History Is At Risk
Right now history is being rewritten. In September the National Park Service removed exhibits about slavery from multiple national parks. In April, legislators in Mississippi attempted to ban ‘divisive concepts' from public education. And PEN American documented nearly 7,000 book bans in the 2024-25 school year alone.
But communities are fighting back and we have a plan to help them.
An Opportunity
A student at UW-Milwaukee built an incredible tool for us that will help marginalized communities protect their histories from erasure. Working with our team on a shoestring budget, the student created the prototype for Map250— a digital historical mapping platform that lets communities collect and preserve the histories of the places where they live and create place-based visions for the future. Users collect stories and upload photos, oral histories, memories and ideas according to both location and era.
The platform, even in its prototype form, is already being used by a dozen high schools, libraries, tribal nations, and museums and has the potential to help us expand our in-person programs and better archive the histories that we and our partners gather.
You made this possible. When federal cuts devastated humanities funding last April, you came through. Your contributions raised nearly $8,000—enough to keep The Whose Land Project alive and maintain critical programs like the Intergenerational Tribal History Program at the Oneida Nation and the Community Archiving project in Milwaukee.
We need your help now to put our organization on firmer ground. We can do this by turning the map prototype into a nationally-accessible platform.
Our Rebuilding Plan: A People's History for the 250th and Map250.
In April we mentioned a unique opportunity in 2026: The nation’s semiquincentennial – the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
While those in power plan to exploit the 250th to celebrate Founding Father narratives and “positive” histories, we're building something different: a hyper-local, grassroots effort to collect and preserve the real stories of everyday people and the lands where they live, work and play.
Since we last wrote, the project has begun to take off in three locations: Madison, Wisconsin; Portland, Maine; and Long Island, New York. Public libraries, schools, city agencies, tribal nations and nature centers have signed on.
Map250
At the center of the project will be the Map250 digital mapping platform. Initial interest in the tool has convinced us that we can turn this resource into a national space for community groups and cultural organizations like us.
But the success of the tool and our programs depends on transforming a rudimentary prototype into a sustainable and glitch-free platform through professional development.
We need your help to ensure that the platform will be ready in time for the launch of our 250th program in late January 2026. Two UX professionals of color - a wonderful designer based at RISD and a programmer from Whitewater, Wisconsin – have joined the team. We've secured $4K in seed funding and need $12K more to complete Phase 1.
Today, that’s our simple focus: Help us raise $12,000 to build this tool and better position us to attract funding to grow our programs. Help us support the students, neighborhood groups, community members and local organizations who will participate in our 250th project.
What Your Support Will Fund
We need to raise an additional $12,000 to make this happen:
• $3,000 – Student Team for place-based research and local story collection to be incorporated into the mapping platform and other Whose Land 250th programs.
• $1,000 – Training Workshops for Community Participants
• $2,000 – Platform Design Improvements
• $4,000 – UX Programming
• $2,000 - Training materials and online toolkits
Who We Are
Whose Land produces collaborative public humanities projects to educate, enhance public understanding and creatively problem-solve around the histories and continued legacies of land displacement and dispossession in the United States.
Donate today and help us launch by January 2026. Your donation doesn't just fund a project. It protects stories. It empowers communities. It ensures that history belongs to all of us, not just those in power.