NEH awards three grants for preservation and research
Two Montana organizations and a University of Montana professor received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana in Charlo was awarded a “Preservation Assistance for Small Institutions” grant in the amount of $5,775. This grant will span an 18-month period and allow the museum to contract with Pat Roath of Specialty Museum Services out of Kalispell, to conduct a general preservation assessment of the institution’s collection of more than 2,000 objects.
“We have artifacts of local and national significance and we want to ensure we have the highest standards of care so that future generations can continue to enjoy these treasures,” says Amy Webster, project director and collections manager at the museum.
The assessment will address the short- and long-term needs of objects in the museum’s care and include a five-year conservation preventive plan. The grant will also fund some storage and monitoring materials and culminate with a training and open house to share findings with board and staff, local museums and tribal members.
“This is a rare opportunity for me,” said Todd Buffalo, an intern at the museum and Salish Kootenai College Tribal Historic Preservation student. “It’s huge because preservation is my passion and this will be a great learning experience for my future career.”
Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana is located on the Flathead Indian Reservation just 10 minutes south of Ronan on Hwy. 93. It was founded in 1997 by Laurel and Bud Cheff, Jr. who had a strong desire to preserve the culture and history of early Montana and the Salish, Flathead and Pend d’Oreille Tribes, although the museum holds Native objects from across the nation. Bud Cheff, who was born and raised in the valley, shares Native and historic objects collected over a lifetime. Many other Mission Valley residents have donated items over the last 20 years to make the museum a national treasure.
Jo Cheff, executive director of the museum, said the NEH grant “is one important step needed to ensure good stewardship of our collections as we work toward our goal of becoming a nationally accredited museum.”
Other NEH grants
Eric Schluessel, an assistant professor of Chinese history and politics at the University of Montana, received a $60,000 fellowship from the NEH for an edition and translation of Tarikh-i Hamidi, a 19th-century Uyghur history of Eurasia. The Tarikh-i Hamidi was written by a scholar living at the crossroads of Eurasia. Its author Mullah Musa Sayrami (1836-1917) belonged to what is now called the Uyghur people, the Turkic-speaking, Sunni Muslim majority of China’s Xinjiang region.
This project will produce a first-ever scholarly edition and English translation of this celebrated work of Uyghur history, which reveals the sociocultural changes that took place in this Muslim society at the turn of the century. The edition will facilitate research on this difficult text, and the translation will bring an eminent Uyghur writer’s work to a global audience.
Ellen Crain, director of the Butte-Silver Bow (BSB) Public Archives, received $12,000, for All Nations: Preserving the Ethnic Heritage of Butte, Montana. The grant helps fund four two-day digitization workshops to collect local history materials from the Hispanic, German, Finnish, and Jewish communities of Butte.
The archives hosts a series of “All Nations” exhibits to honor the ethnic communities that have shaped the city’s history since its founding as a mining camp in the 1860s. In partnership with the Montana Preservation Alliance, the workshops would combine digitization of cultural heritage materials with oral history collection and public programming, to include presentations by a local author and faculty from the University of Montana, Rocky Mountain College, and Montana State University.
The “All Nations” digital collection would be made available for research on the BSB Public Archives website.
For more on NEH programs visit www.neh.gov.
(Photo): Delicate quill-decorated moccasins are among some of the rare objects in the Ninepipes Museum’s care that will be assessed by the NEH grant
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