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Participatory heritage
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page ii

Every purchase of a Facet book helps to fund CILIP’s advocacy,

awareness and accreditation programmes for
information professionals.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page iii

Participatory heritage

Edited by
Henriette Roued-Cunliffe
and Andrea Copeland
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page iv

© This compilation: Henriette Roued-Cunliffe and Andrea Copeland 2017

The chapters: the contributors 2017

Published by Facet Publishing,

7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE
www.facetpublishing.co.uk

Facet Publishing is wholly owned by CILIP: the Chartered Institute of

Library and Information Professionals.

The editor and authors of the individual chapters assert their moral
right to be identified as such in accordance with the terms of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988 this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission of the publisher, or, in
the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of a
licence issued by The Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside those terms should be sent to Facet Publishing,
7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE.

Every effort has been made to contact the holders of copyright material
reproduced in this text, and thanks are due to them for permission to reproduce
the material indicated. If there are any queries please contact the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78330-123-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78330-124-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78330-125-6 (e-book)

First published 2017

Text printed on FSC accredited material.

Typeset from editors’ files by Facet Publishing Production in

10/13 pt Palatino Linotype and Open Sans.
Printed and made in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page v

Contents

List of figures and tables...................................................................................................vii

Contributors ........................................................................................................................ix
Introduction: what is participatory heritage? ................................................................xv

PART 1 PARTICIPAnTs 1
1 A communal rock: sustaining a community archives in Flat Rock, Georgia .........3
JoyEllen Freeman

2 The Bethel AME Church Archive: partners and participants ................................15

Andrea Copeland

3 Creating an authentic learning environment for school children: a case

study of digital storytelling programmes at the Mudgeeraba Light Horse
Museum.......................................................................................................................25
Janis Hanley

4 Viking re-enactment ..................................................................................................37

Lars Konzack

5 Learning, loving and living at the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame.........47
Sarah Baker

6 The contributions of family and local historians to British history online .........57
Mia Ridge

7 Forgotten history on Wikipedia................................................................................67

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe

PART 2 CHALLEnGEs 77
8 Custodianship and online sharing in Australian community archives................79
Courtney Ruge, Tom Denison, Steve Wright, Graham Willett and Joanne Evans

9 Who is the expert in participatory culture? ............................................................87

Lýsa Westberg Gabriel and Thessa Jensen
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page vi

VI pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

10 social inequalities in the shaping of cultural heritage infrastructure ................97

Noah Lenstra

11 no Gun Ri Digital Archive: challenges in archiving memory for a

historically marginalized incident..........................................................................105
Donghee Sinn

12 Giving voice to the community: digitizing Jeffco oral histories ..........................117

Krystyna K. Matusiak, Padma Polepeddi, Allison Tyler, Catherine Newton
and Julianne Rist

13 Issues with archiving community data..................................................................129

Lydia Spotts and Andrea Copeland

PART 3 soLuTIons 141

14 Ethiopian stories in an English landscape .............................................................143
Shawn Sobers

15 Having a lovely time: localized crowdsourcing to create a 1930s street

view of Bristol from a digitized postcard collection.............................................153
Nicholas Nourse, Peter Insole and Julian Warren

16 Digital archiving in Canadian artist-run centres ..................................................163

Shannon Lucky

17 new approaches to the community recording and preservation of burial

space ..........................................................................................................................173
Gareth Beale, Nicole Smith and St Mary the Virgin Embsay with Eastby Churchyard
survey team

18 A case for collaboration: solving practical problems in cultural heritage

digitization projects .................................................................................................185
Craig Harkema and Joel Salt

19 open heritage data and APIs ..................................................................................195

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe

Further reading ................................................................................................................205

Index ..................................................................................................................................207
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page vii

List of figures and tables

Figures
1.1 A file cabinet of unarranged records at Flat Rock Archives............................................7
1.2 African artwork on display at the Flat Rock Archives......................................................8
1.3 the Bryant home and current building of the Flat Rock Archives...............................10
2.1 View from the Bethel church’s bell tower ......................................................................17
3.1 Vietnam veteran being interviewed by students at the ‘Long tan Filming Day’ .......26
3.2 Students capturing a volunteer demonstration of weaponry ....................................28
3.3 Student’s painting produced from the ‘Long tan Filming Day’, backstage on
Anzac day ...........................................................................................................................32
9.1 Revised crossmedia content quadrant ..........................................................................89
11.1 twin railroad bridge tunnels at No gun Ri ..................................................................106
11.2 the No gun Ri peace park and Museum ....................................................................110
12.1 Home page of Jeffco Stories on the omeka platform ...............................................124
12.2 Example of an item-level metadata record in the Jeffco Stories collection .............125
14.1 Fairfield House, an Italian villa of around 25 rooms, built circa 1840 ......................145
14.2 the deed of gift of Fairfield, given to the city as a gift by Emperor Haile
Selassie I...........................................................................................................................147
14.3 Honourable Ras Bandele Selassie and visitors in the grounds of Fairfield
House ...............................................................................................................................148
15.1 there are over 1500 points on the community layer on Know your place, all
providing access to crowdsourced historic information and images ......................154
15.2 Many of the Vaughan postcards depict typical street scenes from the early 20th
century .............................................................................................................................155
15.3 the complete Vaughan layer of over 3500 postcard points covering the City
of Bristol with outliers in the surrounding region ......................................................159
17.1 the recording rig developed by St Mary the Virgin Embsay with Eastby
Churchyard survey team ................................................................................................177
17.2 Left: RtI viewed using Specular Enhancement; centre: RtI normal map;
right: RtI normal map subject to filtering.....................................................................179
19.1 Model showing the long tail...........................................................................................197
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VIII pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

Tables
9.1 Roles in participatory heritage ........................................................................................92
12.1 Number of source recordings and their formats........................................................121
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page ix

Contributors

Sarah Baker PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities,

Languages and Social Science at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
Her current research focuses on do-it-yourself popular music archives,
museums and halls of fame and other aspects of popular music heritage and
cultural memory.

Gareth Beale is a researcher in the Department of Archaeology at the

University of York. His research focus is on the use of digital imaging,
computer graphics and interactive media for archaeological research. He is
based at the University of York’s Digital Creativity Labs.

Andrea Copeland is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library and

Information Science in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana
University, Indianapolis. Her research focus is public libraries and their
relationship with communities, with a current emphasis on connecting the
cultural outputs of individuals and community groups to a sustainable
preservation infrastructure.

Tom Denison PhD is a Lecturer and Research Associate with the Centre for
Organizational and Social Informatics (COSI) in the Faculty of Information
Technology at Monash University, Australia. He researches within the fields
of social and community informatics, specializing in the effective use of
information and communications technologies by communities.

Joanne Evans PhD works in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash

University, Australia.

JoyEllen Freeman is the Outreach/Special Collections Archivist in the

Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books at Kennesaw State
University in Kennesaw, Georgia. Her interests include community archives,
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page x

X pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

the use of archives in K-12 education, southern archives and archives in fiction.
She currently serves as the volunteer archivist at the Flat Rock Archives.

Janis Hanley MArts and Media (Hons), GC Policy Analysis, BCommerce is a practitioner
working with community museums to develop education programmes and
digital exhibits. She has over 20 years’ experience as a sole practitioner,
working in the public sector in information technology and community
policy, and has developed a keen professional interest in education and local
heritage. Her research focus is on digital learning in volunteer-run community
museums and heritage places, with a key interest in cultural value and affect.

Craig Harkema is the Digital Projects Librarian at the University Library,

University of Saskatchewan. He has been involved in many digital projects
over the years, most recently leading the development of Sask History Online.

Peter Insole is the Principal Historic Environment Officer at Bristol City

Council and a Research Associate at the University of Bristol. During 2010 to
2011 Peter managed the English Heritage-funded project to create the online
resource Know Your Place, which won the ESRI UK Local Government Vision
Award in 2011 and the Urban Design Group Francis Tibbalds Award in 2014.

Thessa Jensen PhD is Associate Professor, InDiMedia – Centre for Interactive

Digital Media and Experience Design, Aalborg University, Denmark. Jensen’s
research interests focus mainly on ethical challenges and design aspects
within participatory culture, especially, how creativity, user-generated content
and support found within participatory culture can be developed and
maintained on different social media platforms.

Lars Konzack is an Associate Professor at the Royal School of Library and

Information Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He teaches and
researches internet and game culture and, in particular, the emergence and
development of geek culture online as well as offline.

Noah Lenstra is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Studies at

the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. In 2016 he completed his PhD
at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A community informatics
researcher, he studies how communities shape cultural heritage and digital
literacy. His website is noahlenstra.com.

Shannon Lucky is an Assistant Librarian in Library Systems and Information

Technology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research focuses on how
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xi

CoNtRIButoRS XI

communities can use technology to support their information-based work

and tell their own stories. She has a particular interest in the arts, culture and
education sectors.

Krystyna K. Matusiak is an Assistant Professor in the Library and

Information Science Program (LIS) at the University of Denver, Colorado.
Krystyna’s research and teaching interests focus on the digitization of cultural
heritage materials and use of digital libraries. She is the author (with Iris Xie)
of Discover Digital Libraries: theory and practice (2016).

Catherine Newton is a 2015 graduate of the Library and Information Science

Program at the University of Denver, Colorado. She now serves as Digital
Scholarship & Preservation Librarian at The College of Wooster. Her current
research explores consortial approaches to digital preservation. As an intern,
Catherine consulted for the Jeffco Stories project, ultimately recommending
a digital access platform and preservation system.

Nicholas Nourse is a social and local historian at the University of Bristol

with a background in traditional and digital cartographies and in GIS. He has
been attached to a series of successful Bristol-based community engagement
projects and is currently working on collaborative projects in creative
mapping of postcard geographies.

Padma Polepeddi is the Public Services Manager of Lakewood and

Edgewater Libraries in Jefferson County, Colorado. She also oversees services
and operations of the Library 2 You department serving, patrons who lack
the mobility to access physical library locations. She has 20 years of diverse
public library experience that includes outreach and supervisory experience
with multicultural and senior populations.

Mia Ridge is a Digital Curator in the British Library’s Digital Scholarship

team. She has a PhD in digital humanities (2015, Department of History, Open
University) entitled ‘Making Digital History: the impact of digitality on public
participation and scholarly practices in historical research’. Previously, she
conducted human–computer interaction-based research on crowdsourcing in
cultural heritage.

Julianne Rist is the Assistant Director of Public Services for the Jefferson
County Public Library and oversees the Jeffco Stories project. She has over 25
years’ experience in public libraries, from large metropolitan systems to
independent small-town libraries. Julianne has an MLIS from the
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xii

XII pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

University of South Florida and is an ALA-APA Certified Public Library

Administrator.

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe DPhil is an Assistant Professor at the Royal School

of Library and Information Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She
teaches and researches heritage data and information, and in particular how
DIY culture is engaging with cultural heritage online and often outside of
institutions. Her website is: roued.com.

Courtney Ruge is a graduate of Monash University, Australia, holding a

Master of Business Information Systems with a specialization in Information
Management. She has worked as a research assistant on a number of projects
within the Monash University Faculty of Information Technology,
investigating community informatics and heritage informatics issues amongst
Australian cultural institutions.

Joel Salt is Digitization Coordinator in the University Library at the

University of Saskatchewan, where he works on database infrastructure and
website design. He is also a PhD candidate in the University of Saskatchewan
Department of English, focusing on spatial constructions in John Donne and
John Milton.

Donghee Sinn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information

Studies, University at Albany (State University of New York). She specializes
in Archival Science and her research interests focus on the public memory
and personal archiving in the digital environment. Previously, she worked at
the National Archives of Korea.

Nicole Smith is a researcher in museum studies and in digital archaeology

with a particular interest in the potential of digital technologies for
community-led expressions of heritage. She is based at the Department of
Archaeology, University of York.

Shawn Sobers is Associate Professor of Lens Based Media at the University

of the West of England. He is a specialist in creative approaches to
participatory methodologies in heritage settings, participatory education and
community contexts, and much of his work relates to engaging with
marginalized voices and untold stories.

Lydia Spotts has experience in corporate and academic archives and is a

consulting archivist in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her research interests include
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xiii

CoNtRIButoRS XIII

the preservation and access challenges of community archives, the impact of

archives on collective memory, and digital archiving.

Allison Tyler is a 2016 graduate of the Library and Information Science

Program at the University of Denver, Colorado. She is now a doctoral student
at the School of Information at the University of Michigan, with a research
focus on metadata, digital access and reuse requirements for scientific
research data. Allison worked as an intern on the migration of Jeffco Stories
to Omeka.

Julian Warren is City Archivist at Bristol Record Office. He was the archivist
at Arnolfini (a contemporary arts centre in Bristol) and continues to enjoy
working creatively and collaboratively, often on projects that bring together
academics, artists, audiences and archives.

Lýsa Westberg Gabriel is a research associate at InDiMedia – Centre for

Interactive Digital Media, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research
interests are participatory culture and how identity, literacy and power play
a part in the shaping of it.

Graham Willett PhD is President of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

Steve Wright PhD works in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash

University, Australia.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xiv
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xv

INTRODUCTION
What is participatory heritage?

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe and Andrea Copeland

P
ARTICIPATORY HERITAGE COULD be thought of as a space, a space in which
individuals engage in cultural activities outside of formal institutions
for the purpose of knowledge sharing and co-creating with others.
Those engaged with participatory heritage collaborations tend to place more
importance on content and less importance on medium, process or
professional expertise; thus they acknowledge a diversity of expertise and
operate from a premise of shared authority. The collaborations are bottom-
up in nature, as they emerge from connections among individuals rather than
organizations.
Participatory heritage activities do not necessarily interact with cultural
heritage institutions, which are governed by policies and procedures and are
hindered by legal and budgetary constraints. These institutions employ
information experts who guide practices and innovation in information
organization, access and use. They typically do not employ community
experts and increasingly are employing fewer subject experts (Gerolimos,
Malliari and Iakovidis, 2015). Participatory heritage draws individuals
together around content, and expertise in and knowledge of that content.
These individuals have a strong desire to engage with heritage content in
order to gain, share and create new knowledge. While this sounds like the
sort of activity heritage institutions are designed to support, this contrast of
focus creates a mission mismatch between participatory heritage groups and
heritage institutions, and raises the concern that heritage institutions will lose
their connections to those very persons they are trying to serve if they do not
engage in the participatory heritage sphere.
The do-it-yourself (DIY) movement, strong in many professional domains,
is well represented in archives and other heritage activities. The power of
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xvi

XVI pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

digital connectivity and the ease of content creation fuels participation. Local
and family historians, craftspeople, artists and many more groups are
participating in collection building and memory making outside of formal
heritage institutions. The breadth of participatory heritage space will continue
to expand and, in doing so, create a more inclusive shared heritage.
Without links to formal heritage institutions, issues of scalability, capacity
building and long-term and equitable access arise. Ideally, the participatory
heritage space will evolve to include means for community-based heritage
groups to partner with heritage institutions to the benefit of both.
If participatory heritage groups value shared expertise, dynamism and
bottom-up approaches and heritage institutions value formal credentials,
guiding policies and top-down approaches, how could the linkage between
the two be improved?

Examples of participatory heritage

A good starting place would be to explore a few examples of participatory
heritage facilitated by social media, user-generated content and crowd-
sourcing.
Wikipedia, whose content is generated through crowdsourcing, began in
2001 and today has 31.7 million registered editors.1 As Wikipedia grew in size,
so did the number of policies regarding how entries were to be created. The
larger it grew, the greater the need became for formal systems for organization
and funding to ensure sustainability. It could be argued that the Wikimedia
Foundation is becoming an institution along the lines of other GLAM (gallery,
library, archive and museum) institutions.
The ‘Old Copenhagen’ group, one of many community-based heritage
groups on Facebook,2 has nearly 35,000 members and is an open, local history
group for Copenhagen, Denmark. It is designed as an informal place for
exchanging memories and images of Copenhagen that are a minimum of 30
years old. Users are asked to avoid posting about politics and advertising.
This is the extent of the group’s policies.
The Sydney Opera House Flickr group3 currently has 1883 members. This
group has a few more rules than the Facebook group above. The most
important rule is reflected in its name – the Sydney Opera House must be the
focus of the photographs submitted for inclusion in the collection. A
committee reviews photos for inclusion.
Ravelry,4 a social networking site for knitters, has 1.4 million users
worldwide, a global membership that shares in the cultural experience of
knitting. The site uses its own technical infrastructure in order to better focus
solely on knitting and the allied arts.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xvii

INtRoDuCtIoN: wHAt IS pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE? XVII

Ancestry5 has 2 million paying subscribers, with fees ranging between $20
and $50 a month, and supports genealogical research through the aggregation
of historical records (census data and newspapers) and user-generated
content (family trees, photos, scanned documents and DNA results).
Heritage institutions have had no part in creating these resources and
services. If it were not for the guiding policies (including professional ethics
and tax-based funding constraints) and the limited resources of heritage
institutions, it could be argued that any number of them could have taken the
lead on developing tools like Ravelry and Ancestry. By design, heritage
organizations do not allow for the nimbleness required to respond to the
market-driven technology trends that emerge in a dynamic and democratic
information environment. Revenue from taxes could never be used to invest
in a potentially risky or potentially profitable business venture like Ancestry.
Further, non-profit governmental agencies, which many heritage institutions
are, are rarely permitted to charge the fees necessary to maintain and grow
the service.
Ancestry is a powerful research tool for scholars, genealogists and family
historians around the world. Wonderful for those who can afford it; but, due
to membership fees, many groups of people can find themselves excluded.
While it is highly unlikely that Ancestry will cease to exist, given its proven
profitability, the company that owns Ancestry is not beholden to the public
good in the way that heritage institutions are.
The Ancestry case exemplifies how two deeply held values of heritage
institutions – accessibility for all and sustainable preservation – are up against
profitability and technological innovation.
Bringing heritage institutions and participatory heritage groups together
has proved beneficial to overcoming limitations in both spaces, as this volume
illustrates through a variety of case studies. In forming relationships, heritage
institutions increase their capacity for building more inclusive and culturally
relevant collections. Through such partnerships, institutions not only are
exposed to an increasingly broader scope of heritage topics but also are better
positioned to help those communities that are not as capable of telling their
own stories. The need for participatory heritage groups to form relationships
with heritage institutions often emerges when financial and sustainability
issues arise. Over time, relying on volunteers and limited or sporadic financial
resources threatens the long-term existence of any of the resources created by
these groups. The mission mismatch could match up rather well, with the
right connections in place.
It is our hope that this book will help information and heritage
professionals to learn from others who are engaging with participatory
heritage communities. Hence the focus on case studies authored by
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xviii

XVIII pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

individuals working in the space that combines both formal and informal
approaches to documenting and sharing heritage materials. Each chapter
provides insights into the social, organizational and intellectual characteristics
of participatory heritage and how these characteristics support or conflict
with the characteristics of the formal heritage sector. The overarching result
is a resource that provides methods for connecting, solutions to challenges
and a shared understanding of the phenomenon. All of this is aimed at
moving the conversation forward within our different communities of
practice.
The following chapters present specific cases that explore the successes and
challenges faced when participatory heritage groups connect with heritage
institutions. These cases are shared with the goal of imparting lessons learned
and insights gained to those interested in engaging with heritage ‘amateurs’
and ‘professionals’ in participatory heritage spaces.
It was important for us to include case-based chapters from diverse
geographical locations. While heritage institutions share certain fundamental
goals, the ways in which those goals are met certainly vary from culture to
culture and from institution to institution within the same country. The
patterns and the divergences from those patterns that emerge from the global
perspective presented here are important areas for analysis and reflection. As
such, we have divided the volume into three parts: participants, challenges
and solutions. Within each of the parts, readers can readily explore how the
authors’ cultural experiences contribute to our growing understanding of
participatory heritage and what it means for heritage professionals who want
to engage with it.

Participants in heritage
Part 1 focuses on the variety of different participants possessing an interest
in heritage. In this sector there have always been amateur participants, and
the professional participants we know today (museum curators, archivists
and information specialists) are a rather new phenomenon, born out of
increasingly higher education levels. One can now train to become a
professional in the heritage sector, but this does not mean that there are not
still many people who participate without training. We call them amateurs
and local or family historians, we know them as users of our institutions, we
understand that they are partaking in DIY culture. However, we are very
aware today that there is a divide between those who are professionals and
those who are not, when it comes to heritage. In this book we wanted to break
down this barrier and look at all the potential participants in heritage,
whether they are institutions or communities. In the first chapter, JoyEllen
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page xix

INtRoDuCtIoN: wHAt IS pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE? XIX

Freeman looks at a community archive in Georgia, United States. The archive

is an institution built around amateur initiative, like many other GLAM
institutions that are now fully professionalized. The archive in this case has
become a collecting point for African-American communities and culture in
this Southern part of the United States. Andrea Copeland (Chapter 2)
similarly works with African-American communities in Indianapolis in this
case in relation to the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and its 180-
year history. The focus here is on working to preserve the community’s
archive in collaboration with different institutions such as the Indiana
Historical Society, the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
University Library and the Indiana State Museum. Janis Hanley’s Chapter 3
explores the inclusion of school students in the heritage of Australia’s
involvement in the Vietnam War, through technology. The emphasis is on
digital storytelling and collection, and this also includes collaboration with
teachers. In Lars Konzack’s Chapter 4 we meet various different participants
such as archaeology students, tradespeople, re-enactors, horseback riders,
archers and many more who are all partaking in the same Viking market at
Moesgaard Museum, Denmark. We see how the different participants have
developed their interaction with and interpretation of the Viking age through
the market’s 40-year history. In Chapter 5 Sarah Baker similarly introduces
different motivations and reasons for volunteering in a DIY institution: the
Australian Country Music Hall of Fame. Some volunteers join because they
are fans of country music, and some as a part of a government unemployment
scheme. Mia Ridge, on the other hand, explores a very specific and long-
running group of amateurs and family historians in Britain in Chapter 6. In
particular, this chapter focuses on how these individuals not only participate
in heritage but specifically contribute to our collective heritage through both
grassroots and institutionally organized digital transcription of historical
records. Finally in this part, in Chapter 7 Henriette Roued-Cunliffe explores
the role of heritage on Wikipedia and how this content is linked closely to the
interests of those who participate as editors. The chapter examines different
ways to include more marginalized heritage into the platform through
WikiProjects, edit-a-thons, student editors and Wikipedians in residence.

Challenges in participatory heritage

In Part 2 the main emphasis is on the challenges involved with participation
in heritage. Ruge et al. set the stage in Chapter 8 through their analysis of
Australian GLAM institutions, on the one hand, and the Australian Lesbian
and Gay Archives, on the other. Among other things, they list reasons why
GLAM institutions can be reluctant to digitize and share collections online.
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XX pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE

Lýsa Westberg Gabriel and Thessa Jensen tackle a similar issue in relation to
Danish community archives and heritage-related Facebook groups in Chapter
9. They challenge the concept of expert, curator and participant across online
platforms. In Chapter 10 Noah Lenstra discusses the challenges that can occur
in heritage projects that involve collaboration between well-funded
universities, on the one hand, and marginalized African-American
communities in the United States, on the other. These challenges in particular
centre on an uneven power balance in the shaping of the project. Donghee
Sinn’s Chapter 11 also focuses on the challenges in preserving marginalized
heritage; in this instance, in relation to the stories from survivors of the No
Gun Ri massacre during the Korean War. The chapter challenges the ease of
which projects can take advantage of the passion of volunteer participants in
heritage, particularly when funds are lacking, which they often are outside
of larger institutions. In Chapter 12, by Krystyna Matusiak et al., the
challenges take a turn towards a more technical focus, with a look towards
the digitization and online presentation of oral histories from Colorado,
United States. They take a stance on the issue of developing sustainable digital
projects in this overview of the project Jeffco Stories. Lastly, in Chapter 13
Lydia Spotts and Andrea Copeland explore the intangible on- and offline
heritage that is constantly being created by the cycling culture in Indianapolis,
United States. This, in particular, emphasizes the substantial technical and
ethical challenges we are facing in terms of preserving the ever-growing
amounts of new, born-digital heritage material created online each day.

Participatory heritage solutions

In Part 3 the chapters mainly explore solutions in relation to participation in
heritage. This can be both solutions to the challenges that participation
presents, as well as participation as the solution to other more general issues
faced by the heritage sector. In Chapter 14, in Shawn Sobers’ exploration of
the Ethiopian heritage in Bath, England, dating back to the period 1935–41,
we see how Fairfield House is a multi-purpose space with very different
users. The main success of the place can be ascribed to the inclusion of the
different stakeholders in the decision-making process. In Chapter 15, by
Nicholas Nourse et al., crowdsourcing is presented as a way to encourage
and facilitate participation in local heritage in Bristol, England. In this chapter
they emphasize the importance of understanding the volunteers and their
needs and work processes. Shannon Lucky’s Chapter 16 presents three
solutions used by artist-run centres in Canada in preserving their digital
archives. These include the use of existing web platforms such as YouTube,
Instagram and WordPress, developing their own platforms and online
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INtRoDuCtIoN: wHAt IS pARtICIpAtoRy HERItAgE? XXI

databases, and through partnering with larger GLAM institutions. Gareth

Beale et al. explore technological development in a community archaeology
project on historical burial spaces in York, England, in Chapter 17. In
particular, their account ranges from a description of the development of a
specialized recording rig, to the diversity in skills among the participants of
the project. In Chapter 18, Craig Harkema and Joel Salt present the
collaboration between community members and the University Library at
the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, with the aim of increasing the
amount of Saskatchewan heritage content online. Among several solutions
aimed at particular challenges in the project, one notable solution was their
inclusion of heritage Facebook groups like Vintage Saskatoon and how they
are making the collection available through download options and APIs
(Application Programming Interfaces). This is exactly the topic of the last
chapter, Chapter 19 by Henriette Roued-Cunliffe, which, through three
cases, argues for open heritage data as a means to facilitating
participation in heritage now and in the future.

Notes
1. As of November 2011, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_community.
2. https://www.facebook.com/groups/OldCopenhagen.
3. https://www.flickr.com/groups/16347338@N00.
4. http://www.ravelry.com/about.
5. http://www.ancestry.com.

Reference
Gerolimos, M., Malliari, A. and Iakovidis, P. (2015) Skills in the Market: an analysis
of skills and qualifications for American librarians, Library Review, 64 (1/2), 21–35,
doi: 10.1108/lr-06-2014-0063.
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R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page 1

PART 1
Participants
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CHAPTER 1
A communal rock: sustaining a community
archives in Flat Rock, Georgia

JoyEllen Freeman

I
N A SMALL American community, south-east of Atlanta, in the state of
Georgia, African-American heritage is like a rock – solid, strong, steadfast
and, for many years, silent. Flat Rock gets its name from the flat rock
outcrops that are ubiquitous throughout the region due to the two nearby
granite structures known as Panola Mountain and Arabia Mountain (McVey,
1966). Beyond its geographical uniqueness, Flat Rock is significant because it
is the birthplace of one of the United States’ few African-American
communities in the South that has remained continuously inhabited since the
early 19th century (Collins, 2011; Glover, Woodard, Reed and Waits, 2012).
Despite its historical significance, the name Flat Rock has not appeared on a
map for approximately 150 years (Flat Rock Archives, 2015a). Flat Rock
community has been cartographically invisible and culturally marginalized
for more than five generations, and its legacy was well on its way to
desolation by the late 20th century. But, like a rock, this community stood its
ground. The glaring lack of documentation about the Flat Rock community
in mainstream historical records prompted the residents of Flat Rock to
initiate their own efforts to document and preserve its heritage. In 2006, these
collective efforts united and the Flat Rock Archives was born.
The Flat Rock Archives is not an ordinary archive. Although the
institutional mission is to document, preserve and make available the records
and stories of Flat Rock’s African-American ancestors and descendants, this
is by no means its only mission (Flat Rock Archives, 2015b). The Archives
strives to reinstate many traditions and connections that the community lost
over the years due to slavery and racial marginalization. Because the Flat Rock
community has many needs that mainstream society failed to respect in the
past, including familial ties, cultural empowerment and historical knowledge
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4 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

of its people, the Flat Rock Archives often finds itself playing multiple roles
in order to serve the multifaceted needs of its community and to preserve a
sense of unity. The goal of this chapter is to explore the issues, considerations
and complications that arise when an archival institution serves its
community in multiple and often conflicting capacities. This work relies on
research from archival holdings at the DeKalb History Center and Flat Rock
Archives, a diverse sampling of authoritative archival literature, an interview
with the founder and president of the Flat Rock Archives and my own
personal narration. This research supports the conclusion that balancing the
needs of a community archives as an archival institution and as a
participatory community effort requires archivists to identify and analyse all
the roles an archive serves in its community and then to be willing to depart
from standard, best practices in order to retain the community’s continuous
trust, support and participation in the archival endeavour. Analysing the Flat
Rock Archives in this manner is useful for the archival profession because it
examines the concept of archival identity from the perspective of a
community archives – a viewpoint that is often ignored. Further, this analysis
encourages archivists to take steps toward balancing professionalism with
respect for community.

History and background

‘Nature isn’t separate from history and culture’ (Collins, 2011). This quote,
spoken by the Executive Director of the Arabia Mountain Heritage Area
Alliance, holds true for the Flat Rock community. The history of Flat Rock is
as geographic as it is cultural and begins long before the community was
officially recognized in approximately 1822 (Price, 1997, 51; Collins, 2011).
Prior to the 19th century, Creek and Cherokee Native Americans inhabited
the Flat Rock area. According to Mr Johnny Waits, the founder and president
of the Flat Rock Archives, it is believed that the region served as a migrant
community for Native Americans and runaway slaves, who lived in harmony
during the community’s formative years (J. Waites, personal communication,
9 April, 2016). ‘That’s why there’s Creek Indians buried in our cemetery,’ says
Waits, in reference to the revered and historic slave cemetery where more
than 250 of Flat Rock’s early inhabitants are buried (Lohr, 2008). Around 1840,
the destiny of Flat Rock began to change. Just a few miles east, about 100
individuals were in the process of establishing a settlement at the intersection
of two main roads in the area that connected the cities of Lawrenceville and
McDonough and the cities of Decatur and Augusta. This early settlement was
known as Cross Roads (Robbins, 1986). On 5 March 1856 the Georgia General
Assembly officially incorporated Cross Roads as the city of Lithonia, making
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FREEMAn SuStAININg A CoMMuNIty ARCHIVES 5

it the third oldest town in DeKalb County (DeKalb History Center, n.d.;
Glover et al., 2012). According to local legend, the city’s name originates from
the Greek words lithos, meaning stone, and onia, meaning place – its name
paying homage to the wealth of granite that existed throughout the region
(Robbins, 1986). The copious amount of stone and gneiss granite in Lithonia
made it a major player in national commerce during the mid- to late 19th
century. As Lithonia gained geographic and economic power, however,
recognition of the Flat Rock community faded.
The last map to display the Flat Rock community appeared in
approximately 1865, and for the next century and a half mainstream historical
records failed to acknowledge the community’s (GeorgiaInfo, 2016). Despite
years of historical neglect, the legacy of Flat Rock survives through the
documents, photographs, rare books, films, scrapbooks, artefacts and artwork
of its community members. According to McKemmish, Gilliland and Ketelaar
(2005), it is natural for individual communities to document their impact on
human society by preserving records that evince and memorialize their
functions and activities (p. 146). When mainstream historical records
misrepresent or ignore the existence of communities in an attempt to
‘influence what is remembered and what is forgotten, what is preserved and
what is destroyed’, these communities may feel the need to reclaim their
history and identity by developing community archives (McKemmish et al.,
2005, 146). Flinn, Stevens and Shepherd (2009) define community archives as
‘the active participation of a community in documenting and making
accessible the history of their particular group and/or locality on their own
terms’ (p. 73). Likewise, the creation of the Flat Rock Archives shows how the
Flat Rock community chooses to document history in its own way and on its
own terms. These efforts not only reclaim control over Flat Rock’s
documentary heritage but also challenge mainstream ideas about what an
archival institution is and how it is supposed to function.

Managing the various roles of the Flat Rock Archives

the archive as community
The Flat Rock Archives serves as a communal and familial meeting ground
for local residents. In this sense, the archive fulfils the community’s need for
a space that fosters solidarity and unification. Over the years, the Archives
has hosted church services, family reunions and a variety of community
events to support its community. This culture of community gathering and
celebration at the archive aligns with Jeanette Bastian’s (2013) assertion that
events and celebrations can be considered a part of a ‘living archives’, where
cultural events aid in the creation of collective memory (p. 122). The intimate
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6 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

relationship between the Flat Rock Archives and its community is essential
to the overall sustenance of the institution, yet this same relationship also
poses challenges for the archival endeavour. Because the Flat Rock Archives
not only belongs to the community but is also viewed as an extension of the
community, it is difficult to implement appraisal practices. At the archive, it
is common to find records that have nothing to do with Flat Rock or its
history. Johnny Waits, the president of the Flat Rock Archives, insists on
keeping this material, lest he offend a family member or supporter. Keeping
an extraneous item here or there seemed harmless at first, but the lack of
appraisal practices and a formal collection development policy soon left the
archive vulnerable to community members who attempted to donate
extraneous items, most notably an old blender and a decrepit couch.
According to Flinn (2007), community archives are known for taking a broad
view of archives, as their holdings often fit the mould of a created or artificial
collection of material, in contrast to a traditional archival institution that
collects records created in the course of business. The Flat Rock Archives’
openness to collecting virtually any item offered by community members has
given many individuals a chance to participate in the creation of history;
however, this method turned out to be unsustainable and unhealthy for the
archival programme. To rectify this issue, I drafted the Flat Rock Archives’
first collection development policy.
Creating the first collection development policy for the Flat Rock Archives
was precarious, particularly since the archive had existed for such a long time
without one. Cynthia K. Sauer’s 2001 study of collection development policies
in archival institutions suggests that this issue is not peculiar to Flat Rock.
Sauer found that nearly 35% of respondents in her study did not have a
written collection development policy ‘because the repository did not want
to be limited in scope of what it could collect or because it was not felt that a
written policy was necessary’ (p. 318–19). This mentality is particularly
prevalent in a community archives where ‘forms of remembrance … are
difficult to capture in conventional ways’, leading the archival institution to
collect a myriad of items, even those that professional archivists may consider
ephemeral (Bastian, 2013). In order to create a collection development policy
that is respectful toward communities and yet effective for the archival
programme, archivists must understand the types of records the community
values most, rather than focusing on what best fits the professional definition
of a record. In the case of the Flat Rock Archives, users and donors often share
an important characteristic – both are Flat Rock community members. Hence,
it is crucial for the collection development policy to accurately reflect the wide
range of items that Flat Rock residents donate, as this also provides insight
into what these same community members will value over time. Waits and I
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FREEMAn SuStAININg A CoMMuNIty ARCHIVES 7

came to a point of mutual understanding by developing a collection policy

that welcomes a variety of materials, particularly artefacts and family
heirlooms. In addition, the collection policy leaves space for materials that
may not directly relate to Flat Rock but can provide insight into southern
African-American life in the United States. This type of policy is broad enough
to encompass the wide range of materials that community members are likely
to donate, yet it is specific enough to protect the Archives from acquiring
items that are completely out of scope, without discouraging or offending
community members.

the archive as a museum

Managing an archive that also serves as a museum creates conflicts for
arrangement and description. This difficulty stems from inherent differences
between museums and archives in terms of the types of information they collect
and how this information is managed. Archival institutions generally acquire
collections of reports, correspondence, personal papers, manuscripts,
audiovisual materials and other documentary forms that are used as ‘vehicle[s]
for carrying information about the functions or roles of people, groups or
organizations’ (Roe, 2005, 26). Museums, on the other hand, generally acquire
individual artefacts and objects (Taylor and Joudrey, 2009, 13). As Roe (2005)
notes, it is common for ‘historical societies,1 archives, libraries, and museums to
hold a mixture of archival records,
library materials, and artifacts.
Individuals in smaller institutions must
often single-handedly manage access to
these different types of materials’ (p. 25).
Such is the case at the Flat Rock Archives.
Historical documents, books, magazines,
artwork, photos, artefacts and furniture
occupy almost every inch of space in the
building. All of these materials are on
display, essentially making the entire
repository a museum in addition to an
archive (Figures 1.1 and 1.2).
The emphasis on exhibits and pro-
gramming at the Flat Rock Archives
affects its ability to arrange and describe
material in accordance with archival
principles and standards that were Figure 1.1 A file cabinet of unarranged
records at Flat Rock Archives (image by
developed to protect the context of author)
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8 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

records as collections. Because ‘public programs and outreach initiatives …

both depend on and affect arrangement and description’, the Flat Rock
Archives arranges and describes materials with museum tourists in mind as
opposed to archival researchers; hence, the context of records is often an
afterthought (Roe, 2005, 9). When asked
about the arrangement of materials at
the archive, Waits admitted, ‘I didn’t
[arrange]. I just put things in folders.’ As
for the artefacts, ‘I just randomly put
them out’ (J. Waits, personal com-
munication, 2016). Although Waits
knows the provenance of every item in
the holdings, none of this information
was ever documented. Consequently,
arranging and describing the archive’s
wide range of material is an extremely
complex process.
Implementing standards of arrange-
ment and description in an environment
like the Flat Rock Archives means
substituting professional standards for Figure 1.2 African artwork on display at
community ones. I found that using the Flat Rock Archives (image by author)
archival standards of arrangement and
description as a loose framework while maintaining the community’s current
organization was an effective way to balance the needs of the archive as an
archival repository and as a museum until further processing could get
underway. I used the ‘more product, less process’ (MPLP)2 method to process
only those items that were not on display, leaving the exhibited items where
they were and intellectually noting this nuance in the records inventory. Not
only is this method practical but it also demonstrates respect for the community.
According to Shilton and Srinivasan (2007), ‘using archival arrangement and
resulting descriptive practices to preserve contextual value as the community
understands it allows historically marginalized communities to speak, not be
spoken for’, which is an important aspect of community archiving (p. 94–5).
Because Flat Rock’s residents understand and appreciate the archive as both a
record keeper and a museum, respecting its current arrangement and
descriptive practices is key.

the archive as a home and farm

Before the Flat Rock Archives was an archive, it was a home to one of Flat
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FREEMAn SuStAININg A CoMMuNIty ARCHIVES 9

Rock’s most legendary families – the Bryants. In 1917, Theodore Bryant Sr

built the home and its nearby barn from the ground up. Because the Bryant
family is largely credited with having kept the Flat Rock community intact
during the years of the Great Migration,3 the home has become a symbol of
community memory for residents of Flat Rock. These memories undoubtedly
played a role in Reverend Theodore A. Bryant Jr’s offering his family’s home
to become the space for the archive in 2004. Waits spent a year refurbishing
the home until it was as good as new in 2006, when the archive opened. But,
over the succeeding decade, managing the needs and priorities of the home
has come into direct conflict with the preservation needs of archival materials.
The house contains a host of environmental issues affecting its ability to
serve as a safe place for archives. It lacks central heating and air on the first
floor, so the only temperature controls are four fireplaces. All areas of the
main floor are exposed to wide fluctuations in both temperature and
humidity, largely because the back and front doors of the house are often left
open to facilitate easy access to the porch and barn. Naturally, this practice
leaves the archives vulnerable to pests and dirt. These issues are exacerbated
by the fact that various residents of Flat Rock stay at the Archives for extended
periods of time, sometimes overnight. Consequently, normal human activities
like cooking, using lights and manipulating temperature levels further
endanger archival materials.
According to Mary Ritzenthaler (2005), ‘the highest preservation priority
of every archival institution is to provide environmentally controlled quarters
for the storage and use of holdings’ (p. 110). This ‘mass preservation approach’
is an efficient and economical way of caring for archives in a way that benefits
all materials, regardless of format. At the Flat Rock Archives, this method is
problematic for a few reasons. The first reason has to do with uniqueness.
The Bryant home (Figure 1.3) is approximately 100 years old and was built as
a Georgian-style cottage, one of the most enduring styles of architecture in
Georgia from the late 18th century until the early 20th century (House types,
2013). The character of the home is enhanced by the nearby barn, chicken
coop, outhouse and water well that also lie on the property. The ability to
provide such an authentic representation of 20th-century rural African-
American life is a point of pride for the Flat Rock Archives, particularly since
many tourists and student groups travel to Flat Rock specifically to experience
this bygone way of life. Hence, there is an air of apprehension when it comes
to making significant changes to the home.
The second reason is memory. The Bryant home is a symbol of collective
memory for many of Flat Rock’s residents, particularly Waits, who fondly
remembers his visits to the home as a child and young adult. He especially
remembers holding a ladder while Theodore A. Bryant Sr placed address
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10 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

Figure 1.3 The Bryant home and current building of the Flat Rock Archives (image by author)

numbers on top of the house in the early 1980s, shortly before he died (J.
Waits, personal communication, 2016). Waits has made it his goal to retain
the original structure, look and feel of the historic Bryant home as much as
possible. He even keeps a ‘period room’ on the first floor that remains an
untouched area of the home, meant to provide an authentic view into early
20th-century Black life in Flat Rock. Making significant changes to the home
could compromise these cherished memories and reduce the authentic feel
of the environment.
The final reason is money. The Flat Rock Archives survives on two main
grants per year, and this funding covers basic institutional needs such as
insurance, utilities and repairs. Whatever is left over usually goes toward
purchasing basic archival supplies and funding a few public programmes. In
2015, the Archives spent nearly $4000 dollars in repairs to the home, due to
pipe bursts and other maintenance issues. Maintaining the fundamental
needs of the home, or, as Waits puts it, ‘simply keeping the lights on’, has
strained the Flat Rock Archives financially, and so making significant
environmental changes to the home for the sake of archival material has not
been much of a priority (J. Waits, personal communication, 2016). Overall,
preservation is still a work in progress at the Flat Rock Archives. Currently,
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FREEMAn SuStAININg A CoMMuNIty ARCHIVES 11

the archive is fostering a partnership with the Society of Georgia Archivists

as a means of obtaining further professional expertise regarding the
preservation of archival materials. Future plans for this partnership include
a mass-preservation and processing day, grant-writing assistance and a steady
stream of volunteers.

Conclusion
In 1953 the British author L. P. Hartley wrote, ‘the past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there’. Visiting the Flat Rock Archives is like taking
a step into the past, to a time when the terms ‘neighbour’ and ‘family’ were
synonymous; when land was passed down to multiple generations with
pride; and when community heritage was not merely something to be
remembered, but a way of life. The multiple roles that the Flat Rock Archives
assumes on a daily basis are a part of what makes it a community archives
and what makes its impact so significant. Although these roles often hinder
the archive’s ability to maintain a stable archival programme according to
professional standards, the Flat Rock Archives exemplifies a case where
sustaining multiple functions is required so as to maintain a healthy
relationship with Flat Rock’s residents and to encourage community
participation in local heritage preservation. Balancing the needs of the archive
with the needs of the community requires a departure from standard, archival
best practices and a willingness to respect and support a community’s effort
to document itself as it sees fit.

Notes
1 According to Schmidt (n.d.), historical societies may be defined as ‘organizations
that seek to preserve and promote interest in history of a region, a historical
period, nongovernment organizations, or a subject. The collections of historical
societies typically focus on a state or community’.
2. MPLP is a strategy of archival processing meant to reduce backlogs in archival
repositories. It encourages archivists to focus less on traditional, time-consuming
methods of processing and instead, put more emphasis on achieving the ultimate
goal of accessibility. For further inquiry see Greene and Meissner (2005).
3. In the years following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the USA, The
Great Migration was a 60-year exodus of more than six million African
Americans from southern regions of the USA to areas in the Northeast, Midwest,
and West. The Great Migration spanned roughly from 1910 until 1970.
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12 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

References
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texts, and archival sensibilities, Archival Science, 13 (2–3), 121–31.
Collins, S. (writer and producer) (2011) Legacy of Land: A look at Georgia’s latest
national heritage area [television broadcast], Georgia Public Broadcasting.
DeKalb History Center (n.d.) Untitled document in subject file, unpublished.
Flat Rock Archives (2015a) History of the Archives,
www.flatrockarchives.com/history/.
Flat Rock Archives (2015b) About Us, www.flatrockarchives.com/.
Flinn, A. (2007) Community Histories, Community Archives: some opportunities
and challenges, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 28 (2), 151–76.
Flinn, A., Stevens, M. and Shepherd, E. (2009) Whose Memories, Whose Archives?
Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream, Archival
Science, 9 (1–2), 71–86.
GeorgiaInfo (2016) [1865 historical atlas of DeKalb County], GALILEO,
http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/counties/dekalb.
Glover, J., Woodard, K., Reed, P. J. and Waits, J. (2012) The Flat Rock Community
Mapping Project: a case study in community archaeology, Early Georgia, 40 (1),
23–44.
Greene, M. and Meissner, D. (2005) More Product, Less Process: revamping
traditional archival processing, The American Archivist, 68 (2), 208–63.
Hartley, L. P. (1953) The Go-Between, Hamish Hamilton.
House types (2013) In New Georgia Encyclopedia,
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/house-types.
Lohr, K. (2008) Antebellum Town: A record of black experience,
http://npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18233281.
McKemmish S., Gilliland, A. and Ketelaar, E. (2005) ‘Communities of Memory’:
pluralising archival research and education agendas, Archives and Manuscripts,
33, 146–74, http://infotech.monash.edu/research/about/centres/cosi/projects/mct/
prato2006/mckemmish-gilliland-ketelaar.pdf.
McVey, V. (1966) Lithonia traces beginnings to 100 people at Cross Roads, The
Atlanta Journal, (4 May), 4E.
Price, V. (1997) The History of DeKalb County, 1822–1900, Wolf Publishing Company.
Ritzenthaler, M. (2005) Preserving Archives and Manuscripts, Society of American
Archivists.
Robbins, J. (1986) Lithonia, Georgia. Item in subject file at DeKalb History Center.
Roe, K. (2005) Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, Society of
American Archivists.
Sauer, C. (2001) Doing the Best We Can? The use of collection development policies
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Archivist, 64 (2), 308–49.
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Schmidt, L. (n.d.) Using Archives: a guide to effective research,

http://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives/typesofarchive.
Shilton, K. and Srinivasan, R. (2007) Participatory Appraisal and Arrangement for
Multicultural Archival Collections, Archivaria, 63, 87–101.
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Taylor, A. G. and Joudrey, D. N. (2009) The Organization of Information, 3rd edn,
Libraries Unlimited.
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R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page 15

CHAPTER 2
The Bethel AME Church Archive: partners and
participants

Andrea Copeland

C
OMMUNITY ARCHIVES HAVE proved vital for giving a voice to under-
represented groups. Formal institutional archives have traditionally
represented the dominant narrative in society and continue to do so,
excluding access to the cultural records and artefacts of under-represented
groups. Well-funded cultural heritage institutions have the infrastructures of
support to provide long-term preservation and access on a global scale.
Connecting community archives to this infrastructure of support is the
overarching goal of my research (Copeland, 2015). How to make that
connection in a way that respects the community and the purpose of the
archive remains to be determined.

Bethel AME Church of Indianapolis’ Community Archive

This chapter will detail my journey with one particular community and its
archive.
Bethel is the oldest African American church in the city of Indianapolis, and
was once a vital part of a thriving African American community in the heart
of the Indiana Avenue Jazz District. The church was founded in Indianapolis
in 1836, and its archive documents a shared heritage and a living community.
Over its 180 years of existence, the Bethel AME (African Methodist Episcopal)
Church has played a vital role in the Underground Railroad, the founding of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
Indiana, the founding of the first formal School for Black Children in
Indianapolis and the development of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
in the United States. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the development of the federal
interstate highway system and of Indiana University Purdue University
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16 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

Indianapolis (IUPUI) displaced many members of the community. Where the

church was once surrounded by the homes and businesses of its members,
high-end condominiums now encroach on the tiny parcel upon which the
crumbling brick building stands, and IUPUI’s five-storey School of Informatics
and Computing, where I work, looms across the street (Figure 2.1).
For two years since 2014, I’ve worked closely with Olivia McGee-Lockhart,
the Bethel AME Church of Indianapolis’ Keeper of History, church archivist
and historian. Indianapolis is the state capital of Indiana in the United States.
Our common goal is to preserve and make accessible the church’s archive
dating back to the 1850s. The oldest items in the archive include hand-written
journals, letters and other evidence that the church was a station on the
Underground Railroad, a network of individuals and organizations helping
slaves to escape from the South (National Parks Service, n.d.). This archive
came to my attention only because one of our School’s alumni, Rodney
Freeman, was a member of the church and sought my help. Unfortunately,
many community archives are similarly discovered by happenstance, as there
are no connections to bridge marginalized groups to formal support
structures. To lessen the role of chance in whose history is preserved and to
realize a more inclusive historical representation, methods for creating
connections between resource-rich archival institutions and history’s under-
represented groups are desperately needed.
Over the years, Bethel’s membership has dwindled; the majority of its
parishioners are now elderly. These church members, in particular Ms McGee-
Lockhart, contribute to the contextual narrative that supports the
documentary evidence. Like many others, this community archive has
survived because of the dedication of one or two individuals who understand
the value of the past. Ms McGee-Lockhart has spent her life caring for and
researching the church archive. As a life-long member of the church, she
learned a great deal from the first Keeper of History, Ms Frances Connecticut
Stout, who started caring for the archive in the early 1940s. She inherited the
role from Ms Stout in 2004. As the church congregation continues to dwindle,
it is increasingly unlikely that there will be someone to inherit the role.
In an ideal world, the Bethel AME Church archive would remain in the
church and yet somehow be preserved and made globally accessible. This
would keep the archive in the community and the community in the archive.
Historically, under-represented communities have created archives for use
by their members to advocate for their current and historical representation
in society. However, community archives face many challenges, such as lack
of expertise in preservation, and technical and financial sustainability, because
they prioritize the use of records to support current community information
needs rather than long-term preservation.
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CoPELAnD tHE BEtHEL AME CHuRCH ARCHIVE 17

Figure 2.1 View from the Bethel church’s bell tower (photograph reproduced with permission
of Owen J. Dwyer III)
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18 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

Given the current circumstances in which the church building is about to

be sold for redevelopment, it is not possible to keep the archive in the church,
preserve it and create access to it. If this were possible, would it be the best
approach to promoting intellectual access to the documents and contributing
to the study and understanding of African American history in Indianapolis,
the state of Indiana and the USA? Probably not. The church is not in a position
to organize, preserve and provide access to historical information.
This led me to a quandary: what local heritage institutions would it be best
to partner with for preserving and providing access to both the physical and
digital archive, and where would the physical archive of the Bethel AME
Church reside after digitization?

Funding for preservation of community-based heritage

For our first attempt at finding funds to support the work of organizing the
physical collection and digitizing the documents, we submitted a proposal to
the National Archive and Records Administration for its Literacy and
Engagement with Historical Records Grant programme.
For this initial effort, we struggled to find local partners, in part because
this particular archive is rather large (over 180 years in the making) and not
processed – a daunting archival task. Also, the local heritage institutions were
currently sorting out among themselves who should or could engage with
and preserve whose history. Ultimately, Indiana Historical Society (IHS), the
IUPUI University Library and the Indianapolis Public Library showed interest
in accepting the challenge. IHS, founded in 1830, is heavily endowed, and
utilized by scholars and residents alike. The IUPUI campus has a strong
commitment to community engagement and, as such, the University Library
has digitized several local heritage collections of relevance. Lastly, the
Indianapolis Public Library has digitized local collections representing the
history of the city. Among these institutions there is the potential for overlap
of mission and collection development policies. Also, the institutions have
competing and complementary technical infrastructures and competencies.
How these institutions will work together to preserve the city’s history is still
being worked out. I feel that the Bethel could provide some insight into the
evolving situation.
Given the deadline of the grant and the mission differentiation issues
mentioned above, we initially decided to work with Notre Dame’s university
library in South Bend, Indiana (four hours’ drive from Indianapolis) and to
keep the physical collection at the church. A local advisory board was formed
to direct the processing and digitization of the collection.
The grant programme specified community engagement technologies be a
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CoPELAnD tHE BEtHEL AME CHuRCH ARCHIVE 19

part of making the archive available online. We were excited about this, as
we would like to find ways to keep the community engaged with and
contributing to the archive once it is moved outside of the physical confines
of the church. However, the reviewers determined that our plan for online
engagement was not an ideal fit with Bethel’s predominantly elderly parish
(Personal Communication, NARA Grant Reviewer, 2015):

The real value to this project comes in the creation of the additional web
applications to Omeka to allow for and encourage community engagement. I
think this is a very valuable addition to the open source software but I am
curious if the project planners and the advisory board has considered how they
will reach their intended audience that comes from an age group that is not
necessarily comfortable in an online environment and may not have the
willingness to engage in oral histories and discussions online where there may be
sensitivities to privacy issues that are not as present in the younger generations.

In our response to the first round of reviews, IHS agreed to provide a home
for the physical collection after the digitization was completed. After a second
round of reviews, we were not successful in getting funded and were advised
to take the archive to IHS when the church was finished with it, thereby taking
the community out of the archive as well as the archive out of the community.

Preserving the historic African-American footprint

Meanwhile, the church was facing a larger problem than the preservation of
the archive. The church building that had served the community well for over
150 years was in desperate need of repair and the church was faced with
having to sell the building in order to survive. This was devastating news.
Bethel is one of three remaining buildings representing the African-American
heritage in this historic part of down-town Indianapolis, and the oldest
building on the city’s canal.
The combined efforts of economic development and city planning have,
intentionally or unintentionally, erased the African-American footprint from
down-town Indianapolis. Indiana Avenue and the Central Canal are desirable
locations for businesses and the city has invested considerable resources in
the area. Years ago, African Americans invested considerable resources in
exactly the same way. Unlike other cities with significant arts districts and
histories, Indianapolis chose not to preserve its heritage, in favour of
‘progress’. Cities such as New Orleans and Memphis respected their African-
American cultural heritage and clearly show the benefits of having done so.
As a result, the Indianapolis down-town near the IUPUI campus feels like a
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20 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

space rather than a place, and Indiana’s African Americans are being denied
part of their cultural heritage.
In its heyday, Indiana Avenue was known as the Jazz District. Along with
the church, the Madame Walker Theatre still stands, and features a
functioning theatre venue and a small museum collection. Crispus Attucks
was the only all-black high school in Indianapolis from 1927 to 1967. The
school houses a four-gallery history museum on the African/African
American Experience, but its existence is being threatened by the need for a
girls’ athletic facility. In addition to these buildings, the Ransom Park
neighbourhood is the only fragment of residential area that remains,
surrounded by apartment complexes built to provide homes for IUPUI
students (Briggs, 2015).
Through constantly sharing the plight of the church with anyone who
would listen, I found someone in the IUPUI administration, Khaula
Murtadha, to help connect the church with local officials and the media.
Through her connections, Ms McGee-Lockhart and I were featured on the
Amos Brown radio show to promote a walk on the Central Canal to gather
support for the church (Amos Podcast, 2015). The city’s newspaper, the
Indianapolis Star, sent a reporter to the walk to run an article on the church’s
plight (Lewis, 2015). Before long, the pastor, Louis Parham, and I were
appearing together on the Fox 59 evening news (2015) and the editor-in-chief
of the Indianapolis Monthly was featuring the disappearance of buildings and
organizations vital to the preservation of the city’s history (Heckert, 2016).
Thankfully, the local press helped to re-engage the local heritage institutions
and we were once again trying to figure out how best to handle the archive.
Rather than starting from the perspective of the institutions, I suggested that
we should focus on the potential users of the archive, who would most likely
be researchers or members of the church. While the IUPUI library has an
impressive digitization programme, it cannot store physical collections once
they have been scanned. We brought everyone together to determine the best
way forward, and it was decided that IHS was the best place for the physical
documents, given the expertise and facilities located there.

Organization, preservation, and digitization

For months now, a project team has been working on how best to preserve
the physical items and provide access to a digitized collection of the physical
records. This team includes Olivia McGee-Lockhart, myself, Kisha Tandy
from the Indiana State Museum, Jenny Johnson from the IUPUI University
Library and Wilma Moore and Susan Sutton from the IHS.
Given the social, historical and technical complexities of the project,
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CoPELAnD tHE BEtHEL AME CHuRCH ARCHIVE 21

expertise in many disciplines is needed, such as information technology,

archival science, metadata protocols and knowledge of local, church and
African-American history.
The team was successful in securing a grant from the Indiana State Library
to provide for the digitization of the records. Ms McGee-Lockhart and Kisha
Tandy worked together for several months to organize the collection at the
broadest level, and created finding aids in order that the collection could be
moved to IHS for processing by Wilma Moore.
Once the collection is processed, it will be temporarily moved to the IUPUI
library for digitization and the attribution of basic metadata. Public access to
the digitized records will be provided through the IHS as the society uses the
funds from the sale of high-resolution digital copies for financial support. The
value of charging for access is debatable, especially when you consider the
limitations placed on reuse that could promote the history of the Bethel
community to a broader audience (Tanner, 2004). (The IUPUI library does not
charge to access high-resolution files.) There was some tension among team
members regarding charging for the files, given that public funds will be used
to create them. However, IHS was not interested in storing the physical
archive without also having the benefits of the digitized records. The IUPUI
library always keeps a high-resolution file of the documents which it scans
for other institutions. A copy of the digitized archive will be available to the
project team to build community engagement projects around the Bethel
story. At this point, we also agreed that a hard drive with all of the scans
would be given to the church. This compromise works to a certain extent.
However, as Roued-Cunliffe points out in Chapter 19 on open data, these
types of institutional restrictions inhibit the use of these resources in new
ways that ultimately increase information discovery and knowledge creation.
The Bethel archive contains mostly records contributed by congregants
about the history of the African-American community in Indianapolis as well
as the church. IHS has other collections of local significance, and the Bethel
collection will add to this resource for scholars doing research about the area.
As IHS is located one block from the church, parishioners will have relatively
easy access to their collection – the next best thing to having the archive
housed in the church. However, soon the Bethel congregation will be
relocating to the suburbs of Indianapolis, after calling the historic down-town
building ‘home’ for 150 years.

Conclusion
The African-American footprint continues to be slowly erased from the down-
town Indianapolis fabric without regard for preservation of cultural heritage.
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22 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

A growing number of individuals, scholars, heritage professionals and

journalists are trying not only to preserve what little is left but also to find
ways to bring the culture that once was back to the area. The Bethel archive
is an important part of this effort. It provides a wealth of evidence that the
church is a vital part of Indiana history, and helps to illustrate the history of
Indiana Avenue. Had it not been for the careful conservation of the Bethel
AME archive by church members, the history of the church and its role in
greater African-American history would have been lost. To date, the archive
has played a significant role in getting the church building designated as a
national and state landmark, and a station on the Underground Railroad
(Indiana Historical Bureau, n.d.).
When Ms Stout turned over the responsibilities of keeping the church’s
history to Ms McGee-Lockhart in 2004, she instructed Ms McGee-Lockhart to
never let the archive leave the building and to trust no one outside of the
congregation with it. At that time, she never envisioned a day when the
church land and building would be sold and the congregation relocated
outside of the down-town area (Lewis, 2016). Nor did she anticipate a day
when records could be copied and distributed around the world through
networked computing.
After careful consideration and through the carefully built trust in the
individuals representing the IUPUI Library, the Indiana State Museum and
IHS, Ms McGee-Lockhart, Bethel’s designated Keeper of History, has agreed
to release the archive. While it is not exactly a happy occasion for her,
liberating the archive from the building will enable the history of the church
to be shared. Doing so will allow untold others to participate in and benefit
from the church’s heritage.
Given the situation with the church property being sold and re-zoned for
commerce, preserving the church building was important to Indiana
Landmarks and to many in the community. The contract between the church
and the developer specified that only the main façade and the bell tower be
preserved, and the fate of the rest of the building remained unknown pending
a city planning hearing.
The discussions between the city, the developer, and Indiana Landmarks
delayed the official redesign hearing for several months. In the end, the delay
proved successful for those interested in historical preservation. The
developer agreed to keep the four walls of the church and build around it.
Given that the building will be entirely gutted, Copeland raised funds for a
3D scan of the sanctuary in order to preserve the most important space in the
building. Plans are underway to combine the digitized archive with a virtual
environment built on the 3D scan. A video providing an overview of the
proposed project and technology involved has been made (Wood, 2016).The
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CoPELAnD tHE BEtHEL AME CHuRCH ARCHIVE 23

National Trust for Historic Preservation’s (NTHP) This.Place.Matters. (n.d.)

campaign has drawn attention to heritage sites in need of preservation. The
NTHP website provides a toolkit designed to help individuals tell stories
about the places they think should be preserved. NTHP encourages
participants to share their stories through social media: Twitter, Facebook,
and Pinterest. Twitter is heavily used to document places that matter; for
example, the aforementioned Ransom Place neighbourhood adjacent to
Indiana Avenue joined the campaign with the hashtag #RansomPlaceMatters.
The hashtag #BethelIndyMatters has been created to draw attention to the
preservation needs of the church building.
On 24 July 2016, a community event was held at the church. At this event,
a team of volunteers conducted oral histories with the remaining congregants
to capture their feelings about the sale of the building and the departure of
the congregation from down-town. Additionally, community members were
invited to reflect on their feelings about the inevitable diminishing of the
African-American heritage footprint. Participants were invited to be
photographed with old photographs of church events. They were asked to
reflect on what it means to bear witness to a time and place that will exist
only in documents in the near future. Community contributions were
recorded and will be connected to the archive once it is digitized.
Continued community engagement with the digitized archive will serve to
keep the African-American narrative as part of the fabric of the city’s history.
Hopefully, it will also be a reminder that it is important to preserve and
acknowledge the accomplishments of those who have gone before us for those
who have yet to come. We owe it to past and future generations to facilitate
personal connections to history. We have to do a better job of showing that
history matters. We fail as a profession, a community, a city and a nation when
history is not respected and preserved, in favour of ‘progress’ and profit.

References
Amos Podcast (2015) Is Indy’s Oldest Black Church in Danger? 20 August,
http://praiseindy.hellobeautiful.com/2066304/amos-podcastaug-20-is-indys-
oldest-black-church-in-danger-in-peril-2-black-lawmakers-pushing-for-police-
bodycams-dashcams/.
Briggs, J. (2015) Ransom Place residents say discrimination may have led to housing
project approval, Indy Star, 23 December, www.indystar.com/story/money/2015/
12/23/ransom-place-residents-say-discrimination-may-have-led-housing-project-
approval/77764910/.
Copeland, A. (2015) Public Library: a place for the digital community archive,
Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, 44 (1), 12–21.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page 24

24 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

Fox 59 News (2015) Developers Looking to Purchase Historic Indianapolis Church,

Community Fighting to Save It, 9 September, http://fox59.com/2015/09/09/
developers-looking-to-purchase-historic-indianapolis-church-community-
fighting-to-save-it/.
Heckert, A. (2016) The Changing Face of Indiana Avenue, 3 May,
www.indianapolismonthly.com/news-opinion/changing-face-indiana-avenue/.
Indiana Historical Bureau (n.d.) www.in.gov/history/markers/Bethel.htm.
Lewis, O. (2015) Bethel AME fights to keep legacy alive, Indy Star, 22 August,
www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/08/22/bethel-ame-fights-keep-legacy-
alive/32209385/.
Lewis, O. (2016) Indy’s Oldest African-American Church Sold for Hotel Space, Indy
Star, www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/04/08/indys-oldest-african-american-
church-sold-hotel-space/82765744/.
National Parks Service. (n.d.) Aboard the Underground Railroad: Bethel AME Church,
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/in1.htm.
Personal Communication, NARA Grant Reviewer (2015).
Tanner, S. (2004) Reproduction Charging Models and Rights Policy for Digital Images in
American Art Museums: A Mellon Foundation Study,
www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/USMuseum_SimonTanner.pdf.
This.Place.Matters (n.d.) https://savingplaces.org/this-place-matters#.V04FDuZfX-U.
Wood, Z. (2016) Bethel_New Frontier Grant, https://vimeo.com/187085145.
R-C&C_PH_TEXT PROOF_04 15/12/2016 10:30 Page 25

CHAPTER 3
Creating an authentic learning environment
for school children: a case study of digital
storytelling programmes at the Mudgeeraba
Light Horse Museum
Janis Hanley

Sunday morning, 21 February, 2016: Ten students and their parents gathered at the
Mudgeeraba Light Horse museum for the ‘Long Tan Filming Day’. Long Tan was an
‘against all odds’ win for Australian troops early in Australia’s involvement in the
Vietnam War. Students at the museum that day were aiming to submit a work, in a
form of their choosing, for a competition honoring 50 years since the Long Tan battle.
The filming day started with introductory talks about the battle, Australia’s base at
Nui Dat, weaponry and context – the social revolution of the sixties. Then the day
got interesting. Students set up their video-recording gear in each of three interview
rooms, and in turn interviewed each of the three Vietnam veterans (Figure 3.1). They
captured first-person accounts, providing new primary source materials, and the

I
students’ creative works emerging from the day were inspired. What emerged is a
useful activity that creates archival materials relevant to museums, galleries, libraries
and archives, and an outlet for students’ creative expression.

N 2015, I CONDUCTED research at the Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum

(the museum), situated in South-East Queensland, Australia, exploring
the value of the museum’s Digital Storytelling (DST) programme as a
learning activity for high school students (Hanley, 2015). The museum
honours Light Horsemen and all men and women who served during the
Boer War, the two World Wars and modern conflicts. Its collection was started
in 1998, and it was formally incorporated as a museum in 2012. The museum
shares its site1 with a National Servicemen’s branch: the ‘Nashos’2 and their
partners make up the majority of the museum volunteers, the average age of
volunteers being over 75.
This chapter is a case study of the museum focusing on the authentic
learning environment that developed as the DST programme evolved. This
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26 PART 1 pARtICIpANtS

Figure 3.1 Vietnam veteran being interviewed by students at the ‘Long Tan Filming
Day’ (image by Janis Hanley)

progress was enabled by the participation of willing teachers and volunteers

keen to learn and to respond – ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) (Wenger, 1998;
see also Baker, Chapter 5 in this volume). The case study is framed in terms
of theories of situated learning, drawing on the framework developed by
Herrington and Oliver (2000).
Situated learning was defined by Collins (1988) as learning in contexts that
reflect how skills and knowledge will be applied in real life. Lave and Wenger
(1991) focused on this process within CoP, allowing the learner to increasingly
become part of the community as their own knowledge and skills increase.
The learning occurs directly in context. Situated learning connects knowledge
and skills to contexts, as contrasted to classroom learning where knowledge
is abstracted and can be less accessible: ‘When learning and context are
separated, knowledge itself is seen by learners as the final product of
education rather than a tool to be used dynamically to solve problems’
(Herrington and Oliver, 2000, 23). In a classroom, there are limited ways that
students can anchor their learning in a context that is virtual at best; however,
heritage places provide physical environments. Herrington and Oliver
defined a framework for situated learning and contend that useable learning
occurs in environments with specific characteristics: authentic contexts and
activities, access to experts, multiple perspectives, collaborative construction
of knowledge, reflection, coaching and scaffolding, and authentic assessment.
For the museum, setting up the DST programme was an intuitive response
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HAnLEy AN AutHENtIC LEARNINg ENVIRoNMENt 27

to a request from a school, but running the programme has developed the
learning environment and shaped the museum’s aspirations. DST added an
authentic activity, drawing on the materiality of the museum and its
community. The museum became a space where students, volunteers, teachers
and parents were involved in a participatory process of ‘creating, sharing and
connecting with one another around content’ (Simon, 2010, ii). This chapter
charts how the situated learning environment developed and highlights
characteristics that can be designed into programmes in museums and heritage
places. DST was just the tool: a catalyst for participation in heritage.

Beginning aspirations: introducing a DST programme

In 2012 the museum embarked on becoming a centre for education on
Anzacs (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps)3 and war for local
schools, and started offering excursions for Grade 3 students (8-year-olds).
A DST programme quickly followed. My role, as an education consultant,
was to design programmes connected with the Australian school
curriculum. My work involves designing education programmes for
specific year levels, creating engaging activities for students by drawing
on the museum’s collection and stories and the skills of the museum
workers, developing resources and props required, and then piloting the
programmes with a school. In 2013 a local state high school (Alpha school),
approached the museum about an excursion for Grade 9s (14-year-olds). I
knew the school had just adopted iPads for its students, so I suggested
offering a DST programme based on the History in Place programme in
Victoria (Culture Victoria, 2014), where students create stories, using their
iPads, at museums. The school found iPads for a class of 30 students to
work in groups of two to four and provided a data projector to the museum
for ‘show-time’. The following year, in 2014, a local private school (Beta
school) approached the museum to assist two students in creating digital
stories for the State Premier’s Anzac competition.4 Later that year, the
school brought a class of Grade 9s, armed with Mac-books, digital cameras
and recorders, to the museum for a DST day.
A DST day starts with a briefing, followed by a flag-raising ceremony,
with a firing party and a demonstration of horseback tent-pegging.
Students circulate around volunteer-led activities (Figure 3.2): horses in
war, handling World War 1 weaponry, using trench periscopes, looking at
artefacts, soldiers’ journals and images and hearing stories of battles.
Students work in teams of two to four, capturing images/footage through
these sessions. They then plan their story and spend two hours capturing
extra images, recording interviews, creating voice-overs and assembling
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
far up as the Arctic Circle. The agricultural products of Greenland are
not, therefore, to be regarded as important in a commercial point of
view, though, with care, each inhabitant of Ericsfiord might be well
provided with every needful garden luxury. Potatoes would grow, I
believe, if they would only take the trouble to cultivate them
properly. To perfect any of the cereals would, however, be at present
a hopeless undertaking.
Yet the whole region about Krakortok bears evidence of former
cultivation. Garden patches were in the neighborhood of all the
buildings. The church and two other buildings were inclosed by a
wall, the outlines of which I had no difficulty in determining, and
which, judging from the mass of stones, must have been about five
feet high.
The church interested me most. Its walls are still quite perfect to
from ten to eighteen feet altitude, and even the form of the gable is
yet preserved. The door-ways, three in number, are not in the least
disturbed by time; the windows are mostly entire, except on the
north side, and the arched window in the eastern end is nearly
perfect. Beneath this window was the chancel, and the church was
constructed with singular exactness as to orientation. This could
scarcely be by accident, for the same accuracy is to be observed in
all the other sacred buildings that have been discovered in the
neighborhood—the walls standing within less than one degree of the
meridian line, and even this may have been an error of my
instrument which I had not the means of correcting, rather than an
error of the Northmen. They were evidently close observers of the
movements of the heavenly bodies, and must have known the north
with great exactness, and they built their church walls accordingly.
These walls were four and a half feet thick. The stones were flat,
and no cement appears to have been used other than blue clay.
In one angle of the church-yard there had been a building which I
supposed to have been the almonry; and in another part was the
house of the priest or bishop, the walls of which are still perfect to
the top of the door-way, and one of the windows.
 CLIFF
WEST WALL. A. Church. Walls shown in the accompanying EAST
elevations. The wall forming the church-yard, WALL.
although fallen in, is well defined.
CAP-STONE B. Probably a house, walls fallen.
OF WEST
DOORWAY
SOUTH WALL. C. Probably a house, walls perfect to 9 feet NORTH
elevation. Window, 2 feet by 1. Door, 5 feet by 3. WALL.
The remains of the surrounding wall are readily
traced to the cliff, which is 35 feet high. The
inclosure was probably a garden.

GROUND-PLAN OF RUINS.

Outside the church wall, but not far removed from it, there was a
building evidently of much pretension. It was divided into three
compartments, and was sixty-four by thirty-two feet. There was
another still farther to the westward, others to the east, and one on
the natural terrace above the church. Altogether the cluster of
buildings which composed the church estate—where dwelt the
officers who governed the country round about, and administered in
this distant place, at what was then thought to be “the farthest limit
of the habitable globe,” the ordinances of the pope at Rome—were
nine in number: a church, a tomb, an almonry, five dwellings, and
one round structure; the walls of which latter building had, like those
of the church-yard, completely fallen, but the outline of the
foundation was preserved. The walls had been four feet thick, and
the diameter of the building in the clear was forty-eight feet. It had
but one door-way, which opened towards the church.
To call this circular building a tower, in the sense of its application
to the famous round towers of Ireland, would be a great stretch of
the imagination. There is, however, a strange coincidence in the
circumstance of proximity to a church. Near all the church edifices
that have been discovered in Greenland a structure similar to this
one at Krakortok has been found. None of them are, however, so
large: its walls could not have been more than seven or eight feet
high. Its uses are unknown. Possibly it may have been a work of
military defense, perhaps a baptistery; there is nothing, however,
except its shape, to indicate that it was not a cow-house.
After completing my survey of this church estate, I visited other
parts of the fiord. The buildings have been very numerous
hereabout, but all except the church and bishop’s house are now
levelled with the earth, and so overgrown with willow, juniper, and
birch that even their outline is scarcely distinguishable.
What a wonderful change! what a sad wreck of humanity! Here
people, weary with war, had come to cultivate the arts of peace;
here they had built strong and comfortable dwellings; here they had
reared herds of cattle and flocks of sheep upon pastures of limitless
extent; here they had worshipped God according to the dictates of
their consciences; and now where are they? nothing left but this
“ruined trace.” A single inscription on a tomb-stone, carved in Runic
characters, is all the record that remains besides the crumbled walls.
This inscription reads:
“Vigdis, daughter of M***, rests here. May God
rejoice her soul.”
And may God rejoice the souls of all of those worthies of the olden
time!
I could not fail to experience a feeling of sadness as I stood
beside the tombs of a people now utterly extinct. It seemed as if
voices from the past were speaking to me from out the crumbling
church, from the almonry where the priest dispensed his alms, from
the holy-water stoup, from the tomb-stones bearing the sacred
emblems of our Christian faith; from everywhere, indeed, there was
a silent whispering that here a Christian people once dwelt in peace,
and from temples dedicated to Almighty God arose their anthems of
praise above the glittering crests of snow. That they should ever
have come here seems, however, more strange than that they
should have perished as they did.

Note.—The ruins of Krakortok, shown on page 67, were visited by

Captain Graah in 1828, as the cap-stone over the church door-way
(west end) will testify for many a day. This cap-stone is 12 feet 7
inches long by 2 feet 2 inches wide, and averages 8 inches thick. It
bears this inscription—G. M. G. M. & V. MDCCCXVIII—initial letters,
standing for Graah, Mathiesen, Gram, Motzfeldt, and Vahl, the
visiting party.—See Graah’s Narrative, p. 38.
 CHAPTER VIII.
THE NORTHMEN IN GREENLAND.
These Northmen were certainly a very wonderful people, and they
did very wonderful things; but of all their enterprises the most
singular would seem to be their coming to Greenland, where they
were without the lines of conquest which were so attractive to their
brothers and ancestors; for they were kindred of the Northman
Rollo, son of Rögnvald, jarl of Maere, and king of the Orkneys, who
ravaged the banks of the Seine, and played buffoon with the King of
France; the same with those Danes who, in Anglo-Saxon times,
conquered the half of England: descendants they were of the same
Cimbri who threatened Rome in the days of Marius, and of the
Scythian soldiers of conquered Mithridates, who, under Odin,
migrated from the borders of the Euxine Sea to the north of Europe,
whence their posterity descended within a thousand years by the
Mediterranean, and flourished their battle-axes in the streets of
Constantinople; fellows they were of all the sea-kings, and vikings,
and “barbarians” of the North, whose god of war was their former
general, and who, scorning a peaceful death, sought for Odin’s “bath
of blood” whenever and wherever they could find it. In Greenland
they appear like a fragment thrown off from a revolving wheel by
centrifugal force. And here they seem to have lost the traditional
ferocity of their race, though not its adventurous spirit. Sailing
westward, they discovered America, which was the crowning glory of
their career. Sailing eastward, they saw the light of Christianity which
was breaking in the North, and its blessings followed them to their
distant homes.
These two voyages to the west and east symbolize the character
of this wonderful race. Love of change made their conversion to
Christianity easy; love of adventure made all enterprises of discovery
seem trifling hazards, and gave them the world to roam in. To their
achievements in the Western hemisphere the influence of the
Christian religion was, no doubt, very powerful. It weaned them
from Europe and its perpetual wars, and while it did not destroy, it
turned their enterprise into a new channel, and one more consistent
with the new faith.
The introduction of Christianity into Greenland was accomplished
by Lief, son of Red Eric; and it was the same man who discovered
America—two grand achievements which rank Lief Ericson as one of
the heroes of history. With respect to the former event, an old
Icelandic saga thus briefly records the fact:
“When fourteen winters were passed from the time that Eric the
Red set forth to Greenland, his son Lief sailed from thence to
Norway, and came thither in the autumn that King Olaf Tryggvason
arrived in the North from Helgaland. Lief brought up his ship at
Nidaros [Drontheim], and went straightway to the king. Olaf
declared unto him the true faith, as was his custom unto all
heathens who came before him; and it was not hard for the king to
persuade Lief thereto, and he was baptized, and with him all his
crew.”
Nor was it hard for King Olaf to “persuade” his subjects generally
“thereto.” His Christianity was very new and rather muscular, and
under the persuasive influence of the sword this royal missionary
made more proselytes than ever were made before in the same
space of time by all the monks and missionaries put together.
When Lief came back to Greenland with a new religion and a
priest to boot, his father Eric was much incensed, and declared the
act pregnant with mischief; but after a while he was prevailed upon
to acknowledge the new religion, and at the same time to give his
wife Thjodhilda, who had proved a more ready subject for
conversion, leave to build a church. Thus runs the saga:
“Lief straightway began to declare the universal faith throughout
the land; and he laid before the people the message of King Olaf,
and detailed unto them how much grandeur and great nobleness
there was attached to the new belief. Eric was slow to determine to
leave his ancient faith, but Thjodhilda, his wife, was quickly
persuaded thereto, and she built a kirk, which was called
‘Thjodhilda’s Kirk.’ And from the time she received the faith she
separated from her husband, which did sorely grieve him.”
And this appears to have been the last, and (as the sequel shows)
was the most potent argument for his conversion. To get his wife
back, he turned Christian, and ordered the pagan rites to be
discontinued, and the pagan images of Thor, and Odin, and the rest
of them, to be broken up and burned.
Whether this first Greenland church of Thjodhilda’s was built at
Brattahlid, or Gardar, or Krakortok, can not now be positively said;
but we might, perhaps, find some reason to conclude it was the
latter, from the fact that an old man named Grima, as the saga
states, who lived then at Brattahlid, made complaint, “I get but
seldom to the church to hear the words of learned clerks, for it is a
long journey thereto.”
This much, however, we do know, that the church—wherever it
was situated—was begun in the year 1002, and was known far and
wide by the name of its pious lady-founder. Several churches and
three monasteries were built afterwards. One of these latter was
near a boiling spring, the waters from which, being carried through
the building in pipes, gave a pleasant warmth to the good monks
who occupied it, and they needed no other heat the year round.
The Christian population of Greenland became, in course of time,
so numerous that it was necessary for the Bishop of Iceland to come
over there frequently to administer the duties of that part of his see;
for the diocese of Gardar, as it was called, was from the first
attached to the See of Iceland.
A hundred years thus passed away, and both in spiritual and
temporal matters the Northmen in Greenland were getting along
finely. Their intercourse with Europe was regular, and their export
trade, especially in beef, was considerable. Indeed, Greenland beef
was for a long time highly prized in Norway, and there was no
greater luxury to “set before the king.” The people were almost
wholly independent of the Icelandic government. Under a system of
their own devising, which appears to have perfectly satisfied their
necessities, they lived quite unmolested by the outside world, and,
undisturbed by wars and rumors of wars, the descendants of Eric
the Red were as happy as any people need wish to be.
They lacked only one thing to complete their scheme of perfect
independence: they needed a bishop of their own, which would cut
them loose from Iceland altogether; and, in truth, the Icelanders
were such a liberty-loving people that they were in no wise disposed
to dispute their claims. But a bishop they could not have without the
sanction of the powers that ruled in Norway; for the pope would not
appoint so high an officer for any of the regions directly or indirectly
subject to the control of Norway except upon the nomination of the
king, after consultation with his spiritual advisers. Numerous
petitions were accordingly sent over to the king, in order to secure
his good offices. For a time these efforts were attended with but
partial success, since a temporary bishop only was vouchsafed them
in the person of Eric (not the Red), who went to Greenland in the
year 1120, and, without remaining long, returned home, having,
however, visited Vinland in the interval—this Vinland being the
America which Columbus thought to be a part of Asia some four
centuries later.
Finding they did not get a bishop of their own according to their
deserts (as they estimated them), they grew indignant, and one of
their chief men, named Sokke, declared that they must and would
have one. Their personal honor and the national pride demanded it;
and, indeed, the Christian faith itself was not in safety otherwise.
Accordingly, under the advice of Sokke, a large present of walrus
ivory and valuable furs was voted to the King of Norway; and Einer,
son of Sokke, was commissioned to carry the petition and the
present.
 The result proved that the inhabitants of Ericsfiord were wise in
their day and generation; for whether through the earnestness of
their appeals, or the value of their gifts, or through the
persuasiveness of the ambassador, or through all combined, they
obtained, in the year 1126, Bishop Arnold, who forthwith founded
his Episcopal See at Gardar, and there erected a cathedral, which
was built in the form of a cross.
Arnold seems to have been a most excellent and pious leader of
these struggling Christians. Zealous as the famous monk of Iona,
without the impulsiveness of that great apostle of Scotland, he
bound his charge together in the bonds of Christian love, and gave
unity and happiness to a prosperous people. He died in the year
1152, and thenceforth, until 1409, the See of Gardar, which he had
founded, was regularly maintained. According to Baron Halberg, in
his history of Denmark, seventeen successive bishops administered
the ordinances of the Church in Greenland, the list terminating with
Andreas, who was consecrated in 1406. The see and Andreas
expired together; and the last account we have of either was made
in 1409, when it is recorded that he officiated at a marriage, from
the issue of which men now living are proud to trace their ancestry.
This was his last official act, so far as we have record.
But the people did not then wholly disappear, even if the official
see ceased to exist. To the causes which led to their final overthrow
we shall have occasion to refer presently.
 CHAPTER IX.
THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.
To complete the account of the Northmen who dwelt upon the
banks of Ericsfiord, it is necessary to trace some of their voyages to
the West.
Lief, the son of Eric, was a man of restless disposition. Not content
with Greenland, he had visited Europe, and had there studied in the
very practical school which the Northmen took good care always to
have in operation—the art of war. Dissatisfied with paganism, he
accepted the Christian faith, as we have seen, and carried it to his
own country. Afterwards, wearied with the enforced monotony of his
life at Ericsfiord, he determined to discover new lands for himself, as
his father had done before him, and also, like his father, he sought
them in the West. He set sail in the year 1001, soon after his return
from Norway. Crossing what we now call Davis’s Strait, he first
sighted Labrador. Not liking the looks of it, any more than his father
had liked the first sight he had of the east coast of Greenland, he
sailed south until he came to Newfoundland, where he landed.
Thence he proceeded on his voyage, discovering Nova Scotia; and
finally he arrived at a place which he called Wonderstrand, where he
wintered. This was probably the peninsula now called Cape Cod, in
Massachusetts. Thence he returned to Brattahlid, in Ericsfiord, and
ever afterwards bore the name of Lief the Lucky.
His brother Thorwald followed after him the next year, and the
new land was called Vinland (Vinland hin goda), from the great
quantities of wild grapes they found there, and of which they made
wine. Thorwald was set upon and killed by savages, whom they
called Skraellings, from their diminutive stature.
A third brother, Thorstein, went in search of Thorwald’s body the
next year, and died without finding it. Then, after this further
disaster, Lief, who had now succeeded Red Eric, his father, in the
government of the colonies of Ericsfiord, resolved no longer to
pursue the enterprise. No settlement had been made, and no profit
had yet accrued to the daring men who had undertaken it. The
natives were very numerous and hostile, and the people could only
live in a fortified camp.
Nothing more would, in all probability, have been attempted, had
not a rich Iceland merchant come to Brattahlid, named Thorfin
Karlsefne, and surnamed the Hopeful. This was in 1006. While at
Brattahlid, he was the guest of Lief, with whom he spent the winter.
There was much feasting, especially at Yule-time, and some love-
making besides, for Thorfin married Gudrid, widow of Thorstein,
before spring came. They spoke much about Vinland, and finally
they resolved on a voyage thither. Accordingly they got together a
company of one hundred and sixty, of whom five were women,
Gudrid being one. “Then,” according to the saga, “they made an
agreement with Karlsefne that each should have equal share they
made of gain. They had with them all kinds of cattle, intending to
settle in Vinland.”
They sailed on their voyage in the spring, and came to
Wonderstrand, where Lief had erected houses. These they found;
but not liking the place, they proceeded to Mount Hope Bay, in
Rhode Island. But the natives came out of the woods, and troubled
them so much that they had no peace. Finally a great battle was
fought, in which many of the natives were killed, as were also
several of the whites. Some of the latter fell into the hands of their
enemies, and were called before a council of the tribe, as they
supposed, to hear the judgment of death pronounced upon them. To
their great surprise, they found the council presided over by a man
as white as themselves, and who addressed them in their own
language. He wore a long beard, which was very gray, but in other
respects he was dressed like the others. Through the instrumentality
of this man, who appeared to be their chief, the whites were
liberated on condition of their leaving the country, which they did,
after having lived there three years.
 This proved to be a most unfortunate speculation for the rich
Iceland merchant. Its only value to him was, that his wife, while
there, bore him a son, whom he called Snorre, and from whom was
descended a line of men famous in Iceland history.
This strange man whom they found at the head of the Skraellings
proved to be Biorn Asbrandson, a native of Bredifiord, in Iceland,
and who had once been a famous viking, or sea-rover, and had
drifted to America, no one knew how. Doubtless it was even before
Lief’s time. He had left Iceland, and was never heard of until
Karlsefne returned, when, from certain articles which this chief of
the savages gave him, with directions how to dispose of them, and
from a message which was to be delivered to Biorn’s former
sweetheart, the identity was established. The man himself would
give no explanation of who he was, or how he came there. Biorn
was therefore probably the first white man to land on the shores of
America, if we may except some Irish monks and others whose
adventurous enterprises originated the idea of a “white man’s land”
far away across the sea.
Humboldt, in his Cosmos, basing his observations on Rafn’s
“Antiquitates Americanæ,” declares that Biorn undertook the voyage
to the southward from Greenland in 986, the year following Eric’s
colonization of Ericsfiord. There is, however, a discrepancy between
his statement and those of others concerning the course of Lief,
“who,” as Humboldt says, “first saw land one degree south of
Boston, at the island of Nantucket, then Nova Scotia, and lastly
Newfoundland, which was subsequently called Libla Helluland, but
never ‘Vinland.’ The gulf which divides Newfoundland from the
mouth of the great river St. Lawrence was called by the Northmen,
who had settled in Iceland and Greenland, Markland’s Gulf.” Nova
Scotia was called Markland.
The Eric family did not, however, altogether abandon the idea of
reaping some profit from America, even with the death of Thorstein,
for a sister named Freydis went to Vinland in 1011, and for some
time lived in the same place where her brothers had lived before.
More unfortunate than their predecessors, they fell not only to
fighting the natives, but each other, being instigated thereto by
Freydis, who caused a great number of the party to be treacherously
murdered in order that she might get control and reap all the profit;
yet no good came of it after all.
Other expeditions followed some years later; but, so far as we
know, there were no actual settlements made by these Northmen in
America. Yet Bishop Eric went to Vinland in 1121, during his
Greenland mission (which would make it appear as if people were
there to visit), in his ministerial capacity. Occasional voyages were,
however, made to the country, at least as far as Nova Scotia. As late
as 1347, we have written accounts of Greenlanders going from
Ericsfiord to Markland to cut timber.
It will be seen by the foregoing that history presents quite a
number of candidates for being the first discoverers of America. Who
knows what influence these adventurous voyages of the Northmen
may have had upon the discovery of America by Columbus? That
great navigator is stated to have visited Iceland in 1477; and may he
not then have heard of this land of the grape and vine to the
westward? and may not the tales of the Icelanders have encouraged
his western aspirations, which are said to have originated as far back
as 1470? This supposition would not, however, detract from the
great merit of Columbus; for the idea of crossing the Atlantic, and of
reaching Asia by the west, was not original with Columbus, nor even
with his generation. The glory was not in the conception, but in the
execution. It has been said that the name America is “a monument
of man’s ingratitude;” but this is hardly true, since the name
Columbus gave to his own discoveries was, as we all know, West
Indies, in the full belief that he was within reach of the rich treasures
of the Orient; and even after Columbus’s death, and after the
conquests of Cortez, Mexico was marked down upon the maps of the
period as a part of China, and, indeed, the capital city of the
Montezumas was shown to be only a few days’ journey overland
from the mouths of the Ganges. It was not until Balboa had waded
into the waters of the Pacific Ocean, and had thus taken possession
of the newly-discovered sea, that the idea of a new world, or new
continent, having been discovered began to enter into the minds of
men. The belief of Marco Polo, who looked out over the ocean
eastward from China, and the belief of the ambitious Genoese
navigator, who looked westward from the shores of Spain, was the
same, and it was shared by every body: this belief being that the
Atlantic Ocean extended from Asia to Europe; and what we now call
America was nowhere at all in their imaginations.
 CHAPTER X.
THE LAST MAN.
The final destruction of the Northmen in Greenland is a matter of
melancholy interest. Exactly when it came about we can not know.
We have seen that the bishop’s see was abandoned in 1409. Prior to
that time, however, we have accounts of the desperate straits to
which the people were reduced. In 1383 we find the following
curious entry in the Icelandic annals:
“A ship came from Greenland to Norway which had lain in the
former country six years, and certain men returned by this vessel
who had escaped from the wreck of Thorlast’s ship. This ship
brought the news of Bishop Alf’s death from Greenland, which had
taken place there six years before.”
Of the causes which led to this state of affairs we are not,
however, left wholly to conjecture. First came a royal decree (for by
this time Greenland had passed over, along with Iceland, from a
state of independence into the possession of the King of Norway)
laying a prohibition on the foreign trade, and creating Greenland a
monopoly of the crown. This was a dreadful blow, and the shipping
was practically at an end. Trade must, indeed, have been sadly
languishing when six years were required to obtain a return cargo.
But “misfortunes never come singly.” In 1418 a hostile fleet made a
descent upon the coast, and, after laying waste the buildings,
carried off what plunder and as many captives as they could. With
respect to this latter event, and the generally poor condition to
which the colonies were reduced, we find the following appeal of
Pope Nicholas the Fifth, written to the Bishop of Iceland in the year
1448:
“In regard,” says the pope’s letter, “to my beloved children born in
and inhabiting the island of Greenland, which is said to be situated
at the farthest limits of the great ocean, north of the kingdom of
Norway, and in the Sea of Trondheim—their pitiable complaints have
reached our ears, and awakened our compassion; hearing that they
have, for a period of near six hundred years, maintained, in firm and
inviolate subjection to the authority and ordinances of the apostolic
chair, the Christian faith established among them by the preaching of
their renowned teacher, King Olaf, and have, actuated by a pious
zeal for the interests of religion, erected many churches, and, among
others, a cathedral, in that island, where religious service was
diligently performed until about thirty years ago, when some
heathen foreigners from the neighboring coast came against them
with a fleet, fell upon them furiously, laid waste the country and its
holy buildings with fire and sword, sparing nothing throughout the
whole island of Greenland but the small parishes said to be situated
a long way off, and which they were prevented from reaching by the
mountains and precipices intervening, and carrying away into
captivity the wretched inhabitants of both sexes, particularly such of
them as were considered to be strong of body and able to endure
the labors of perpetual slavery.”
Furthermore, the letter states that some of those who were
carried away captive have returned, but that the organization of the
colonies is destroyed, and the worship of God is given up because
there are no priests or bishops; and finally, the Bishop of Iceland is
enjoined to send to Greenland “some fit and proper person for their
bishop, if the distance between you and them permit.”
But the distance did not permit. At least, there is no evidence of
any action having been taken, so that this is the last we know of
ancient Greenland, and from that time “the lost colonies” passed into
tradition.
Who the raiders were who thus gave rise to the necessity which
existed for the pope’s earnest interference we are not positively
informed, but about this time the savages attacked the colonists, as
we know from the sagas of Ivar Bere. Previous to this, however, they
had appeared upon the coast. This was about the middle of the
fourteenth century.
 In a former chapter I have alluded to the progress of the
Northmen up the Greenland coast, and have mentioned their
occupation of an island near Upernavik. But no important
settlements were effected farther in that direction than those which
were founded upon the banks of what is now Baal’s River, where
stands the modern colony of Godthaab—a deep fiord, alike in
character with that of Ericsfiord. Here there was a considerable
population, the colonies being distinguished by the name of West
Buygd; while those about Ericsfiord and to the south, towards Cape
Farewell, were called the East Buygd, meaning the western and
eastern inhabited places.
In the year 1349 intelligence was brought to Ericsfiord from the
West Buygd that a descent had been made upon them by the
Skraellings. An expedition was immediately fitted out for their
defense and succor, and was placed in charge of Ivar Bere (the same
who left a written account of his Greenland experiences), who was
secretary to the bishop, and lay superintendent of Gardar. He found,
however, on arriving there, not a human being left, but merely a few
cattle, which he brought away with him. Nor did he discover any
enemies. Having accomplished their murderous and plundering
design, the savages had retreated with the fruits of their raid, and
for a time were not again heard from. But at length they learned of
the still greater wealth of the white men lower down the coast, and
there they began to show themselves—at first in small bands, but
finally in great numbers, until they overran the habitable parts of the
country; and, driving the Northmen from place to place, at length
wiped them out as completely here as they had formerly done in the
West Buygd. The churches were pillaged and burned, and the
monasteries of St. Olaf, St. Michael, and St. Thomas were levelled
with the earth.
A peculiar interest attaches to the church at Krakortok from the
circumstance that here the Northmen made their last stand, and,
under the leadership of a man named Ungitok, for some years
maintained an obstinate and successful resistance. At this time great
numbers of the savages were collected upon the island of
Aukpeitsavik (about midway between Krakortok and Julianashaab),
under the lead of their chief, Krassippe.
These savages, or Skraellings, were the Esquimaux of the present
time. Originally they appear to have been warlike and aggressive. At
present they are an inoffensive, harmless people—a change entirely
due to the influence of the Danish missionaries and the Moravian
Brethren, who have been among them during the past hundred and
fifty years.
Whence they came, we can of course only conjecture, since they
had formerly no written language of any kind, and possessed only
vague traditions of having come from the West. That they crossed
from Asia by Behring’s Straits, and then wandered eastward along
the coasts of Arctic America, until, in course of time, they reached
Greenland, there can be no reasonable doubt. Of the period of their
original migration we can not, of course, have ground for even a
rational speculation. This is, however, wholly unimportant to our
present purpose, which concerns only their appearance in Greenland
—an event which, as we have seen, happened in the fourteenth
century. Could it be that these same savages were identical with
those of similar character which Lief and his successors, three
centuries before, had found on the shores of Massachusetts, and
who were there in sufficient numbers to prevent the Northmen from
occupying the country? I think it very probable; and their
appearance in Greenland is, perhaps, due to the fact that the tribes
now known as Indians (who first appeared upon the eastern slope of
the Alleghanies about that time) drove them from their southern
hunting-grounds, and forced them to seek safety in the inhospitable
North, compelling them to reside upon the sea-shore, because the
land produced but little game, while the sea everywhere abounded
in fish. Hence their name, derived from the Indian word Esquimatlik,
applied to them in derision, and signifying “eaters of fish.”
In what manner they crossed Baffin’s Bay is left in doubt. It would
not have been impossible for them to do so in their skin boats.
Possibly, however, they went higher up, and crossed over on the ice
of Smith’s Sound. Some tribes still exist in that neighborhood; and to
show their insatiable love of wandering, I may mention that I have
found evidences of their presence upon the shores of Grinnell’s Land
as far north as latitude 81°. It has been conjectured that they came
over in fleets of boats, crossing the narrowest part of Davis’s Strait,
which is less than two hundred miles wide, from land to land. It may
be that they were not less influenced by a motive of revenge for the
wrongs of their ancestors than fleeing from the Indians who
possessed their lands, for they had been sadly ill-used in
Massachusetts by the Northmen when they first came there. These
Northmen had killed and tortured a great many of them in very
wantonness, before actual hostilities began. There might seem to
be, therefore, in the destruction of the Northmen by these
Skraellings something of retributive justice.
This destruction went on, as we have seen, until the remnant of
the race was brought to bay and driven to defend themselves at
Krakortok. But they could neither be dislodged nor completely
destroyed until stratagem was brought to bear; and the device to
which these savages resorted in order to accomplish their purpose
deserves to rank with the famous wooden horse of Troy.
This did not, however, happen until after a most desperate
attempt had been made by Ungitok to get free from the clutches of
his brutal adversaries. He managed, with a large party of his
followers, to get over to the island, and in the dead of night he
surprised them in their huts, and, with the loss of only one man,
destroyed the entire party, putting men, women, and children to the
sword. It was a fearful massacre, and a dreadful revenge; but it only
further imbittered the savages against the whites, and caused them
to redouble their efforts. One man escaped the general slaughter,
and carried with him the memory of their burning huts and bleeding
wives and children. Two there were at first, and, unhappily for the
whites, one of those men was the chief, Krassippe; while the second
was his brother. These Ungitok pursued upon the ice (the attack was
made in winter), with several men following after; but Ungitok
outstripped them all, and, overtaking the brother, ran him through
the body, and then cutting off the right arm of his fallen enemy he
brandished it in the air, shouting at the same time to Krassippe (who
by this time had reached the shore), intimating to him, in an obliging
manner, that if he ever wanted an arm he would know where to
come for it. Krassippe was now beyond pursuit, so Ungitok returned,
well pleased with the trophy he had cut from his victim.
After this Krassippe neither rested by night nor day until he had
compassed the destruction of Ungitok and his band. In a fair fight
every Northman was good for at least half a dozen savages, and,
notwithstanding the destruction they had spread elsewhere, the
people of Krakortok held them personally in the greatest contempt.
But Krassippe was nevertheless, by numbers and strategy, to get the
best of them at last. He constructed an immense raft of boats, over
which he erected a low and irregular scaffolding. This he covered
with tanned and bleached seal-skins, so that when afloat the
structure looked like an iceberg. This he filled with armed men, and
turned it adrift upon the fiord, allowing it to float down with the tide
towards Krakortok among some pieces of ice. When it floated too
fast, the people threw overboard stones, with lines attached to
them. These, by retarding the progress of the raft, enabled them to
keep in company with the icebergs. Ungitok and his people saw the
raft; but so much did it appear like the ice alongside of it, that they
never once suspected its character, and the armed men drifted
around into a bight almost at the rear of the town. Running the raft
ashore, they then rushed up and made for the church by an
unfrequented route, which was left unguarded, except close to the
town. The sentinel was killed, and the church was surrounded before
a single person escaped from it. Then it was fired, and all who were
not burned or smothered with smoke met death, as they rushed out,
on the points of their enemies’ spears. Not a soul escaped except
Ungitok and his son, who was but a small boy. With him Ungitok fled
to the mountains, and there hid for a time in a cave, where at length
he was discovered through the indefatigable exertions of Krassippe.
The hiding chieftain was surrounded, and, discovering that his case
was hopeless, he threw his son into the lake to prevent his falling
into the hands of the savages, who would be sure to torture him,
and then prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible. In the end he
was overpowered and borne down. While yet sensible, Krassippe
completed his revenge by cutting off his right arm, and, flourishing it
before the expiring chieftain, he exclaimed, “Thou didst tell me
where to come for an arm if I should want one. I have come for it.”
Thus perished the last man of his race; and since that day the
Esquimaux, whom their defeated rivals had so contemptuously called
Skraellings, have held possession of the country undisturbed. They
have, however, very evidently decreased in numbers, and where
there were once tens of thousands, there are only thousands now.
For a long period of time they remained the sole occupants of the
country, and nothing was known of them save vague and
exaggerated accounts brought by occasional ships—such as those of
Davis, Baffin, and Frobisher, who touched at Greenland on their way
to the discovery of a north-west passage. In later times, however,
the Danish Government (to which Greenland as well as Iceland had
become subject) made numerous efforts to recover the “lost
colonies,” with the hope of sustaining the trade and fisheries.
Admiral Lindenau reached the coast in 1605, and carried off some of
the savages. Afterwards Captain Hall, an Englishman in the employ
of Denmark, took away four others, and shot what more he could,
as if by way of amusement. Another, who was not versed in ocean
currents, did not get near the land at all; but, becoming frightened
at being able to make no progress, he declared that there was a
huge magnet in the sea holding his ship, which so alarmed him that
he returned home. About half a dozen enterprises followed, the last
in 1670, without any further result than the killing of a few more of
the savages. Then the “lost colonies” were given up altogether, until
that excellent missionary, Hans Egede, went there in 1721, and
established himself in Baal’s River, near where the West Buygd had
flourished. Here he founded the colony of Godthaab. Then came the
Moravians; and from that time to the present the re-establishment of
colonies, and the civilizing and Christianizing of the natives, has
gone steadily on. But nowhere did Egede or his followers find any
traces of the race that had dwelt there in ancient times, save those
evidences of their decay which I have described. Egede travelled
very extensively; and others coming after him have described all we
shall probably ever know of this Land of Desolation as it was in the
days of Red Eric. Among the most important discoveries were those
of Captain Graah, of the Danish navy, who visited both coasts in
oomiaks during the years between 1828 and 1832; and after him Dr.
Henry Rink.
I will close this historical account of Greenland with a paragraph
from the Dublin Review of twenty years ago, which has not less
interest at the present time than then. “Few people,” observes the
Review, “imagine the extent of these ancient Greenland colonies. At
best, it seems to most persons some sort of Arctic fable, and they
are hardly prepared to learn that of this Greenland nation
contemporary records, histories, papal briefs, and grants of land yet
exist. So complete was the destruction of the colonies, and so
absolutely were they lost to the rest of the world, that for centuries
Europe was in doubt respecting their fate, and, up to a very recent
period, was ignorant of their geographical position. To the Catholic
they must be doubly interesting when he learns that here, as in his
own land, the traces of his faith—of that faith which is everywhere
the same—are yet distinctly to be found; that the sacred temples of
his worship may still be identified; nay, that in at least one instance
the church itself, with its burial-ground, its aumbries, its holy-water
stoup, and its tomb-stones, bearing the sacred emblems of the
Catholic belief, and the pious petitions for the prayers of the
surviving faithful, still remain to attest that here once dwelt a people
who were our brethren in the Church of God. It was not, as in our
own land, that these churches, these fair establishments of the true
faith, were ruined by the lust and avarice of a tyrant. No change of
religion marked the history of the Church of Greenland; the colonies
had been lost before the fearful religious calamities of the sixteenth
century. How or when they were swept away we scarcely know, save
from a few scattered notices, and from the traditions of wandering
Esquimaux—a heathen people that burst in upon the old colonists of
Greenland, and laid desolate their sanctuaries and their homes, ‘till
not one man was left alive.’”
 CHAPTER XI.
A DISCONSOLATE LOVER.
To resume the thread of our narrative. Taking it up where it was
dropped some chapters back, I must first recall the day and the
situation.
Our lunch was spread under the ample shelter of a tent, which
screened us from the rays of the sun, and formed a no bad
substitute for the protecting trees under which our picnics are
enjoyed in other lands. There seemed to be but one drawback to
complete enjoyment. The noonday heat rose above 70°, and started
great quantities of small flies and mosquitoes. From these
pestiferous insects we thought we surely had escaped when we
came to Greenland. But no! this was not to be. They attacked us in
perfect clouds during the afternoon, and before I had quite
completed my survey most of the party had betaken themselves to
the oomiak, and hauled out into the middle of the fiord to escape
their assaults. But the day was then well spent, and the pleasure-
seekers had by this time enough of sport to satisfy them. All had
enjoyed the day, Marcus alone excepted. That youth could never
restrain his mortification at the havoc he at heart believed the Prince
was making with his matrimonial prospects. For that young
gentleman persistently devoted himself to the lively Concordia,
despite the heat and mosquitoes, while she, in grateful appreciation
of his attentions, wove wreaths of wild flowers for his cap, sung for
him in irreproachable Esquimaux, and performed other coquettish
acts of that kind with which recognized lovers are not unfrequently
tantalized in other places than Greenland.
 CONCORDIA AT THE PICNIC.

Whether Marcus would sensibly have staid at home, had he not

been ordered to go by the pastor, I can not pretend to say; but
having gone, he was certainly deserving (or at least he evidently
thought so, like any other lover would have done) of better
treatment from his inamorata; and, to look at him, you would have
thought so too, for he was really a fine-looking fellow—at least for a
half-breed. The stolid mask of the Esquimaux did not suit his frank,
open face at all, and it was quite impossible for him to show himself
at ease when he was not. Whether the Prince discovered the
disturbed state of his feelings is not certain, but it is certain that he
did not treat the matter with much attention. He never allowed
Marcus to approach the object of his devotion to speak with her
except once, and then Marcus was overheard to reproach her with
flirting with the American—an opinion which was very generally
entertained. The lively young lady of the seal-skin pantaloons grew
indignant, declaring very pointedly that it was none of his business
what she did with the American. Quite taken aback, the young man
began to remonstrate with her, evidently under the impression that
the Prince had already installed himself deep in the affections which,
until this most unhappy day, he thought he had possessed all to
himself. Then he began to institute comparisons between himself
and the Prince. “Look at him,” exclaimed the much-injured lover,
“with his pockets full of beads and jewelry! Look at him there, with
his pop-gun of a rifle! Do you imagine he could shoot a seal? No,
never! And if he did, could he get it home? No! Can he go in the
fleet kayak? Can he climb the cliffs of the kittiwake, or gather the
eggs of the lumme? Can he dart the spear at the eider-duck? Can he
scale the mountain-sides in pursuit of the reindeer? Look at his pale
face, and answer me!” and by this time fairly boiling over with rage
and vexation as he recounted the Prince’s negative qualifications, he
exclaimed, “No! he can do none of these things. He is good for
nothing!” Then he straightened himself and said, with great self-
complacency, “Look at me!”
“I don’t want to,” said the girl; “I won’t!” which terminated the
colloquy, for the Prince himself came up at that very moment, and,
addressing himself to the indignant lover, desired to know if his
mother was intimately acquainted with his whereabouts—an inquiry
which might have resulted in serious consequences had the lover
understood even so much as a word of it. Without wasting much
time, however, upon the injured youth, the Prince called for the
music (the boy who steered our oomiak had brought up a cracked
fiddle), and then, seizing Concordia by the waist, he whirled her
through the old Norseman’s grave-yard in a fantastic waltz that must
have made the very bones of the dead heroes fairly rattle again.
Could those ancient priests, with the bishops at their head, have
arisen then and there, they would doubtless have anathematized the
whole party on the spot; for others were not slow to follow, and the
dance did not wind up until they had gone through with several
hornpipes and Greenland reels of a kind, I dare avow, never
dreamed of by Terpsichore. Meanwhile Marcus, leaning against the
old church wall, looked on in a most disconsolate and defiant
manner, with his fists thrust far down into his pockets, as if that
were the only safe place for them.
Whatever may have been Marcus’s recollections of the day,
certainly all the rest of the party had a thoroughly good time of it.
The day, however, lost something of its romantic character when the
shades of evening began to trail over us, and the sun going down
behind the distant glacier-crowned hills left the chilliness of evening
to succeed the warmth of noon, as fatigue succeeded to the
freshness of the morning.
When, therefore, we had completed our survey of the spot, we
were a much more orderly party than we had been previously; and,
when once more afloat in our oomiak, we went about from place to
place in the fiord, visiting other ruins, with a solemnity more
befitting explorers. The jealous Marcus had not now so much cause
of complaint against the Prince, yet he did not recover his liveliness
of disposition. He paddled along at his post of duty, looking neither
to the right nor to the left, saying never a word, but evidently
thinking very hard.
As he appeared to be of a very simple and gentle nature, I could
but sympathize with him in his present trouble. There could be no
doubt that he looked upon his hopes of happiness as forever gone.
He had discovered his lady-love to be mercenary—her mind carried
away by the Prince’s lavish expenditure of beads, ribbons, and
jewelry; and all this for a young foreigner with a fair face, who could
neither shoot a seal, nor go in a kayak, nor cast a spear! It was
altogether most unaccountable. He seemed to be all the time, and
naturally enough, comparing himself with his rival, to the great
disparagement, of course, of the said rival, else he would not have
been a lover, and with great wonderment as to what she possibly
could see to admire in the other man. That Concordia meant to run
off to America, Marcus evidently did not have a doubt, and his face
seemed to indicate at times that he was capable of any deed of
desperation in order to prevent so dire a catastrophe. Should he
spear him, or put a bullet through him, or any thing of that sort?
Especially did his countenance assume a malignant expression when,
upon the homeward journey, the coquette would break out with her
favorite song, the chorus of which was, “Tesseinowah, tesseinowah,”
repeated over and over again. At this the Prince always manifested
great delight, while Marcus grew correspondingly gloomy.
When we had at length reached Julianashaab, and had thanked
the good pastor, to whom we were so much indebted, and had said
“good-night” to our oarswomen, I took the unhappy Marcus aside to
condole with him. “Are you not,” said I, “son of the head man of
Bungetak?”
“Ab,” said Marcus, and I thought a glow of satisfaction overspread
his features at being reminded of his superior parentage.
“Concordia is very pretty,” I continued.
“Ab!” said Marcus again, his countenance falling at the recollection
of his previous hopes and present discomfiture.
I asked him, “Do you know what pretty girls do in my country?”
“Na-mik” (no), he answered, his countenance falling still more at
the further mention of the pretty girl that he had lost.
“When the pretty girl has the chance, she always marries the son
of the head man,” said I.
 Then his countenance assumed a joyous expression, and he went
his way with a smile, which said plainly that, if he thought it was not
much to be Marcus, it was good to be the son of the head man of
Bungetak.
 CHAPTER XII.
THE CHURCH AT JULIANASHAAB.
The day following our return from Krakortok being Sunday, I gladly
availed myself of Mr. Anthon’s invitation to attend service at his little
church.
Julianashaab is not at any time a particularly lively place, but there
is sufficient activity during six days of the week to make the silence
of the seventh very marked. Solemnly silent it was to me, as I
landed on the beach, and then, beside the stream which flows
through the town, made my way towards the temple dedicated to
God among the majestic hills. The people, savage and civilized alike,
had rested from their labors—the fishermen from their lines and
nets; the hunters from their search after game in the valleys; the
sound of the cooper’s hammer, and the ring of the blacksmith’s anvil
were no longer heard; even the voices of the inhabitants seemed to
be hushed, as if awed by the presence of that divinely ordained day
which, it is commanded, shall be remembered and kept holy.
It was delightfully calm; the sun gave a pleasant autumnal warmth
to the atmosphere; and altogether it was one of those peaceful
Sunday mornings which one enjoys so much at home in the country,
when the mind instinctively dwells upon the wonders of nature, and
the very soul goes out to the great universal Father whose dwelling-
place is everywhere, and whose presence is nowhere felt more
strongly than amidst the solemn grandeur of the cloud-piercing hills.
As I approached the church, the only sounds that greeted me
were those made by the tumbling waters of the brook until I came
very near, when the sweet music of an organ rose above the voice of
the glad stream. It was a most agreeable surprise; for I had hardly
expected to find here in Greenland any such artificial means of
inspiring religious feeling. How far this circumstance may have had
an influence with me I can not say; but certain it is, I would not
exchange the memory of the notes of that little organ of the small
Julianashaab church, as I first caught them there on that peaceful
Sunday morning in that Greenland dell, for those of any other
church-organ that I ever heard. Afterwards, when I had taken my
seat among the congregation, the effect was not the less pleasing as
I listened to the voices of the choir, and reflected that they were the
voices of God’s children, who, through the instrumentality of
Christian love, had been reclaimed from barbarism.
As sometimes happens elsewhere, a large majority of the
worshippers were women. They generally appeared to be inspired
with a devout feeling, which even the presence of strangers could
not disturb, and they sang the hymns in a manner peculiarly
agreeable.
The Esquimaux language is by no means lacking in euphonious
sounds, and, as pronounced by a native, is often music itself. Mr.
Anthon had caught the accent and pronunciation perfectly, and the
entire service, sermon included, was in the common tongue—a
language peculiar to the Esquimaux, and the same with all the
tribes.
The organ of the little church is of the quaint device of a hundred
years ago, having been presented to the mission by Queen Juliana,
in recognition of the compliment paid her by the naming of the
town. A native played it with reasonable skill, and the catechist led
the singing, in which the entire congregation joined with a good
voice.
I have never seen a congregation pay closer attention to their
pastor than these rude people paid to Mr. Anthon. They seemed
eager for instruction, and drank in his every word. The sermon was
well adapted to the minds of a people exposed to the dangers of the
sea, as they are continually. As I sat looking at their upturned faces,
I could not but reflect upon the great change that had come over
the people who subdued the Northmen. Then they were steeped in
the worst form of barbarous superstition. Earth, sea, and air were
peopled with horrid spirits; now the love of Christ rules in every
heart, and they are all, without exception, converts to the Christian
faith.
As a specimen of their language, I quote a stanza from one of the
hymns sung (with a literal translation appended), which no doubt my
readers will find no difficulty in singing for themselves.
Aut nellekangitsok, That blood, that inestimable,
Pirsaunekangarpok, Hath a very great power;
Kuttingub attausingut, A single drop,
Innuit nunametut, The men that are upon earth,
Annau-sinna-kullugit That it has power to redeem them
Kringarsairsub karnanit. From the cruel hater’s jaws.
Another, which was an exhortation to all men to come to Jesus,
began thus:
“Krikiektorsimarsok
Jesuse innulerkipok.”

The services ended, I went with Mr. Anthon to the parsonage, and
passed the greater part of the day with his agreeable family. The
pastor himself has devoted much attention to gathering the
traditions and legends of the people, and in his recital of them I
found much entertainment.
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