Congress Passes the National Heritage Areas Act

With strong bipartisan support, the 117th Congress passed the National Heritage Areas Act. After decades of advocacy, National Heritage Area (NHA) supporters achieved the goal of creating a standardized NHA system. Along with extending funding for the existing 55 NHAs to 2037, the bill also designated seven new NHAs and authorized the study of three more as potential additions to the program. Importantly, the program is now a unified system managed by the National Park Service. For more specifics see this summary from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

National Heritage Areas helped inspire the mission of the Living Landscape Observer - to provide observations and information on the emerging fields of a large landscape conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development. The strong grassroots effort that mobilized to pass the National Heritage Areas Act demonstrates the strength of this movement, which harnessed the power of partnerships based on years of lived experience. Special recognition for the success of this effort should go to Sara Capen, President of the Alliance of National Heritage Areas, and Alan Spears, Senior Director of Cultural Resources, Government Affairs, for NPCA. Watch a recent interview with both leaders here.

African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act Becomes Law

This bill creates a new African American Burial Grounds Preservation Program within the National Park Service. It provides several million dollars a year in funding for grants and technical assistance to organizations that protect and preserve African American cemeteries and burial sites.

The new program also seeks to coordinate national, state, and local efforts to conserve African American burial sites by developing a voluntary, nationwide database of historic burial grounds as well providing educational materials and funding. Read more here on why this program is so critical.

Register Now for Webinar: Documenting Landscapes of Protest

Please join us on January 12, 2023, from 2:00pm to 2:45pm ET for a presentation and discussion with Dr. Roneva Keel. Dr. Keel recently completed a study for the National Park Service (NPS) documenting the past and present of protest on the National Mall and other nearby parks. Her study explores how First Amendment activities in the National Capital Region have transformed the way citizens engage with the federal government. It also examines the role the National Park Service, as a steward of these lands, has played in shaping democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Dr. Keel is a historian of the twentieth-century United States, with a focus on labor and immigration. She received her PhD in history from the University of Washington in 2020. From 2021 to 2022, she held a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, which partnered with the cultural resources division of the National Capital Region, to produce her study.