About our Partnership

There is No Such Thing as Free Land: Understanding Homestead Acts from Multiple Perspectives is created in partnership between Homestead National Historical Park (HNHP) and the Nebraska Writing Project (NeWP), works to fully tell the historical story of the Homestead Act through Native, women homesteader and suffragists, and diverse immigrant experiences. The project was sponsored through a grant provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

The Nebraska Writing Project is a consortium of teachers of writing, all grade levels, all subjects, who share some common beliefs about writing education. Nebraska Writing Project has been active in our state since 1978, and offers an array of programs for teachers, youth, community members every year.  Our partnership with Homestead National Historical Park emerges from our enduring interest in place-conscious education, or the immersive use of local resources (both cultural and natural) to make education more meaningful, relevant, and engaged.  When young people are able to see their lives and communities reflected in and affected by their school study, they find more motivation to write and more real audiences to write to, for, and about.  The complicated stories of homesteading in our region are full of such compelling reasons to write.

Robert Brooke

Nebraska Writing Project Director