That's the mission of the National Park Service. Too often I think of NPS sites as natural places. In Washington, the big three parks are Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. The same goes for most of the big parks out west.

NPS does a great job of preserving these natural sites, but also the cultural sites. Some of those are inspiring like the Manhattan Project at Hanford or the Klondike Gold Rush site. Others celebrate culture and memorialize what was done to it like the Nez Perce sites.

Then there's sites like Minidoka National Historic Site that leave you feeling nothing but shame and sorrow.

Minidoka was one of several concentration camps run by the United States government used to incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry. The site is largely empty with only a couple of buildings. The visitor center tells stories of some of the people forcibly relocated to the Idaho desert. What really made it real for me was the film.

Watch the film and think of what we must do to prevent something like this happening ever again.

📍On the lands of the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla people.