Vanport Mosaic is among the 2023 recipients of an Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) making it the fourth year in a row that an Oregon project has won this national award. The Award of Excellence is part of the AASLH Leadership in History Awards, the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation of state and local history.
The Vanport Mosaic, a Portland-based non-profit, is being recognized for its “memory activism” amplifying, honoring, and preserving the history of Vanport, once Oregon’s second-largest city and the largest WWII federal housing project in the country. The temporary company town was erased by a flood in 1948 and never rebuilt.
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The Vanport Mosaic holds the communities’ lived experiences and narratives as central and essential pillars of our work,” said Vanport Mosaic “story midwife” Laura Lo Forti. “We tell stories with, and not about individuals and communities.”
This is the fourth year in a row that an Oregon project has won this distinguished, national award. Previous Oregon winners include:
- Chelsea Rose, Lisa Rice, and Don Hann for Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (2021 Award Winner) – OCDP partners leveraged their resources and local relationships into an extraordinary program to promote appreciation of Oregon’s diverse and multifaceted cultural heritage during a time of rising violence and rhetoric against Asian communities. OCDP’s public interpretation efforts focus on the ethnic diversity of the state during its formulative period to offset the erasure of Chinese Oregonians in the common historical narrative and share this group’s essential contributions to state history.
- Oregon Heritage’s Guide to Community Disaster Resilience Planning for Heritage Resources (2020 Award Winner) – Oregon Heritage, in partnership with UO School of Planning, Public Policy and Management’s Institute for Policy Research & Engagement (IPRE), the City of Cottage Grove and several local nonprofits, developed a new model for heritage resource disaster planning. The initiative resulted in organizational plans for five heritage organizations, a community-wide plan for the city and a guidebook so the process can be duplicated in other communities.
- Oregon Historical Society for the publication Oregon Historical Quarterly, “Oregon’s Manila Galleon” special issue (summer 2018). Through collaborative scholarship that brought together Native oral tradition, archival collections on three continents, and archaeological investigations, this publication shared the story of a mysterious seventeenth-century shipwreck that had profound consequences for the future of the state. This publication represents the synthesis of two hundred years of research and speculation being made cohesive and accessible for a public audience.
“National recognition for heritage projects in Oregon four years in a row speaks to the meaningful work that Oregon’s heritage organizations are doing in dynamic, innovative ways.“ says Katie Henry, Oregon Heritage Commission Coordinator. “The breadth of these projects range from telling untold stories through public archaeology and memory activism, to collaborative scholarship, to community-wide protection of historic resources. These projects have become national models and there are certainly many more award-worthy projects being done across the state by organizations of all sizes.”
Oregon Heritage currently serves as the state representative for the AASLH Awards of Excellence. This national awards program is open in the Winter of every year and those interested in applying can visit www.aaslh.org.
