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20 years later, Dickson Mounds keeps adapting anew

LEWISTOWN — Hanging on a wall not far from the entrance to the Dickson Mounds Museum, a handful of posters reminds visitors of the controversy that flared years ago atop an ancient burial mound.

“NO ONE KNOWS from where these people came,” one poster blares above a photo of the skeletons that once brought 75,000 people a year to visit the isolated museum. “The World's largest Display of Stone Age Man,” another promises with a photo of a skull.

Looking down on the exhibit of 237 skeletons, American Indian activists who did not feel the carnival-style wonder promised by those posters persuaded former Gov. Jim Edgar to cover them up 20 years ago last month. Balancing the concerns of activists who wanted the skeletons reburied and local residents who worried the museum would disappear without them, the state of Illinois gave the museum $4 million to reinvent itself.

Today Dickson Mounds survives as part of the state museum system, about 40 miles southwest of Peoria. But as Illinois struggles with a multibillion-dollar deficit, it must again rely on adaptability. The museum's budget has been flat, the staff has shrunk and field trips for children are down as some school districts also struggle with budget troubles.

The staff is now bracing for another challenge if state officials follow through with a proposal to begin charging admission fees at state parks and museums to help generate revenue. Some worry it could dissuade visitors from making the trip to this unique, remote spot far from any airport or interstate.

“You have to be pragmatic about this,” said museum director Michael Wiant, an anthropologist. “If (fees are) the way that we have to underwrite cultural institutions and that is the only way, we must find a way.”

Dickson Mounds was built to display what chiropractor Don Dickson unearthed on his farm just outside Lewistown starting in the 1920s. Leaving the 800-year-old remains right where he uncovered them, he turned the site into a popular private museum that eventually was sold to the state.

From the beginning, tens of thousands of people flocked to the area for a curious look into the past.

“The school groups have always gone down to Dickson Mounds, as far as I can remember,” said 81-year-old Donita Ridle, who grew up nearby and now is treasurer of the local Fulton County Tourism Council. “I've been going down there a long time.”

Starting in the 1960s, American Indian activists angry over sports mascots, movie and television imagery and a range of other pieces of American culture they considered degrading convinced museums around the country to take remains off display, and in many cases return them for reburial.

Dickson Mounds held out for years, even under intense pressure from protesters, who at one point sneaked in dirt to shovel on the remains. Among them was Joseph Standing Bear Schranz, now president of the Chicago-based chapter of the Save Our Ancestors & Resources Indigenous Network Group.

“I was overcome with grief to see our ancestors treated in that way,” the 62-year-old Ojibwe Indian recalled of his visit to Dickson Mounds when the skeletons were still on display. “It makes me feel personally disappointed that people view our remains as something less than human, that they're just objects.”

After passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, Edgar agreed to seal off the Dickson Mounds remains. As part of a settlement, the state budgeted $4 million to upgrade the museum's exhibits.

No one would see the remains, which were covered with a wooden floor and a multimedia exhibit focused on the spirituality of the ancient people of the Illinois River Valley. But, with the help of a design firm, the renovated museum offered new exhibits focused on where they lived, the food they ate, and the tools, pots and bowls they made.

“We did innovative work,” said Wiant, who worked previously at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. “I think you learn more about life and death and change here now than you could in the past.”

Visitation, which dropped to about 35,000 after the skeletons were buried, is back above 50,000 annually, Wiant said.

Dickson Mounds' budget has been stuck at just more than $800,000 for three years and the staff of 11 is about half of what it was 20 years ago. But those problems have made the museum smarter too, Wiant said. For instance, Dickson Mounds spends about half the industry standard on heating and cooling.

With no budget for new excavations, museum staff promotes the site's potential to university researchers. Artifacts they find end up in the museum cost-free.

Visits by schools kids are down from around 5,500 students a year a few years ago to somewhere between 4,000 and 4,500 now, so the museum director regularly takes his show to classrooms. The museum hosts community meetings, concerts and birthday parties.

Schranz, the American Indian activist, says exhibits not attached to the burial area “were done pretty well,” though he is bothered by the multimedia presentation in the room where the remains are entombed. “We absolutely hated that,” he said.

The idea of charging for admission is included in a bill in the General Assembly. For the first time, it proposes charging fees for entrance to properties managed by the Department of Natural Resources, including Dickson Mounds and the state's other museum sites.

The agency would like to keep its parks and museums as accessible as possible, spokesman Chris McCloud said, but may not have many choices because of the budget crunch. “Without solutions, the DNR and other state agencies will be forced to make additional cuts that will be seen and felt throughout the summer vacation season and beyond,” McCloud said.

Wiant believes charging admission would keep some people away from Dickson Mounds, particularly school kids. With pride, he talks about examples like the older couple he knows from nearby Havana whom he saw at the museum on a Sunday morning with their grandchildren, and wants to make sure they keep coming.

“They asked their granddaughter what (she'd) like to do today,” he said, “and she said she'd like to go to Dickson Mounds Museum.”

Ancient burial mounds looted, driven over

A truck drives by a granite sign on the outskirts of Lewistown that highlights the importance of the Dickson Mounds State Museum to the small town. Associated Press
Dickson Mounds State Museum Director Michael Wiant talks to members of a school group about American Indian pottery and other artifacts kept in storage at the museum. Associated Press
A decades-old poster on display at the Dickson Mounds State Museum highlights the American Indian remains that once were the primary draw for the museum . Associated Press
Displays at the Dickson Mounds State Museum show pots and other American Indian artifacts found at and around the museum site. Associated Press
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