PHOTO BY SEAN COLLIER

I started writing this column while standing in an igloo.

Or, rather, a snowhouse; as I learned, the word igloo simply means house, while the structure we think of when we picture an igloo would generally be called “igloovigak,” or snowhouse.

I learned this in the Hall of Arctic Life at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which explores traditional and modern life among Canadian Inuit populations through artifacts, videos and illustrative dioramas. Inside the igloovigak, two figures — a child and mother — confer; the youth proudly displays a recently trapped fox while the parent crafts household items. I, however, am fixated on the lush skins that separate the humans from their icy furnishings, considering warmth and comfort amid these conditions.

This is an essential component of visiting a natural-history museum — considering lives different from one’s own, removed by time or geography. It plays an essential role in civic life.

And, like many aspects of public education and enrichment, the powers that be are trying to take it away — or at least undercut it.

The igloovigak scene is one of many such scenes in the museum, many depicting natural scenes in Pennsylvania and regions far beyond. One permanent exhibition, the Art of the Diroama, jumped out at me on a recent visit; designed to look like museums did 100 years ago, this area is home to some of the museum’s oldest dioramas. In one, ravens perch on a rocky outcropping; in another, a great horned owl dives at a passing skunk.

Such displays were cutting-edge a century or so ago; the public packed museums to see taxidermied specimens arranged in lifelike displays. While contemporary viewers may question the use of real animals in such contexts, the practice was seen as the height of the conservation movement; by showing these creatures in this way, early advocates for the natural world believed they could convince people of the importance of respecting and protecting native flora and fauna.

Many of those early conservationists were the sort of rich and powerful individuals who had the time to travel widely (and, admittedly, hunt specimens for future museum use). There was a great interest, a century or so ago, in the education and even intellectual enlightenment of the population as a whole. Andrew Carnegie — whose name is on the front of a great many museums and libraries — famously said, “A library outranks any other thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

Jump forward to today, however, and the rich and powerful have decided we shouldn’t be in the business of funding libraries and museums — or public media.

Last week, Congress approved a plan to cut all federal funding, some $1.1 billion, for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees National Public Radio and PBS. This comes amid similar efforts to strip or severely reduce funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Public television and radio, by the way, were established after research from none other than the Carnegie Corp. recommended that “a well-financed and well-directed educational television system, substantially larger and far more pervasive and effective than that which now exists in the United States, must be brought into being if the full needs of the American public are to be served.”

The reasons for these cuts, despite what you may have been told by a mathematically challenged pundit or blatantly lying congressperson, are not financial. The total federal budget for 2024 was about $6.75 trillion, meaning that the portion going to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting represented 0.0001% of overall government spending.

To make an equivalent comparison to one’s personal finances: To say that we cannot afford funds for public broadcasting would be like if I told you that you were going bankrupt because you bought exactly one cup of coffee last October.

Since it’s not economic, then, the cuts to these programs can only be ideological. Unlike figures such as Carnegie and Frick (undoubtedly flawed and complex historic figures in their own right) today’s barons and bosses do not value an educated, informed population. They do not see our intellectual development and enrichment as good work; they would rather, it seems, keep us in the dark.

Perhaps — just speculating here — they know that the more we learn, the worse they’ll look.

We still have civic treasures like the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and its sister museums. For the moment, we still have WESA, WYEP and WQED. We still have the Carnegie Libraries and dozens of smaller community libraries throughout the region. I can still stand in an igloovigak and contemplate lives lived far from Pittsburgh.

The task of maintaining and growing them, however, may fall to us. Because the people holding the purse no longer seem inclined to provide the people much of anything at all.