CURIOSITY INVITED VISITS HEART MOUNTAIN CONCENTRATION CAMP

Curiosity Invited Podcast - David Bryan and Aura Sunada Newlin

Heart Mountain is the site of what was one of ten concentration camps the US government created to imprison more than 110,000 Japanese Americans

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, US, September 14, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Followers of the Curiosity Invited podcast¹ know that creator/host, David Bryan, spends time in some difficult places of our cultural landscape. For Bryan, divisions between races, between liberal and conservative, issues such as homelessness, crime, gun freedom, and the like are not to be avoided. Not seeking contrived click-bait, Bryan approaches cultural, political, and personal division in search of conversation that can help us understand one another and bring us together.

This was evident in his recent conversation with Aura Sunada Newlin³, Executive Director of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation². Heart Mountain is the site of what was one of ten concentration camps the US government created to imprison more than 110,000 Japanese Americans - two thirds of them American citizens - after Japan attacked the US naval base in Pearl Harbor. Still tip-toeing around the harsh reality, many Americans continue to speak of relocation, evacuation or internment - anything to avoid the truth of this sad chapter in American history. The truth: it was a blatantly racist act forcibly imprisoning thousands of innocent people behind barbed wire. Thousands lost virtually everything they owned, simply because of their Japanese heritage.

Sunada Newlin speaks powerfully about this time in US history, steeped not only in the political and historical knowledge so beautifully communicated at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, but also with intimate details she’s learned from the many stories told to her by members of Sunada Newlin’s family, some of whom were incarcerated at the camp. The podcast conversation takes a deeper dive into the ways that family and cultural histories remain alive, wounds still fresh as they are passed from generation to generation. The rifts caused by these events parallel the deep divisions in the fabric of American culture today.

Perhaps this explains Sunada Newlin’s enthusiasm when she speaks of the Foundation’s latest initiative, the Mineta-Simpson Institute, a bold step beyond the museum’s traditional mission. Opening later this year, the Institute will bring people and groups to the site for retreats, seminars, and workshops, for “conversations about issues that are tearing our nation apart.” The hope is to have citizens gather at the site of an egregious wrong, and use that wrong as the foundation of conversations to reinvigorate democracy and community.

We selfishly hope that Sunada Newlin will invite Bryan’s Curiosity Invited back for the opening and a next conversation.

Zach Schnall
Bander Productions
email us here
Visit us on social media:
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

WATCH NOW: Aura Sunada Newlin - Executive Director, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation - Generational Healing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFnzfTj00Mk&t=405s

¹ http://curiosityinvitedpodcast.com
² https://www.heartmountain.org
³ https://youtube.com/watch?v=eFnzfTj00Mk