Ho-Chunk Museum Seeks To Recover After Fire Damages Collection

Within hours of the fire that destroyed two historic buildings in downtown Tomah, Josie Lee and more than two dozen other members of the Ho-Chunk Nation had gathered in front of the building.

The fire that broke out in the early morning of Nov. 29 started in an apartment above a downtown bar. But the efforts to contain the blaze had led to severe water damage to the Ho-Chunk Museum and Cultural Center next door.

Lee, who is the museum’s director, found boxes of archived documents, photographs and historical items floating in a flooded basement. As soon as the fire department gave them the OK, she and the team of volunteers who had assembled began the work of retrieving the museum’s collection — and Lee, drawing on training from her master’s degree in museology, began to make decisions about how they would set about preserving whatever they could.

“My biggest fear is I’m going to lose something that is not just important to me as an individual, but to an entire family and to our entire tribe,” Lee said.

Two weeks later, she has taken account of the damage to the museum’s collection, including its more than 500 photographs; thousands of pages of archival documents; baskets; textiles; plus tools and objects made of bone, shell, hide, wood and glass. She and the volunteers laid out documents to dry on mats in the gymnasium of the Ho-Chunk Youth Center, which is closed due to the pandemic. They’ve gotten help from archivists and preservation specialists from Chicago’s Field Museum, the Milwaukee Public Museum and an array of Wisconsin historical societies and public agencies.

The news is better than Lee could have imagined on that first day. Of all the items that could have been destroyed, Lee said it looks like a single photograph from the collection is too far damaged to be recovered — and that photo, like the rest of the collection, had been digitized. It’s sad to lose even a single object, Lee said. But the damage could have been much, much worse.

“I’m extremely relieved that we were able to get everything out,” she said. “Nothing was so completely damaged that it’s lost. That feels really good to know.”

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The work of recovering and accounting for the entire collection will take months. Some of the water-damaged photographs are in the custody of the Field Museum, where specialists will lead restoration efforts that take into account the complexities of sometimes century-old photo papers and chemicals. Volunteers are carefully bagging and matching other items, records and photos with museum records.

Investigators with the Tomah Fire Department found no safe way to access the building where the fire started, so they used drone footage and witness interviews to try to identify the cause of the fire. They weren’t able to pin down the cause and ruled it “undetermined,” but said in a release that they are “confident that the fire was not intentionally set.”

“I sat there basically the whole morning, transfixed to the video with tears in my eyes,” said Suzanne Baker-Young, a member of Tomah’s Historical Society, about livestream video of the blaze. “This is my hometown. I grew up walking past these buildings.”

The fire destroyed the bar, Dimensions, and the city’s Artisan Market, which was using the other storefront space. The water damage to the museum’s building is extensive, and Lee said she doesn’t know yet when or if it will be fit for them again.

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The Ho-Chunk Museum’s building is the former home of the city’s daily newspaper, the Tomah Journal. The long-awaited museum opened for the first time in January, and it was only weeks later that the pandemic forced its closure in March. When it closed, Lee, its only employee, was laid off. She went to work for the tribe’s health department, and to pursue her doctoral studies in First Nations education. When she got the call on the morning of the fire and began the work of retrieving the museum’s collection, she wasn’t even an employee. She’s since been recalled to that position to lead recovery efforts.

It’s been an intense couple of weeks.

“It’s mostly adrenaline” that’s fueled her, Lee said. “I’m still being held together with coffee and snacks.”

The community support for those efforts has been overwhelming, she said. Tribal members, non-Ho-Chunk community members, museums far and wide have reached out to help. Even the Smithsonian Institution is involved. She said it’s made her think about her studies in community building.

“Even though this is a huge tragedy, we’re still getting through the tragedy,” she said. “Hopefully we’re making sure these things are taken care of safely for many more generations.”