The Problem with America’s National Parks

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we’re sharing an episode from The Experiment, a podcast from The Atlantic and WNYC that tells “stories from an unfinished country.” Sign up for the Outside/In newsletter. Each episode explores elements of the experiment that is the United States, from the evangelical influence on American politics to alcohol use in the United States… and to “America’s best idea:” its national parks. In an essay for The Atlantic, David Treuer, an Ojibwe author and historian, says we can make that idea even better—by giving national parks back to Native Americans. “By virtue of the parks returning to Native control, I would like people, when they’re standing at the foot of El Capitan, to look up knowing they’re on Native lands, to look up knowing that they’re standing on the graves of Native people,” says Treuer, who grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota as the nearby Voyageurs National Park was being established. “I would like, when people look up at vistas, like at Yosemite or at Yellowstone, that they’d look up as a way to look back at the history of this country.” Outside/In is a member-supported production of New Hampshire Public Radio. You can donate at outsideinradio.org/donate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Outside In, a show about the natural world and how we use it.
0:13.7	I'm Justine Paradise.
0:16.1	Last year we released an episode called Fortress Conservation, which is about the conservation
0:20.9	philosophy behind America's national parks.
0:24.3	And what happens when you try and draw a separation between the natural world and the people
0:28.5	that inhabit it, specifically people like the Nez purse and the Black Feet Tribes.
0:36.7	This week we're sharing a piece that goes a few steps further.
0:40.0	It's an episode of a podcast where big fans of over here, it's called The Experiment,
0:45.1	Stories from an Unfinished Country, from the Atlantic and WNYC.
0:50.3	I really love this podcast.
0:52.3	Every time I listen, I think about the United States or an aspect of its history in a
0:56.1	new way.
0:57.1	Like for instance, they have an episode on the evangelical influence on American politics.
1:01.5	Or they introduce an idea that I have never thought about so deeply before.
1:06.1	Like the episode that we're sharing with you today, about what it would mean to literally
1:09.8	give the national parks back to native people.
1:14.5	This episode does touch on some of the history that we explored in Fortress Conservation,
1:19.3	but it turns the page in a way that is so thought provoking and actually they're really
1:23.6	funny often and really honest.
1:26.9	Okay, so without further ado, we present the problem with America's national parks from
1:33.0	the experiment.
1:54.6	So, Tracy Hunt.
	...

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