Links and Acknowledgments

The Bay Mills Virtual Museum project would not have been possible were it not for myriad different people and institutions who generously offered time, money, knowledge, and encouragement for our efforts. As an effort dedicated to community-curation and open-access to information, the guiding vision has been that communities themselves are best equipped to tell their own histories, and that information best gains value when shared with minimal restrictions.

Major funding for the project has been provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF, Grant #CNS-0739183). Within NSF, the main entity backing this effort is the admirable "Broadening Participation in Computing" program, overseen by the inestimable Jan Cuny. The [co-]Principal Investigators are Professors Gavin Clarkson and Bob Frost.

Aside from the PIs, instructors of the project include Erin Rhode and Veronica Pasfield, graduate students from the University of Michigan, with further assistance from graduate student Trond Jacobsen. The project would obviously be nothing without the high-energy contributions of the students of the Bay Mills and Sault communities: Ashtyn Cameron, Greg Dunning, Justin Frazier, Alicia Gervais, Kat Keenan, Kellen Perron, Brad Tadgerson, Chantell Tadgerson, Cole Tadgerson, Kyle Tadgerson, Julie Timmer, and Rikki Timmer. They are the true stars of this project!

The "home" institution of the project is the School of Information (SI) at the University of Michigan. Prof. Martha Pollack, Dean of SI, along with SI's Associate Dean for Research, Prof. Thomas Finholt, contributed major insight and assistance in securing funding and managing the many details of the grant. IT support has been provided by SI's IT support unit and SI Computing. Installation support for drupal was provided by Michael Hess.

The physical home of the project is Bay Mills Community College (BMCC) at the Bay Mills Indian Community. Michael Parish, President of BMCC, has been unstinting in his enthusiasm and generosity. Founded on a grant-supported shoestring in 1983 in an effort of local self-government and community improvement, BMCC has some of the best staff and facilities of any tribal college in the USA. Along with the Ojibwe Charter School at Bay Mills led by Principal Marcia Malloy, the Bay Mills Indian Community has an educational infrastructure worthy of envy anywhere. The Bay Mills News is the go-to source for community news and its archives are an invaluable historical resource. Similarly, BMIC is privileged to have the expertise of the Bay Mills History Department, operated by Wanda Perron and Paula Carrick, as a splendid repository of materials relevant to the collective memory of the community. Our work would not have been possible without their heroic assistance. Our deepest thanks go out to all of the supporters we've had in the community, especially to Wanda and Paula. They are also de facto curators of the Keene Collection, owned by BMCC, now located at the Bay Mills Resort and Casino. Much of our source material also comes from The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community, by Charles E. Cleland (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press: 2000).

Though this is presented as a virtual museum of the Bay Mills Indian Community, it is also in part about the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Due to deeply unfortunate and unjust actions by the US government in the nineteenth century, an insidious division was created within the once united community. We have tried to ameliorate that breach with the participation of a number of Sault Tribe members in this project, yet much remains to be done.

As any visitor to this virtual museum will soon discover, "indians don't live in tipis anymore." What is more, BMCC and BMIC have embraced IT with a careful enthusiasm that have made our work at the College a genuine, flawless pleasure. "Need WiFi? Here are the links." "Need a temporary repository? Wait a half-hour and it'll be there." "Need a roomful of student computers networked together with a massive display in front? Which room would you prefer?" The expertise of Chet Kasper and Robin Bedell, BMCC's IT administrators, and the amazing grant-writing expertise of the BMCC administration has created a computing environment that is equal to that of the mighty University of Michigan School of Information!

Though copyright on the virtual museum site is held by the Bay Mills Indian Community, Bob Frost, in his role as the project director at Bay Mills and as a faculty member at the University of Michigan, remains the responsible party for all copyright issues and liabilities. As a non-profit site owned by a non-profit and sovereign entity, we take a broad view of fair-use rights as stated in USC 17, Chapter 1, Section 107. Should any copyright owner object to our use of her or his material, a take-down request should be sent to rfrost<at>umich.edu, and the material will be removed as soon as possible. We are strong advocates of open-access to cultural materials, yet we respect the right of authors to control the ultimate use of their works.

Finally, we have been in awe about the expertise and depth of collective memory in the Bay Mills Indian Community. Led in different yet complementary ways by people such as Jeffrey Parker and Bucko Teeple, the community does not need outside experts to speak for it. Traditions are never frozen, as they are always renewed and reinvented by their communities. That is why this museum is driven by a deep commitment to community curation and the right of all people to write their own history.