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The Smithsonian brings Journey Stories to North Dakota
A most treasured American freedom is the right to travel, to go where we please, to explore or to relocate our family and life. Throughout history, Americans have valued their right to mobility. Thousands of immigrants traveled to this country to claim that exact freedom. Many were searching for something better in a new land while others had no choice, like enslaved Africans relocated to a strange land or Native Americans already here, often pushed aside by newcomers. America’s transportation history is more than trains, boats, buses, cars, wagons, and trucks. The development of transportation was inspired by the human desire for freedom. Looking back and understanding the past can lead us forward.
That is precisely what Journey Stories allows us to do. The Smithsonian exhibit, curated by William Withuhn, takes us through the journey of how we came to this place called America and how our journeys did not end or even begin with a boat trip. Everyone has a powerful journey story somewhere deep in their own heritage. Do we know that story? The tale of a young man who left a child and her mother in Norway to look for a better life in America, and never returned to retrieve them or how a Chippewa man forced to move to a reservation had the most precious mark of his identity, his own name stripped away and replaced by a randomly assigned English name that held no meaning. Tales of abandonment, perseverance, longing and hope are woven tightly into our national identity. The Journey Stories exhibit allows us to examine the individual threads whether broken, frayed, or in tact, to see the profound sense of liberty that ultimately stitches every American citizen together.
Museum on Main Street is a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and state humanities council’s nationalwide. Museum on Main Street combines the prestige of Smithsonian exhibitions, the program expertise of state humanities councils, and the remarkable volunteerism and unique histories of small rural towns.