Dear AIM Relatives and Friends:

January 24, 2016:  The challenges facing the AIMIC are great. At times it feels like we could lose our balance, but we haven’t. Still a small, fledgling initiative struggling to grow from down to feathers, we continue to dream the big dream of giving our vision flight like an eagle. We still believe our higher purpose is to make a profound difference to the future of humanity, locally and globally.

Our on-the-ground mission “to protect indigenous peoples, cultures, nature, spirituality, and Grandmother Earth through accurate interpretation” is inspired by immense characters who enliven our collective memories, like Sitting Bull who said, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” The vitality of our continuing relationship with earth and sky, as a result of the positive and wise contributions of the generations of indigenous peoples before us, will reverberate into the future and inform the new and unfamiliar changes bound to come.

AIMIC’s evolution, in part, is due to the loyalty and dedication of our staff. Long hours and low pay is often the hallmark of even self-actualized interpretive centers everywhere. Although we are far from being fully operational where we want to be, our endeavor to accurately identify and describe significant visitor experiences persist.

In 2016, our early goals will include the effective completion and answering of key questions such as: Why will the AIMIC be made available to the public? What experience will our visitors desire? What current conditions affect visitor experience? What stories and experiences will AIMIC make available to visitors? What laws, mandates, policies, and guidelines affect our project? What significant relationships between resources and visitors currently exist? How can AIMIC meet visitor experience goals in the most cost-effective manner?

Also this year, AIMIC will incrementally adjust and expand its focus from making more practical its vision and early conceptual phase, to encompassing the goal of designing and - even further upstream – of building a modest, powerful, and uniquely indigenous interpretive center. Our preparatory journey will eventually exit 2016 and enter ever unfamiliar territory the following year. Ideally, this means creatively involving an experienced team of explorers such as an interpretive planner, a facility design specialist, potential partners, affected audience members, subject matter experts, publication and media experts, and others to help us effectively and efficiently navigate a route to our preferred interpretive center site.

In closing, AIMIC extends our heart-felt appreciation to those individuals, groups, and organizations everywhere who resonate with our vision, and to those throughout the national and international communities and interpretive field whose own visions coincide deeply with parts of ours. In particular, we embrace in gratitude those who have stepped into our lives and expressed belief in us through contribution of funds, materials, and resources.  We say “Wopila tanka” to you, our undying expression of thanks. Please join us on the next part of our journey.

Respectfully,

LeMoine LaPointe
Chairman, Board of Directors
AIM Interpretive Center