The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has received a grant from the National Endowment of Humanities to conduct workshops for 72 teachers from around the country next summer. The workshops will focus on the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans in Wyoming during World War II.

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced last week that Heart Mountain has been awarded a $187,804 grant as part of its Landmarks in American History and Culture program, marking the second straight year the foundation has received funding through the program. The grant will bring teachers from across the nation to Park County for a pair of one-week, education workshops exploring the history of the Heart Mountain camp. Participants will learn from former incarcerees and recognized scholars of Japanese American incarceration. During the course of the week, they will develop lessons and activities to take back to their classrooms.

The team developing the program includes: master teacher Tyson Emborg, a high school history teacher at Highlands Ranch, Colorado; Ray Locker, Heart Mountain’s editorial consultant and project director; and Julie Abo, its Washington affairs director.

In Tuesday’s announcement, NEH Acting Chairman Adam Wolfson said projects like Heart Mountain’s help students develop a better grasp of American history.

“The grants announced today demonstrate the resilience and breadth of our nation’s humanities institutions and practitioners,” Wolfson said. “From education programs that will enrich teaching in college and high school classrooms to multi-institutional research initiatives, these excellent projects will advance the teaching, preservation, and understanding of history and culture.”

Heart Mountain previously received a Landmarks in American History and Culture grant to hold educator workshops in 2020. Those workshops were delayed due to the spread of COVID-19, and were ultimately held virtually in June and July of 2021. In spite of the challenges, the foundation says the workshops were a resounding success.

Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation Executive Director Dakota Russell is excited about plans to hold the 2022 workshops in person.

“The online events were phenomenal, but there’s no substitute for teaching this history in the place where it happened,” Russell said, “It really helps to connect this story to the other stories of the West — from the Apsáalooke people to Buffalo Bill Cody to the homesteaders that came after the camp.”

These teacher workshops are key to the long-range vision of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. In July, the Foundation announced The Mineta-Simpson Institute at Heart Mountain, a planned addition to Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. Named for lifelong friends — former U.S. Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Cody and former Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta of California — the new wing will be a dedicated space to host groups and workshops. Heart Mountain is currently raising funds for the construction of the Mineta-Simpson Institute.

Applications for the 2022 workshops will open on Nov. 1 and close on March 1, 2022.

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation preserves the site between Cody and Powell where nearly 11,000 Japanese Americans were confined during World War II, and operates Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. For more information about the planned teacher workshops, visit www.heartmountain.org or call Heart Mountain Interpretive Center at 307-754-8000.