Loveday remembers from a conversation with the trustee.
The society eventually relented, agreeing to build the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce. Yet, even today, OHS remains a nonpresence in two of Ohio’s three big cities, home to the state’s largest African-American populations. Historical societies in the Cleveland and Cincinnati metropolitan areas “serve 60 percent of the state’s population,” says Douglass McDonald, CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center.
Society trustees were equally indifferent to the politicians who funded them. In the 10-year plan that OHS submitted to the General Assembly in 1974, the society wrote that only by using a private organization—not a state agency subject to the whims of politicians—can “history be collected and interpreted without partisan bias.”
Thirty-five years later, the society still finds communicating with lawmakers difficult. “I don’t think the case has ever been made very well that history is important to the state for economic development,” says Tyrone Yates, a Democratic state representative from Cincinnati.
As its political support diminished, the society never found it easy to replace shrinking state appropriations with private funds or national grants. As early as 1973, OHS reported to the legislature that many Ohioans were reluctant to donate money to what they believed to be a taxpayer-funded agency. That misconception continues to dog the society, Loveday says.
Meanwhile, OHS laid off hundreds of employees over the years, many of whom found jobs in top-caliber museums, historical societies and government agencies around the country. So whenever OHS applies for a grant from the federal government or a major national foundation, it’s almost inevitable to find embittered former society workers or their friends sitting on the boards that make funding decisions. Which means that whatever progress the society makes now, its ability to raise money in the future is limited by its past of mismanagement and bad decisions. (OHS isn’t entirely out of the running, though; it recently won two federal grants for $300,000.) “Probably the most important thing OHS could do would be to reach out to its former employees and try to make peace with them,” Loveday says. “Because those people are out there every day, speaking badly about the organization.”
The society also alienated natural allies. Its archives are a treasure trove for people interested in tracing their family trees, but the lack of staff needed to process new records and keep the archives open more than three days a week have angered some people. “We get lots of people in here who are really unhappy that they drove all the way to Columbus only to find the archives closed,” says Tom Neel, librarian at the Ohio Genealogical Society.
Efforts by the society’s leaders to keep possession of an archive program that even they concede is failing frustrates their colleagues around the state. “It just doesn’t make sense to have three state archives—the OSU library, the State Library of Ohio and the Ohio Historical Center—all within three miles of each other,” says Raimund Goerler, Ohio State University Libraries’ chief archivist.
A crisis builds
By the mid 2000s, OHS found itself isolated from public and political leaders. Its exhibits, once among the best in the nation, no longer attracted much interest. In 2007, the society hosted a show called Once Upon A Dime about American currency. “It was idiotic,” says Mark Passerello, a former OHS Statehouse tour guide who brought his children to the program. “It had nothing to do with Ohio. My kids were bored in five minutes.”
Society leaders admit that Once Upon A Dime bombed. But breaking attendance records wasn’t their intent. “That exhibit was part of our experimentation process,” says Sharon Dean, collections director at OHS. “It helped us learn how modern audiences want to interact with us.” That effort appears to have succeeded. During recent exhibits, such as Rockwell’s America and Capture the Moment, a show of Pulitzer Prize-winning photos, attendance at the Ohio Historical Center jumped by as much as 105 percent over the same time periods from previous years.
That success, though, couldn’t begin to make up for its lost clout with a select few politicians. “When you had term limits in the legislature, OHS lost a great deal of power with legislators who had been longtime supporters,” Hollister says.
It’s no surprise, then, that whenever Ohio’s state budget falls on hard times, OHS is among the first on the chopping block. “We’re operating under Maslow’s hierarchy of need,” says Gene Krebs, a former state representative who works with OHS as co-director of Greater Ohio, a nonprofit group focused on smart growth. “I can either give money to a food bank to keep people from starving, or I can give money to the Ohio Historical Society to show people how Ohioans used to buy food. Putting food on the table wins.”
State budget cuts had a massive impact on OHS. Strickland’s approved budgets slashed the state’s appropriations to OHS from $13.6 million in Fiscal Year 2008 to $7.9 million in 2010, a 42 percent drop in just two years. The society was forced to lay off more than half its staff during this decade, reducing the number of full-time employees from more than 400 in 2001 to 184 today. “It really decimates us,” Laidlaw told the Associated Press in June. “These budget cuts really cut very deeply into the bone of this organization. We’re cutting off limbs.”
Laidlaw threatened that unless OHS found partners to operate historic sites, many would close. By the beginning of August, the society had contracted with local organizations to take over operations at 37 sites, and it was negotiating with other groups to assume control at another 10.
Desperate to cut costs, Laidlaw even stopped OHS employees from giving tours of the Ohio Statehouse, one of the society’s most prominent and best-attended sites—instead handing that function over to the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.
Then there’s Ohio Village, the society’s re-created 19th-century town that was closed to the general public in 2002, but remained available for tour groups and private functions. Starting in January, the village will open just for the occasional school field trip.
And at the beginning of 2010, public access to the state archives will drop from three days a week to one. “That’s an embarrassment,” says Goerler, the chief archivist for the OSU library. “Records hold public officials accountable. They’re fundamental to our democracy.”
A turning ship, or a sinking one?
The Newark Earthworks are some of the greatest construction projects of the ancient world. And unless you’re a serious history buff, you’ve probably never heard of them. The Hopewell Native American tribe spent 600 years building the mounds over four square acres, making the earthworks the world’s largest lunar observatory.
The Ohio Historical Society has owned the earthworks since 1933. It always has leased them to the private Moundbuilders Country Club, which maintained most of the mounds as part of its 18-hole golf course and occasionally allowed public access to them.
“This place is one of the premier cultural sites in the world, and the Ohio Historical Society basically ignored it,” says Richard Shiels, an associate history professor at Ohio State and director of the Newark Earthworks Center. “They simply didn’t understand the importance of this site.”
That changed in 2005, when Newark residents demanded better public access to the golf course. After ignoring Shiels’s phone calls for months, Laidlaw drove to Newark to see the mounds himself. He seems to have been transformed. Laidlaw directed OHS staff to nominate the mounds to UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, as a World Heritage Site. (UNESCO could announce its decision at any time.) He won support from the U.S. Department of the Interior for the bid and persuaded the department to consider turning the mounds into a national park. (That study has not yet begun.)
Laidlaw gave Shiels his private cellphone number, urging Shiels to call him concerning any problems with the golf club. “Bill realized what an incredible site it is,” Shiels says. “He became one of our best allies.”
But it may be the classic example of too little, too late. Given their size and condition, the mounds could attract tourists from around the world. But in 1997, the society extended the country club’s lease, denying access to outsiders until 2078.
As recently as five years ago, OHS had seven employees looking after a smaller cluster of mounds not leased to the golf course, and it was coordinating maintenance projects with the country club. Due to budget cuts, that number was cut to zero. “The society has some of the most significant historical properties in the nation, and I don’t think people realize that,” says Fleming. “Can they turn that around? I don’t know. It may be too late.”
The society’s turnaround attempts were complicated by tragedy in August, when Laidlaw, who was planning to retire at the end of the year, died while vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard. Strider believes Laidlaw had the society headed in the right direction, and he plans to continue the former director’s agenda until the new one takes over in mid December.
“I agree we’re doing too much,” Strider says. “But we’re changing. We’re improving.” The society will cut Timeline, its expensive membership magazine, unless it can find private funding. OHS is preparing to build new history exhibits that will tour the state, educating students and improving the society’s visibility. To make its collections more accessible, OHS paid $70,000 for a high-tech camera to take photographs of its vast archives and load the images onto the Internet.
After years of criticism, the society finally has begun to mend relationships with legislators and other history groups. “The problem they faced is they centralized so much on Columbus that they forgot they had a statewide role to play,” says Greg Myers, president of the Ohio Association of Historical Societies and Museums. “I think OHS is on a healthy track. It’s become much more collaborative.”
By far the society’s most visible change was its decision to turn maintenance of historic sites over to local organizations. “OHS was stretching itself thin,” says Crystal Marvin with the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System, which recently took over management of Fort Ancient, an important ceremonial site of the Hopewell Indians located just off I-71 north of Kings Island. “Local people have more passion for these sites than a statewide organization because this is our backyard.”
Others wonder how much damage OHS caused itself by holding onto the sites too long. “We started saying 20 years ago, ‘Look, you can’t continue maintaining all these sites,’ ” Hollister says.
Change is coming to the spaceship, too. In January, OHS will close the Ohio Historical Center for 15 months to construct what it calls a collections learning center. The idea is to put the society’s vast collections into a high-density storage system of shelves, drawers and cabinets that will be open to the public, with only limited space devoted to displays explaining the artifacts’ significance “In the future, there may not be any glass between you and a stuffed river otter,” says Connie Bodner, education director at OHS, standing beside one such otter in a museum diorama. “You’ll be able to come with other experts and may be able to handle the otter itself.”
It’s this plan, which hasn’t yet received much public attention, that has bewildered curators and museum experts. How does OHS plan to keep all those priceless artifacts secure from theft? Most historic artifacts are delicate; if OHS allows people to handle them, how can it prevent the objects from being damaged or destroyed? With few interpretive signs, how will OHS explain the collections’ importance to visitors accustomed to the Internet’s explanation overload?
“We’re just in the very beginning stages of figuring all this out,” Bodner says.
Once all the current exhibits are removed, society leaders have different visions for what will replace them. Strider, who until Laidlaw’s death served as director of historic preservation and outreach, believes the museum will no longer cater to its traditional audience of elementary school field trips. “People using this building will be aficionados of quilts, glass, gun collections—people who in many cases know more about these objects than we do,” he says.
Others at OHS seem to disagree. “If we do it right, a fourth-grader comes here, gets intrigued and then keeps coming back as a seventh-grader, a high-schooler and an adult,” Bodner says.
“We’re still developing the vision,” says Schuette, the OHS spokeswoman. “But we’ve got a really good start.”
Perhaps the most important concern: How will OHS pay for this? The society plans to spend $2 million building the learning center, which will occupy most of the museum’s 20,000 square feet of exhibit space. The average new history museum exhibit occupies a fraction of that space, Loveday says, and still costs $40 million to $50 million to install. “Two million dollars in this business is chump change,” he says. “They’re trying to reach out. But they’re so far behind they don’t even realize that they have no idea how to do it.”
History’s muddled future
In 2002, Hollister led a special committee of concerned legislators to find possible solutions to the society’s ongoing crisis. Suggestions included forcing OHS to relinquish control over the Ohio Historical Preservation Office and possibly turning the entire society into a state agency.
“The [OHS] director has to report to both a very private board and a very public board—the state legislature. That person serves too many masters,” Hollister says. “It’s not a disaster that’s waiting to happen. It’s happening now.”
Many lawmakers believed the society’s reaction to the committee’s findings was inadequate. “The response from OHS was, ‘We have no problems. Everything’s fine here,’ ” says Krebs. “People around the Statehouse found that profoundly alarming.”
Talking recently in the conference room connected to his office, Strider bristles when asked about these concerns. “Like Mark Twain said, ‘Rumors of our demise are premature,’ ” he says. “I frankly get tired of hearing how bad things are at OHS.”
Nevertheless, it’s hard to see how the society can emerge from its crisis without fundamental change. Some observers describe the society and the state as having a dysfunctional, codependent relationship: Both sides get abused, and neither gets what it needs. Society employees work diligently, under constant threat of layoffs, doing historic preservation work that most other states consider to be a basic government function.
Ohio taxpayers spend $10 million every year for the preservation of historical sites, museums and archives, many of which are poorly maintained and rarely open. Perhaps, some longtime observers argue, it’s time for this marriage to end. “I came to the conclusion a long time ago that until the state and OHS revisit their legal arrangement, nothing is going to change,” Loveday says.
“I don’t think they need a divorce,” says Hollister, “but they need a separation.”
Maybe Strider is right, though. Maybe OHS has turned the corner on its problems without structural changes. Or maybe not. True, the city of Tallmadge now is responsible for cutting the grass outside First Congregational Church. But OHS still must install a costly new heating and cooling system, says Penny Shonk, who manages the church for the Tallmadge parks department. The work was supposed to have started this summer, but the project was postponed. Facing an $80 million backlog in critical repairs, the Ohio Historical Society just didn’t have enough money.
“I despair over what’s happened to OHS,” says Arp, the former state archivist. “The issue isn’t the people. The institutional model is the problem.”
Christopher Maag, who writes frequently for theNew York Times, is a freelance writer.
This story appeared in the October 2009 issue of Columbus Monthly.
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
OHS agrees to go ahead with study on mounds
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us
By TIFFANY AUMANN
ADVOCATE REPORTER
COLUMBUS – The Ohio Historical Society Board of Trustees voted unanimously Friday to move forward with the National Park Service study to evaluate the feasibility of the Newark Earthworks
becoming affiliated with or becoming part of the national park system.
The study could have implications for all three sites in the Newark Earthworks- the Great Circle Earthworks, the Wright Earthworks and the Octagon Earthworks,. Findings would take about a year,
and if adopted by the board would need to be approved by the Ohio General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.
The Octagon Earthworks currently are leased by Moundbuilders Country Club, which has butted heads with the Ohio Historical Society and local mounds enthusiasts who want to see more public access to the site.
OHS Executive Director William Laidlaw said the country club has a been a good steward of the grounds, preserving the area from encroaching development, but with public awareness and interest in the earthworks building,
preparation for tourism should be considered. An observation tower stands next to the country club, but access to the property has been limited to four days this year because of the site’s primary function as a private golf course.
“If you can’t go inside the enclosure you don’t have access,” said Pat Mason, historian for Friends of the Mounds. “I think this is a positive move. I think (OHS) is realizing they need to manage the site a little better.”
Mason was one of about half a dozen supporters of the Newark Earthworks who attended the boards meeting at Ohio Historical Society headquarters in Columbus.
Wayne Sorenson, general manager of Moundbuilders Country Club, was not in attendance. He said at this time he does not have a comment on the board’s action because it doesn’t have any specifics attached.
The country club has a lease with the historical society through 2078.
“I think it’s a bit premature,” he said. “There is nothing to respond to”.
Laidlaw said the society plans to let the park service take the lead in offering recommendations on how to move forward. To h is knowledge, a buyout of Moundbuilders’ lease has not been discussed.
“That may not be in the cards for them.: he said In addition to the access issues, the board of trustees cited budget pressures as the main impetus behind seeking the assistance of the National Park Service.
Kim Schuette, OHS media relations manager, said the Ohio Historical Society has the largest site system in the country,. However, state funding – which makes up 60% of the nonprofit organizations funding- has been shrinking.
Of the Ohio Historical Society’s 58 sites, 29 now are managed by other parties. The board voted Friday to transfer ownership of Seip Mound in Chillicothe to the National Park Service. They also voted to enter into an agreement with Dennison Railroad Depot Museum to manage the Schoenbrunn village.
“The old business model is somewhat in peril,” Laidlaw said. “We need to find a new one, one that is less reliant on the state. We need to find a way to go on offense.
That means no more spreading ourselves over too many product lines.”
Several trustees shared comments on the Newark Earthworks proposal, all supporting the effort to seek outside counsel.
They emphasized the motion was for a study only.
“this course of action does not commit us to any particular course of action,” said George Kane, director of facilities management.
“I view this study as more information for us that someone else is doing.” OHS Trustee Richard Prasse said.
Nonetheless, supporters of the earthworks viewed the vote as a positive first step.
“I know that this is only a study; this is not a fait accompli that will end up in the hands of the park service,” said John Jackson, Denison University professor
and co-chairman of Friends of the Mounds. However, he added “I think it’s a great idea because it would help to elevate the visibility of the site nationally.”
Tiffany Aumann can be reached at (740)328-8544
Or taedward@newarkadvocate.com
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us
By TIFFANY AUMANN
ADVOCATE REPORTER
COLUMBUS – The Ohio Historical Society Board of Trustees voted unanimously Friday to move forward with the National Park Service study to evaluate the feasibility of the Newark Earthworks
becoming affiliated with or becoming part of the national park system.
The study could have implications for all three sites in the Newark Earthworks- the Great Circle Earthworks, the Wright Earthworks and the Octagon Earthworks,. Findings would take about a year,
and if adopted by the board would need to be approved by the Ohio General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.
The Octagon Earthworks currently are leased by Moundbuilders Country Club, which has butted heads with the Ohio Historical Society and local mounds enthusiasts who want to see more public access to the site.
OHS Executive Director William Laidlaw said the country club has a been a good steward of the grounds, preserving the area from encroaching development, but with public awareness and interest in the earthworks building,
preparation for tourism should be considered. An observation tower stands next to the country club, but access to the property has been limited to four days this year because of the site’s primary function as a private golf course.
“If you can’t go inside the enclosure you don’t have access,” said Pat Mason, historian for Friends of the Mounds. “I think this is a positive move. I think (OHS) is realizing they need to manage the site a little better.”
Mason was one of about half a dozen supporters of the Newark Earthworks who attended the boards meeting at Ohio Historical Society headquarters in Columbus.
Wayne Sorenson, general manager of Moundbuilders Country Club, was not in attendance. He said at this time he does not have a comment on the board’s action because it doesn’t have any specifics attached.
The country club has a lease with the historical society through 2078.
“I think it’s a bit premature,” he said. “There is nothing to respond to”.
Laidlaw said the society plans to let the park service take the lead in offering recommendations on how to move forward. To h is knowledge, a buyout of Moundbuilders’ lease has not been discussed.
“That may not be in the cards for them.: he said In addition to the access issues, the board of trustees cited budget pressures as the main impetus behind seeking the assistance of the National Park Service.
Kim Schuette, OHS media relations manager, said the Ohio Historical Society has the largest site system in the country,. However, state funding – which makes up 60% of the nonprofit organizations funding- has been shrinking.
Of the Ohio Historical Society’s 58 sites, 29 now are managed by other parties. The board voted Friday to transfer ownership of Seip Mound in Chillicothe to the National Park Service. They also voted to enter into an agreement with Dennison Railroad Depot Museum to manage the Schoenbrunn village.
“The old business model is somewhat in peril,” Laidlaw said. “We need to find a new one, one that is less reliant on the state. We need to find a way to go on offense.
That means no more spreading ourselves over too many product lines.”
Several trustees shared comments on the Newark Earthworks proposal, all supporting the effort to seek outside counsel.
They emphasized the motion was for a study only.
“this course of action does not commit us to any particular course of action,” said George Kane, director of facilities management.
“I view this study as more information for us that someone else is doing.” OHS Trustee Richard Prasse said.
Nonetheless, supporters of the earthworks viewed the vote as a positive first step.
“I know that this is only a study; this is not a fait accompli that will end up in the hands of the park service,” said John Jackson, Denison University professor
and co-chairman of Friends of the Mounds. However, he added “I think it’s a great idea because it would help to elevate the visibility of the site nationally.”
Tiffany Aumann can be reached at (740)328-8544
Or taedward@newarkadvocate.com
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
Golfers control ancient lunar observatory
Politics obscure spirituality of mound complex
Stephanie Woodard
9/6/06
NEWARK, Ohio – “Look, we’ve won,” quipped Mark Welsh, Yankton Dakota/Mohawk, as he stood on a wooden viewing tower and watched golfers plant a white pennant on a hole of the Moundbuilders Country Club golf course. “They’re surrendering.”
The golf course sits on the Newark Earthworks, the world’s largest mound complex, built 2,000 years ago by ancestral indigenous people in what was then a managed prairie landscape, kept largely free of trees by periodic burning. The site includes grass-covered, precisely sculpted earthen walls defining a 20-acre circle and a 50-acre octagon, as well as freestanding mounds, or artificial hills. Portions of the vast installation align with important lunar events – including the northernmost and southernmost rises and sets of the moon’s 18.6-year cycle. Walled roads as long as 60 miles appear to have connected it to other mound complexes around central Ohio.
Denison College professor emeritus of physics and astronomy Michael Mickelson called the site “an ancient solid-state lunar computer,” and a British archaeologist cataloging wonders of the ancient world recently placed it on the list.
Welsh was joined on the viewing tower by a group that’s working to obtain meaningful public access to the complex, including Marti Chaatsmith, Comanche/Choctaw, program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center, a program of Ohio State University at Newark; Christine Ballengee-Morris, Eastern Band Cherokee, art education professor at OSU’s main campus in Columbus; Carol Welsh, Sisseton-Wahpeton, director of the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, in Columbus; and several community members.
This year, Oct. 14 is Newark Earthworks Day. NAICCO, Denison University, Newark Earthworks Center and other organizations will draw attention to indigenous people’s concerns with speakers, music and more on the OSU-Newark campus.
The Ohio Historical Society, a private nonprofit, owns the tract and has leased it to the country club since the early 20th century. The first leases stipulated that the earthworks be “restored and preserved” and that non-club members be allowed entry. These requirements disappeared in later leases, which currently net OHS about $30,000 annually, a small fraction of its multi-million-dollar budget. The most recent deal, in 1997, extended the club’s tenure from 2028 to 2078.
Except for a few golf-free days each year, non-club members may view the earthworks only from the tower and a short sidewalk. Arranging additional access has been difficult. In 2002, Barbara Crandell, a Cherokee elder praying at the site, was told to leave by course personnel. When she refused, she was arrested and later convicted of criminal trespass, according to court documents.
During 2005 and 2006, the Newark Earthworks Center negotiated with OHS to schedule events at the mounds to celebrate the northernmost moonrises of the current cycle. After the programs, the center’s staff reported to OHS that at various times country club representatives shut down the site at the last minute, refused to provide golf carts to elderly guests, walked – cocktails in hand – across the mounds and blasted the tract with disco music.
A public moonrise viewing that OHS itself had arranged for later this fall was recently canceled. “In negotiating with the club, we were unable to obtain reasonable access for what we felt was a community learning experience,” said OHS spokesman Kathy Hoke.
The difficulties weren’t confined to those events, added Jeff Gill, a minister who leads OHS tours. He described golfers hitting balls toward Native people, reporters and others over the years.
At one point, non-club members were offered Monday mornings as a visiting time, only to encounter workers in hazmat suits applying chemicals as part of regular course maintenance.
“Seeing the treatment Native people are subjected to has shocked non-Native people who’ve gotten involved,” said Chaatsmith. “Much of this has been so negative that most of our conversation has been about that, and about archaeology, and not about the sacredness of this place. Ohio is a state where removals occurred, so a lot of Native history has not been told, and Native voices have not been heard.”
Country club representatives did not respond to requests for a comment, but OHS did. “We are aware things happened and are moving forward with the circumstances we have,” said Hoke. “We’re hoping to dialogue with all concerned and shift the focus to the significance of the site.”
Despite the negativity, moonrise events that did take place were meaningful to participants. “Grandmother Moon came, and we were there,” said Ballengee-Morris. “It brought tears to my eyes.”
Ensuring access for Native people is a moral issue, said Richard Shiels, OSU-Newark history professor and interim director of Newark Earthworks Center, who noted that protecting the mounds is critical, too. Since they’re privately owned, national preservation law doesn’t apply. There is a management plan; however, OHS hasn’t formally accepted it, and the site remains vulnerable.
For nearly a century, the country club has dug into the mounds to install tees, putting greens, sidewalks, a sprinkler system, about 40 memorial plaques and more. “The first clubhouse destroyed 100 feet of the circle,” said Shiels. “Who knows what was lost when the pool went in.”
Additional damage occurs during the off-season. Community member Gail Zion has observed the tracks of ATVs, dog walkers and cross-country skiers in winter. “The ground is soft then, so they dig up the surface,” she said.
Further, maintenance the ancestral builders would have undertaken is no longer done, including removal of trees that are growing on the walls and damaging them with their roots.
Said Mark Welsh: “Native people in Ohio are trying to talk sense into the general population – to help them understand what a gift we have here and how it honors God. Someday we’ll take it back, and the golf course will go away. Just a theory. History will prove me right or wrong.”
<b>Ancient road gets reprieve</b>
A 192-acre parcel that includes the last 250 feet of a 2,000-year-old road has just been rezoned from agricultural to commercial use in preparation for sale to a developer, confirmed John Groff, chief of the division of building and zoning in Heath, Ohio. Ancestral indigenous people constructed the straight, 200-foot-wide walled boulevard, which connected the Newark Earthworks, a mound complex in nearby Newark, with another major mound grouping 60 miles away.
Archaeologist Bradley Lepper has been documenting the thoroughfare by examining aerial and infrared photographs, post-contact maps and more. It was likely a ceremonial road, he said: “It’s much bigger than necessary for practical reasons. Its straightness and scale implies sacred traditions.”
The zoning change sent shivers through the local Native community and their supporters, who are already embroiled in controversies surrounding the Newark complex.
Not to worry, said David Palchesko, a vice president of Chase Properties Ltd., the developer of the retail center proposed for the site. “We’re aware of area with the road. We’re discussing whether we’ll keep it, give it to the city or whatever, but we’re not going to destroy it.”
“Many Ohio earthworks, including the much of the ceremonial road, sit on land that’s privately owned or leased,” said Marti Chaatsmith, Comanche/ Choctaw, program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center. “So, their preservation depends on educating the public, including developers, about not just their historical meaning, but their contemporary religious significance. Native people still come to these places to pray. Protecting the places is important to maintaining Indian cultural identity and spiritual beliefs.”
Politics obscure spirituality of mound complex
Stephanie Woodard
9/6/06
NEWARK, Ohio – “Look, we’ve won,” quipped Mark Welsh, Yankton Dakota/Mohawk, as he stood on a wooden viewing tower and watched golfers plant a white pennant on a hole of the Moundbuilders Country Club golf course. “They’re surrendering.”
The golf course sits on the Newark Earthworks, the world’s largest mound complex, built 2,000 years ago by ancestral indigenous people in what was then a managed prairie landscape, kept largely free of trees by periodic burning. The site includes grass-covered, precisely sculpted earthen walls defining a 20-acre circle and a 50-acre octagon, as well as freestanding mounds, or artificial hills. Portions of the vast installation align with important lunar events – including the northernmost and southernmost rises and sets of the moon’s 18.6-year cycle. Walled roads as long as 60 miles appear to have connected it to other mound complexes around central Ohio.
Denison College professor emeritus of physics and astronomy Michael Mickelson called the site “an ancient solid-state lunar computer,” and a British archaeologist cataloging wonders of the ancient world recently placed it on the list.
Welsh was joined on the viewing tower by a group that’s working to obtain meaningful public access to the complex, including Marti Chaatsmith, Comanche/Choctaw, program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center, a program of Ohio State University at Newark; Christine Ballengee-Morris, Eastern Band Cherokee, art education professor at OSU’s main campus in Columbus; Carol Welsh, Sisseton-Wahpeton, director of the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, in Columbus; and several community members.
This year, Oct. 14 is Newark Earthworks Day. NAICCO, Denison University, Newark Earthworks Center and other organizations will draw attention to indigenous people’s concerns with speakers, music and more on the OSU-Newark campus.
The Ohio Historical Society, a private nonprofit, owns the tract and has leased it to the country club since the early 20th century. The first leases stipulated that the earthworks be “restored and preserved” and that non-club members be allowed entry. These requirements disappeared in later leases, which currently net OHS about $30,000 annually, a small fraction of its multi-million-dollar budget. The most recent deal, in 1997, extended the club’s tenure from 2028 to 2078.
Except for a few golf-free days each year, non-club members may view the earthworks only from the tower and a short sidewalk. Arranging additional access has been difficult. In 2002, Barbara Crandell, a Cherokee elder praying at the site, was told to leave by course personnel. When she refused, she was arrested and later convicted of criminal trespass, according to court documents.
During 2005 and 2006, the Newark Earthworks Center negotiated with OHS to schedule events at the mounds to celebrate the northernmost moonrises of the current cycle. After the programs, the center’s staff reported to OHS that at various times country club representatives shut down the site at the last minute, refused to provide golf carts to elderly guests, walked – cocktails in hand – across the mounds and blasted the tract with disco music.
A public moonrise viewing that OHS itself had arranged for later this fall was recently canceled. “In negotiating with the club, we were unable to obtain reasonable access for what we felt was a community learning experience,” said OHS spokesman Kathy Hoke.
The difficulties weren’t confined to those events, added Jeff Gill, a minister who leads OHS tours. He described golfers hitting balls toward Native people, reporters and others over the years.
At one point, non-club members were offered Monday mornings as a visiting time, only to encounter workers in hazmat suits applying chemicals as part of regular course maintenance.
“Seeing the treatment Native people are subjected to has shocked non-Native people who’ve gotten involved,” said Chaatsmith. “Much of this has been so negative that most of our conversation has been about that, and about archaeology, and not about the sacredness of this place. Ohio is a state where removals occurred, so a lot of Native history has not been told, and Native voices have not been heard.”
Country club representatives did not respond to requests for a comment, but OHS did. “We are aware things happened and are moving forward with the circumstances we have,” said Hoke. “We’re hoping to dialogue with all concerned and shift the focus to the significance of the site.”
Despite the negativity, moonrise events that did take place were meaningful to participants. “Grandmother Moon came, and we were there,” said Ballengee-Morris. “It brought tears to my eyes.”
Ensuring access for Native people is a moral issue, said Richard Shiels, OSU-Newark history professor and interim director of Newark Earthworks Center, who noted that protecting the mounds is critical, too. Since they’re privately owned, national preservation law doesn’t apply. There is a management plan; however, OHS hasn’t formally accepted it, and the site remains vulnerable.
For nearly a century, the country club has dug into the mounds to install tees, putting greens, sidewalks, a sprinkler system, about 40 memorial plaques and more. “The first clubhouse destroyed 100 feet of the circle,” said Shiels. “Who knows what was lost when the pool went in.”
Additional damage occurs during the off-season. Community member Gail Zion has observed the tracks of ATVs, dog walkers and cross-country skiers in winter. “The ground is soft then, so they dig up the surface,” she said.
Further, maintenance the ancestral builders would have undertaken is no longer done, including removal of trees that are growing on the walls and damaging them with their roots.
Said Mark Welsh: “Native people in Ohio are trying to talk sense into the general population – to help them understand what a gift we have here and how it honors God. Someday we’ll take it back, and the golf course will go away. Just a theory. History will prove me right or wrong.”
<b>Ancient road gets reprieve</b>
A 192-acre parcel that includes the last 250 feet of a 2,000-year-old road has just been rezoned from agricultural to commercial use in preparation for sale to a developer, confirmed John Groff, chief of the division of building and zoning in Heath, Ohio. Ancestral indigenous people constructed the straight, 200-foot-wide walled boulevard, which connected the Newark Earthworks, a mound complex in nearby Newark, with another major mound grouping 60 miles away.
Archaeologist Bradley Lepper has been documenting the thoroughfare by examining aerial and infrared photographs, post-contact maps and more. It was likely a ceremonial road, he said: “It’s much bigger than necessary for practical reasons. Its straightness and scale implies sacred traditions.”
The zoning change sent shivers through the local Native community and their supporters, who are already embroiled in controversies surrounding the Newark complex.
Not to worry, said David Palchesko, a vice president of Chase Properties Ltd., the developer of the retail center proposed for the site. “We’re aware of area with the road. We’re discussing whether we’ll keep it, give it to the city or whatever, but we’re not going to destroy it.”
“Many Ohio earthworks, including the much of the ceremonial road, sit on land that’s privately owned or leased,” said Marti Chaatsmith, Comanche/ Choctaw, program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center. “So, their preservation depends on educating the public, including developers, about not just their historical meaning, but their contemporary religious significance. Native people still come to these places to pray. Protecting the places is important to maintaining Indian cultural identity and spiritual beliefs.”
-
E.P. Grondine
Re: Cultural Genocide of Shawnee in Ohio
I have to read through a rather sad attempt at a proto-historic synthesis, and need to vent -
in other words. point out some of its major errors here.
The work is "The Worlds the Shawnee Made - Migration and Violence in Early America" by Stephen Warren.
First problems - no acknowledgement of the appearance Marksville culture in the north, or Lamar Phase culture in the south.
No acknowledgement of Monongahela Fort Ancient versus Ohio River Fort Ancient.
These are important, as they are indicators of migrations in response to
a major climate collapse in North America.
No acknowledgement of the early appearance of pallisades -
No acknowledgement of ancient tribal conflicts - all goods acquired by trade, not as war prizes -
in particular disk pipes - no note made as to dating of disk pipe finds -
no acknowledgement of disk pipe concentration on Upper Ohio River in association with Monongahela Late Fort Ancient.
No acknowledgment of the early appearance of European plagues,
the first ca. 1537 or so.
Little understanding of the timing of the rise of the Creek Confederacy.
Mistaken trade routes through Susquehannock, Ocanachee -
no acknowledgement of early trade via Lake Erie and northern nations.
No understanding of trade via Thawaghila Division on upper headwaters of the Potomac River.
No understanding of genocide of both Susquehannock and Ocanachee in 1676 by Virginia colonists.
No understanding of the Monacans/Manahoacs.
No understanding of Shawnee Divisions as political entities, along with confusion of "piqua" - "gathering"/with "Piqua" - one of the Shawnee Divisions.
No understanding of the key role of the Puritans in the "Beaver Wars".
See"Island at the Center of the World" for background on this.
No understanding of the antiquity of the Yuchees.
To be continued - there's about 2 howlers per page.
No knowledge of the defeat and annihilation of the Five Nations' combined army by the Three Fires in a canoe battle on Lake Superior.
The amount of money (funding and support) the author got for this work is astounding to me -
thus a somewhat warped view of events and an imaginary history gets promoted.
Finally at Martin Chartier - let's see what happens next.
It's bound to be as bad as the rest.
No acknowledgement of the existence of the Tuscarora, or their wars with the colonists.
The author has limited understanding of the expansion of the colonies into the Piedmont.
No understanding of the ancient relations of the Andastes (Susquehannock) with other peoples,
and no understanding of their genocide in 1676.
To say something nice, the author does give the reason for Piscataway migration, but does not detail their migration.
and evolution into the Conoy.
To say something else nice, the author sort of understands the importance of the Chesapeake Bay,
but fails to mention food from fishing, or the settlement of Port Tobacco.
Martin Chartier's party first arrived at Point of Rocks.
Other Shawnee returned immediately to their former homes along the Ohio River
after learning of the annihilation of the Five Nation's army.
In my opinion, Martin and Peter Chartier's actions are covered far better in Charles Augustus Hannah's "The Wilderness Road".
The Shawnee knew more about the geography of the Eastern half of North America then anyone else
for centuries before European arrival.
The remainder of the Alibama were likely located at Muscle Shoals.
Peter Chartier is also mentioned in Spanish records.
In this book, there are often lacks of dates for actions.
Anger by the Catawba at early Shawnee slaving is not understood,
nor the Shawnee slaving at Savanna.
Exactly who slaved who is very important, as it reflects ancient enmities caused by the migrations during the climate collapse.
Tzewaghila (modern Thawakila) migrations are poorly understood.
The three distinct divisions of the Lenape are poorly understood.
To say something good, the author clearly sets our James Logan's role.
The Twightees were a confederacy that included the Miami along with other nations.
To say something else nice, the author has a clear understanding of the legal fictions used to take the Shawnee lands.
"The Worlds the Shawnee Made" is illustrated with colonial pictures of the Yuchi.
Let me see if I can explain myself here.
Comets and asteroids do not hit all that often.
The European history of the the Americas only goes back 500 years.
So to find indicators of impact events and their locations one must use Native American histories.
Geological work follows.
These histories have usually been treated as trash, because of their mentions of impacts, giants (Andaste/Adena),
and most importantly because they show ancient use and thus in some sense title" to lands.
I had to work my way through conquest histories to locate the peoples before conquest,
and then to tie them to their ancient histories.
The regular practice of assimilation among Native American peoples, and the combining of conflicting tribal histories,
is seldom understood.
Among the Shawnee you have C mt DNA (iroquoian), B and D mt DNA (south American immediate source) ,
and A mt DNA (algonquin and siouxian), and thus three very different and conflicting ancient histories combined.
Certainly one of the most important archaeological sites in North America is the underwater site of the remains of the canoe battle on Lake Superior.
Aside from that, some of the most important archives to work through will be those of the Puritan's gun suppliers in the "Low Countries".
I myself would like a hefty amount of money to work my way through Erminie Vogelin's transcripts.
I would need help to set up a 501-3c for this work.
in other words. point out some of its major errors here.
The work is "The Worlds the Shawnee Made - Migration and Violence in Early America" by Stephen Warren.
First problems - no acknowledgement of the appearance Marksville culture in the north, or Lamar Phase culture in the south.
No acknowledgement of Monongahela Fort Ancient versus Ohio River Fort Ancient.
These are important, as they are indicators of migrations in response to
a major climate collapse in North America.
No acknowledgement of the early appearance of pallisades -
No acknowledgement of ancient tribal conflicts - all goods acquired by trade, not as war prizes -
in particular disk pipes - no note made as to dating of disk pipe finds -
no acknowledgement of disk pipe concentration on Upper Ohio River in association with Monongahela Late Fort Ancient.
No acknowledgment of the early appearance of European plagues,
the first ca. 1537 or so.
Little understanding of the timing of the rise of the Creek Confederacy.
Mistaken trade routes through Susquehannock, Ocanachee -
no acknowledgement of early trade via Lake Erie and northern nations.
No understanding of trade via Thawaghila Division on upper headwaters of the Potomac River.
No understanding of genocide of both Susquehannock and Ocanachee in 1676 by Virginia colonists.
No understanding of the Monacans/Manahoacs.
No understanding of Shawnee Divisions as political entities, along with confusion of "piqua" - "gathering"/with "Piqua" - one of the Shawnee Divisions.
No understanding of the key role of the Puritans in the "Beaver Wars".
See"Island at the Center of the World" for background on this.
No understanding of the antiquity of the Yuchees.
To be continued - there's about 2 howlers per page.
No knowledge of the defeat and annihilation of the Five Nations' combined army by the Three Fires in a canoe battle on Lake Superior.
The amount of money (funding and support) the author got for this work is astounding to me -
thus a somewhat warped view of events and an imaginary history gets promoted.
Finally at Martin Chartier - let's see what happens next.
It's bound to be as bad as the rest.
No acknowledgement of the existence of the Tuscarora, or their wars with the colonists.
The author has limited understanding of the expansion of the colonies into the Piedmont.
No understanding of the ancient relations of the Andastes (Susquehannock) with other peoples,
and no understanding of their genocide in 1676.
To say something nice, the author does give the reason for Piscataway migration, but does not detail their migration.
and evolution into the Conoy.
To say something else nice, the author sort of understands the importance of the Chesapeake Bay,
but fails to mention food from fishing, or the settlement of Port Tobacco.
Martin Chartier's party first arrived at Point of Rocks.
Other Shawnee returned immediately to their former homes along the Ohio River
after learning of the annihilation of the Five Nation's army.
In my opinion, Martin and Peter Chartier's actions are covered far better in Charles Augustus Hannah's "The Wilderness Road".
The Shawnee knew more about the geography of the Eastern half of North America then anyone else
for centuries before European arrival.
The remainder of the Alibama were likely located at Muscle Shoals.
Peter Chartier is also mentioned in Spanish records.
In this book, there are often lacks of dates for actions.
Anger by the Catawba at early Shawnee slaving is not understood,
nor the Shawnee slaving at Savanna.
Exactly who slaved who is very important, as it reflects ancient enmities caused by the migrations during the climate collapse.
Tzewaghila (modern Thawakila) migrations are poorly understood.
The three distinct divisions of the Lenape are poorly understood.
To say something good, the author clearly sets our James Logan's role.
The Twightees were a confederacy that included the Miami along with other nations.
To say something else nice, the author has a clear understanding of the legal fictions used to take the Shawnee lands.
"The Worlds the Shawnee Made" is illustrated with colonial pictures of the Yuchi.
Let me see if I can explain myself here.
Comets and asteroids do not hit all that often.
The European history of the the Americas only goes back 500 years.
So to find indicators of impact events and their locations one must use Native American histories.
Geological work follows.
These histories have usually been treated as trash, because of their mentions of impacts, giants (Andaste/Adena),
and most importantly because they show ancient use and thus in some sense title" to lands.
I had to work my way through conquest histories to locate the peoples before conquest,
and then to tie them to their ancient histories.
The regular practice of assimilation among Native American peoples, and the combining of conflicting tribal histories,
is seldom understood.
Among the Shawnee you have C mt DNA (iroquoian), B and D mt DNA (south American immediate source) ,
and A mt DNA (algonquin and siouxian), and thus three very different and conflicting ancient histories combined.
Certainly one of the most important archaeological sites in North America is the underwater site of the remains of the canoe battle on Lake Superior.
Aside from that, some of the most important archives to work through will be those of the Puritan's gun suppliers in the "Low Countries".
I myself would like a hefty amount of money to work my way through Erminie Vogelin's transcripts.
I would need help to set up a 501-3c for this work.