One of our nation’s newest National Historic Sites, the site of Honouliuli, will interpret the history of civilian incarceration and the experience of prisoners of war in Hawaii during World War II— an important and often glossed over part of America’s past. To use the words of the National Park Service, it “will be a place to reflect on wartime experiences and recommit ourselves to the pursuit of freedom and justice.”

Join me as I chat with Hanako Wakatsuki, JHU Museum Studies Program alumna and Superintendent of Honouliuli National Historic Site, about the importance of interpreting complicated histories. And how understanding the historical context and trajectory of events in our nation’s past can help us in the present and the future. She talks about the ways her own family’s history is intertwined with the powerful stories she shares regarding the lived experience of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Hanako Wakatsuki, Superintendent of Honouliuli National Historic Site, in front of the Minidoka National Historic Site tower.

Hanako is an alumna of Johns Hopkins University's Museum Studies program. She has over 14 years of experience in museums and public history. She has worked for Minidoka National Historic Site, U.S. Navy Seabee Museum, Tule Lake National Monument, and the Idaho State Historical Society. She received her B.A. in History and B.S. in Political Science from Boise State University and her M.A. in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Hanako is passionate about visitor services, making cultural institutions accessible to the community, and bridging the gap between academia and the public.

To learn more about the sites and resources mentioned in the podcast, see the links below:

• Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
• Vincent Chin

The 21st century has seen an unprecedented threat to our global heritage—from natural disasters, extreme weather events, and climate change to military conflicts in some of our most sensitive areas of global heritage alongside the intentional targeting of cultural sites for destruction.

During this episode, join me as I chat with Corine Wegener, director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI), an outreach program dedicated to protecting cultural heritage in crisis situations. SCRI’s work includes U.S. domestic and international responses to disasters in Haiti, Nepal, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It also offers disaster response and leadership training for cultural heritage stewards worldwide.

Cori Wegener at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Cathedral sustained extensive damage during Haiti's 2010 earthquake.

Cori has spent many years working on disaster preparedness for Heritage sites and assets. Before coming to the Smithsonian in 2012, Cori was an associate curator in Decorative Arts, Textiles, and Sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. During a concurrent career as a U.S. Army Reserve officer, she served on several military deployments, including her last assignment as an Arts, Monuments, and Archives Officer in Iraq after the 2003 looting of the Iraq National Museum. In 2006, Cori founded the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), the U.S. branch of an international NGO dedicated to implementing the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict. She serves on the USCBS and the Civil Affairs Association boards and provides advice and training to U.S. and international military personnel regarding cultural property protection. Cori holds a BGS in Political Science with a minor in Military History from the University of Nebraska Omaha, where she also received her ROTC commission. She has M.A. degrees in both Political Science and Art History from the University of Kansas.

To learn more about the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, visit culturalrescue.si.edu. To learn more about the 1954 Hague Convention, visit uscbs.org.

Additional Resources:

Links to some the organizations and initiatives Cori mentioned in our chat.

• Conflict Culture Resource Network
• American Institute for Conservation: National Heritage Responders Program
• Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF)
• HEART: Heritage Emergency and Response Training
• Saving Your Family Treasures
  • Facebook Live Workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvLc2slDGVU&feature=youtu.be
• U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS)
• Alliance for Response Communities

The 2020 fire season in the US has seen another historic year, with record breaking fires across the Western US. But fire is not new, it has been part of the Indigenous cultural landscape for millennia; not framed as something to be feared but rather as something to be embraced as an intentional part of stewardship. For this episode we unpack a bit about this relationship and what it can mean for land management moving forward.

This episode is co-hosted by first-year Cultural Heritage Management graduate student, Emily Dayhoff. Emily is a Southern Sierra Miwuk and currently works as a Cultural Demonstrator and Park Ranger in Yosemite National Park. She gives interpretive programs on her ancestors and a variety of other topics related to the park.  Emily often engages in conversations about Indigenous fire stewardship and cultural burns with park visitors.

Valley view of Yosemite National Park by King of Hearts - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28519137.

During this episode Emily and I speak with Dr. Don Hankins, a Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico and Field Director for the California State University Chico Ecological Reserves. His areas of expertise are pyrogeography, water resources, and conservation.

Combining his academic and cultural expertise as a Miwkoʔ (Plains Miwok) traditional cultural practitioner, he is particularly interested in the application of Indigenous land stewardship practices as a keystone process to aid in conservation and management of resources. Dr. Hankins is currently engaged in wildland fire research with an emphasis on landscape scale, prescribed and cultural burns; water research focused on ecocultural approaches to place with an emphasis on the Bay-Delta and tribal water rights.

Dr. Hankins has been involved in various aspects of land management and conservation for a variety of organizations and agencies including federal and Indigenous entities in both North America and Australia. More about his work can be found HERE.

Landscape shaped by fire. Hundreds of lupins and fireweed. Photo by Leithen M'Gonigle retrieved from: https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/news/2016/03/how-fire-diversity-promotes-biodiversity.

Additional Resources:

Dr. Hankins mentions the chaparral ecosystem, a definition of chaparral can be found on the US Forest Service’s website HERE.

Find out more information about a few of the fires referenced in the podcast:

• Rim Fire (2013)
• Ferguson Fire (2018) 
• Camp Fire (2018)