Join us for the Monuments Toolkit 2025 Summer Webinar Series! This three-part series will discuss digital monuments, reinterpretation of historic places, and international approaches to oppressive monuments.
Digitally Mapping the Monuments Landscape
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Friday, July 18, 2025 – 1:00 – 2:30pm EDT/ 10:00 – 11:30am PDT
The process of healing the monuments landscape is about more than removing, relocating, or reinterpreting oppressive monuments. Creating new monuments that reflect the complete and diverse history of places is just as important. In this panel, we’re joined by a group working to diversify the monuments landscape using modern digital approaches.
Huy Pham – Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation
Huy Pham is Executive Director of Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP), a national nonprofit advancing the preservation of Asian and Pacific Islander historic places and cultural heritage. With nearly a decade of experience in preservation and advocacy, Huy leads place-based campaigns, public history initiatives, and cross-sector partnerships that elevate underrepresented histories at local, state, and national levels. He champions the role of historic places as vital to community identity, intergenerational connection, and social equity.
Monuments Toolkit Team
The Monuments Toolkit team will be presenting a sneak-peak of the forthcoming Monuments Toolkit app at this webinar!
Reconciling Historic Trauma with Monuments and Sites
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Friday, August 22, 2025 – 3:00 – 4:30pm EDT/ 12:00 – 1:30pm PDT
Monuments dedicated to oppressive people, thoughts, and ideas reinforce trauma on the communities historically oppressed by these figures. For this panel, we’re joined by those who are working to reconcile this trauma through monuments – whether that’s through reinterpreting a historic site or redesignating a place under its historic name.
Father Tom Elewaut – Mission Basilica San Buenaventura
Fr. Tom Elewaut for the past 15 years serves as a priest-pastor in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at Mission Basilica San Buenaventura, the ninth and last California mission founded by St. Junipero Serra. Formerly, he served in secondary educational ministry for 30 years (20 as Head of School) at two high schools. He earned a B.A. from Long Beach State University and a M.A. in School Administration from California Poly-Technic University, San Luis Obispo and an M. Div. from St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California.
Stephen Hammond – Syphax PastFinders
A Denver, Colorado native, Mr. Hammond is a retired federal employee having spent his entire 40-year career as an earth scientist with the United States Geological Survey. He is now a Scientist Emeritus with the agency. Steve is a 7th generation member of the Syphax family of Washington, DC and Virginia: a line that moved by force to New Orleans and then by choice to Denver. He has participated in a variety of National Park Service programs at the ‘Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial’ to highlight the lives of his Syphax ancestors and other enslaved Americans on the plantation. He has spoken at the African American Civil War Museum and the historic Decatur House on Lafayette Square and has contributed to exhibits and programs at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Archives and Records Administration, and Arlington National Cemetery. He is working with elected officials to pass Federal legislation that will redesignate Arlington House as Arlington House National Historic Site to be inclusive of the broader history at the site. Steve is a charter member of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage. He is a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. He was named a Virginia Humanities Scholar for his work in exploring AfricanAmerican life and achievement in Virginia and is a recipient of the Meritorious Achievement Award from the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. Steve received an honorary doctorate from his Alma mater, Whitman College, where he is a Trustee Emeritus.
Aaron Leggett – Indigenous Place Names Project
Aaron Leggett is the President of the Native Village of Eklutna and the Special Exhibits Curator for the Anchorage Museum. He is a founder of the Indigenous Place Names Project, a movement to bring Dena’ina culture to Anchorage’s built environment and place name signage. Leggett’s work includes scholarly articles about the Dena’ina language and people and he has also co-authored several publications including “Dena’ina Heritage and Representation in Anchorage, AK,” “Dena’ina Nat’uh: Our Special Place” and “Sakuuktugut: Alaska Native Corporations, an Overview of ANCSA.” He also served as one of the editors and contributors to the exhibition catalog for “Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living.” Leggett was an influential voice in naming the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage and helped select the art that is displayed there. He has been involved in putting up a series of interpretive signs around Anchorage that reflect Dena’ina culture, including near Ship Creek, Chester Park and Potter Marsh.
International Approaches to Monument Removal, Relocation, and Reinterpretation
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Friday, September 26, 2025 – 1:00 – 2:30pm EDT/ 10:00 – 11:30am PDT
Changing the monuments landscape is not a new or American idea. The practices of removal, relocation, and reinterpretation have been used by other countries throughout all of history. This panel will examine these processes from other countries and eras as we seek to understand what the United States can learn from these historic processes.
Alexandre Almeida Marcussi – University of São Paulo
Alexandre Marcussi is professor of African History in the University of São Paulo. His research interests relate to the history of African-American religions and the intellectual history of Africa and the African diaspora. In 2017, he was awarded the Coimbra University Center of Social Studies Award for Young Social Researches, for his Ph.D. dissertation “Captivity and cure: religious experiences of Atlantic slavery the calundus of Luzia Pinta, 17th-18th centuries”.