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Across Nebraska and many American cities, policymakers are debating the future of historic preservation and cultural funding. Recent proposals to reduce or restructure the Nebraska Cultural Preservation Endowment Fund, a fund that supports arts and humanities programs across the state, as well as eliminate the Nebraska Historic Tax Credit, have raised broader questions about how communities value and sustain cultural heritage.
As regions grow and redevelopment pressures increase, questions emerge about which historic places and objects should be protected, how preservation policies should function and be funded and what role cultural heritage should play in modern development.
These debates often focus on economics, zoning and property rights. Yet one crucial piece is frequently overlooked: cultural heritage is not simply about buildings, sites, artifacts or nostalgia. It is about identity. Historic places and artifacts connect communities to their past, anchor them in the present and provide the physical framework through which shared stories, traditions and collective memory are carried into the future.
I have spent much of my academic and professional career researching cultural heritage and identity, including how the protection or destruction of heritage shapes community strength in both stable societies and war zones. Across vastly different contexts, the same lesson emerges: When heritage is lost, communities lose pieces of themselves, their memory and their resilience.
In areas experiencing conflict, this reality becomes exceptionally clear. Cultural heritage is deliberately targeted during war because it represents the identity and continuity of a community. When historic monuments, religious sites, museums, archives and objects are destroyed, the goal is not simply physical damage. It is an attempt to erase memory, weaken social bonds and undermine the structure that holds a community together.
Museums, archives, historic sites and cultural organizations serve as stewards of memory, preserving the physical and cultural record that communities depend on to understand themselves. Historic buildings, archives, artwork, artifacts and traditions serve as physical reminders of who a community has been, what it is now and what it will become.
The state’s current policy discussions are not theoretical. Nebraska has already experienced what happens when heritage disappears.
In the late 1980s, Omaha’s Jobbers Canyon Historic District was demolished to make way for a major corporate redevelopment project. The district contained 24 late-nineteenth-century warehouse buildings and represented one of the most significant historic warehouse districts in the Midwest. Despite a national preservation campaign to save them, the buildings were demolished between 1988 and 1989. The loss was historic in more ways than one. The demolition of Jobbers Canyon remains the largest loss of a National Register historic district in U.S. history.
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What was dismantled was not merely a set of old structures. Jobbers Canyon represented a tangible link to Omaha’s identity as a transportation and commercial hub. The warehouses communicated the story of railroads, immigration, trade and the economic forces that built the modern Midwest. Once destroyed, that narrative became harder to see, harder to feel and harder to pass on.
While Jobbers Canyon was lost through redevelopment, today many historic places and artifacts survive because preservation policy and public investment make rehabilitation and continuity possible. When protected and used thoughtfully, heritage becomes a powerful engine for renewal.
Across Omaha, neighborhoods like the Old Market and Benson demonstrate how cultural heritage shapes vibrant modern communities. Historic architecture, restaurants, music venues, galleries and festivals create a sense of place that cannot be easily replicated. The preservation of culture has become a foundation for economic vitality.
Throughout Nebraska, small towns offer similar examples. Wilber’s annual Czech Festival draws 30,000 to 50,000 visitors each year, celebrating heritage through food, music and community traditions. The city’s historic downtown with the Wilber Czech Museum, Czech Cultural Center, Dvořáček Memorial Library, and Hotel Wilber have provided the foundation for cultural tourism, demonstrating how heritage supports long-term economic resilience.
These examples highlight an important truth. Cultural heritage is not simply about nostalgia. It is infrastructure for identity, community cohesion and economic resilience.
Cultural heritage protection is increasingly recognized at the national and international level as an important component of stability. Globally, the destruction or neglect of cultural heritage is now understood as more than the loss of physical structures and artifacts. It signals deeper fractures within communities and societies. As a result, cultural heritage preservation has become an important part of international policy discussions surrounding resilience, stability, conflict prevention and humanitarian protection. Protecting heritage strengthens the foundations that allow communities to thrive.
While Nebraska’s preservation debates are far from global conflict zones, the underlying principle is the same. Cultural heritage shapes how a community understands itself, how it stays strong over time and how it presents its stories to the world.
As policymakers in Nebraska consider the future of preservation funding, historic tax credits, and other tools that support the protection and rehabilitation of historic places, it is worth remembering that cultural heritage is not merely decorative or symbolic. It is part of the infrastructure of community identity and strength.
Cities constantly evolve, and redevelopment is often necessary. But thoughtful preservation ensures that growth does not erase the places, artifacts and stories that shaped communities over time. My research examining cultural property and its connection to people has shown repeatedly that protecting cultural heritage ultimately protects something far more fundamental: the identity, cohesion and strength of the people connected to it.
Once lost, heritage cannot truly be replaced.
The question facing communities today is not whether change will happen. It is whether we will continue to preserve the places, objects and stories that help future generations know the past, celebrate the present and carry strength into the future.
Capt. Jessica L. Wagner is a Heritage and Preservation Officer in the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) and director of education and public engagement at the Durham Museum in Omaha.
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