HERITAGE LEADERSHIP*
Confluences, Not Binaries
River Journey by Dail Chambers is featured in the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum’s Make the River Present exhibit that encourages creative engagement with the Mississippi and Missouri rivers: The exhibit explores “present-day and ancestral stewardship of the rivers and surrounding environments, especially focusing on Indigenous and African American perspectives." Photo by St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum.
Thank you to our contributing authors: Galen Gritts, Lauren Obermark, Geoff Ward, Ian Darnell, lara kelland, and Theresa Coble
*The posture of a heritage leader is one of cultural humility, a readiness to rebalance power dynamics, and reciprocity.
Perhaps interpreting beyond the binary is best accomplished when we study the river—its eddies, flows, meanderings, and confluences. Perhaps binaries are like banks—artificial boundaries that rivers periodically dismiss as irrelevant. Constrict a river and flow rates increase. We do this artificially, erecting infrastructure to direct and constrain flows. But rivers are awash with potential and unconstrained in their exuberance. They view riverbanks as mere suggestions. They connect with groundwater systems up and down their watercourse. And they come together in mighty confluences.
In April 2025, sixty heritage site interpreters, managers, and university partners gathered in St. Louis for an inclusive storytelling workshop led by Sarah Case and Sara Bradshaw from the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. We were ensconced in the Great Rivers region of the state where the Missouri River, North America’s longest waterway, and the mighty Mississippi merge their majestic flows.
The workshop was the brainchild of Challenging History: A St. Louis Collaborative, a group formed to correct the incomplete and oversimplified histories told in our schools and at public history sites. Workshop participants represented 26 heritage sites and cultural institutions, and we sensed that, like the Great Rivers, we needed to channel the region’s diverse histories to tell an inclusive story of St. Louis—a story replete with humanity but perhaps far less majestic in its contours and throughputs.
You can read about our co-author panelists and project leaders, including Galen Gritts (Cherokee), Lauren Obermark (UMSL), Geoff Ward (Washington University), Ian Darnell (Missouri Historical Society), lara kelland (UMSL) and Theresa Coble (UMSL) by clicking the About our Authors link in this Legacy article. Suffice it to say, the co-authors helped workshop participants navigate deep waters and spot the shallow sandbars that could high center our storytelling efforts. They suggested that the confluences that merged to form modern-day St. Louis channel power and possibility.
Confluences overflow static binaries, inundate thoughtscapes, and generate potential energy. In her book Engaging Museums: Rhetorical Education and Social Justice, Lauren reiterates disability scholar Tanya Titchkosky’s points about access:
Access is not an either/or binary, and when we assume access is a have/have not scenario, we shut down avenues for questions and conversations about what access can be. Titchkosky suggests that rather than creating a binary understanding of access—it is either present or absent—we might instead adopt a flexible and fluid method of wonder, which can lead to different ways of imagining...
To interpret beyond the binary, we may need to cultivate a flexible and fluid method of wonder. Contemplating confluences may nudge us in that direction.
St. Louis Public Radio reports that Galen Gritts searched in St. Louis for a burial plaque to the Odawa Chief Pontiac. He found the memorial dedicated to “a war chief who led the largest alliance of Native American tribes against the British in the mid-18th century” hung on a downtown parking garage. Photo by Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio.
When Rivers Meet
[W]hen these two rivers meet…I witness the subtle shifts and swirls, the gentle back-and-forth, the give-and-take. It is amazing to witness what it’s like for two strong forces to not fight for control. Neither side wins. The two forces gather, give of themselves, and grow a new creation.
~Andrew Johnson, "In Praise Of: Confluence"
Galen
Though Indigenous people have lived in North America for at least 14,000 years, most Americans don’t know us or our story. We are not artifacts, we’re individuals. We’re not binary, we encompass multitudes of distinct tribal nations. Settler colonialists justified the destruction of our cultures and our lives. They rationalized home invasion and murders as normal. They took the land on which we live. In their founding document, the Declaration of Independence, they referred to us as “merciless Indian savages.” Museums and history books curate the “accomplishments” of the people who said and did these things. They pay scant heed to the crimes committed against us, but not only against us, against animals, against water, against the land.
In the Midwest, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee have no federally recognized tribal nations who live on reservations or on lands under tribal jurisdiction. But in a first for Illinois, in April 2024, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation received federal recognition by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Not only that, but the state returned nearly 1,500 acres that had previously served as Shabbona Lake State Park to the tribe. This recognition of tribal sovereignty and the return of a parcel of ancestral homeland helps reestablish trust and mutual respect.
Galen Gritts (Cherokee) says, “All of life is a verb…The river and all water predates us. It is larger than us. Respect it and have joy.” The recording provides the backstory to Galen’s haiku about river being both verb and noun (To hear the recording, click here). Photo courtesy of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
The confluence of the Missouri River (left) and the Mississippi River (right) near St. Louis, Missouri. Photo by Joe Sohm/Visions of America.
The St. Louis flag symbolically depicts the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Photo by Fox2Now.
Theresa
Andrew Johnson’s river metaphor, offered as the epigraph for this section of our article, is compelling, especially when he observes that confluences represent two strong forces who do not vie for control. He says it’s a neither side wins scenario. Binaries lock us into false dichotomies. It’s either this or that, us or them, now or never. Binaries obscure possibility and forestall imagination. Many things can be true at the same time and it’s in the aggregate that human experience and ecosystem functioning are complete.
St. Louis is a confluence on so many levels. Geographically, St. Louis is where east meets west and north meets south. In North America, the collision of white settler-invader and Indigenous cultures led to dominance not confluence. In fact, a dominance at all costs ethos was inherent to the settler colonialism project. I hope this discussion will prompt different questions and help us fashion a more holistic understanding.
Ian
Even when museums and historic sites engage queer history as a topic, there’s a tendency to treat it as a niche or special interest: “If we engage this content, it’ll be nice for queer people. It’ll help them feel seen.” But straight museum visitors also have so much to learn by paying attention to queer history—not just about the LGBTQIA+ community, but about the human experience and the forces that shape social change.
One misconception is that queer history is something new or that it only affects an isolated population. I acknowledge that it’s difficult to talk about queer history in today’s polarized political environment. But interpreters can present queer history as something that’s relevant to everyone. They can weave queer history into a diverse array of topics, narratives, and storylines. And, emphatically, they can host queer history programs any time of the year, not just during Pride Month in June.
lara
As we get closer to folding diverse identity histories into our mainstream narratives, I think we’ll sidestep the criticism that these are specialty histories. I believe we’ll disempower the critics and reduce the effectiveness of anti-DEI rhetoric. We’ll create the conditions where countervailing forces can gather, pause, listen, and grow in mutual understanding and respect.
Confluences are light, reflections, turbidity, movement, flow, sound, and many layers of interacting cultural elements. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis’ gallery guide for their Make the River Present exhibit highlights a series of Indigenous connections to rivers. As you read through the list below, listen to a two-minute audio recording of river sounds produced by Terry Bergeron:
- Mihcisiipiiwi: Name for the Mississippi river by the Myaamia/Miami-Illinoi.
- Misi-ziibi: Ojibwe word meaning “long river,” “great river,” or “gathering of waters.”
- Missouria: The Algonquin word for the tribe, whose name for themselves is Nút’achi, “people of the river’s mouth.”
- Mní wičóni: Lakota for “water is life,” adopted by Standing Rock protests.
- Ni-u-kon-ska: The Osage people’s own name for themselves, meaning “Children of the Middle Waters.”
- Ny-tonks: Name for the Mississippi River by the Ogáxpa/Quapaw, meaning “great river.”
Photo courtesy of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Lessons Learned Upstream
What are the lessons learned upstream that come to bear upon this moment? What does each river know at the molecular level that they insist remain essential, and what knowledge served them well upstream but can be released from this new reality?
~Andrew Johnson, "In Praise Of: Confluence"
lara
Johnson suggests that like rivers, we must decide whether some knowledge is essential and which framings might hold us back. I’m wondering whether there are historic sites and museums that are doing it right? Are there sites that tell stories using multiple perspectives? Do you know of sites that convey lessons learned upstream? And how do those lessons come to bear upon this moment?
Galen
The First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City is doing it right. The museum is relatively new. It tells the story of the thirty-nine tribes that currently reside in the state of Oklahoma, highlighting such themes as cosmology, origin stories, land appropriation, forced removals, Native American boarding schools, ethnic cleansing, Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous humor, the spirit of objects, warrior culture, and resilience. The important thing is that the museum was designed and curated with ongoing involvement from the thirty-nine tribes—from the idea of it, to the maintenance of it, to everything that goes on to this day. The FAM tells the story of Indigenous experience accurately and authentically.
Theresa
Galen and I toured FAM in May 2023 with Native American leaders and representatives from academic and cultural institutions in St. Louis. This was a group of professionals who engage with Indigenous history and, in some cases, manage collections with Indigenous artifacts. The visit was, in essence, an initial overture. We wanted to begin building relationships with Native people who had historic ties to the St. Louis region.
At FAM, we met with Jim Pepper Henry (Kaw/Muscogee, Director Emeritus) and Dr. heather ahtone (Chickasaw/Choctaw, Director of Curatorial Affairs). Pepper Henry shared his thoughts on what it means to tell Indigenous stories accurately and authentically. He suggests that at FAM, they’ve taken something that’s inherently colonial, a museum, and Indigenized it:
Museums, for most indigenous peoples, are reminders of what has been taken from us. The first museums were in the UK; repositories of the spoils of colonization. There is a movement to decolonize the museum, but the museum is inherently colonial; its roots are in colonization. So that’s not our approach. We don’t say we’re going to decolonize the museum, we say we’re going to Indigenize the museum. We are going to bring our values, our methodologies, into the museum setting. That will make it our own. We’re going to appropriate the museum, versus things that have been appropriated from us over time.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. joined Cherokee Freedmen Project Committee members at the closing event for the “We Are Cherokee: Cherokee Freedmen and the Right to Citizenship” exhibit in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Visit Cherokee Nation YouTube channel says that “Although the Cherokee Freedmen exhibit is ending at the Cherokee National History Museum, this is just the beginning for this story!” Learn more about this history via a nine-video Cherokee Freedmen history YouTube playlist curated by Visit Cherokee Nation. Photo courtesy of Visit Cherokee Nation.
Geoff
Exhibits about slavery at the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, come to mind. Recently, a temporary exhibit titled “We Are Cherokee: Cherokee Freedmen and the Right to Citizenship” was installed in their main floor gallery. Meanwhile, an older, evasive interpretation of slavery in Cherokee Nation remained in the permanent exhibit upstairs. The two exhibits were at odds in their interpretations of belonging, citizenship rights, and disenfranchisement, and in their commitments to truth telling and bearing witness.
Galen
The temporary exhibit explored the history of Black people who were enslaved by members of Cherokee Nation. After the Civil War, when human bondage ended except for those convicted of a crime, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed, people who were enslaved by the Cherokee were freed. They became full citizens of the Cherokee Nation. About 15-20 years ago, the tribe disenfranchised the descendants of former slaves. They lost their citizenship, their right to vote, and their identity as members of the Cherokee People. The current Chief, however, restored to the descendants of Freedmen their status as full tribal members with voting rights.
Geoff
In the downstairs exhibit you see how a reckoning with slavery within the Cherokee Nation unfolded. In the upstairs exhibit, however, they still had exhibits that conveyed their old interpretation of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. Permanent exhibit panels said, “We didn’t take a side” and “There were people on this side and people on that side” of the slavery issue. Upstairs, they equivocated and suppressed the truth. I found the juxtaposition very instructive. If you’re in a museum context and you critically reframe events, it can be helpful to leave up the old interpretation and allow both framings to exist side by side. That has pedagogical value.
Lauren
The Missouri History Museum curated the “#1 in Civil Rights” exhibit a few years ago. Toward the end of the exhibit, you were invited to think about the choices you would’ve made if you were curating the exhibit. Would you include this artifact from the Ferguson Uprising, and if so, why would you do that? It asked people to think about the design of the exhibit, inviting them to consider curatorial decisions, and giving them a sense of agency. This part of the exhibit helped visitors understand the complexity of interpreting history. It underscored that you’re going to have to leave something out. These are hard decisions. I’ve never forgotten that experience.
In 2020, Easterseals discovered that 61 million people in the U.S.—one in four adults—has a disability. They designed the bilingual “We Are the 25%” campaign to rally Americans with disabilities to get out the vote. Perhaps interpreters could adopt a “We Include the 25%” stretch goal: 100% of interpretive content is delivered in accessible formats; 25% of interpretive content integrates disability issues, showcases disability history, and highlights the contributions of people with disabilities; and one deep partnership is formed with a disability advocacy group. Photo courtesy of Hannah Peterson.
Moments of Confluence
And at moments of confluence, we greet the new, we gather, we give, we receive, we create. We inhabit this moment. We don’t settle.
~Andrew Johnson, "In Praise Of: Confluence"
lara
I tell the stories of individuals who inhabited the political movements of their time in my book, Clio’s Foot Soldiers: Twentieth Century U.S. Social Movements and Collective Memory. These leaders didn’t settle. They understood the power that identity holds for building political momentum based on the past. They shared the contours of their own lived experiences, and in so doing, they strengthened their claims to historical interpretation. Significantly, I write, “these claims to historical authority provoked a conservative backlash because they had successfully changed the terms of historical and cultural authority by cultivating the notion that communities should speak for themselves in public narratives.”
What do moments of confluence look like in your professional spheres?
Geoff
Public history is often regarded as merely symbolic, and people sometimes think that symbolic measures don't matter. Sometimes people think that installing an historical marker or holding a remembrance ceremony are small measures. They don’t see value in these actions. They think we should get on with more meaningful work. This is a widespread misconception.
When we talk about reparative justice, we tend to emphasize the political and economic realms. We talk about the need to redistribute things like rights and wealth and resources and other social goods.
As historians and interpreters, we should view symbolic actions as central to acknowledgement. As a society, we should be more intentional about promoting recognition as a crucial element of repair. The goal is to create shared understanding and counter disrespect. Once we decide who is worthy of respect, this affects our values and our ability to act collectively. Greater recognition creates a foundation of mutual respect upon which we can make and sustain greater commitments to equitable distribution.
Photo by Joe Sohm/Visions of America. According to the Smithsonian, “People with disabilities and ideas related to disability are everywhere in American history. Just as ethnicity and race are not Either/Or rigid classifications, neither is disability. A person is not always disabled or unable to do all things.” At the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington D.C., a ceremonial flame rises from the star-shaped fountain and reflecting pool and an inscription reads:
It's possible for a man to lose half of his physical being and still become whole. Before I lost my limbs I was only half a man. Now I've developed some humility. I can look at the average person and understand him, where before I looked only at myself.
~Theodore Strong, Jr.
St. Louis Magazine urges readers to visit the Contemporary Art Museum (March through August 2025) to view a trio of exhibits, including Like Water, Make the River Present, and ArtReach: Confluence. The Like Water exhibit includes canvases painted by Vivian Suter that “hang like the flags of many nations…dividing the space in a colorful cascade that blends fluid movement and recognizable form.” Photo by Christine Jackson.
Deborah Hopkinson's Steamboat School, illustrated by Ron Husband and published by DIsney-Hyperion in 2016, discusses how Reverend John Berry Meachum owned and operated river boats and barges on the Mississippi River. In 1847, after Missouri legislators prohibited the education of free and enslaved African Americans, authorities closed a clandestine school that he operated at the First Baptist Church. Undaunted, Meachum converted one of his steamboats into a school. He outfitted the “floating freedom school” with desks and a library and anchored it in the river beyond Missouri legal jurisdiction. Photo courtesy of Deborah Hopkinson, Ron Husband, and Disney-Hyperion.
Lauren
Universal Design (UD) is an architectural movement that emerged partially in response to changing demographics: people were living longer, and more people were living with disabilities. Thus, accessibility in the built environment became an important issue for a much larger portion of the population. Whether we’re talking about UD or its sister concept, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), there’s a temptation to encapsulate what’s needed in a checklist. But at the heart of UD and UDL is a simple yet fertile idea that resists being reduced to a binary: constant adaptable flexibility.
People get into the weeds with questions like, “Am I following all the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act?” I celebrate the Americans with Disabilities Act, but don't let legality become restrictive. Start something and just keep trying. Think about disability-related and disability-adjacent needs. People with disabilities and people who are caregivers have distinctly different needs. You might think, “If we have to offer a sign language interpreter, or if we have to hire someone to do image descriptions for our exhibits, that’ll be too much for us.” But there are so many ways to move toward access. Don't give in to access panic. If you're trying, if you keep working on it, that's good.
Galen
In a moment of confluence, it’s helpful to ask: “What does each river bring to the merger?” Is one river crystal clear while the other is laden with silt and debris? In historical interpretation, we don’t use a double-entry accounting system. In double-entry accounting, you list every transaction as a debit (subtracting money from an account) or a credit (adding money to an account). On the surface, double-entry accounting appears to be quintessentially binary: One account always loses something and another account always gains something. But this system ensures that in your enthusiasm for what’s gained (e.g., profit), you don’t gloss over what’s lost (e.g., costs).
If you analyze the messages shared at heritage sites nationwide, they tell the story of what we accomplished. But we don’t say, here’s what it cost us. We tell the story of riverboats on the Mississippi River, but we don’t tell the story of the damage to riparian ecosystems or acknowledge that the removal of native vegetation allowed invasive species to colonize riverbanks. When we label something as “progress,” we tend to ignore what it actually cost. I think there has to be a way to tell both stories—all the stories—at the same time.
Ian
The story that historians tell about St. Louis, and many other American cities in the second half of the twentieth century, is one of decline. In his book, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, Colin Gordon argues that government policies and the practices of the real estate industry contributed to depopulation and economic stagnation in St. Louis’s urban core while also perpetuating racial segregation and inequality. Gordon’s narrative is one of loss and failure.
In my own thinking about the city’s past, however, I queer decline, or purposefully disrupt dominant notions of decline, by reinterpreting St. Louis’s history at the confluence of race and sexuality. The social history of St. Louis in the post-WWII era is not a one-dimensional story of loss and failure. “Declining” areas of the city presented their inhabitants with new possibilities for creative change. They could foster community-building within and sometimes across the divisions of race and sexuality. When we queer history, we might realize that a neighborhood’s “decline” is often a matter of perspective. We might come to understand that the consequences of St. Louis’ apparent decline are more complicated and ambiguous than has often been acknowledged.
Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing is the northernmost heritage site on the Black Heritage Water Trail of St. Louis. Meachum led nine enslaved people who were attempting to self-emancipate by crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, Meachum and at least five others were caught and arrested. Nine PBS interviewed Angela da Silva, a public historian and cultural preservationist, to learn more about Meachum’s role in the underground railroad. In 2001, the National Park Service included the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Map produced by the Missouri Department of Conservation; The Meachum Mural is located on the Mississippi Greenway and was produced by St. Louis Artworks.
Conclusion
Walter Johnson, a historian at Harvard, wrote The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and America’s History of Racial Violence. Johnson’s metaphor of St. Louis as a broken heart suggests that St. Louis has historically acted in a pulmonary fashion, pumping the harms of imperialism, slavery, racial segregation, and the military industrial complex throughout the country. For example, Harland Bartholomew prototyped many urban planning techniques like racially restrictive covenants, racially informed zoning, and “urban renewal” policies that led to displacement, disinvestment, and an exacerbated racial wealth gap. His approach to urban planning was pumped out from "the broken heart of America" and picked up and adopted nationwide.
In pulmonary fashion, St. Louis has also circulated civil rights strategies and legal test cases like Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). It has circulated blues, rock-n-roll, and hip-hop far and wide.
We acknowledge that St. Louis histories are replete with broken-heart dynamics and dysfunctions. We embrace Galen’s double-entry approach to historical accounting because it helps us tell a more complete story of the past. And, we acknowledge St. Louis heritage in all its complexity.
But St. Louis is not alone. Other midsize cities—perhaps every city, town, and rural zip code—would benefit from a historical reckoning. Interpreters working at heritage sites in St. Louis are like interpreters working at heritage sites nationwide: We all need the courage of our own convictions.
Geoff urged us to channel Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea of “beloved community.” He has wondered whether St. Louis could become America’s beloved heart. What is a beloved heart? Perhaps it’s a confluence of arteries and vessels that pump truth telling and healing out to the remotest extremities.
Every heritage site, especially when it’s in deep partnership with its surrounding communities and affinity groups, has the potential to be a beloved heart, a confluence where acknowledgement meets reparative justice. Perhaps this issue of Legacy will nudge us collectively to embrace confluences and eschew binaries. We hope that as we embrace confluence, a flexible and fluid method of wonder will emerge.
If this discussion has piqued your interest, dig deeper through these action steps:
- UMSL’s heritage leadership doctoral program is recruiting students for the next online three-year cohort that will begin in January 2026. Interested? Check out our promotional flyer and recruitment packet with information about how to apply.
- Ask yourself: what does confluence mean to you? How might confluence be a metaphor for the processes and relationships that could move you or your site beyond the binary?
- Identify three stories told at your heritage site that could be made more complete using Galen’s double-entry approach to historical accounting.
- How are you working to strengthen access at your heritage site? Are there other strategies you’d like to try? And, do you have a creativity/accountability partner for this work?
Finally, check out these recommended resources:
- The Smithsonian curated an online exhibition titled “Everybody: An Artifact History of Disability in America” that explores disability history, people, places, technology, and civil rights. There’s also a corresponding Spanish language PDF.
- The WashU & Slavery Project created two storymaps (1) “Black Heritage Water Trail of St. Louis” that interprets African American community connections to the waterways of St. Louis, and (2) “Enslavement and its Wake” that provides a digital walking tour of the Washington University in St. Louis campus. Storymap content was written by Drs. Kelly Schmidt, Postdoctoral Research Associate, and Geoff Ward, Director of the WashU & Slavery Project.
- Blooloop published an in-depth look at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, highlighting its origins, architectural design, core values, collections, consultative processes, workforce development, exhibits and interpretation, reunion initiatives, and how they have worked to “take control of the narrative.” Based in the UK, Blooloop generates “world-leading coverage” for professionals in the visitor attractions sector.
- In 2016, the National Park Service published "LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History". It was deleted from the NPS website by the Trump administration in February 2025, but the study was republished (at the above link) by OutHistory.com. It consists of thirty-two accessibly written chapters by leading scholars and public historians addressing a wide array of topics within queer American history. Also, Susan Ferentinos’s Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites is an essential guidebook for public historians. Finally, The Routledge History of Queer America compiles state-of-the-field essays surveying many aspects of LGBTQIA+ history.
- The Pitt River Museum on the University of Oxford campus undertook an ethical review of their collections and exhibit content. The museum has more than 500,000 items that were collected over a 130 year period during British imperial expansion. They acknowledge that many of these objects were obtained through violence or as a result of inequitable power relations with the people who were colonized. Their Critical Changes booklet encapsulates the insights that emerged during their decolonization process. Perhaps their example will prompt discussions and/or inform approaches at your heritage site?
- An open access book by Denise Meringolo (Ed.) titled Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism includes chapters on topics such as oral history, place-based and public history pedagogy, Black history, community engagement, dialogue, collaboration, and social justice.This book is for those who realize that “...we are always on the edge of the political, even when we don’t set out to be.”
Galen Gritts
Lauren Obermark
Geoff Ward
Ian Darnell
lara kelland
Theresa Coble
