"Shivaree/Chivaree: A Past Tradition”

     During the opening reception, Gary Buxton will present “Shivaree/Chivaree: A Past Tradition.”  He will provide a historical overview of the marriage custom of shivaree and will describe what typically took place during shivarees in the Ozarks in previous generations.  Much of the content of his presentation will be based on oral history interviews, and there will be opportunities for audience participation.

“Climate Change in the Ozarks: Here We Go Again"

“Music Parties and Céilís: A Study in Cultural Continuity”

     “Music Parties and Céilís: A Study in Cultural Continuity” by Julie Henigan will compare two genres of social gatherings in which traditional music-making is central: music parties in the Ozarks and céilís in Ireland.  This presentation will draw upon Henigan’s field research and will include audio-visual illustrations.

“Reflections on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program"

     In “Reflections on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program,” Lisa Higgins will discuss the twenty-five-year history of the program, in which master folk artists receive funding to share their knowledge and skills with promising, less experienced practitioners through extended collaboration.  The program has contributed substantially to the ongoing transmission and vitality of many traditional artistic genres in the Missouri Ozarks and throughout the state.

“Traditional Health and Healing in the Ozarks: Implications for Medical Folklore Research”

Friday, September 25, 2009, 1:00-4:30 PM

“Hit’s the Closest to Everlastin’: Collaborative Conservation in the Ozarks” — A series of presentations and panel discussions

     Brian Campbell will moderate “Hit’s the Closest to Everlastin’: Collaborative Conservation in the Ozarks,” a series of presentations and panel discussions.  The participants represent a diverse range of perspectives and expertise on contemporary conservation activities.  They include an Ozark gardener, a farmer, a naturalist, an herbalist, a Cherokee artist and anthropologist, a documentary filmmaker, and a few ecological anthropologists, to document and discuss contemporary cultural and biological conservation efforts in the Ozark Highlands region.”  “Hit’s the Closest to Everlastin’: Collaborative Conservation in the Ozarks” will encompass the seven presentations described below.

•  In “Agrarianism and Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation in the Ozarks,” Brian Campbell will situate historical Ozark homesteading in relation to bucolic Ozark stereotypes and explore interconnections between traditional Ozark values and subsistence strategies and contemporary agricultural and biological conservation initiatives.  He will discuss Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage, incorporating ethnographic research with farmers and gardeners from Missouri and Arkansas.

•  “Integrating the Old with the Ancient in the Ozarks” by D’Coda will discuss a seed preservation project located on an in-holding in the Hurricane Creek Wilderness Preserve, Johnson County, Arkansas.  The presentation will relate the project both to local traditions and to current land management practices.  Now in its tenth year, the seed collection has expanded beyond heirlooms and medicinal plants to include traditional Ozark cultivars.  It is one of the primary growout locations for the Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage Seed Bank.

•  “The Ozark Seed Swap,” a documentary film by Zachariah McCannon (OzarkSatchel.com), examines the Second Annual Ozark Seed Swap.  Though the event, which took place in Mountain View, Arkansas, February 21, 2009, lasted just over three hours, hundreds of varieties of heirloom seed were exchanged.  The film relates the stories behind the seeds and the people who save, swap, and use them.

•  “Generative Traditions: Cultural Identity and Wild Plant Procurement in the Western Cherokee Ozarks and the Arkansas Ozarks,” a collaborative presentation by Justin Nolan, Shawna Cain, Roger Cain, and Diana Storch, will examine links between cultural identity and wild plant procurement in the Oklahoma and Arkansas Ozarks.  On the basis of data collected over nine years across 32 communities, it will compare plant knowledge of Cherokee speakers of the Oklahoma Ozarks with that of English speakers of the Arkansas Ozarks.  Despite the relative ecological similarity in forest understory growth, the constellations of plants known, named, and used by Cherokee and Euro-Americans, respectively, differ in ways that subtly bespeak the diversity of plant-use traditions found in the Ozarks.

•  In “Building a Regional Public Domain Seed Bank for the Ozarks,” Daniel Roth will discuss the development of One Garden and the Ozark Seed Bank in Brixey, Missouri.  Initially, the organization maintained a seed collection representing North American native and non-native plants of medicinal value, but a donation of almost a thousand rare and heirloom seeds led to the creation of a curated seed collection unique to the Ozarks.

•  Jim Veteto’s “Situating the Seeds: On-the-Ground Documentation and Conservation of Ozark Heirloom Vegetable and Fruit Cultivars” will present results from a collaborative dissertation research project that involved researchers, farmers, backyard gardeners, and seed saving initiatives in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma.  It will demonstrate that seed saving in the Ozarks is a diverse, dynamic, ongoing cultural tradition that spans hundreds of years, involves people of multiple ethnicities, and encompasses heirloom seeds originating from several continents.

•  In “Perpetual Weed Patches,” Tina Marie Wilcox will contend that when one has a long-term relationship with a patch garden, one realizes that the “weeds” are plants that originally planted intentionally or have volunteered from the wild and have simply become too abundant.  It is convenient and natural to allow them to cast seed, and is a more arduous chore to harvest the seed and replant in proper timing every year.  Such plants may be regarded as gourmet micro-greens, baby greens, green manure, mulch, medicine, or compost food.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: “Gasconade Mills: Daniel Morgan Boone’s Piney Woods”

     The keynote presentation by Lynn Morrow, “Gasconade Mills: Daniel Morgan Boone’s Piney Woods,” will examine the socio-economic milieu of the interior Missouri Ozarks, 1816-1825.  Its central narrative will be the career of Morgan Boone, who was involved in establishing the first large commercial pine lumbering enterprise in the region.  This contributed to the first “timber boom” in the Ozarks, which was initiated largely by affluent families from St. Louis and St. Charles counties who had the venture capital and slave labor to open and maintain modest industrial sash and grist mills, both powered by water.  Much of this activity was situated in an area that became known as Gasconade Mills, encompassing the Big Piney River and its mill sites from Arthur’s Creek to Spring Creek.  Drawing upon the contents of newly developed archival collections, Morrow will discuss the multifaceted impact of this early timber boom upon the social and economic development of the interior Missouri Ozarks.  He will address such themes as folklore surrounding Morgan Boone; the economic importance of Ozarks shortleaf pine to antebellum St. Louis; the occupational and economic versatility of residents of the region during this period, who were not simply “farmers” but forest agrarians; and the development of long-distance trade in the interior Ozarks and of St. Louis as a major market for resources from this region.

“The Rule in Shelley’s Case: Judge Leigh B. Woodside and Law in the Ozarks”

“The Polk County Rebellion”

“Folk Cures in the Missouri State University Folk Card Index”

     Rachel Gholson, in “Folk Cures in the Missouri State University Folk Card Index,” will discuss folk medicines and cures documented by students at Missouri State University in Springfield and archived in the university’s Folk Card Index.  Patterned after card files maintained by folklorist Frank C. Brown, which became the basis for his seven-volume work on folk belief in North Carolina, the Missouri State University Folk Card Index is intended to expand upon folklorist Vance Randolph’s research on folk belief in the Ozarks.  Between 2006 and 2008, students contributed documentation of more than 30 beliefs about folk medicine to the index.  Gholson will discuss these beliefs, which bespeak various origins and address a wide range of maladies.

“Are Ozarks Jews Southern Jews?  Redefining a Region”

     Mara Cohen Ioannides’s “Are Ozarks Jews Southern Jews?  Redefining a Region” will contribute to the study of two subjects that have received very limited scholarly investigation thus far but are increasingly of interest to scholars in various fields: minority communities in the Ozarks and regional differences among Jewish communities in the United States.  Building upon the work of specialists in both Jewish studies and Ozarks studies, Ioannides will discuss the intersection of Jewish ethnic and religious identity with Ozark regional identity in the fewer than two dozen small Jewish communities located in this region.  She will contend that although Ozarks Jewry has cultural attributes of its own, it is closely akin to the Southern Jewish experience.

“Metamorphoses in the Missouri Ozarks: The Socioeconomic Implications of ‘Incorporated’ Tribal Membership”

“Under Our Feet: Photo-Text Narratives”

     “Under Our Feet” by Jan Roddy will consist of photo-text narratives exploring the influence of the Karst topography of much of the Ozarks upon the region’s identity.  Though other regions of the United States also exhibit Karst topography – landscape characterized by features resulting from dissolution of soluble bedrock such as limestone or dolomite – it plays a remarkably significant role in Ozarkers’ cultural self-image.  Roddy’s narratives will examine how caves, springs, losing streams, sinkholes, and rocky ridges and their attendant hollows are inextricably woven into Ozark identity, past and present.  Influenced by the methods of author and photographer Wright Morris, who coined the term “photo-text” to describe his work in the 1940s, these narratives form part of Roddy’s ongoing documentary project devoted to Ozarks culture.

“The West Plains Dance Hall Explosion”

“A Report on the West Plains Council on the Arts’ Cultural Documentation Workshops for Prospective Community Folklorists"

     In “A Report on the West Plains Council on the Arts’ Cultural Documentation Workshops for Prospective Community Folklorists,” Matt Meacham will discuss the content and outcomes of an instructional program conducted in Ripley, Carter, Shannon, and Dent counties in Missouri during the summer and fall of 2009.  The workshops have enabled the West Plains Council on the Arts to develop promising relationships with people who share its commitment to the conservation and public presentation of folk culture in this region.

“Recollections of Life in Butterfield”

     Marideth Sisco’s “Recollections of Life in Butterfield” will describe small-town life in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri in the 1940s and ‘50s from a personal perspective, focusing on some of its more comical elements.  Sisco will share stories recalling her early years in Butterfield in Barry County, where her two aunts ran a small grocery store and her mother, grandmother, grandfather, and great uncle all served as postmaster at one time or another.