Idaho Humanities Council awards 24 grants
at winter meeting

The Idaho Humanities Council, the non-profit, state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded $65,580 in grants to organizations and individuals at its recent board meeting in Lewiston. Twenty-four awards include four Teacher Incentive Grants and 20 public humanities projects.  Five projects are funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People program, and five focusing on Idaho history and Native American culture are funded with support from the Idaho Governor’s Lewis and Clark Trail Committee.  The following projects were funded:

Major and Mini Grants:

Museum of North Idaho (Coeur d’Alene) received $1,825 to support Nampa musician Gary Eller’s field work in Idaho’s panhandle to research, record, and preserve historically based songs of Idaho. In addition to researching archives of small and large museums and libraries, Eller will visit with individual folk musicians and conduct a series of public “song swaps” in Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene, Kellogg, and Moscow.   Previous research on songs from the Snake River region resulted in compilation of a bibliography of more than 800 Idaho songs so far.  The project director is Gary Eller.

Weippe Community Club (Weippe) was awarded $1,500 to help bring Native American performer Dennis Lee Rogers to Weippe for the 8th Annual Idaho Camas Festival in May. The weekend festival explores a different theme each year. This year’s theme is “Tales, Trails and Trading.” Rogers, a nationally known presenter and graduate of Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, will demonstrate several Native American traditions including: the art of sand painting, the use of the hand drum and native flute, and the craft of featherwork in northern traditional and plains dances, as well as demonstrate the hoop dance. The project director is Marge Kuchynka.

Idaho Botanical Gardens, Inc. (Boise) received $525 to help support a summer speaker series featuring five speakers on June 24, July 15, August 12, September 9 and September 16. Topics include women who helped open the Oregon Trail, York of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis and Clark campsite locations, Boise area geology, and the process of wine-making.  The project director is Elizabeth Dickey. 

City of Stanley was awarded $1,200 to research and produce a self-guiding, historic walking tour brochure of the city.  It will be keyed to signs on specific buildings and sites.  Approximately 2,500 visitors come to the Stanley Museum and Visitors Center each year, often requesting additional educational opportunities.  The brochure not only will provide historical information, but also will interpret the lives of settlers and the impact they had on the natural and social systems around Stanley.  The project director is Gary Gadwa.

Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association (Stanley) received $4,923 to help launch a weekly summer “Sawtooth Forum and Lecture Series” from June through September of 2008. The series will take place on Friday afternoons in Stanley, and be repeated at Redfish Lake Amphitheater later that evening.  This grant supports presentations by two nationally prominent environmental historians, Roderick Nash and Alfred Runte, along with a presentation by Sawtooth Valley writer John Rember.  Nash is professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of Wilderness and the American Mind.  Alfred Runte is the author of a number of books including a history of American railroads and a history of the National Parks.  John Rember is the former writer-in-residence for the College of Idaho, and the author of the memoir Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley.  He also has written about the impact of tourism on the American West.  The series will consist of additional presentations over the summer months.  The project director is Vicki Jo Lawson.

Northwest Nazarene University (Nampa) received $1,675 to help host an exhibition of WPA photographs from the Library of Congress on the theme of “Picturing Faith,” which depicts in 45 black and white Depression-era photographs Americans and their relationship to their various faiths.  The curator of the exhibit, Dr. Colleen McDannell, of the University of Utah, will make a presentation about the exhibit at its opening.  In addition to the “Picturing Faith” exhibit, planners will display a complementary exhibit of images from the early 20th century about the development of the Church of the Nazarene in the Pacific Northwest.  The project director is Jay Akkerman.

University of Idaho (Moscow) received $1,996 for a public forum titled “What Does Dividing Nature Matter?: Ethical, Environmental, and Practical Dimensions” as part of the 11th Annual Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference (INPC) in March..  Held in Moscow, the forum focused on how issues surrounding taxonomy impact our daily lives ethically, politically, and scientifically.  Two conference speakers, Dr. Neil Williams, University of New York, and Dr. Kadri Vihvelin, University of Southern California, explored the theme from the perspectives of biology, medicine, psychology, law, and ethics. The project director is Matthew Slater.

College of Southern Idaho (Twin Falls) was awarded $3,000 to help supportthe third Civil Liberties Symposium, this year focusing on the media. Geoffrey Stone will deliver the symposium keynote at the June conference.  Stone is the author of several books, including Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark and War and Liberty: An American Dilemma.  The symposium coincides with the annual reunion of World War II internees of the Minidoka Relocation Center and their families.  Several other speakers will make presentations at the conference, including Idaho Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones, Densho Foundation Director Tom Ikeda, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editor Mark Trahant.  The project director is Russ Tremayne.

Oregon Trail Center, Inc. (Montpelier) was awarded $3,000 to help produce permanent interpretive markers that will coincide with a larger exhibit the Center is creating, the Big Hill Interpretive Project.
Early Oregon/California Trail emigrants descended down Big Hill into the Bear Lake Valley in the 1850’s, and the Center would like to better tell this story in an interpretive exhibition that will be housed at the Center. The project director is Steve Allred.

Friends of Stricker, Inc. (Twin Falls) received $2,536 to help identify, preserve and transfer to DVD an extensive collection of 8mm home movies taken by Gladys Stricker, daughter of 1870s pioneers Herman and Lucy Stricker. The movies were taken around mid-20th century and captured farm and ranch activities along with the urban development of the Magic Valley.  The films record cattle ranching, harvesting of potatoes by hand, community events, the 1963 Idaho Territorial Centennial commemorations, and other rural activities. There are more than 20,000 feet of film.  The project director is Curtis Johnson.

David Thompson Bicenntennial Partnership (Libby, MT) received $4,500 to help support the commemoration of the Bicentennial of Canadian explorer David Thompson’s explorations of the Pacific Northwest.  The group’s third annual conference will be held near Bonners Ferry and hosted by the Kootenai Tribe on tribal land, comprising a two-day “Traditional Kootenai Indian Encampment.” Members of the Kootenai Tribe will camp alongside a company of mountain men re-enactors. The two “villages” will “trade, communicate, and collaborate,” while practicing traditional life ways, participating in competitions, engaging in Old World crafts, and eating traditional foods. Members of the public will be able to walk through the encampment, viewing the process of making baskets, drying meat, beading moccasins, and practicing the Kootenai language and sign language.  Each night scholar Jack Nisbet, an authority on Thompson, will speak on the significance of Thompson’s exploration and his relations with the Kootenais.  Nisbet is the author of the books Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson across Western North America and The Mapmaker’s Eye.  While the encampment is taking place, the Bonners Ferry Visitor Center and Boundary County Historical Society will host traveling exhibits on Thompson and the fur trade.  The project director is Loretta Stevens.

Boise State University (Boise) was awarded $3,500 to help bring Palestinian peace activist Hanan Ashrawi to Boise for a lecture on April 7, 2008.  Ashrawi, a Christian Palestinian woman, was appointed by Yasser Arafat in 1991 as a spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation in the peace talks with Israel.  In 1998, Ashrawi resigned from the government in protest against political corruption, specifically Arafat’s handling of peace talks. Ashrawi’s talk is titled “This Side of Peace” and will explore the challenges facing those who wish to bring peace to the Middle East.  The project director is Lynn Lubamersky.

Jerome County Historical Society (Jerome) was awarded $3,500 to begin an oral history archive. They plan to begin profiling Jerome residents who experienced the WWII era.  Those interviewed will discuss their experiences during and after the war, including roles as home makers, school teachers, and soldiers. The interviews will be available at the Jerome Public Library and Historical Society, and on the Jerome County High School website.  The Society also would like to create an exhibit profiling the interviewees and consisting of photos, scrapbooks, and text from the interviews. The project director is Kim Lickley.

Children's Home Society of Idaho (Boise) received $4,000 to update and expand a traveling exhibit that explores the history of Boise’s old Warm Springs Avenue orphanage and the Children’s Home Society. In 2008, the Society celebrates its centennial, and plans a variety of activities and reunions.  They plan to repair and update the exhibit with newly discovered photos, old posters, and oral histories, adding interpretive information about the last dozen years of the Society’s work.  Sponsors plan to take the exhibit to 12 communities between May and October, from Coeur d’Alene to Idaho Falls.  The project director is Kara Craig.

Trailing of the Sheep Cultural Heritage (Hailey) received $4,500 to help support components of its popular Trailing of the Sheep Festival held each fall in Ketchum.  This year’s festival will highlight four
cultures--the Scots, Basques, Irish and Peruvians--through storytelling.  Utah folklorist and musician Hal Cannon, of the Western Folklife Center, and Idaho folksinger and storyteller Rosalie Sorrels will lead discussion and also facilitate storytelling sessions with Festival goers over several days.  The project director is Linnea Collins.

Ernest Hemingway Festival (Sun Valley) was awarded $3,000 to help with its fourth annual festival exploring the life and work of American writer Ernest Hemingway.  Scheduled for September 25-28, this year’s theme is “Hemingway in Cuba,” and will explore how Cuba, Hemingway’s home from 1939 until his death in Ketchum, influenced his work. Presenters include Hemingway Review editor Susan Beegel, who will deliver a talk on Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea; Penn State University scholar Sandra Spanier, editor of “The Hemingway Letters Project,” a projected 12-volume edition of Hemingway’s collected correspondence; and niece Hilary Hemingway, author of a book on Hemingway in Cuba, and producer of a new documentary film by the same title.  The project director is Carrie Westergard.

Treasure Valley Family YMCA (Boise) was awarded $3,500 to help support an annual youth government program for high school students statewide. Established in 1937, the program’s goal is to teach students how to be active citizens through a nine-month hands-on experience participating in the processes of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Idaho state government. Over 1300 students participate annually.  Students work closely with their teachers and advisors, and the program culminates in a two-day State Session held in April in Boise.  The project director is Stacy Gobel.

Exile Productions (Provo, Utah) received $4,500 to help produce a documentary about retiring University of Idaho Classics Professor Louis Perraud.  Perraud is teaching his last semester at the U of I after a 25-year career there. Over the years, Perraud created a lively program in classical languages and literature, and he gained a reputation among students as an inspiring teacher. While this film is about the retirement of a fine teacher, it is also the story of a national trend in the decline of classics programs on American college campuses. When Perraud retires, the classics program may retire with him.  The project director is Craig Harline.

The Cabin (Boise) received $3,500 to bring two scholars to Boise to lecture and inspire discussion of a citywide reading of Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia.  My Antonia is an American classic that takes place in rural Nebraska and concerns a young boy’s relationship with a young Bohemian girl and her poor family who immigrate to Nebraska to make a living farming.  The Cabin will host St. Lawrence University Cather Scholar Robert Thacker for a keynote lecture, along with Salt Lake City writer Teresa Jordan, author of Cowgirls: Women of the American West and the memoir Riding the White Horse Home.  The Cabin also plans to bring Moscow writer Mary Clearman Blew to be part of a panel with Jordan relating Cather’s book to memoirs of western women of the same era.  The project director is Paul Shaffer.

Idaho State Historical Museum (Boise) received $5,000 to help create a new exhibit covering the history of Idaho Freemasonry. The exhibit will chronicle the rich history of the Freemasons and their continual involvement in Idaho communities from the early days of mining through the present.  It also will cover a general history of the Freemasons in the world and United States.  Many lodges around Idaho will loan artifacts.  The exhibit will be on display at the museum in Boise from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  The project director is Jody Ochoa.

Teacher Incentive Grants:

Melissa Stringfield, Spanish teacher at Thomas Jefferson Charter School (Caldwell), was awarded $1,000 to help expand the Spanish curriculum into “Project Language Literacy.”  This program will enhance Spanish instruction through increased conversational Spanish exercises and a greater cultural component.  The school will purchase materials and supplies, including CD-ROMs, DVDs, workbooks, and supplies for student-created books, and will increase the use of local speakers and extra-curricular activities within the Hispanic community.  The project will culminate in a year-end cultural event. 

Merlinda Haueter, a teacher at North Star International School (Eagle), received $1,000 to help with an International Evening Showcase.  It will highlight every grade level’s learning of international cultures, languages, and traditions, especially from those ethnic groups living in the local community.  Teachers will present lessons focusing on the people, culture, economy, and traditions of a particular country.  Students will prepare artistic displays to illustrate this learning. 

Madelaine Love, English and History Instructor at Skyline High School (Idaho Falls), was awarded $1,000 for help with an interdisciplinary class blending Science and English.  Students will read several literary selections related to their science classes on “aquatic and terrestrial environments,” including A River Runs Through It and Written on Water.  They will keep field journals during several field trips, present their research papers and oral presentations, and share the results of the class at a Parents’ Night the last week of school. 

Siimone Mansfield, 4th grade teacher at Hawthorne Elementary (Boise), received $900 to support a district-wide history field day for 4th and 5th graders.  “Wagons Ho of Idaho” involves students in “hands-on” experiences where they participate in a couple of days of Old World crafts and folkways to make their study of Idaho and American history more meaningful. 

The Next Deadline for IHC Grants:

Spring '07 Grants