Last month, the Monuments Toolkit wrapped up its 2025 Summer Webinar Series. Between the three episodes and our five guest speakers, we learned about several updates in the monuments landscape and how the Toolkit can be implemented.
Digitally Mapping the Monuments Landscape
In the first episode of the series, we heard from Huy Pham, the Executive Director of Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP) and his team’s work with HistoryPin. Using the tools available at HistoryPin, APIAHiP created the “East at Main Street” map to pinpoint monuments, sites, and other landmarks relevant to Asian & Pacific Islander American history.
HistoryPin is available for anyone to create a similar project that maps out the landmarks relevant to their personal history.
Cequyna Moore, Director of the Monuments Toolkit, provided a sneak peak of the forthcoming Monuments Toolkit app. View the webinar on our YouTube page to see more.
Reconciling Historic Trauma with Monuments and Sites
The August episode of our webinar series featured guests Father Thomas Elewaut of Mission San Buenaventura, Stephen Hammond of Syphax Pastfinders, and Aaron Leggett, President of the Native Village of Eklutna and the Special Exhibits Curator for the Anchorage Museum. Each of these projects shared how existing sites can be renamed and reinterpreted to better reflect their history.
In San Buenaventura, Father Elewaut has worked with the local government to find proper placement of statues and has worked on exhibits and signage that seek to include Indigenous history at the Mission and their involvement in its development.
Stephen Hammond is a descendant of the Syphax family, one of the many families that refers to Arlington House in Virginia as home. He and the extended family group, called the Family Circle, are working to have the site officially redesignated as Arlington House rather than the Robert E. Lee Memorial House at Arlington in order to accurately reflect the history of the much larger family that hails from the site. You can support his work by signing their petition.
Aaron Leggett is the creator of the Indigenous Place Names Project in Anchorage, Alaska and he shared about how the project began and continues to bring back the original site names to the Dena’ina people that call the land home for time immemorial. View his and the other presentations on YouTube.
International Approaches to Monument Removal, Relocation, and Reinterpretation
In the final episode of this summer’s webinar series, we heard from Professor Alexandre Almeida Marcussi from the University of São Paulo as he spoke about the process of monument removals in Brazil. These monuments largely dealt with Brazil’s colonial history and the intersection between Indigenous Brazilians, European settlers, and enslaved Africans.
This webinar provided an important reminder that the United States is not alone in its efforts to reenvision the monuments landscape and that countries all around the world consider these processes as well. You can view this presentation on Youtube as well.