Interview · North Dakota · Erik Holland
Themes: Land & stewardship, Culture & continuity
New transcript-based questions created with AI assistance using Scott Simpson’s Learn About and Learn From guide.
Learn About questions
1. How does Erik Holland use exhibit design to communicate changes in time?
2. Why does he ask what the word here means when considering different accounts of the past?
3. How does he distinguish seeing perspectives as different from labeling them good or bad?
Learn From questions
1. When have I treated a different perspective as wrong before trying to understand it?
2. What assumptions would I need to examine to listen more openly?
3. How might I hold more than one account in view without pretending their differences do not matter?
Transcripts
05 Erik Holland Individual Perspectives
Watch this interview on YouTubeSo some of the things that we have done is in the design of an exhibit there are colors and different color palettes as you move through the exhibit that give indication of change in time for instance in the monition gallery which is what we call early peoples it’s dates are from the end of the Ice Age to 1860 so you know if you want real numbers we’re talking about 12,000 BC is the earliest archaeological site that we know of native people say we’ve been here for forever where is here is my question when you when you work with a thing like that if there’s a mile of ice on the land there’s going to be dirt and lakes and trees on top of that ice in the movement of that continental glacier if you’re living on the permafrost on top of a mile of ice on a lake that begins in the Yukon and ends up in Western North Dakota are you still here yeah but where is here so I think that level of perspective that can help people bridge between native traditions that say we’ve always been here and an archaeologist who says no we don’t have any evidence before 12,000 years ago there’s a way to gray that line from yes and no and that’s what I think is it important when one talks about cultures it isn’t I was trained as an anthropologist in my BA degree and so what we were taught to think about was lay down your bias identify what it is that you think is good and bad and get rid of it and don’t think about good and bad just think of it as different and so if you have a perspective that’s like this in a perspective like this it’s not either this or this it’s ha those are different isn’t that interesting and what’s the is there a place to get between I’m also a Quaker so I have a different worldview than many people I see that there is a fire in you that’s valuable and I don’t know you’ve hardly for me I mean we’ve talked for an hour but my point with a visitor when they come to me is there’s a value that they’re bringing no matter what baggage they’re bringing and if I can help them to recognize that there are various perspectives that can be talked about at once it’s a valuable thing for them in the rest of their days and so
Video title and URL from the supplied Teachings of Our Elders transcript document.
Source materials
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