The lands we share, University of Wisconsin System and local community members (review)

The mission of the The Lands We Share initiative is "to use Wisconsin's rich agricultural history and culturally diverse connections to land and farming to support community engagement and dialogue about the connections between identity, history and farming at six featured farm sites." The initiative was made possible through a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin System, local communities, and students. The initiative constitutes two parts: a traveling exhibition paired with a public dialogue tour that centers on "the intersection of farming, land, ethnic culture and history in Wisconsin." This review focuses on the exhibition.

The six featured farm sites span the state: Allenville Farms in central eastern Wisconsin, Oneida Nation Farms near Green Bay, Dettmann Dairy Farms in southeastern Wisconsin, Vang C&C Farm in south central Wisconsin, Metcalfe Legacy Garden in Milwaukee, and Walker Square Farmers' Market in Milwaukee. The installation of the exhibit consisted of six stations. Five of the six stations featured the farms, and one station was dedicated to comments and feedback as well as furthering the conversation about Wisconsin's agricultural history and folks' connections to land. Each station was comprised of a large square post. For the five stations that featured a farm, each side of the post included a mix of introductory historical textual information, material that explored the topic at hand, and audio from four or five oral history interviews with community members and featured farmers. The side of the post with the oral history interviews included a sitting area with a headset.

The layout of the installation made the exhibit accessible. The exhibit engaged audiences by allowing them to start anywhere and by including a combination of pictures, texts, objects, and audio. The five stations that featured the farms each addressed one of the questions below. The questions explored the intersections of identity, history, survival, and farming:

1. 1. How does land shape urban neighborhoods?

2. 2. How does land shape identity?

3. 3. How does land shape community?

4. 4. How does the land hold memory?

5. 5. Who is a farmer?

I visited the exhibit on two occasions: the first was to get a brief orientation and the second was to tour it more thoroughly and experience it more intimately. In my first tour, I read the texts and observed the ambience of the exhibit. The most striking thing about my first tour was the use of the phrase "slash-and-burn" agriculture to describe the featured Hmong farm owners' farming technique in Laos. This term is quite outdated and is extremely derogatory. As a Hmong person, I was quite taken aback.

In my second experience, I took the time to closely read the text as well as listen to the oral history interviews. The text emphasized various social topics, such as settler colonialism and land theft, urban poverty, war and displacement, and the decline of small family farms. What was remarkable this time around was the realization that oral history is an important analytical tool. The oral history interviews were central to the exhibit and brought to life the information in the text panels. For example, in the Oneida Nation Farms interviews, one of the interviewees, Loretta Metoxen, talked about the Dawes Act that divided reservation land among American Indian individuals. By 1929, most of Oneida Nation Reservation, except for 200 acres, had been sold off and was occupied by whites. This caused an onset of additional problems for Oneida members as they had no way to work for food since there was no land. As such, they worked for farmers who through the Dawes Act now occupied their land to earn their board. According to Metoxen, through this policy, the "ancient traditions were just shattered."

This audio interview gave life to the text panel on the Dawes Act. The methodological approach of these oral history interviews left out the interviewers' voices. This created the experience of interviewees talking to the exhibit visitor alone, telling their story...