A visit to the Heart Mountain (Powell, Wyoming) World War II Japanese American Internment site made us wonder whether the reservations that the Indian Nations were forced on to in the last half of the 19th century were really themselves just meant to be internment centers? Heart Mountain has become a National Historic Site comprised of a museum and gallery. Very well done, engrossing, educational and ultimately disturbing and shocking. Within 2 monthsof Pearl Harbor this barren very rural location grew from nothing to become Wyoming’s 3rd largest city housing over 10,000 Japanese Americans. It was one of 10 such camps nationwide all in remote, isolated locations. For almost three years this barren landscape was “home” and the Japanese tried to make the most of it, creating a farm, schools, a hospital, recreation program and so on.
While reservations were not surrounded by guards and barbed wire as this place was they were also often barren locations or small portions of their traditional lands that Indian tribes were forced onto and told to make the best of it. But without recourse to their main traditional source of sustenance, the bison (extinguished primarily by white hunters and traders), and other traditional ways of living they became dependent on meager welfare doled out by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (the Indians were literally given ration tickets for example). And often the promised welfare payments or provisions weren’t even forthcoming as promised. While technically sovereign within the reservations, in reality sovereignty was eroded by poverty, political intervention/control by the BIA, and forced sales to whites of reservation land.
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