The 2022 Freeman Tilden Awards: The National Park Service's Best Interpretation

The Freeman Tilden Awards are the National Park Service's highest honors for interpretation, given to individuals and teams for creative, original programs and projects that make a real difference for visitors and for preserving parks. The 2022 recipients:

National winners

Steven J. Roberts — Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (individual award). Honoring the Historic Footprint set out to learn, honor and share the truth of the Native Americans imprisoned at Fort Marion (now Castillo de San Marcos) — from the perspective of the imprisoned rather than the U.S. Army, through deep partnership with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. In November 2022, about 30 Tribe members traveled from Oklahoma for educational sessions and memorial ceremonies with hundreds of visitors, who heard the history of the imprisonment and the intergenerational trauma it caused — and made room for healing and for honoring the imprisoned warriors.

Steven J. Roberts accepts the 2022 National Freeman Tilden Award for an individual. NPS film.

A chief of the Southern Cheyenne who was imprisoned at Fort Marion. Image from the National Park Service

Johanna Lombard, Ian Ferris, Jen Kolm and Mat Stevens — Joshua Tree National Park (group award). New exhibits built in-house were shaped from start to finish with the park's traditionally associated Tribes. In a 1,500-square-foot hall in the visitor center in Twentynine Palms, California, visitors follow colored lines that weave together to show links between plants, animals, earth, sky and people — with oral histories, videos with captions and audio description, Indigenous art, collections and tactile elements. Partners included the park's associated Tribes and bands and the City of Twentynine Palms.

Johanna Lombard, Ian Ferris, Jen Kolm and Mat Stevens accept the 2022 group award for Joshua Tree National Park. NPS film.

National Park Service staff recording audio for the Headwaters podcast.

Entrance to the Universal Threads exhibit. Image from the National Park Service

Other recipients

• Glenn Klaus — National Mall and Memorial Parks. At the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, tactile models, audio description and braille now let visitors with sight impairments experience engravings and sculptures more fully — designed through repeated testing with people with disabilities.
• A team from 11 NPS units along the east coast — including Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, Shenandoah National Park, Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway — ran workshops on the NPS study Segregation in Virginia's National Parks, 1916–1965, helping staff across disciplines grapple with its findings as a first step toward social justice, interpretation and community engagement.
• Shannon Moeck — Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park. Inalienable Rights, an annual November event with Belle Grove Plantation, the Slave Dwelling Project and others, uses storytelling and living history to show the daily lives of enslaved people; in 2022 it spread to nearby historic sites.
• A team at Charles Pinckney National Historic Site. New interactive exhibits at Snee Farm tell a fuller story, including that of the enslaved workers, replacing 25-year-old displays that glorified Pinckney's role in the Constitution without examining his and other delegates' influence on slavery.
• Katie Keller, Chris Amidon, Bridget Byrne and Jenna Behnke — Isle Royale National Park. Over three years, Help Isle Royale Stay Wild reworked visitor orientation for a new, more diverse generation, across videos, the website, social media, The Greenstone newspaper and every orientation program.
• Brian Schwieger — Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. The NINE pilot program teaches nonviolence, integrity, "nice" (kindness) and education — ideals tied to the Little Rock Nine — reaching more than 1,000 fourth graders and educators, mostly in Title I schools with few field trips.
• Daniel Lombardi, Michael Faist, Peri Sasnett and Andrew Smith — Glacier National Park. Season two of the Headwaters podcast, a five-part series on whitebark pine — why it matters, why it's dying, and the generations-long effort to save it.
• Sarah Bone — Manzanar National Historic Site. Through oral histories, archival research and videos about museum artifacts, she connects families with the stories of Japanese Americans unconstitutionally incarcerated during World War II, fostering healing and understanding across generations.
• Amber Kraft, Sarah Gage and Lian Law — Katmai National Park & Preserve. Journeys at Katmai is a self-paced "Not-So-Junior Ranger" booklet for adults, launched in 2022 and as popular as the Junior Ranger program — reaching some of Brooks Camp's 40,000 yearly bear-watchers with Katmai's geologic and human history.

NPS staff visit previously segregated restrooms in Shenandoah National Park.

Ranger Shannon Moeck leads a program during an Inalienable Rights event. Image from the National Park Service

Ranger Sarah Bone interviews Irene Furuoka for an oral history in Lodi, California. Image from the National Park Service

Sources

Based on "2022 Freeman Tilden Award Recipients," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source says 11 park units took part in the segregation workshops but names nine; a misspelling ("Pickney") is corrected. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26. The Park Service's films, lost when the page was imported, are restored from its page (2026-09-27).