The $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 relief package, which President Biden enacted was worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was granted to “under/unemployed or historian researchers” for research on Indigenous histories and anti-racism.
The American Rescue Plan (ARP Act) was approved by Democrats in March 2021. It was supported by Republicans. It was supported by Republicans.
Many institutions received grants for projects that did not directly address the pandemic.
Elizabeth “Beth” Castle (Shawnee-ancestor antiracist educator) was awarded $60,000 grants in order to establish “A Collaborative oral history of the Fight Against Mineral and Uranium Mining In the Black Hills”, the Origins and Ongoing Struggle for Protecting Mother Earth.
Virginia Espino was also awarded a $60,000 grant. Her project was about the “intimate lives” of Latinxs and Afro-Latinxs living in Los Angeles. It was designed to document and recover rebellious ideas and experiences, as well as everyday life, of women who aren’t stereotypically and invisible.
Colette Montoya–Sloan is a queer Indigenous librarian/archivist who was awarded $60,000 to create an oral history on the “collective emotion and intellect and spirit experience of creating” Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, northern Maine.
$50,000 was granted to the Oral History Association in ARP funds. This money will be used to keep staff positions open during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for post-oral history online.
500 Sails, a nonprofit organization in Northern Mariana Islands received $50,000 in ARP funds by the NEH. The money was used to “reopen programs which teach Indigenous canoe building skills and explore precolonial maritime life.” ”
To fund the “ongoing development” of an exhibit on Ancient Egypt, the NEH awarded $471 905 to Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh in ARP funds. For a multiplatform project that explores the historical roots of racism in American science and medicine, the Science History Institute in Philadelphia was awarded $359097 by the NEH.
Biden stated that every allocation in the legislation was required just prior to signing ARP on February 20, 2021.
President Obama declared that Congress must approve the American Rescue Plan. This plan is immediate and addresses urgent crises. “What would they prefer me to leave out?”
Due to its effect on the U.S. economic system, the American Rescue Plan has come under greater scrutiny. Economists, including ex-economic advisers to Obama, credit the $1.9 COVID-19 relief plan, which caused 8.6% inflation last June.
Jay Greene, Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow, called the allocation of public funds “unconscionable.”
