Heart Mountain Awarded With Another Landmarks Grant From the National Endowment for the Humanities
Written by Jessi Entel on August 18, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has received its fourth consecutive Landmarks of American History and Culture grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The grant will be used for the “Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and the Japanese American Incarceration” program, which will bring 72 teachers from around the country to Heart Mountain to study the Japanese American incarceration during World War II.
“One of the most exciting aspects of our educator workshops is the enthusiasm that our participants take with them when they leave,” said Aura Sunada Newlin, the executive director of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and member of the workshop faculty. “Every one of these teachers becomes an ambassador for our story, which enables us to reach thousands of new students around the country each year.”
The Landmarks of American History and Culture program aims to teach educators about historical events by using the power of the places where they occurred. Workshop participants will learn about the incarceration in the larger context of the mistreatment of immigrant and marginalized groups in the United States, such as Native Americans and Chinese immigrants, who were banned from the United States in 1882.
COURTESY: Heart Mountain Foundation Facebook
Next year’s workshops will be the first to be conducted in the new Mineta-Simpson Institute at Heart Mountain, which features a 200-seat conference center, production studio and permanent exhibit about the lives and careers of Secretary Norman Mineta and Senator Alan Simpson. Mineta and Simpson first met as Boy Scouts during a jamboree at the Heart Mountain camp in 1943.
The Heart Mountain program relies on materials created almost exclusively by Foundation board and staff members and descendants, such as Setsuko’s Secret: Heart Mountain and the Japanese American Incarceration by Shirley Ann Higuchi, the chair of the Foundation’s board.
Heart Mountain would also like to congratulate the Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles for also receiving a Landmarks grant for its 2024 program about the Japanese American incarceration. Together, their two programs are helping spread the word about this sad chapter in U.S. history to educators everywhere.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the Foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, located between Cody and Powell.
For more information about Heart Mountain Interpretive Center or further questions about this grant, please contact the Center at 307-754-8000.
