The Freeman Tilden Awards are the highest interpretation awards presented to a National Park Service individual or team to recognize outstanding contributions to the profession of interpretation. The award was created to inspire and reward creative thinking and original programs and projects in our national parks that result in positive and meaningful impacts for the visitors and the preservation of parks.
We are pleased to congratulate the national recipients of the 2013 Freeman Tilden Awards for Excellence in Interpretation. These national award recipients’ contributions during this past year model excellence, achievement, and innovation in the profession of interpretation and visitor engagement.
Jane Farmer
National Recipient | Natchez Trace Parkway
This project to connect American Indian students to their ancestral homelands along Natchez Trace invited a new generation of American Indian youth to their own stories within Natchez Trace Parkway. Park Ranger Jane Farmer hosted student groups from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and drafted new five-year Cooperative Agreements to allow tribal students to travel to the Natchez Trace Parkway. Students traveled hundreds of miles to spend one week researching genealogy, exploring their ancestral homeland, and working on educational projects. Social media content, a student documentary, and other projects shared new voices and stories as threads woven into the complex historical tapestry of the park.
The program showcased how educational curriculum turns an experience into more than a field trip and instead serves as a catalyst for connections that last far beyond the initial visit. Students experienced the park through the eyes of their Chickasaw ancestors. They have took hold of the experience and made it their own, and the effects will be felt far and wide. The program serves as a model that can be expanded throughout the National Park System to provide youth from the widest possible backgrounds with opportunities to discover and connect to their own stories found within our national parks. This outstanding program brought together education, youth, partnership, diversity and technology.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service