What is cultural heritage, anyway?
Cultural heritage is a very broad concept, which we at IHE conceive as an inheritance of shared histories and traditions passed down from previous generations and shared by a population. The tangible remains of those shared histories – including historic and archaeological sites and valued objects that are emblematic of that history – are an important part of cultural heritage, and in many cases have been preserved specifically for their heritage value.
For some time, the most visible expressions of cultural heritage in the United States have been about the birth of the nation, its founders, and events that have shaped its history. These clearly are a significant part of the cultural heritage of the U.S. IHE’s concept, though, is much wider, including, for example, the distinct histories, traditions, sites, and objects important to all the peoples who make up the nation.
We also include in our working definition the common heritage of all humanity, for example the story of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture told in archaeological sites in the Middle East, a story of universal human heritage.
As examples showing the breadth of cultural heritage, consider these few stories of human migration and some of the tangible remains that vividly recall these stories. Each of these has become part of a deeply rooted cultural tradition.
The forced migrations of African peoples to be enslaved in the Americas.
Tangible remains include the wreck of the Clotilda, the ship that brought the last known group of African captives into the United States; a Kentucky “slave pen” a broker used to hold those awaiting auction; and the archaeological sites of slave quarters at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest Plantation, which have revealed details of peoples’ lives in bondage not revealed in written records.
The Irish who fled famine in the 19th century for better lives in Canada, the United States, Australia, and many other places. The Grosse Île and Irish Memorial National Historic Site, on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, is a quarantine station set up in 1832 to hold floods of European migrants, two-thirds of whom were Irish, during a time of cholera and smallpox epidemics in Europe. The records of the station include hundreds of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths that took place there.
The forced relocation of the Cherokee and other First Nations peoples from their homelands in the Southern Appalachians to land in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s. About 4,000 of the 15,000 Cherokee uprooted and marched west in the late 1830s died along the way.
The routes of these forced migrations are now commemorated as a national historic trail system, the Trail of Tears. The National Park Service and its partners highlight and interpret dozens of historic sites along these trails.
At IHE, we are concentrating right now on overcoming the mismatch between the professionally prepared heritage education materials available for teachers to bring to life in the classroom, and the relative lack of opportunity for teachers to receive and learn how to use these materials. To do so, we are encouraging and helping fund professional development events in heritage education for teachers.
Our current board is most familiar with Project Archaeology materials and has funded several workshops devoted to those materials. We are also funding workshops based on other materials, such as a statewide heritage program in Nevada, materials and activities for learning about an important North Carolina Native American archaeological site, and a curriculum about a World War II-era Japanese-American internment camp in Colorado.
If you are aware of other outstanding cultural heritage education programs and materials we could be supporting, please let us know at info@heritageeducation.org.
