The Freeport Memoryscape Walk is a focused scavenger hunt-style event where small teams will span out across different parts of Freeport to examine the commemorative landscape before regrouping to share our findings over a community meal.

Communities encode memory, pride, and power into the built environment in a variety of ways. The Memoryscape Walk offers a chance to gather alongside other folks with a shared connection to this place and take on the role of community historians, collaborating to survey the town’s commemorative landscape. As we examine the monuments, plaques, street names, symbols, and other historical signifiers all around us, we will ask: Whose stories are being told here, whose are missing, and how might these partial narratives impact this community today? We will also bring our awareness to the natural environment, recentering the non-human residents of this place and identifying instances of "terraforming,” a practice through which European settlers reshaped the environment and erased Indigenous ecologies, cultures, and lifeways.

By collectively looking at the messages and values embedded in the built environment, we will develop connections, deepen our understanding of the ways public memory is formed and perpetuated, and launch an ongoing dialogue about what it would take to ensure the memoryscape is more accurate and reflective of those who have contributed to shaping this community over the centuries.