National Park After Dark - Little Islands: The Dark History of America’s National Parks

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

To celebrate National Indigenous History Month, we take a step back in history as Danielle flips back the pages of time and brings us to a dark chapter in US history. National Parks, some of our favorite places in the world, were once home to hundreds of indigenous nations. The lands we benefit from and enjoy today as parks came at the expense of others, others who lived and worshiped on those same lands for millennia. Lands that were stolen. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This land is your land, and this land is my land. From California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me. You can hear that, just as I can, the tune embedded deep in our brains. It's difficult to even say without actually singing, and even more difficult to pin down when we all first learned it. sometime, many, many years ago in grade school. That's how young most Americans were when they learned the basics.

America's diamond deserts, sparkling sands, fields of wheat and golden valleys were ours. Pristine, glorious pockets of Eden saved just for us to enjoy. As we move forward in life, we were given the impression that men in history, such as Theodore Roosevelt, should be glorified. Nicknamed the conservation president, he did. did make big strides for national parks. During his presidency, he created 150 national forests, 18 national monuments, and five national parks. But at what cost? While the U.S. education system taught us some catchy songs, they skimmed by a very important and very dark reality. These lands are not our lands. They were not made for you and me. These lands were stolen. Welcome to National Park.

After Dark. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name's Cassie. And I'm Danielle. Another Monday. Another Monday, another week. Time to learn some new things.

This week is going to be a little bit of a dark history lesson, so I hope you're all prepared. But before we get started, we did want to just briefly mention we did release our Patreon episode a little bit early this month. and it was released on Wednesday of last week. And we went back to Florida. So you head into the Everglades and we're talking, Danielle talks to us about a plane crash that happened there. And actually the survivor accounts from the plane crash.

And we even add in a little bit of paranormal to it. So if you're interested in hearing that episode, go over to Patreon. You can find our Patreon link in our Instagram, National Park After Dark. or you can go right onto our website, M-PADPodcast.com. So this week, we're diving, like I said, into history. And we're not visiting one particular place. We're kind of doing an overview. The vast majority of information that I gathered for this episode

was gathered from a couple different articles in particular. The first was written by David Truer called Return the National Parks to the Tribes, which can be found on Atlantic.com. This article is actually part of a series called Who Owns America's Wilderness? And as of now, along with that article, there are three other fascinating articles that deep dive into different aspects of America's Wild Places that I really recommend if you have some downtime. And the other is called Ethnic Cleansing and America's Creation of National Parks by Isaac Cantor. These articles and links to others that I used as references for this episode can be. found in the links provided in the show notes. I think this is such an important topic to talk about

in our national parks because this is something that as Americans, we don't learn about. And we did, we had a message from one of our listeners who was talking about the right terminology to use with Native peoples and just some background history there. And we realized at this conversation that we had a lot to learn. And there's a lot of information that unfortunately, the American school system likes to leave out because it's not good and it's a rough history. So I think that it's really cool that you're going to touch on this and you're going to tell the story of what really happened. Absolutely. You are 100% right. And it's something that I actually get into a little bit at the end of the episode and throughout the episode, but you're right, the vast majority of

Americans don't receive that crucial part of history. We don't learn that in the classroom, and we have to seek it out on our own. But that's part of the reason why I wanted to really get into this subject today, because it is important, and we should learn this information. So with that being said, Let's go. So first, before we get into the meat of the episode, before we really get into it, I want to preface this by saying a couple things. First, I'm going to be speaking mainly in the past tense, and that's because we're discussing history. And because we are going to be discussing history that is primarily focused on native peoples, you may hear me say a lot of things like they once lived, they once did, they once believed, they once believed, they once believed.

etc. And I do want to make it clear that Native peoples don't live in the past tense and that there are many, many Native peoples living in areas that we're going to talk about and they continue to their traditions of their people even today. And we'll touch on that on the episode as well, but I did want to say that right off the bat that we're not trying to disregard any Native peoples or diminish their continued presence in present day. And one other thing, We are going to be talking about a lot of prominent male historical figures, most notably Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir. And they did contribute a lot of their professional career to investing to what we now cherish

as our natural protected areas. But on the other hand, they also did some things, said some things, and held some views that we find deplorable today. And that being said, this episode is not going to be about delving into and dissecting who they were as people. It's not going to be an ethical debate. We certainly have our opinions and everyone is entitled to formulate their own. But anything that's said about them today is going to be historical fact. We're just sticking to the basics here. What really happened in recorded history? And that's what this is going to be. This is going to be a dark history lesson. We're going to discuss the events

that led to the establishment of the national parks in the United States. So first, let's talk about the land. After all, it's the land that's the golden thread here that weaves together stories from the past and the present and from different points of view. We tend to have this utopian outlook on places like national parks. As if they're small little gems that have been untouched by the hand of humans existing in their natural state unchanged since the beginning of time. And that's the reason we want to protect them, right? So they don't change and human activity doesn't alter them in any way.

But, psych, native peoples have been shaping America's landscapes for hundreds of thousands of years. Dating as far back as prehistoric times, there has been evidence of indigenous land use. Small-scale agricultural societies caused big ecological changes, some of which changed sedimentation and hydraulic systems, decreased forest cover, and increased soil erosion. More recently, but still way before European settlers came, they practiced succession. And for all you biology and environmental science majors, you should know what this is.

It's a process which happens when intentional fires are set strategically to prevent the natural transformation of grasslands into forests. Native peoples also burned huge areas of oak, hickory, and pine forests in the eastern part of the United States. They did this to prevent the growth of less desirable trees, because for them, the oak and hickory trees served as high-yielding nut producers, and pine was a really important tree used to build their canoes. On the other side of the country, in Yosemite Valley, the land was tended by people like the Miwok. This tribe relied heavily on acorns of oak trees, aside from animal resources like deer,

as a mainstay in their diets. In order to feed their people, the tribe cultivated oak trees in Yosemite Valley. So the idea that these natural places have, we just like stumbled upon and no one, no human has ever laid eyes on them or touch them and changed them in any way is false. People have been here for a really long time. We just, we didn't make it here until later.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. So not only did the land provide sustenance for the physical body, it also fed the soul. As of today, there are 574 federally recognized tribes within the state. the United States. Historically, despite any conflict or differences that they had between them, one thing rang true for all tribes. A deep-rooted respect for the land. As a whole, I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of present-day Americans have a really big disconnect with nature, but this certainly was not the case for the estimated 60 million Native peoples that lived on

and worshipped in the places that we call home today. No matter the tribe or where they were on the continent, Native peoples held the land in a very high regard. Their lives were very intertwined with nature in a way that a lot of us, most of us, I would argue, can't comprehend today. They perceived land as a living, sacred being who should be respected and protected.

Some locations served as a more spiritual, significant location than others, such as the place that we now know as Bears' Ears National Monument in Utah. This place has been recognized as a place of sacramental practice, worship, and held as sacred by Native peoples for generations that stretch back hundreds of thousands of years. And it is this deep connection that is one of the many reasons that make the history behind the formation of national parks, so tragic. So where did the idea for national parks come from? To answer this in a really short, spark notes style version, it was back in the 1800s when the first non-native people started to lay their eyes on the west. Many of them, including George Catlin, who was a writer and an

artist, John James Audubon, the famous naturalist, and John Colter, who was a member for the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Group, advocated for setting aside parcels of this wilderness once they realized how amazingly beautiful it was. Writers such as John Muir also had a huge impact on the way that national parks were created. It was because of his influential writings and the role that he played in the creation of multiple parks,

he is often referred to as, do you know? Isn't it the father of National parks. Yeah. Yes, that's right. So while he may have highly regarded the landscape and had a deep love for nature, he felt a little different about its original inhabitants.

For example, what would become Glacier Bay National Park, he saw his native guides as ignorant and superstitious. He would become upset about his guides hunting for food and would sometimes deliberately even rock their canoe back and forth, causing them to miss the shot that they were trying to take at game animals. He once wrote a really long essay about Yosemite. The beauty of it, he described the amazing landscapes, the plants, the animals, everything that surrounded it, he wrote in beautiful detail and in a really positive light.

However, out of its 16 chapters, none of them were devoted to native peoples. But he does make note of them, he does mention them. He described them as, quote, mostly ugly, sometimes altogether hideous having no right place in the landscape. Even though I'm sure that they were the people who were showing him all of these areas to explore. It's awful. It's just so awful. That's so wild to me that you would go into a new land where people already inhabit it. And that's your description is they have no right. to be there and they're ugly, which actually, today I was scrolling through Facebook and there

were real reviews of vacations that people went on. And it was kind of like the National Park real reviews. There were bad ones. And there was this one and it's like, no one told me when I went to Spain there would be so many Spanish people there. It's like there's Spanish food. Everyone speaks Spanish. We even had issues where the taxi driver only spoke. Spanish. And I was like, how ignorant? How typical of the uneducated, and they were American too.

And I was like, of course. Uneducated American people going into a new place and saying stuff. And I don't want to say that. Like, everyone's like that. But I've certainly seen it firsthand myself. I was on a trip to Europe years ago. I did a whole trip there. And I was with this girl.

and she called a salon because she wanted to get her hair done. And she started yelling at the people on the phone that, why don't you speak English? Why don't you speak English? We were in France. And we were in a small town in France. There wasn't, it's not like, even in Paris, a lot of people don't speak English and they don't have to.

They're in France. So it was just, I've definitely seen it firsthand of people. coming in to land in areas that are not theirs and immediately feeling entitled. It is really upsetting, even reading back into historical publications of what the quote-unquote normal was, because that's something we have to remember. This was historical times where they had a different outlook and there were varying degrees of racism and entitlement that we are not used to in 2021. Like reading back in history books is cringy.

Sometimes it's really cringy. But I will say, I don't know, because we say that and then we think back, or I think back on last year in 2020 when a lot of issues came bubbling to the surface. And at the beginning of this episode, we're like, we're not going to say our opinions. It's all going to be fine. And I'm not. I'm not. And immediately we're angry. Sadly, he wasn't alone in this way of thinking. Known in the history books, like I said, as conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt was famously quoted as saying, the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. I don't go as far to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians. But I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th. He was saying, I have no interest in getting to know these people, their practices, their culture, they're all, they all should be dead. And maybe there's one good one, but I don't care about finding out. That's horrible.

Another man named Samuel Bowles, who was an influential advocate of the national park system and the idea of Indian reservations, stated that the park landscape. were to be, quote, the pleasure ground and health home of the nation. But he advocated for the removal of natives from those lands. He thought that the natives were doomed to extinction anyways, and that by putting them into reservations, it would, quote, make a smooth descent to the pathway to the Indian's grave. This was a way of thinking, by removing native peoples from the land, and then establishing those very same places as national parks, that was to them a way to make the removal of the natives justifiable. And even though Samuel Bowes and other influential men of his time really

tried to hammer home the idea that the act of removing natives was justified, there was also a lot of effort being put into spreading this rumor and illusion that the wilderness areas were never actually used by natives at all. So it may be more palatable and easier to swallow to the general public. Like, la, la, la, la, nothing to see here. No one was even here to begin with. We're just, we're going to just rope off this little corner of forest. No one was, no one was here anyway. They're like, look at this beautiful land that we found. We're going to dedicate it so you can all visit it. And the people who did live here, it didn't live in this part. So, It's fine.

It's ours. So, for example, despite archaeological evidence in Yellowstone, it was claimed that Native peoples never used the land due to superstitious fear of the geothermal features that were in the park. Another is in Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks, where it was said that, again, Native peoples didn't inhabit the area due to a fear of spirits. These claims bled into dozens of other parks, including Zion, Banff, and Glacier. And that scheme worked. In less than a century, the general population and even conservation advocates had gone from viewing the native peoples inhabiting the lands they wished to save as a critical part of them to viewing them as a disease that plagued the landscape and a disease that had to be gotten rid of. and so began the peak of the armed conflict between Western tribes and the United States Army.

Acts such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which attempted to eject all the tribes that were east of the Mississippi, to be relocated into what was known as Indian Territory. And then there was the Dawes Act of 1887, which split the large areas of reservations up into smaller pieces of land. land, and then that surplus, quote-unquote, surplus land, was then open to white settlement. And to put that into perspective, that particular act, the Dawes Act, took about 90 million acres away from that already small amount of land that the natives were given after they were taken from their homes. And that amount of land is roughly equal to the size of the 423 National park sites that we have in the United States right now. The Oglala Lakota spiritual leader,

named Black Elk, noted darkly that the United States, quote, made little islands for us and other littler islands for the four-legged. And always, these islands are becoming smaller. This conflict was frequent from the 1850s through the 1870s. And there were several wars that took place throughout the country as a result of this native and settler conflict, one of which being the Mariposa war. And this war began in 1849 and was sparked by the California gold rush. Do you remember learning about that right? Because I sure do. Yeah, I remember learning about that in school. Yeah, like, what's the phrase, there's gold in them hills. Something like that. Yeah, but those hills were home to a lot of native peoples.

And it's when thousands, approximately 40,000 of them, to be exact, prospectors flooded into the hills of California in hopes of striking it rich, that problem started to arise. And this included the area of what is now Yosemite. In 1851, the Mariposa Battalion, which was a Californianist military force, led by James Savage, entered Yosemite Valley. At the time, the Awanichi tribe lived in the valley, and the battalion came in, burned the tribe's villages, destroyed their food stores, killed the chief's sons, and forced them out of Yosemite.

Yellowstone, the first national park was established in 1872, and that park also found itself smack dab in the middle of a native settler conflict. In the early years of the park's existence, the crow, Shoshone, Bannock, and Sheep Eater peoples frequented Yellowstone, which, surprise, didn't really go over well. Conflict arose between the tribes and the white settlers, and actually for the first few years of when the park was in existence, the headquarters of Yellowstone appeared more like a military fort than the visitor centers that you and I are accustomed to today. The secretary of the interior named Lucius Lamar felt that the area should be managed to preserve wilderness, which his interpretation of wilderness was thought to be uncut and undisturbed forests

full of a bunch of different animals. But because natives hunted animals and set intentional fires, like we talked about earlier in the episode, they were thought of as being incapable of appreciating the natural world. And in 1879, the last of Yellowstone's native inhabitants, which were a band of peoples from the sheep eater tribe, were removed. Now, when you say removed from the park, what do you mean by that? So we're going to get into a little bit of the, a little bit of the ways that the U.S. government, quote unquote,

removed natives from National Park land and other lands, but in no way does removed correlate with a easy, nonviolent, in most cases, nonviolent way. So in a lot of circumstances, native peoples were either forcefully removed via violence. They were tricked by empty promises given in various different treaties. They were starved out. A lot of times the U.S. government would cut off food supply, knowing that the natives would have to move because they were at risk of starvation. It was terrible.

There were a lot of ways that the natives were forced to leave their land, and it wasn't in the best of circumstances. Yeah, it wasn't. I guess there's no way to. say nice way to remove someone from their original home, but it wasn't in a peaceful manner. Yeah, I know. And unfortunately, that was kind of the common theme. So two years before, the sheep eater tribe was removed from Yosevety. So we're now in the summer of 1877. The Nes-Piers were facing their own struggles in Wallowa Valley, which is located in present-day Or

Oregon. A band of 800 men, women, and children who are led by Chief Joseph were forced from their homeland and were being pursued by the U.S. Army. Settlers were moving into their homeland and the U.S. government was trying to force the natives out of it and onto a reservation. The natives were headed to Canada. They were trying to evade the settlers at all costs, but along the way, while being pursued by the U.S. government, at Big Hole, Montana, they were ambushed. Soldiers led by Colonel John Gibbons approached the camp at sunrise, and they fired into the Nezpiers' tents, which killed men, women, and children. And although the tribe managed to escape, 60 of them were left dead. As the group fleed, they continued on and found themselves in the middle

of Yellowstone. Again, they were trying to elude the army, but during the 13 days they spent in the park at several points they actually encountered visitors, because remember the park at this point is open to tourists. So there's tourists here, and these native peoples are coming across tourists while they're running for their lives. Warriors took some of those tourists hostage and did release them, but they also ran into tourists on multiple occasions, and at one point they killed two of them. The group continued traveling through the park and over the Abroska Mountains into Montana.

The army stopped them near Bears Paws Mountains, which is less than 40 miles from the Canadian border. Some of the tribe escaped into Canada, but after the journey, which was 1,500 miles long, the rest of the members surrendered on October 5th. Most of the survivors were sent into the Indian territory in Oklahoma. Wow, what a, I'm just putting myself in their shoes a little bit, going from there being in the landscape of Oregon and then being transported to Oklahoma for a whole new landscape, a whole new way of living off the land and what they needed to do. I just, that's a huge change. Yeah, it was a huge change and one that didn't go. very smoothly, as history has told us. So back in Yellowstone, although the last of its native year-round inhabitants were removed,

a lot of local tribes used the park seasonally, which really pissed off that guy Lucius Lamar, who was, again, the secretary of the interior at the time. He saw the use of the land by natives as undermining what the park was established to do, and he wanted to put a stop to the native use. of Yellowstone, despite previously granted rights given entreaties. Both legal and forceful tactics were used to accomplish this. In July of 1895, a Jackson Hole man named William Manning gathered a group of 26 men

and came across a camp of Bannock peoples who were hunting game in the park. The group arrested them, confiscated their food, horses, and equipment, and marched them away at gunpoint. When Manning instructed his men to load their weapons, some of the banic people ran. They were terrified. And that resulted in the deaths of both elderly people and children. The tribal leaders were furious when they heard about this, but they attempted to play along with legal proceedings and hopes to regain their hunting rights, kind of playing by the rules of the government, going the legal route.

For example, in 1895, a banic leader named Racehorse admitted to killing an elk within the park, which at the time violated Wyoming game laws. But during the court trial, he made his case stating that the treaty rights to off-reservation hunting, which were established in 1868, trumped the current law of Wyoming, which didn't become a state until 1890. The judge actually sided with him, and racehorse won. But later, a Supreme Court judge reversed the decision, stating that the Congress could terminate the treaty rights and therefore had the authority to nullify hunting rights, which were originally promised in the treaty. This case ended up serving as a template for other national parks to follow, and sadly, it was one that did not honor treaty rights between the government and the native people.

So they were just finagling any type of law that they could to get rid of them. Three years later, over in Montana, the U.S. dispatch commissioners to negotiate the purchase of mountain lands on the west side of the Blackfeet Reservation, which actually covered the eastern half of modern-day glacier National Park. It was believed that wealth in the form of minerals was in those mountains, and the government wanted control and ownership of that land. The reservation had already shrunk in size, and the Blackfeet declined the laughable $1 million offer from the commissioners to buy that land from them. Decimation of the bison. And as a side note for people who may not know this, killing of bison in the West was a big thing back in the 1800s. Government officials actually

appointed different groups and private parties. And they even compensated them to kill bison in the West. And a large driving factor behind that was they wanted to cut off the food supply for the natives. Wow. So we're not only hurting people, but also thousands of animals. Yeah. And it wasn't just thousands, sadly. It was millions. There are some. actually this is a classic picture that I actually remember seeing, I believe, in school, but during my research, I stumbled upon it again. And for anyone who wants to see it, literally all you have to type into Google is killing of bison in the West. And it'll pop up right away on Google images. And it's of two guys and old black and white photo. And they're

standing. One of them is standing on the ground next to this huge pile, triangular pile of hundreds and hundreds of bison skulls. And on top, I mean, he looks so tiny compared to the amount of skulls, but there's another guy. He's standing right on top of the pile. And it's just a horrific illustration of the lengths that the American government and the American people went to you to decimate the bison population. And like I said, a huge driving force behind that was to choke out the supply of food that a lot of native peoples relied on for sustenance and to live. And there's a big long history that also involves the transcontinental railroad and how that plays a part in the killing of the bison and all of that. But, um,

again, a really sad, tragic chapter in U.S. history. I've never heard that before. Yeah, that's certainly not something I was ever taught in my fifth grade history class. Yeah, and I wouldn't imagine so because it's dark and ugly and difficult to reflect on. But so anyways, that in combination with disease had really hurt the Blackfeet tribe. And because they were at risk of starving the following winter, the tribe reluctantly settled for a $1.5 million settlement under the promise that hunting, fishing, and timber cutting rights would be reserved. Even though Chief Whitecalf accepted the settlement on behalf of the tribe, he stated, quote, Chief Mountain is my head, and now my head is cut off. The mountains have been my last refuge, end quote.

After all, that land had been both a physical and spiritual homeland to the Blackfeet people for generations. But lo and behold, the mountains didn't have mineral value, and Glacier National Park was created later in 1910. But again, shock of the century. The land use that was promised to the natives was not mentioned in the bill that created the park. So while the Blackfeet maintained that they did have the right, within the park to hunt and fish, etc. They were arrested for doing just that in 1912. And from then forward, hunting and fishing rights and glacier have been denied to the black feet.

And just another slap in the face, at the same time, Lewis Hill, who was the owner of the Great Northern Railroad, started employing members of the Blackfeet to be hosts in his hotels near and in the park as a way to boost tourism and to promote the park. So they were almost like an attraction for people to come see. Right. And for lack of a better term, it was similar to like a circus attraction. And I say that because you have to remember most of the American people at this time, had no close interactions with native peoples.

So for the opportunity to get to see one of them up close was a tourist attraction. So here they are being used for that purpose. Meanwhile, at the same time, in the same park, like they were being lied to, and they weren't being allowed to hunt and fish and timber in the park. like they were originally promised. And it's just, it's horrific and so upsetting to know that there was so much deceit and dishonesty when it came to treaties and going back on the word that the U.S. government set out originally. And just, yeah, it's a mess.

And unfortunately, the examples like this go on and on. In each of the parks that we have actually visited in our episodes and in countless more, stories of crimes committed against natives including thievery, trickery, deceit, hostility, murder, rape, etc., kidnapping. They can all be found in our national parks. The last major conflict between a native tribe and the U.S. government ended at Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservoir. in South Dakota in December of 1890. And for those of you who are not familiar with the book or the movie, bury my heart at Wounded Knee, this was a massacre of 300 men, women, and children. And again, the only reason that I know what that massacre is about is because of that movie, a movie, pop culture, bury my heart at Wounded Knee, I can pick up.

the movie, I don't remember reading about it in school or learning about it in school. Do you? Yeah, this is an information that you can just pull from the back of your brain. Like, oh, I learned about this through first through sixth grade. Like, I know this stuff. It's like, no, I didn't learn about this until I feel like even in school with Christopher Columbus where they were like, he discovered America. and then they told you kind of what happened and they breezed by like, oh, there were native peoples here.

But then it was our land. It was pretty much what they said. And I feel like it was never actually taught that it was bad. Everyone who's learning about it just slowly put it in their heads. Like, hold on a second. What happened? How does this make sense? And I feel like it wasn't even formally taught.

And maybe it is more now than it was when we were kids. I don't know personally, but I feel like it was kind of just something that people started thinking for themselves and they're like, hold on a second. He did what? And that's why this happened. That's why we have this land. No one mentioned that. How is he the founder of America? This doesn't make sense.

Yeah. And coming from, you know, both of us to girls who were raised in New England, very close to Plymouth, Massachusetts. and the whole Christopher Columbus discovering America, landing on Plymouth Rock, the whole Thanksgiving Day tradition and how that all came to be, that was all stuff that was really harped on, at least in my education experience. Me too. And it was done so in a very sugar-coded way. So I do want to say that with all this being said, looking back on this dark chapter in our history

really does make me uncomfortable. And I've really put a lot of thought into it and reflected on why this is for a long time, not just right now while I was doing research for this episode. And it really is such a weird feeling because obviously I wasn't. personally, directly involved in the decisions that the U.S. government made against Native peoples in the past. I don't have, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, I also don't have any friends or distant relatives that are native or who have native ancestors. So honestly, I have zero ties to any Native peoples. But what I do have is a feeling of huge responsibility and a really large weight of pressure to live my life in a way that respects and

honors Native past and that recognizes current affairs that affect Native people today. And I want to live my life in a way that I am an ally to whatever battle they are currently advocating for. For example, the preservation of land like Bears ears, from resource extraction and development. You know, Bear's Ears National Monument in Southern Utah, it was signed into being by President Obama, but, you know, one year later, Trump slashed it and, you know, by 85%. So that 1.4 million acres that Bear's Ears was is now reduced to just about 200,000 acres. And that's it. That was a big deal and is a big deal to Native peoples. And my mind

It also goes to the fight against the pipelines in the Dakotas. Yeah, I remember hearing a lot about that. And this whole thing just kind of reminds me of that quote, if you don't learn from the past, you're doomed to repeat it. And that whole situation kind of felt like looking at the past and seeing it happen in real time today. Absolutely. So I first learned about Native history in school. And I know I said earlier in the episode that the U.S. education system filled us in that regard. And I still stick by that. I still feel that that is true. And I say that because I wasn't, it wasn't until my 20s when I learned about Native history. And it was in an elective course that I had to seek out and choose myself. As an environmental science and biology major, this class was by no means a required course for my particular area of study.

Like I said, it was an elective, but, and maybe it's required in certain history majors, but my point is that it's not mainstream knowledge. It was offered way later in life after a lot of years of other information had already been imprinted on my brain. and I think that's wrong. Why are we purposely being diverted from learning particular chapters in history? Once we finally get to them, why are those chapters sugar-coded? My point, I guess, is I think that it's time we take those rose-colored glasses that we've had slammed onto our face for our whole lives and see the past for what it really is. and it's, you know, it's hard. It sucks. It's hard to face the fact that the country you love and have pride for and live in and want to live in for the rest of your life did a lot of horrific things. But it would be wrong to not learn about and acknowledge that. And just because we did do awful things as a country does not mean that we have to go forward and continue that in the future. I think the first step is learning of our past because then we can address it and do better.

Right. It's all about doing better. And in, you know, recent years, the National Park Service has made strides in recognizing Native tribes and their continued presence in and around the parks. Back in 1995, the National Park Service released a plan to close Devil's Tower for the month of June every year to commercial rock climbing. Devil's Tower located in Wyoming is actually known by the Cheyenne people as Bears Lodge. And it's there that they spent winters hunting and camping and regarded it as a holy sacred space for generations. So the National Park Service wanted to close it down to climbers during the month of June every year because that's when a lot of tribal ceremonies were taking place and it was a really important time for the native tribes. But the climbers sued and they won. And as a result, for the last 23 years, instead of it being a mandatory closure every June,

there's a voluntary climbing ban that's been put in place by the National Park Service to allow local tribes to hold ceremonies at the site. Sadly, though, a lot of climbers ignore that, and every single year, more and more of them try to scale the walls every summer. Other efforts that the National Park Service has put into place statutes, statutes like the National Historic Preservation Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act require consultation with Native tribes by entities such as the National Park Service. Court decisions have also reaffirmed the rights of area tribes in places like Olympic National Park

so that they can carry on their fishing practices, and many national parks in Alaska allow for traditional substance used by the Native peoples. Back down in the lower 48, Crater Lake in Oregon actually permits the Klamath Tribe use of the area for religious and substance purposes. The National Park Service also presents special events like Heritage Days throughout the year at different parks. For example, in the Grand Canyon, events are organized to celebrate cultural diversity of the nations who have a history with the canyon. Demonstrations include traditional dance, artistry like glass blowing and basket weaving, and they do have presentations that, keep the history and continued presence of the park's native peoples alive. And the National Park Service does recognize Native American Heritage Month, which happens

every November. And it's in this month where they really focus on sharing different stories in history about Native and Indigenous peoples as they relate to the National Park System. And they also do strive to continue Native culture of America's Indigenous peoples as well, especially during this month where there's a big focus on it. And more and more throughout every national park, there are more informative and detailed exhibits about Native tribes in the visitor centers. And just something that I think is pretty exciting to see just as the years go on is the change in cultural and racial diversity in regards to employees of the National Park Service, the Rangers, interpretive guides, etc. So a lot of native and indigenous peoples are becoming

employed by the National Park Service. And I think that adds a really cool layer to an experience at a national park, getting a different insight, a different view. They serve as a very valuable source as a voice to both the history and the current affairs of Native peoples throughout the country. So to wrap this up, I wanted to just leave you with a little bit of a reflection exercise. So picture this. We're in New York City outside of the Museum of Natural History where there's a statue. It's a statue of Deodor Roosevelt. It's been there since the 1940s. And next to him is a native man and an African man. Last summer, as America erupted, an outrage over the murder of George Floyd, statues like this one were suddenly in the spotlight

as symbols of racial bias and imperialism. And while the debate still rages on over what to do about them, do we take them down, set them on fire, keep them up, continue their legacy for what they are, no matter your stance on that issue, my hope for this episode is that you look at these statues, ponder their meaning a little deeper than surface value. Read more into your history books. Re-evaluate the stories you've heard about the formation of our nation, all with new perspective. I hope that this is just the beginning of a journey that you take into the history of Native Studies. And hopefully you use it as a stepping stone into a future of continued appreciation of native cultures as they endure today.

Well, I'm certainly going to be looking at national parks a little bit differently. And I think it would be really interesting to attend one of the, those learnings that they have at the visitor centers, and I certainly learned a lot more than I knew before this episode. Yeah, well, that's what it's all about. It's learning, educating yourself, because, you know, it really is up to our generation for a lot of things to be better than the generation before us, and it's up to our generation to make the next one better than we are. It's all about stepping forward into a better way of being decent human beings. And I think that's a pretty good message for a lot of things in life, not just recognizing historical tragedy.

And lastly, in that same vein of learning about Native studies, you know, just start small, start simple. Google your area and the Native tribes that live there or continue to live there. By researching that information that has such close ties to you personally where you live your life and where they once live their lives and continue to in maybe a way that's different from you, that could be your start. If you're interested in learning more about this topic, aside from information in your local area, there are countless numbers of documentaries, books, and resources on the subject. and we're going to list a few of them on a new feature that we just launched on our website. So we decided to revamp the book recommendation list that we had that led to a good reads list. So now if you go over to our website, which is NPAD Podcast.com, there will be a tab there that will lead you to a list of books that we've recommended or mentioned in our episodes.

And there will also be a link provided for you that you can buy them straight for you. from the site if you want to add them into your book collection. And that's it. That's all I have for this episode. Thank you so much for listening, coming back, sticking with us every week, and wanting to learn something new every Monday. You can always reach us via email at NPAD Podcast at gmail.com. You can keep up to date with all of our episodes at NPAD Podcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram, National Park After Dark, and on Facebook, National Park After Dark. And as always, if you are enjoying the show, we would greatly appreciate if you could subscribe to our show wherever you're listening to it, whether it be on Spotify, Apple, etc. And if you haven't, please leave us a rating or a review.

it really truly does help us. Well, thank you for doing that episode. I think it was certainly a hard one, but a lot of really much needed information in a country that we don't really learn that much about it. So thank you for bringing that to light. It was my pleasure. So that's it, everybody. Thank you again for tuning in.

Hopefully we'll see all of you next Monday when we are back for another episode. So in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye, everyone. Bye. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average.

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