Welcoming: Who, Where, and Why

The word “welcome” itself is an import (from Scandinavia more than 1,500 years ago) to the English language, which feels fitting for the topic of welcoming weeks. These exist for all kinds of populations, from immigrants to military families, and they’re clustered in mid- to late September.

This is one of the things Missouri prioritizes as a state, and I sometimes wonder if it’s because this area was a jumping-off point for wagon trains back in the day. There was a tradition of “welcome wagons” that would meet newcomers to help them feel at home in their new location. (This is where the marketing company Welcome Wagon gets its name.)

In 2022, Missouri passed a law creating Good Neighbor Week to encourage citizens to “participate in events and activities to establish a connection with their neighbors.” This year, the dates are Sept. 28-Oct. 4. One of the first suggestions for commemorating this week is to learn the names of your neighbors. I won’t go into all the research about why this is super important, but there is a great discussion of it on this podcast episode from the Missouri Humanities Signature Series.

By coincidence, I was on a road trip across the state of Missouri yesterday, and I had a chance to listen to all the episodes of the Rural Remix podcast series Routes to Roots. Its goal is to “push back on common misconceptions about immigration in rural America” through first-person stories from across the central portion of the U.S. It’s a very timely topic, obviously, and I appreciate the straightforward approach they took to highlight who these populations are, what work they do, what their cultural acclimation looks like, how we all communicate, and why we are stronger together.

As someone who migrated from rural North Dakota to other states and even another country, I’m attuned to others’ journeys. It can be very challenging to adapt even if you have tremendous support, as military families do. The Army’s cultural training when I moved to Germany, for example, was invaluable even though my family lived on an American base and had English-language supports for everything. I can’t imagine having arrived in a new country without those benefits.

Sometimes a lack of knowledge about the place you’re moving to can cause huge and long-lasting problems. As a Dakotan, one of the saddest examples I can think of is the battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. There were people who understood the local dynamics and could have prevented hundreds of deaths (and the drama that continues to this day, 135 years later).

I also think quite often about a specific group of my own ancestors, who arrived in North Dakota from the area near Odessa, now in Ukraine. They were part of a huge migration of thousands of Germans who had left their home territories (not yet united to form the country of Germany) for the promise of a better life along the Volga River. They’re sometimes called the Volga Germans; other times, they’re called Germans from Russia, which obvious is problematic since the area where they lived is now highly contested in a war between Russia and Ukraine. Even the exhibit about them at North Dakota State University uses the name “Germans from Russia Heritage Collection.”

There’s a Missouri connection to those ancestors as well, and I’m grateful I was able to explore it a little recently. The City of Odessa got its name because an early visitor felt the landscape was reminiscent of the wheat fields along the Volga River.

Driving to Odessa along Interstate 70, travelers will see signs for the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area. I’d never paid much attention to the sign before, but I had a moment to look it up during a recent road trip. The area is represented by more than 230 museums, historical societies, and heritage sites based on this history: “In the nineteenth century, the nation turned its eyes to the Missouri-Kansas border, where peoples with diverse definitions of freedom collided, inciting and fueling a Civil War.”

Over the next few years, I will be making a lot of trips on I-70, and I will have the opportunity to explore some of these hundreds of sites, including libraries, farms, native villages, cemeteries, homes, plazas, and parks. I will probably start in the city of Olathe, Kansas, where my son lives now (being welcomed in his own right!) and expand out from there.

I love to explore new places and connect with new people, however briefly. I thrive on self-expansion through conversation, which “can come in many forms. It may come from an exposure to new points of view, or an introduction to new and exciting experiences that we had never encountered alone.”

Researchers theorize that you also thrive on self-expansion because “people have a fundamental desire to expand the self—that is, to increase their self-efficacy, perspectives, competence, and resources.”

And that is the point of this meandering thought journey I’ve just taken with you! Whether you are welcoming someone to your own neighborhood, connecting for the first time with someone who is already there, or exploring a new place, you are doing something very good for your own well-being. It just happens to have wider benefits for the world as well.

I’ll leave you with five questions to be pondered, courtesy of the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area …