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The fulfillment of nearly a 50-year-old promise came to fruition Friday, August 10, 2007, with the grand opening of the Grand Portage National Monument’s Heritage Center.

The implied promise of a center such as the one opened officially on Friday was given to the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Ojibway when it gave some of its reservation land to the federal government for creation of the Grand Portage National Monument. The monument is meant to preserve the story of the Ojibway people and the history of the voyageurs on the corner of Lake Superior that was long a center of fur-trading activity. It is the only such land donation by a tribal government to the U.S. government within the U.S. Park Service’s Midwest Region and perhaps within the entire system.

Park Superintendent Tim Cochrane spoke about the difficulty of persuading the federal government and Congress to fund the special center, a process that literally took decades and spanned the tenure of several superintendents and tribal chairpeople.

“By my count, it took roughly 48 years for this,” he said of the building.

Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar, one of the state’s congressional and senatorial delegations involved in finally bringing in the money for the project, started his address to the standing-room crowd at the ceremony by welcoming them to the “Grand Portage Intermodal Transportation Heritage Center.” The half-joking reference alluded to the struggle to secure funding, ultimately secured for the $4 million project. Most of the funding came through the Park Service budget.

When the band donated the property, it was with the understanding that the Park Service (and hence the federal government) would invest in something to preserve the heritage and to promote tourism.

“There was a great vision painted,” Oberstar said, “but over time and over budgets … those promises were not kept.”

The new center incorporates several architectural styles, featuring large log pillars (still fresh with sap for the unwary visitor who leans on them) and a semi-circular center façade topped by a square top structure mindful of the four cardinal directions important in Ojibway culture. It has a small gift shop and a classroom on the ground level and will house the archives and artifacts from the Grand Portage National Monument collection downstairs. Additional exhibits are planned on the ground level. The outside and inside design also incorporates the slate excavated onsite during construction of the building.

The design for the structure was by Patrick Pauley, an architect for the Midwest Region of the National Park Service.

The new building is not merely a “visitor center,” said Cochrane. “We are calling it a heritage center because of what we hope it will be.”

The center currently features artwork on the main level by painters Carl Gawboy and Howard Sivertson and photography by Grand Portage band member Travis Novitsky. On the second floor, which opens to the lower level, beadwork by Grand Portage band member Marcie MacIntire is displayed.

The cooperative effort between the population of Grand Portage, the federal and state governments was strongly reiterated by all of the day’s speakers.

Norman Deschampe, chairman of the Grand Portage Band and Chairman of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, said, “The big story today is everybody pulling together.”

Deschampe said he felt secure in the success of the new structure because a couple of tribal elders made a point of telling him of their “sincere happiness with what’s going on here.”

The opinion of elders, he said, “has always been my gauge of whether things are good.”

The director of the National Park Service Midwest Region, Ernest Quintana, also pointed to cooperative efforts. “I’m a firm believer in good things happening because good people come together in the right place and at the right time.”

The building will be in place for next year’s 50th anniversary of the Grand Portage National Monument, which was established September 2, 1958, to commemorate and preserve “a premier site and route of the 18th century fur trade that lead to pioneering international commerce and exploration in North American, as well as cultural contact between Ojibway and other Native societies and the North West Company partners, clerks and canoe-men,” according to the day’s program.

The event included several songs performed by the Grand Portage Traditional Drum under Drum Keeper Gilbert Caribou and a bagpipe selection (reflecting the Scottish heritage of some fur traders) by park rangers Jeremy Kingsbury and Shane Ausprey.

Grand Portage National Monument also has several recreated buildings reflecting the life and times of the fur trade. A great hall, rebuilt after the original burned in the 1970s, houses artifacts, with costumed interpreters interacting with guests.

-- Konnie LeMay

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