Interview with an Interpretive Planner: Julie Davis

You grew up in Cass Lake?

Yes, I grew up as a non-Native person in Cass Lake, on the Leech Lake Reservation. It was super small, and in the community, everyone knew everyone. But you know, when you grow up, you think, well, this is just how everyone grows up, right?

It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized, maybe there was something unusual or particular about the way that I grew up. While in college I met lots of people that weren’t from my home area or weren’t familiar with Native communities, and got questions like, “oh, do Indians still live in teepees?” I realized, oh, okay, there’s something with my experience that not everyone is familiar with or understands or not everybody grew up with.

How did your childhood steer your career?

I went to college as the fabulous undeclared major for my first two years at Moorhead State University, before choosing history. In my senior year I took a course on Native American history—the first class on the subject I’d ever had—and it blew my college-student mind. That class gave me valuable context for my childhood, my community, and some of the patterns and dynamics I saw or sensed growing up, but never had conversations about. I learned a lot of things that I should have learned long ago, but it just wasn’t taught in my schools.

Eventually, both that class and growing up in my home community inspired me to focus my graduate studies and PhD dissertation on Native American and Indigenous histories.  I was a history professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University for eight years, where I taught courses on Native American and US history. I also spent three years working for a research center at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, coordinating a project that focused on Indigenous community health. And now here I am, with 106 Group. (About Julie)

Tell me, what is interpretation?

Interpretation is focused, purposeful communication that helps people connect with and understand places with historical, cultural, and environmental significance. The heart of my work is working with organizations and communities to help figure out who they are, what stories they want to tell, how they want to tell them, and how they want visitors to experience their place.

This is usually achieved by answering the questions: What messages do they want to communicate? What do they want people to feel? What do they want people to experience? What do they want them to do? What do they want them to sense around them? How do they want them to interact with each other? And then what do they want them to take away with them when they leave?

How does telling Indigenous stories differ from other types of interpretive work?

With Indigenous stories, we are still trying to answer those core questions (above).

But often, historically, Native people have not been consulted or included in the processes of telling their stories to non-Native people, or in some cases, have been excluded and marginalized from stewarding the lands that they are most closely connected to. There are layers of historical marginalization, colonization, dispossession that you can’t ignore.

Being Indigenous is not just about being descended from the first people who were here. Yes, Native or Indigenous means you were the first one here—that’s part of it. But what it really means is that your ancestors were the first people to build a deep and abiding and multi-generational relationship with very particular places.

It’s the relationship between people and the land. Landscape, water, plants, animals, rocks, and more. That relationship between people and particular places and all the layers that are involved there, that’s what Indigenousness is—we are the land, the land is us. And they’ve figured out how to survive and thrive in particular landscapes over many generations. So that’s all integrated and intertwined and inseparable from who you are.

So, when you’re interpreting a place that is deeply connected to an Indigenous community, they are descended from and, in this present moment, living that relationship. Then there is also the history of Indigenous people being deliberately dispossessed and disconnected from the land they’re closely connected to by the US government and by the process of colonization. That history is embedded in every place that’s meaningful to Native people.

Of the projects that you’ve worked on at 106 Group, what’s been most inspiring?

You can’t choose a favorite child!

But I would say the Wakan Tipi Center. It’s local. It’s a Dakota sacred site. Wakan Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi is a Dakota-led organization that is now stewarding the site in partnership with the city of St. Paul. They are building the Wakan Tipi Center, which is going to be an environmental and cultural interpretive and community center on that land.

The Wakan Tipi Center is a direct example of reclaiming and rebuilding the relationship with a very significant place for Dakota people. I’ve learned so much from them. We did an interpretive plan with them, as well as exhibit development. It’s been multiple years, and I have been able to work closely with the Center’s Dakota leaders through that process, helping develop concepts and designs for exterior and interior experiences. It’s the most collaborative project I’ve ever worked on. There was a Dakota Advisory Committee that we worked super closely with. Members of that committee guided content development and design decisions, created art for the exhibits, wrote some of the text, and provided Dakota language translations. So, I really loved that deep collaboration.

If you have an exciting project that needs interpretation and design services, reach out. We’d love to chat!

Julie Davis has worked extensively in interpretation, exhibit development, and strategic planning for museums, parks, and historic sites. Throughout all her work, Julie remains committed to creating engaging experiences that connect people with the past.

Ben is a proposal writer for 106 Group, with a background in copywriting and professional communications.