Author: stephansen

Contract & Week 5 Update

by stephansen

Amy and I spent today’s meeting organizing ourselves and gawking over our beautiful website. Our goals were

  1. Finalize our contract
  2. Look into more Latino Resources
  3. Talk about the purpose and plan for oral histories
  4. Check out our site!

Because my dear partner Amy went a little crazy with web design over the weekend, we actually skipped 1-3 and got straight to a site check up! All her hard work really paid off! We edited our introductory welcome page which states our goals and made sure that it was consistent with what we put on the contract. We are currently looking at different ways to organize content and make the site as user friendly as possible while still leaving plenty of room to add all the information we need.

After finishing our goals, we finalized our contract and organized all of our dates. We reviewed all of the jobs that need to get done and the roll that both Amy and I will take in the production of the site. Because Amy is very technologically advanced, very organized, and taking 10 less credits than me this semester, I have trusted her with the majority of the work in regards to web design and details. I will focus on editing content and ensuring that the site conveys the message that we have agreed on. Amy and I have worked on other digital projects together and I am confident that our teamwork and personal styles will produce a beautiful and educational resource for Morris and all of Stevens County to enjoy.

We began discussing a few more Latino resources that we want to look at more specifically. One of which is a project by U of M Morris Professors, Stacey Aronson and Windy Roberts called, “History of the Latino Experience in the Morris Area.” This resource is housed in the Center for Small Towns and I should gain access to it by Wednesday or Thursday morning. I love that a lot of our local history is housed right here at the University and also at the Historical Society.

We didn’t get too far into discussing our plan for oral histories/ interviews/ meetings with local historians, but instead had a really good talk about what we want out of this project and how we’re going to accomplish it. We want to shed a new light on history here in Morris and talk about what that means for our community. We want to show that people, no matter where they are from or how long they’re living somewhere, deserve to feel like they are at home. We want to influence the way discussions on immigration and migration are conducted in Morris and Stevens County. We want to use this research as a platform to make a change in our community.

Below you can find the first draft of our contract:

Project Contract

Morris Intercultural Education Initiative

by stephansen

Ortiz, Cristina. “Morris Intercultural Education Initiative.” August 2014, 1-75. Accessed September 13, 2017.

“We are more likely to hear about a Latino achievement gap than a success story. We often hear of generalized statistics, but rarely of local, context- and as-set-driven figures.”

The Morris Intercultural Education Initiative was a program compiled and executed by a large array of individuals from the University of Minnesota Morris in 2014. It also included information from many sources in and around our community such as the  Morris Area School District, Community Education & Recreation office, Minnesota Literacy Council and other community groups. Dr. Cristina Ortiz, a beloved professor of Amy and myself, did much of the work on this project and has supplied us with an array of incredible resources for our project simply by conducting her own research both independently and with the help of her classes. This project is divided into chapters discussing the program itself, the differing national and local contexts of education, community based research, recommendations, and an appendices. If you take a look at the goals below and I’m sure you’ll see the importance of this study to our research.

One of the many goals of the assessment overall was to demonstrate the differences in native language and culture should be viewed as assets and an opportunity to create a positive, intercultural setting for relationship building and learning. Because of this specific goal, Amy and I are going to be able to dissect the community based research that has been done through the Office of Community Engagement at UMM as well as external research. Their research questions are clear and align much of the information Amy and I have been interested in pursuing while studying the Latino population here in Stevens County. The study includes best practices for the proposed programs, specific data from national and local research, and community perspectives. One thing it does exclude, that Amy and I should take into consideration, is data on Stevens County as a whole. We planned our research on Stevens County because so many people groups and industries here overlap between towns. This focuses on Morris which excludes some of the other school districts in Stevens County.

This resource, although specific to Morris, could be beneficial to anyone looking to understand more about grassroots education or community involvement in their project. It is also a very clear and organized piece of literature that could help others understand the layout of anthropological research studies.

Perry Klopfenstein and My AC Experience

by stephansen

George Orwall said,

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Perry Klopfenstein would agree. He gave many a quote like this on Saturday evening during his lecture on the history of the Apostolic Church. I needed to take a few days to reflect on my time at the Apostolic Fellowship Hall because for each piece of information that I wrote down there were two questions that came up in my mind. Amy and I both recorded the lecture on our phones and I am excited to be able to go back and listen to it again for more direct quotes. We did get permission to use Mr. Klopfenstein’s lecture as a resource for the project, so I am excited about that. I learned so much about the importance of the Church history stemming from Europe to the United States and specifically the Midwest and Minnesota. Out of my five pages of notes, I have concluded that I took two good notes on the theology of the church which really did not pertain to our research- I just found it interesting! However bit of the useful information:

  1. the Froelich movement in Germany. He was a man who “formed a sect” of the anabaptist church which is known today as the apostolic and much of the teachings and history that I learned from this lecture where based off his influence.
  2. Many apostolics in the United States and specifically the midwest may have been from a Mennonite tradition because they understood the German language and respected the anabaptist model of religion.
  3. 1848 began some of the mass migration to the US from Germany. Perry was very excited to explain that they came here, “legally” because it’s important in today’s context. This was interesting specifically because it directly relates to our project and Amy and I both looked at each other and wrote this in large print in our notebooks. He mentioned that all immigrants have similar struggles but  the apostolics found that “money grows on trees” in the context of farming and that the church community was strongest where the  land was the best. This is another proof to us that these people found that the rural Midwest had great lands.

Some questions that arose that would be pertinent to a comparison with Latinos:

  1. How is their current relationship to the community similar or different to that of the Latino community? How does this influence Morris and Stevens County?
  2. Is there a way to relate the tithes that embers of the church pay to the way that Latinos here send remittances?
  3. How does the education of these groups compare and how do they engage in schools? How are they perceived in the educational system?
  4. How does the rhetoric/ bad publicity from World War 1 about the apostolics relate to that of immigration rhetoric and Latino Immigrants?

 

What a blessing it was that Perry Klopfenstein was here in Morris during our research! We were able to meet a large variety of people and now have so many more resources to explore. I’m excited about the project and everything we find just keeps sparking more and more interest.

 

Must Use Resource: Immigration to the Great Plains

by stephansen

Looking through some of our annotations for secondary sources, I realized that I wrote, “Must Read” with nine exclamation marks behind one source on Immigration to the Great Plains from 1864 to 1914. After taking note of the rather long timeline and seeing the words “great plains” that grabs every Minnesotan’s attention, I skimmed the first page and concluded it was a must read. Every sentence is packed with information and now that I have dissected this article, I think I forgot an exclamation mark or two.

This journal article touches on some very interesting and very specific topics that Amy and I really need for both a more global timeline as well as an understanding of the midwest before the German Apostolic population arrived.

To begin, Garver discusses the influence of six wars and explains how they created the proper conditions for migration. Although all of these wars have obviously had their influence, three of them have pertinence in our research.

  1. The American Civil War (1861-1865): Abolished slavery which in turn encouraged immigration for the continuation of work on the Railroads throughout the United States. This was also about 40 years before the Apostolic church was founded in Stevens County in 1902, which gives us some perspective.
  2. The 7 Weeks War (1866): Prussia and Italy defeated the Austrian Empire and several small German Principalities which lead to a small and preliminary German migration out of the German Territory. This was the same time that the Mexican Republic was reestablished after the expulsion of the French under Benito Juarez. The only reason that is pertinent is that lead to great commerce trade and more Mexican influence in the construction of the Railroad in the Midwest.
  3. Franco-German War (July, 1870- May, 1871): Prussia and Germany allied to defeat France and establish an authoritarian constitutional German empire. This allowed for and created rapid industrialization and a new political structure that promoted aggressive foreign policy and destabilized European powers in a variety of ways. This also allowed for them more freedom to travel and move to a different country.

Above I touched a bit on the importance of these three specific wars, but there are five influence Garver makes to discuss the influence of war on the Grate Plains. To be as concise as possible, he outlines these as:

  1. Enlargement of Civil Liberties
  2. Extreme Economic Growth
  3. Industrial Technological Innovation
  4. Growing World Market
  5. “Advent” of Mass Eastern/Southern European Immigration

Each one of these things is absolutely crucial to our research because they are all a piece of one of our overarching topics. While that seems pretty straightforward (and exciting!), the book says that these products of war were facilitated by “the achievements of widespread literacy through universal, free, compulsory, and state funded elementary education.” I don’t know what this means I don’t think that it was very clearly described throughout the journal. This may have more to do with states closer to the center of the United States, but nevertheless is a topic to be explored as well. Another thing that this journal has information on are the churches and general culture of the Eastern and Southern European immigrants. The influence of small town industry and rural life is also discussed throughout the article and will be very useful to our research.

Religious painted glass in German that was most likely from a small town Main street.

Garver, Bruce. “Immigration to the Great Plains, 1865—1914: War, Politics, Technology, And Economic Development.” Great Plains Quarterly 31, no. 3, 2011: 179-203.

Professor Gross

by stephansen

Today, Amy and I met with Stephan Gross who is the Archive Director and Associate Professor of History to discuss some different perspectives on our project. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation with Professor Gross, because he was able to narrow our interests in some ways and expand our research searches. When we were discussing the similarities between the Apostolic community and the Latino’s assimilation patterns, Gross mentioned that “no one fully assimilates.” This is interesting because assimilation is a very important part of the rhetoric around Immigrant and migratory groups. This is bread from what I believe is a nativist perspective that values some cultures over others. But when it comes to Minnesota and Minnesotans, many have agreed that we are people who, “work hard and honor our families.” When Professor Gross brought up this notion, I was intrigued to hear that all of his “research” on this concept was strictly out of oral history and could be found in everything from Ole and Lena jokes to state political rhetoric. Midwesterners are known for being very connected to their roots and the idea of “chain migration” was brought up. I had very little background knowledge on the idea of chain migration and was even more interested to know that the Apostolic church sent scouts to the area to check if there was plentiful land and positive prospects. The last word that Steven had for us was that we have become “so infatuated with difference that we stopped looking at what has [has connected and] connects us.” This final idea left me inspired and excited to continue pursuing this project with more and more focus.

Annotated Bibliography 1

by stephansen

I believe that we have done a great job of searching through sources and finding a good number of sources that hold a different emphasis and touch on specific factors that have impacted migration in the world, Midwest, and Stevens County. We will be taking these sources and compiling a list of questions that address the immigration process, family structure, language, customs, and assimilation.

We are looking forward to working with these sources, editing the annotations, and adding more to this list.

 

Google Docs link to Annotated Bibliography

 

Our Moment

by stephansen

As I have mentioned on a previous page, my partner, Amy and I are focusing in on Stevens County. This small western county of Minnesota is made up of multiple towns and townships. Morris, the county seat on the eastern edge of the county, is where a University of Minnesota campus can be found. Due to the university, there is a huge demographic of young adults throughout the school year and there is a sizable portion of the area that works on campus. The campus, however, is very separate from the community of Morris and the surrounding area.

For this research. Amy and I want to examine Stevens County and explore ideas of migration and community from outside of the college block. That being said, we are fully aware that the rich history, abundant resources, and invested faculty that the campus provides will be vital to us.

In order to influence the greatest change and best represent Stevens County, our goal is to relate the contemporary migration story of the Latino population in the area and the influential apostolic community that has been present since the inception of Stevens County as a community. Many apostolic families have stayed in Stevens County and much of the industry is a result of their settlement. The increasing Latino population, however, is often seen as a direct correlation to these industries. We will be coming the settlement of the apostolic community and the migration patterns of Latinos in Stevens county in order to draw some conclusions on how similar and/or different their experiences have been. Stevens County, although in what some may describe as the middle of no where, is full of history, culture, and people that deserve to be brought to light and examined.

Resources and Research Part I

by stephansen

Amy and I  have taken major steps to exploring Stevens County resources and through the University as well as the community, we have ran into many sources! Who knew that there was so much about such a small community? Originally we didn’t even know where to begin but knew that we wanted to make an impact on the people that have been and are currently here.

We have a large variety of archival resources at UMM and even more at the Stevens County Historical Society. There is also more information at the Minnesota Historical Society that I am excited to explore when back in the Twin Cities. Probably most important to our current research, are the primary sources available through the Apostolic community in Stevens County. Amy even called me after she discovered that a Church historian will be visiting Morris to talk about the history of the Apostolic Church. Amy even has a book that he has published!

Along with a meeting with the Church historian, we will also be having more meetings with the Director or Archives at the university and the historians at the Historical society. We have talked about using our connections within our community to contact and form stronger ties with potential resources! I love learning from individuals who have been around Morris and Stevens County for a long time and I am very grateful that Amy and her family have a rich history here. Between the two of us we have connections in the community, the school, the churches, and even in the Twin Cities. We have been reaching out to more and more people while also doing research online through our archives. There is most definitely a lot of information and I am excited to dive deeper in order to better understand and better represent our community!

Nation of Migrants – Goodman

by stephansen

Goodman. “Nation of Migrants, Historians of Migration.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 34, no. 4, 2015, p. 7., Accessed 27 Aug. 2017.

In his article, Adam Goodman lays out a few clear reasons as to why the intentional way in which The United States has created an identity as a nation of immigrants and perpetuated it through education is an inadequate historical representation of who we are as America. His main arguments stem from the fact that US National Identity has been cultivated and intentionally designed to use words such as “immigrant,” “melting pot,” “assimilation,” all to attempt to recognize diversity in America’s growth as a nation. These words are problematic, however, by not including migratory patterns, native people groups, and any type of cultural preservation. Throughout the article, Goodman notes how important words are both in fields of study and to individuals. He also notes that in the midst of reevaluating the United State’s history of immigration, we must also acknowledge that the subject matter is not solely historical but also political, cultural, social, and economical. Even though there are many different reviews/articles/journals/studies written on immigration and migration, I think one clear point that Goodman makes is that one way migration- those that would most likely be defined as immigrants– is valued in America more than any other migratory flow. This is a dangerous line however because much like legal status or personal identity, National identity is not fixed and entire groups or nations (Goodman specifically mentions Sweden and Mexico while also alluding to the US) will not be either.

I think that as we take a migration-based approach to our research, we have even recently seen that Native American groups are migratory and have been excluded throughout our preliminary research. Similarly, the large apostolic population here migrated from Illinois and Iowa. We will continue looking into why people moved but also want to investigate what type of role the Midwest in general has played in the Nation’s migratory history. Towards the end of the article, Goodman notes that deep and difficult research is “essential to understanding the experiences, motivations and decisions of migrants, and their diverse reasons for migrating.” I believe that keeping this type of interdisciplinary mindset on hand will greatly benefit our research throughout the semester.

 

Some Questions and Ideas to further my research:

What is American Exceptionalism? How does “us vs. them” mentality play into that?

Define: temporal, geographic, and political boundaries

Native American’s were excluded for much of America’s history as a migratory group, but there are many ethnic groups dispersed throughout America. Have these different groups been taken into consideration in a different way? What factors allow(ed) for some Native groups to be privileged over others? How can we take Stevens County’s rich Native American History into account during this project?

Citizenship and Naturalization

by stephansen

Throughout my various research topics I have found that it is important to make sure that the audience fully understands the terms being used. While the article was articulate, well organized, and informative, I believe that there is always room for more definitions. Especially in the beginning of a semester and the start of a new project, terms like “citizen,” “naturalization,” and “immigration” ought to be defined.  So according to webster dictionary, here’s what I’ve got:

Citizen:

  1. one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman

  2. a member of a state :  a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it.

  3.  a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state.

Naturalization:

  1.  to confer the rights of a national on:  to admit to citizenship

  2. to introduce into common use or into the vernacular

  3. to cause something to become established as if native

Immigrant:

1. a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.

 

I really enjoyed the review of naturalization laws and changes, many of which I didn’t fully know of understand and I look forward to continuing to learn more throughout the semester and hear what stuck out to each of us as peers and colleagues.