The Boundary of the Oppressor: Challenging the Use of the Historic Footprint

Update: Fight for Long Term Protections 

Friends of Minidoka is pleased to share with you our addendum report, The Boundary of the Oppressor: Challenging the Use of the Historic Footprint as an Appropriate Property Boundary for the Minidoka TCP.  This is part of Friends of Minidoka's fight to protect Minidoka National Historic Site's immersive and reflective experience which educates about one of the worst violations of civil liberties in American history.

Friends of Minidoka received feedback from the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that the viewshed acreage we proposed for preservation is too large and that Minidoka's historic footprint may be more appropriate. We disagree and argue that reducing the proposed protected viewshed acreage to the historic footprint of the Minidoka concentration camp fails to capture the true experience of isolation and imprisonment of the incarcerees.

Thus, Friends of Minidoka produced the addendum, The Boundary of the Oppressor, which further enhances the original TCP. The addendum makes a strong case for the significance of Minidoka beyond the historic footprint and into the viewscape:

The widespread use and occupancy of what has been considered “outside” the recently defined historic footprint challenges the notion that the historic footprint is anything but a construct and demarcation of the oppressor. It is a convenient boundary line drawn by the perpetrators but does not reflect the on-the-ground, lived experiences of the incarcerees. For the Japanese American community, their “historic footprint” is much larger, encompassing much more of the spatial experience of their incarceration. It certainly includes the area of the concentration camp itself, but critically, also incorporates those areas where they spent many months out of the year developing the sagebrush desert into fertile farmland, where they seasonally planted and harvested crops on already established farms nearby, where they fought the range fires in the areas adjacent to Minidoka, and finally, the expansive viewsheds that imprisoned them; in sum, it includes all nearby areas where incarcerees lived and, in some cases, died.

We have sent The Boundary of the Oppressor to the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office, the BLM, the Idaho Congressional delegation, local and state officials in Idaho, and many more. We will update you as this process of creating long term protections progresses.