Greg Nokes, a historian and former journalist, published his book, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (2009). He investigated the Hells Canyon Massacre in 1887 and presented many stories that had never been told before. Because of Greg’s book and his organization, a granite monument was installed at the site of the massacre in 2012, on which three languages are used to engrave these words: “Site of the 1887 massacre of as many as 34 Chinese gold miners. No one was held accountable.” In this episode, Greg talks about how he began his investigation and some of those stories, and the stories behind those stories. As Greg writes, “We owe the Chinese laborers a great deal. They prepare the land on which many of us now live. But their reward in the nineteenth century was too often mistreatment and abuse. The least we can do is fill the blank pages. We owe them their names” (p. 184). This conversation emphasizes that the experiences of the Chinese or any minority group in the US are an inseparable part of the US history, and that progress can only be made without forgetting the history.
