The land beneath the museum has its own layered history. D.H. Robbins homesteaded near the site in 1884, operating a sawmill, farm, and trading post in the decades that followed. In 1916, Robbins sold part of his land to Harry and Jeanette Ayer; two years later, he sold the rest to the U.S. government. The Ayers saw opportunity on Mille Lacs Lake. By 1930, they had purchased additional lakeshore acreage and began renting cabins to hunters and visitors. Within seven years, the Ayers' resort was a full operation: cabins, boats, a dining hall, a dock, a boat factory, a maple sugar syrup refinery, a gas station, and a trading post. Throughout those years, the Ayers collected American Indian artifacts -- bandolier bags, moccasins, birch-bark baskets -- building a collection that would eventually number 2,200 pieces.

In 1959, Harry Ayer donated the buildings, the land, and his entire collection to the Minnesota Historical Society. The Society opened a public exhibit of the artifacts in 1960 and by 1969 unveiled the Four Seasons exhibit that remains the museum's centerpiece. The original building housed these displays for more than two decades before closing in 1992 to make way for the new museum, which opened four years later. The transition from private collection to state institution preserved something that might otherwise have scattered: a concentrated record of Ojibwe material culture assembled by people who lived alongside the community. The Ayer Collection's strength lies not in rare or ceremonial objects but in the everyday items that tell you how people actually lived -- the tools, the clothing, the baskets shaped by hands that knew exactly what they needed to carry.

The Four Seasons Room remains the heart of the museum. The dioramas depict not a frozen past but a cycle that continues: Ojibwe families still harvest wild rice on Mille Lacs Lake each fall, still tap maple trees in spring. The museum's exhibits are presented in both English and Ojibwe, a deliberate bilingualism that reflects the Band's commitment to language preservation. Beyond the seasonal displays, "Our Living Culture" showcases contemporary powwow regalia, reminding visitors that tradition is not something stored behind glass but something worn, danced in, and handed down. "Making a Living" documents the economic history of the Ojibwe people over the past century, from fur trading through the wage labor era. "Nation Within a Nation" addresses the Mille Lacs Band's ongoing work in sovereignty and self-governance -- the political reality that underpins everything else in the building.

The museum sits within the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation, land established by the Treaty of Washington in 1855 and subject to nearly two centuries of legal disputes. In March 2022, a federal court reaffirmed that the 61,000-acre reservation boundaries still hold -- a ruling that gave legal weight to what the Mille Lacs Band had never stopped asserting. The museum, in this context, is more than a repository of artifacts. It is a statement of presence, anchored to the same lakeshore where the Ojibwe first established themselves after the Battle of Kathio. The restored Ayer trading post now serves as the museum's gift shop, a tidy bit of transformation: what was once a place where cultures exchanged goods is now a place where one culture invites others to understand its story on its own terms.