Series: Home and Homelands Exhibition: Loss

What does it mean to lose a home or homeland? What are the consequences? The story of the Pacific West is of competing visions of home, and the women who built and sustained the dreams held by their communities. The stories in this thread touch upon many of the darker moments in American history, including colonialism, forced removal, incarceration, war, and death. They show women bravely fought back at the cost of their own lives. Some had no choice but to endure.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Article 1: Home and Homelands Exhibition: Introduction

    Peeled white paper reveals collage of black and white women's portraits.

    This unassuming jelly kettle from Manhattan Project National Historical Park contains multiple layers: indigenous, pioneer, and federal. When we zoom in on a single layer of the jelly kettle’s story, we can see how women’s everyday work supported their homes and homelands. If we zoom out and place these layers in succession, we can see how one group’s vision of home has often meant the destruction of another’s. Explore more stories in the "Home and Homelands" exhibition. Read more

  • Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

    Article 2: Fort Spokane Indian Boarding School

    Indigenous girls at Indian boarding schools were taught domestic labor & stripped of their culture.

    Home invokes feelings of family, belonging, affection, comfort, and safety. It's where our identities are formed. Federal Indian boarding schools, like Fort Spokane, erased that for Indigenous children. They were removed from their families, had to change their names, clothes, hair, and language. Girls spent long hours doing laundry, sewing, cooking and other domestic work designed to mold them into self-reliant citizens who could also provide domestic labor in white homes. Read more

  • Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail

    Article 3: Life and Death of Manuela Peñuelas

    Group of Latino mourners surround deceased woman in arid landscape

    Eight women were pregnant during the nine-month Anza colonizing expedition of 1775-76. Many of them gave birth in route. Manuela Ygnacia López Peñuelas tragically died after giving birth to a healthy baby. Women's reproduction was crucial to the Spanish empire's successful conquest of Alta California. With little choice in the matter, these women faced extreme hardship in hopes of making a better home in a new land at the expense of Indigenous homes and lifeways. Read more

  • Manzanar National Historic Site

    Article 4: Eiko Yamada's Storage Basket

    Wicker basket with handles and tags, portrait of Japanese American girl.

    In 1920, Eiko Yamada crossed the Pacific with her two-year old daughter and an ordinary wicker basket that stored her prized silk wedding kimono. She journeyed from Japan to the U.S. to find a new home. Over twenty years later, she carried that basket to Manzanar War Relocation Center. Fearing the government would confiscate it, she cut the kimono into strips and hid it in the basket. The basket reflects the Yamada family's courage in the face of so much loss. Read more

  • Big Hole National Battlefield

    Article 5: “Death of Wahlitits and His Wife”

    Oil painting of woman with rifle sitting in field next to dead man.

    At dawn on August 9, 1877, U.S. troops attacked the Nez Perce camped at Big Hole on their way toward asylum in Canada, brutally killing many women and children. When a soldier killed the warrior Wahlitits, his wife picked up his rifle and killed the soldier before being fatally shot herself. To hear this nameless woman’s story is to sit with the hard truth that the dispossession of Indigenous homelands lies at the very center of the American story. Read more

  • Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail

    Article 6: Manono at the Battle of Kuamoʻo

    Oil painting of heroic Hawaiian woman with musket, surrounded by warriors

    “Malama ko aloha (keep your love)" were Chiefess Manono's dying words in the 1819 Battle of Kuamo'o. Her words were a plea to both sides to keep their love for one another despite the obstacles that had come to Hawai?i, including the abolition of the traditional kapu system. Manono fought on the side of the traditionalists for the culture she believed defined her homeland. But she hoped that love would be enough to get all Hawaiians through the turmoil ahead. Read more

  • American Memorial Park

    Article 7: Chamorro Women at Camp Susupe

    Black and white photo of two women holding religious items flanking distressed older woman in crowd

    The July 1944 Battle of Saipan, between American and Japanese forces, had devastating effects for the surviving Indigenous civilians. These Chamorro women lost their homes in a war not of their making. When the bombardment began, they carried only what they valued most: their children and a cross. They lived in bleak conditions in U.S. internment camps for two years before rebuilding their homes and villages. Read more

Tags: home and homelands thread