The board of the Haines Sheldon Museum wants to dissolve the museum’s relationship with the borough and turn it into a membership-driven nonprofit organization. Haines residents should be asking: Is this the best way to keep our museum alive?
The museum is our memory. In it are housed the things that give our community an identity. Haines residents know themselves through the documents, photos, and treasures that prove who we have been, what we could be. Cutting the museum adrift will degrade the collection and staff.
The museum is our conscience. It is the repository for priceless documents, including Tlingit cultural materials that would fade away or be moved to Juneau or farther if not for our museum. When Raven House caretaker Nathan Jackson sounded the alarm as he did in a recent CVN, he expressed a very real concern for priceless clan items in the museum’s professional care. Did our leaders hear him?
The museum is public. Towns invest in museums because residents value their identity. Some have enough tourists to make a profit, some don’t. Like libraries, museums are the sign of communities’ concern for their heritage and understanding. As a nonprofit, the museum becomes another competitor with the more than fifty other local nonprofits in the valley. Sink or swim—is this the best way to keep our museum alive?
The consequences of this action are intergenerational. I believe the current plan will push the museum down a short slope to its demise.
Daniel Henry