Parke Lewis and Brent Newman had the opportunity to attend the annual Trail of Florida Indian Heritage meeting in St Augustine FL on October 13 and 14. The Trail of Florida Indian Heritage is non-profit organization whose mission is, “To promote awareness, responsible visitation and protection of the remaining cultural sites of the original people of Florida. Interpretation will engage all levels, will be consistent and based on current science to encourage heritage tourism." Mound House is a one of the 52 sites and 20 state parks that feature Native American sites, artifacts, or information.
In addition to attending workshops on grant writing and the use of social media Parke and Brent visited four sites in St Augustine as part of the meeting. These sites included Fountain of Youth Park (open since the 1860s!), where they have an excellent presentation on the Indians and early Spanish colonists to Florida. Staff agreed they learned a huge amount there and got some ideas to improve our atlatl presentations. After the Fountain of Youth the group arrived at Mission Nombre de Dios museum, this relatively new museum covers one of the earliest missions to the Timucuan Indians. Their presentation of historic documents and hanging, printed silk screens were both impressive. The St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum was also visited, we viewed some of the challenges they faced turning a historic lighthouse keeper’s home into a museum and the clever ways they utilized their space. Finally, we visited Fort Mose historic site, another new museum, we were impressed with presentation and took away many good ideas. They did an excellent job presenting the story of Fort Mose while using a limited number of artifacts.
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| Brent and Ponce |
