The Planning Conference at Ft. Lincoln

It has been two months since my husband, Ted, and I traveled to Ft. Lincoln (Bismarck, ND) to attend a planning conference which was the result of a grant
issued by the National Park Service in response to Public Law 109-441. This law authorized the NPS to create a program which would encourage and support the preservation and interpretation of historic confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. During the development of the grant program, the scope of the project was augmented to also include the stories of ethnic Germans and Italians as well as other Europeans and Latin Americans who were interned alongside the Japanese in some DOJ camps---Ft. Lincoln being an example of such a camp.
It has taken me at least this long to really digest the significance of the conference at Ft. Lincoln. Our hosts, and the actual recipients of the grant, were the people at United Tribes Technical College (the current owner and occupant of Ft. Lincoln).
Rather than try to put into my own words the scope of the conference, I am including a link to a news article written by Martha Nakagawa that describes wonderfully the happenings of the conference which took place from May 29 through June 2 of 2010:

http://www.uttc.edu/news/story/070810_01.asp