APIAHiP: Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation

APIAHiP was created at the 2007 when Asian and Pacific Islanders Americans noticed a lack of APIA representation at state and national preservation meetings. With this gap, key founders developed an API Caucus at the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual conference. In June 2010, the API Caucus developed and hosted the first Asian Pacific Islander American National Historic Preservation Forum in San Francisco, California. The first Forum brought together Asian and Pacific Islander Americans from across the country who gathered and discussed various issues and approaches across the nation and in US territories. Since the inaugural Forum, APIAHiP has begun to develop programs that focus on developing a greater awareness of APIA historic and cultural sites. These include the formation of an APIA Endangered Sites sub-committee and the East at Main Street national APIA history mapping project, a crowdsourcing website and mobile app for APIA historic and cultural sites. We welcome interested individuals and organizations to get involved. APIAHiP’s mission is to protect historic places and cultural resources significant to Asian and Pacific Islander Americans through historic preservation and heritage conservation by: 1) Creating an information-sharing network that can provide support for established and emerging historic preservation programs. 2) Establishing educational programs for raising public awareness and impacting historic preservation policy on local, state, and national levels 3) Increase public and private resources for building historic preservation capacity. The term "historic preservation” and “heritage conservation" are meant to include educational and community development activities involving the preservation, conservation, and protection of tangible and intangible historic and cultural resources.