(upbeat music) (gentle music) - Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in this show, we'll learn about the importance of Native American food and foraging from Candace Stock.

But first, joining me now is the Executive Director of the Theater Roosevelt Presidential Library.

Robbie Lauf.

Robbie, thanks for joining us today.

- Thrilled to be here.

- Well, as we get started, we always ask, tell the folks a little bit about yourself, your background, maybe where you're from originally.

- As you said, my name's Robbie Lauf.

I'm a proud Mayport CG High School grad class of 2011 from Mayville, North Dakota.

Grew up there.

I went to North Dakota State University in Fargo, spent some time in Bismarck working previously for the governor of North Dakota Governor Burgum before a couple more different adventures before returning back here to start my family on Bismarck and Medora.

- Well, how did you get involved with the library?

- So I felt very fortunate early in my career to work for then Governor Burgum as his senior policy advisor.

At which time I connected with a guy named Bruce Pitts who was then chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation.

It was a small 15 million dollar renovation to a campus building at Dickinson State University at that time.

And he shared the vision for the project and their interest and support.

And very quickly at that, during that conversation, I shared that I'd been to every presidential library already in my life at that point.

I was that level of history buff.

So connected with him and the project and shared with Governor Burgum, his interest in the project and since that point have helped expand it from a $15 million renovation to now a $450 million global institution on the top of Butte at the entrance of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora.

- Well, maybe talk just a little bit about that.

The history was, yeah, it was gonna be in Dickinson.

- [Robbie] Yeah.

- There was a lot of talk about that and then it got, how all of that, what all took place to make all this happen?

- Well, it was an incredible vision early on from a lot of the leaders at Dickinson State University and the TR Center, which is one of the most important intellectual history places for the history and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt.

So quickly, we developed a very strong partnership with the DSU, the TR Center, and different institutions.

But quickly into the fundraising for the project, we decided to lean towards telling the story in the place where TR actually spent most of his time in the Badlands, which was in and around Medora, North Dakota.

So about a few years into the project's creation, there was a motion from the board, which I was a subserved as a member at that time to move it from Dickinson to Medora while leaving the intellectual heft of the institution at the TR Center in Dickinson.

So that process probably happened right around 2018 or so before we went to the state legislature and asked for a challenge grant, which helped found the institution.

But Dickinson continues to be an incredibly important part of TR's story, his legacy.

He gave one of his best speeches there, this 4th of July speech.

It also will be the intellectual repository for a lot of the artifacts and documents that TR scholars from across the world will come to study at the TR Library.

- Why didn't we already have a Roosevelt Librarian?

- Well, our nation's loss in that fact is our gain because the actual presidential library system started with TR's cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

He had been president for over 10 years, the most in the longest of any president history, and to the point where he died in office and all of his papers were distributed across many different owners and individuals.

This was a huge issue in presidential history up to this point.

When a president died, whoever owned or had the papers became the owner of American history.

So they created a Records Retention Act in 1940, right around 1944 which established the presidential library system, which basically said that all the documents from presidents passed beyond FDR have to be stored at one location so that for the rest of history can go and make an intellectual center.

It has transformed more from a document retention site to museums from now on.

The first one being in Hyde Park, New York is well-worth anybody's adventure.

But now we're going back in time and helping to build presidential libraries for people before FDR, because they tell the story of some of our greatest Americans.

And frankly, for our benefit, TR didn't have one.

There'd been two efforts to build one before in New York.

Turns out it's really hard to do.

And it helps a lot to have a living president to help fundraise for it.

But the state of the North Dakota kind of led the effort under Governor Burgum and the state legislature which passed a $50 million challenge grant, which was the seed capital to create this incredible institution.

So fortunate for us, it's gonna be in the Badlands.

- Well, you talked about 16 and 18, but how long did it take from breaking ground to completion?

- So about a little over two years, we've been constructing the TR presidential library a little two and a half years thus far.

But the concept is 10 years in total but we're having substantial completion here coming up in May before opening in July of 2026.

- Well, and were there any challenges along the way?

- There were a lot of challenges.

First and foremost you know, for it's important to get the endorsement of the family, which is the Roosevelt family is a large and vast institution of incredible leaders across this country.

Back when we were kind of trying to build this from a $15 million to now a 450 million dollar institution, we reached out to the Roosevelt family.

And very quickly, they became enthusiastic about building it in North Dakota, which we thought it might take a little bit of conversation, but frankly, if you want, they shared that if you want to see the history and the ghost of TR, go to Sagamore Hill in New York, you can find his house just as he left it.

You know, the eyeglasses on the bedside, exactly where he passed away.

You know, the incredible animals he harvested across the world hanging on the walls.

But if you wanna feel his spirit go to the badlands.

And TR, if he had one time in his life, he chose to relive, he shared with a good friend before his passing, he said it would have been as his time as a cowboy in Dakota territory.

So we think we're telling his story in the place that was the fulcrum of his hero's pitch.

- So what are the plans for the grand opening and when will it be open to the public?

- Well, we're thrilled to open the TR Presidential Library on July 4th of 2026, America's 250th birthday, the semi-quincentennial which just rolls off the tongue of our country's founding.

So TR was very interestingly, also the president during the 125th birthday of America.

So halfway between our founding and this year is when he served as president and now we'll be celebrating his actual presidency in Medora on July 4th.

There'll be opening festivities from the 1st through the 4th.

We're gonna have a lot of incredible opportunities for people who help make the project possible from donors to community leaders to Roosevelt family members from the first three days.

But after July 4th, the institution's open and you could become a founding member of TR Library and get early access to tickets in just a week or so's time, end of March at trlibrary.com.

- So after the grand opening, everything, what are the hours gonna be?

What's the process for going to the library?

- We'll be open seven days a week during the summer from shoulder seasons of the Medora.

I think most North Dakotans spend a little bit of time in Medora each summer.

So we'll be open every day of the week from morning to evening.

In the winter, we're really gonna focus on having kids school trips come to the library, but we'll also be open about four or five days a week in the shoulder seasons and all-winter-long.

Of course, this is our first-year, so we're gonna find and kind of iterate on that a little bit, but you can come enjoy Medora all four seasons.

- Okay.

Talk about some, maybe some of the other people behind the scenes working with you.

Who else is helping you with this?

- Well, there's an incredible amount of people that have made the TR Library possible, ranging from an incredible board of leaders, our chair, Hilary Hamm.

We have past chairs, you mentioned Bruce Pitts.

We chatted a little bit about him before.

Ed O'Keefe, our incredible CEO is one of the greatest storytellers and TR historians across the world.

Just opened just wrote his first book on "The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, The Women in his Life that was a Formative People in His Story."

But we have incredible local team members as well who are gonna be the people hosting you.

I think of people like Amy McCann who used to be an incredible person at the National Park in Medora.

She's now been leading our institution and helping for multiple years.

Chris Blackwell, our VP of operations.

We just have an incredible group of individuals who are dedicated to sharing the life and legacy of our greatest president.

It's a pretty incredible honor.

- Sure.

The inner Roosevelt obviously was known for his environmental advocacy.

How does the library reflect that in the library and maybe it's programs you're gonna have?

- Well, our greatest conservationist was Theodore Roosevelt.

He came to the Badlands first in 1883, hopped-off the train September 8th to hunt a bison.

And he came there because he knew, just like he knew the sky was blue, that the bison would soon be extinct.

We'd grown, we'd decimated this population of millions and millions of bison down to just thousands at the time he came here.

He spent multiple weeks searching for the bison, found it, hunted, harvested it, and then thought to himself, "Wow, I will be the last who's able to do this.

We need to do something about it."

So his conservation ethic really came to be in the Badlands of North Dakota.

He went from that to the Elkhorn Ranch where his we say it's the cradle of conservation, it's where he kind of developed the policies around it in his mind before going on to being the greatest conservation president who protected over 230 million acres, who created the forest service, who established national parks, who did bird reserves, I mean, a lot of incredible things that are still impacted and seen across the country today.

So we're gonna tell that story and we're gonna tell it the most interesting place in the world for it, the Heart of the Badlands with a place where he came up and connected with the earth.

- Okay.

Well, maybe let's talk about a couple of your projects.

What is the native plant project?

What does that mean with the library?

- Well, it's a great program that really takes that conservation ethic and puts it into practice.

Primarily in reclamation projects across the badlands before the TR Library, the seed mix that was used to reclaim land was actually from Oregon and Washington.

So I like to say we were slowly replacing the beautiful Badlands with Oregon and Washington.

Frankly this program is now developed with NDSU where we developed a seed mix that is taken from the national park, from the prairie, the Maah Daah Hey Trail from different parts of the Badlands that now can be used to restore the prairie of the Badlands across the entirety of North Dakota.

- And then what about the living building challenge?

- So we're very proud to say that we're building an institution that is gonna be the greenest building on Earth when it's completed.

We're gonna be quickly surpassed because that's the incredible nature of technology, but think of the living building challenges, lead platinum on steroids.

It's gonna be zero water, zero waste, zero energy, living an ethic that we're from the land and respecting the land around us.

So this building, if you don't, if you're not interested in TR, if you're not interested in American history, you might come because you're interested in technology, you're interested in architecture, you're interested in conservation, and you come to see this institution that is 100,000 square foot building on the top of a Butte in the Badlands that is completely independent from the grid system.

- Yeah.

So who's responsible for coming up with these projects and programs?

Well, we have a lot of people who've come up with them, but anywhere from the building design is from our incredible architect, Snohetta and JLG, who have developed what I think is gonna be one of the 100 buildings you have to see before you die.

It'll be in every coffee table book that you might buy about architecture.

Two incredible local leaders who've helped cultivate things like the Native Plant Project in partnership with NDSU and people on our team like Allison O'Keefe and Jenn Carroll to our TR Scholars Program, which has been an interesting program.

We're trying to cultivate higher education and a place to do research and connect with the land for graduates and postgraduates in the Badlands, which has been cultivated by our education team.

So it's vast and wide who's made it possible and frankly, we're still hiring people to come join and create the next generation of programs.

- Yeah, I hear you say 100,000 square feet.

- [Robbie] Yes, correct.

- So what kind of exhibits will be at the library, and I assume some are permanent, maybe some are temporary?

- Correct.

We have a temporary gallery, which is gonna have traveling exhibits across three to four perhaps a year, changing early and often to encourage repeat visitation, telling stories of American history, of our tribal nation partners, of local history, to things completely non-topical to TR.

But then we have the most incredible permanent exhibits telling TR's life story, birth to death sequentially from his childhood bedroom to his time to the bath time in the badlands, to the rough rioters, to his incredible presidency and the fast ascension he had from governor to president in two years time.

Of course, then as well to his post-presidency, which I like to say TR stories, you know, he's a top five president by most historian standards.

You know, I think he's number one.

But his before and after of his presidency was almost more interesting.

His time in Africa, his time down the river of doubt, which is one of the most harrowing tales in history, you'll get to experience those things.

His third-party run as a bull moose candidate where he was nearly assassinated.

A lot of incredible stories in the different chapters of his life will be told through exhibits that you get to look, feel, and touch, not just read texts on walls.

You're gonna get to experience life as TR in the Badlands.

- Wow.

So what's the anticipated impact on Medora and the state of North Dakota?

- Well, our goal is to be a great reason to come to the Badlands, to get inside the TR Library, to get outdoors and to connect with nature like TR did.

You know, when he came to North Dakota in the second journey in 1884, it was after his wife and his mother died on the same day in the same house, February 14th, 1884, Valentine's Day.

He took into his diary out and wrote an X on that date and said, "The light has gone out of my life."

In other words, he gave up.

That diary will be on display for the first time ever in the TR Library.

And what did he do after his wife and mother passed?

He went as west, as far west as he could, the time and went to Medora, and instead of giving up on life, he was reborn.

So we think people will come to experience that and perhaps to connect with the outdoors and to increase visitation to the beautiful Badlands to Medora, North Dakota, to take for the incredible three million visitors a year that go to the Black Hills and the Yellowstone and perhaps, add our journey to the Great American Road trip and increase visitation to our state.

- Well, exactly, you hit on that.

Medora is not the maybe easiest place to get to for people that are not in this region.

So how much marketing will you do after the grand opening just on an annual basis getting people, because I know a lot of people like to go.

- [Robbie] Yeah.

- But as yourself to presidential libraries.

- Well, it's an incredible.

There's a lot of people out there who this is on their bucket list, is going to every presidential library, but we're not just going after them.

We want this to be a museum that kids drag their parents to, not parents drag their kids to.

We wanna make sure that this is an institution that K-12 schools across the country venture to come learn from one of the greatest Americans and connect to American history.

We think that this will be a place that could do that.

There are millions of people each year that drive but through North Dakota.

We wanna pull them off the road and get them to stay a little bit longer to connect to the place that we all love.

And genuinely, I think it will be an incredible story to tell.

- If people want to, how can they support the library for its future endeavors, I guess?

- Yeah, so we're still fundraising for the project.

We're, North Dakota has been the incredible supporter.

Most of our donations have come from North Dakotans.

We're still fundraising and they can donate at trlbrary.com/donate, help us create this building and also the programs that'll go on for years after.

- Talking about future endeavors and looking ahead, sort of after the grand opening.

- [Robbie] Yeah.

- I know that's gonna be a wonderful thing but maybe what are the days you're gonna be closed?

- Well, during the grand opening, July 1st through 3rd will be not open, but then in the winter, we'll have Monday and Tuesdays of certain weeks, but it's still being established, frankly.

- Okay, so you're still working on- - Yeah.

- All the details with that.

- You can find all that information on our website.

- Very good.

So now then, again, going for the future, what do you hope to accomplish as the executive director?

What are your goals and how is that gonna translate into the success for the library?

- Well, our goal is to make this far more than just a museum that people visit.

We want this to be a platform for citizenship, for leadership, for conservation.

We want this to be a global convening point for conversations of the future of our planet.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, as an example, has an annual defense forum where all of the secretaries of defense across the globe come together and to discuss the issues most pertinent to protection and safety of their countries.

We want to be that for conservation, a platform where the most interesting conversations for the mo- perhaps the most difficult conversations happen at the entrance of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only national park named after a person in the entire system.

And we're connecting conservation to citizenship, to leaders, to policy, and we're gonna do it in North Dakota where we think people are pragmatic, and we're gonna do it with a president that is loved by the left and right of American politics.

He is the favorite president of Elizabeth Warren on the left and Josh Hawley on the right.

Perhaps a unique person to help heal the divides of our country, and we're gonna do it in North Dakota.

- Well, we talked about this, but how's the funding?

You got the funding to get it built, but how will it be funding operationally going forward and how many paid staff will you have, and will you have volunteers?

- We will absolutely have volunteers.

We'd encourage people to join our program which, again, can be located on our website.

But we're hoping to have around 80 or so team members in total telling and helping to create the story of TR.

But we'll be funded by a combination of operational endowment, revenues off of events and ticketing, and of course, philanthropy.

Philanthropy will always be a part of this institution.

Museums aren't exactly here to be cashflowing institutions.

They're here to serve the public.

So for decades after, we're gonna be encouraged and supported by annual membership, which the inaugural memberships are for sale right now on trlibrary.com, and by generous donations of people keeping the institution running for decades to come.

- With the mission of the library, and maybe I didn't ask you exactly, what is the mission?

Do you have a mission statement?

- Yeah, so we have a mission statement, which is to preserve the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt for generations to come.

We're gonna do it through telling the citizenship aspect of his life, his incredible conservation leadership ethic, and, of course, just leadership in general.

- Yeah.

A lot of people, and most people that know presidents, know Theodore Roosevelt.

- [Robbie] Yeah.

- As you mentioned, but, you know, what do you think the biggest thing people think of when they think of Theodore Roosevelt?

- I think they think of being proud to be an American, somebody who loved his country.

They might connect to the Teddy Bear, which is a unique story about his, I mean, his life is larger, his life was bigger than all of ours combined.

But I think they'll also find out that he was somebody who deeply loved the land and wanna conserve this place, this great American tradition and we're gonna tell that full story.

- Now, Robbie, you've been involved a long time, it sounds like, with the library since the beginning in some capacity, but what does the role as executive director of the Presidential Library mean to you?

- Well, it means the opportunity to connect people to a place and to a person who changed my life.

You know, I met my wife in the Badlands of Medora.

We're starting our family there.

I've gone there when life gets tough, and I've used it to heal, and I hope people will use this opportunity to connect to a great American to find that when life gets tough, go outside, and, you know, put your phone down, connect to the earth and recenter yourself, just like TR did.

So to me, it's the greatest opportunity in my life to give back to a place I love so much.

- Great way to end it here.

If people want information, I know you said it, but where can they go, what's the best place for you?

- trlibrary.com.

We're excited to welcome people to Medora this summer and for many summers to come.

- Well, Robbie, we wish you the best, and thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Food foraging is the art of gathering edible and nutritious food from the wild places around us.

From a young age, Candace Stock learned these traditional practices from our grandparents.

With the cultural wisdom, Candace shares how harvesting native plants nourishes both body and spirit.

(gentle music) - These are guild bracket mushrooms, and there's a lot of new growth.

There's also Hen of the woods that grows back here, but they are in larger clusters and will have a slightly fruity aroma to them also.

My culture has always influenced my perspective in cooking.

I like to bring the element of food medicine to everything that I do.

As far as indigenous cuisine, it's just being elevated now, but a lot of the practices have always been there, and so now, it's my job to kind of take what I've learned with my cultural background and bring that to the people.

It's just an invitation, really, for people to see what's out there, to taste it, and then get a little bit of knowledge on how they can go out and do it themselves.

My name is Candice Stock.

We're just north of Morehead, Minnesota, on Doubting Thomas Farms.

Foraging is land stewardship practice.

It's going out into the wilderness and interacting with all the plants.

It is a necessary interaction.

Foraging heals me, and I heal the land by tending to it.

There are a lot of invasive species, and so in foraging, that is also a practice in going out and pulling those invasive plants so that the native plants can flourish, but then being able to harvest all of these, these nutrient dense plants that can be consumed at home.

People have been looking for food medicine.

They've been looking for more natural ways to cure their ailments, and so, especially being Native American, diabetes has always been a big issue, and so getting back to the indigenous diet really helps to resolve those issues.

This little flower has the anti-anxiety properties to it.

I'll make beverages somewhere, or with these kind of properties.

Staghorn sumac is also a really good one, kind of gets the blood flowing, makes people feel a little bit more relaxed.

I grew up on a farm near White Earth, Minnesota, and harvesting throughout the year was always a big part of my childhood, so my grandmother on my mom's side is full-blood native, and so she taught me about the medicine and how that would be applied, and how to harvest it honorably in the native way.

(gentle music) In a native way, foraging is about building a relationship with the earth.

Our involvement has always been that we are designed to tend the earth, and I think that in society, we've been working backwards.

This is nature's candy.

This knowledge is supposed to be multi-generational.

We're supposed to be talking about it.

We're supposed to be practicing it, and so the more people that are interested, the better.

Getting the youth involved right away, incredibly important, because these are memories that last.

So at Doubting Thomas Farms, we bring groups out to the farm, I'll forage with them, do a small cooking demonstration afterwards, or just show them how to process some of the ingredients that we forage.

But I think that, you know, the long walks and the interaction with the plants, and then having that nourishment at the end really drives home the purpose of why we do it.

People get to taste the fruits of the labor right away, and it creates a stronger memory and absorption of the process.

In the harvesting practice, I pick with intention.

I think it's very important to be prepared.

You have to bring proper bags, baskets, and you wanna line them and respect the plant so that it keeps its integrity.

Learning foraging.

If you don't have a guide, there are a lot of plant identifier apps now, and I think it's best to just go out and catalog as much as you can.

Once you find things that are edible, you can take them home and process them if you feel comfortable.

If you don't, it's best to have a friend, I guess, that you can bounce some of these things off of.

But I think that the foraging community and the Morehead and Fargo area are really expanding.

More people are practicing these different land stewardship practices, and so there's more of a platform for it, I guess.

I only feel good when I forage.

It's the best way for me to ground myself, to heal, to kind of reset.

Working in a kitchen or in an office really drains me, and so the only way to really build myself back up is to be able to connect with nature.

I'd say there are a lot of lessons that I've learned in my career when it comes to preparing medicinal foods, so the practice of foraging really connects me to my ancestors.

This land was meant to be tended to, it was meant to be shared, and as far as the nutrients that come from it, it's a big part of my mission and my career as a chef to share that medicine and that nourishment.

(upbeat music) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Post this week, and as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Speaker With Soft Tone] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.

(light upbeat music) (soft music)