Representing Wisconsin's Past at the Shalom Wildlife Zoo

Since moving to Wisconsin I have been eagerly exploring its history through visits to historical and prehistorical sites and by reading up on Wisconsin's Indian History. Some particularly excellent resources include Robert Birmingham's Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, Lurie's Wisconsin Indians, and Carol Mason's Introduction to Wisconsin Indians: Prehistory to Statehood. Unlike Illinois and the northeastern states where I grew up, Indian sites are fairly easy to find and experience in Wisconsin. There are mounds in the State Fairgrounds near Milwaukee, as well as in Milwaukee's Lake Park. Lizard Mount County Park in Washington County also has a lovely set of trails that wind through late Woodland Period effigy mounds as well as conical mounds that may be somewhat older.

Recently my family and I visited the Shalom Wildlife Zoo not far from the Lizard Mound County Park. Shalom Wildlife Zoo's (SWZ) website explained that it features a number of learning centers and an Indian artifact museum. My plan was to go, view the animals, experience nature, and enjoy whatever exhibits they had. I was fairly sure the exhibits would be more indicative of popular conceptions of American Indians and their culture, rather than a deeply-informed presentation of Indian culture and beliefs. Indeed, the presentation of the Indian past, natural present, and popular dispositions towards learning about the past and present were clearly on display at SWZ. I found that the zoo's presentations suggest an unresolved tension between genuine interest in learning and a hostility to information. This unresolved tension indicates to me that there is public interest in knowledge of Wisconsin's natural and social history, but that expert resources are either off-putting or inaccessible. Before examining some of the features of the zoo, I also want to emphasize that I share the zoo's message that experience of the outdoors is a powerful, necessary, and a disappearing learning opportunity.

The Shalom Wildlife Zoo began in 1979 when David and Lana Fechter purchased 30 acres to preserve from development. They started a deer farm there which became popular with locals and by 2010 they registered the farm as a federally-recognized zoo that today houses over 300 animals [1][2].

The animals include rare forms of white-tailed deer, such as piebald and albino varieties, as well as elk, wolves, brown bears, and American bison. Pebbly trails wind between the animal habitats, "learning centers," physical challenges, and other features, such as the Artifact Museum. Walking the trails - or riding in a rented golf cart - is legitimately fun and enlightening.

The signage, however, present the unresolved tension between 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' as the zoo puts it. Consider the experience of visiting the artifact museum. The museum is a small cabin flanked by a half-moon-doored outhouse. The museum is labeled with a laminated sheet that announces its purpose and also advises the visitor to seek wisdom - which is of the future - and not knowledge - which is of the past. However, the museum itself presents a historical review of artifact types in laminated posters above display cases of stone, ceramic, bone, and other unprovenenced artifacts.

 

Further down the trail, an artistic architectural installation built by a college intern reinforces this hostility towards knowledge by juxtaposing "knowledge" flanked by references to books, schools, libraries, news outlets, universities, science, culture, etc., to "wisdom," which is represented only by a framed (and admittedly beautiful) vista of the farms cultivated, semi-natural landscape. The SWZ website invites school groups to make field trips here, and one wonders what message students will take away from a didactic field trip that is anti-didactic.

At left: "Window to Wisdom." At right: "Window to Knowledge"
Note 'education,' 'university,' and 'learning' located in the right hand window.

The trails between these installations explain little bits of unattributed Indian lore to visitors, some of which explains that humans are unimportant and asks 'how does it feel to be unimportant?' Other bits of lore explain the uses of local trees and additional installments present Indian dwellings and burials as reconstructed by the zoo. Despite Wisconsin's great diversity of Indian People and cultures - not to mention the vast diversity in the current borders of the US - the SWZ tends to pick 3000 BC as the prime time for the Indian artifacts it presents.

 

There are other unusual attractions at the zoo: an above ground Indian burial, a 'bison pole,' a sadder version of a supposed Indian lean-to. And it appears that there have been complaints from concerned citizens about authenticity and animal welfare here. A change.org petition called for the removal of ferrets from an outdoor ferret enclosure because the ferrets were in fact domestic ferrets meant for indoor life as pets, not the wild ferrets they were presented as. The zoo apparently rectified the situation, as noted by the petition's administrators [3].

Critiquing the zoo or debunking its presentation of Indian Peoples cannot be my purpose here because I am not a specialist in zoo ethics or North American Indians (though I am a specialist in precolonial material culture in the Western Hemisphere). Moreover, I don't intend to pick apart and research every claim. Finally, it's not for me here to defend the history of Indian Peoples, as there are plenty of Indian People who can handle that themselves.

As an expert on researching and teaching the past I am most interested in the unresolved and problematic tension between information about the past and the attitudes by which it is presented. At the SWZ the past is clearly valuable and important. However, legitimate means for learning about the past are presented as unimportant and regarded with hostility. This apparent contradiction seems to me to be symptomatic of American ambivalence to legitimate intellectual pursuits and also the failure of education specialists at all levels to foster a positive engagement with our collective pasts. 

As a public-oriented anthropologist and archaeologist the solution to me seems to call for increased public outreach by specialists as well as public support for those specialists (e.g., teachers, professors, researchers, publishers, etc.).

I share the SWZ's firm belief that the field is an invaluable teaching resource. Moreover, the experience of the field is as important to me as the systematic absorption of information about the field through note-taking, book reading, lecture hearing, and etc. But the value of field experience does not devalue systematic attempts to record, analyze, and communicate knowledge about the field and its residents - as the Shalom Wildlife Zoo might have us believe.

[1] Shalom Wildlife Zoo. "About Us" webpage. Accessed 12 September 2016.
[2] The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. "Why it's called the Shalom Zoo on Shalom Drive." Published 13 April 2016. Accessed 12 September 2016.
[3] Change.org petition."Take measures to provide a proper habitat for four domestic ferrets..." Accessed 12 September 2016.