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This Land Is Not Our Land

Photograph of tourists at scenic overview.

Evaluating Native American displacement from areas that are designated as protected land is not typical of tour guides or visitors to any of the United States’s 58 national parks. In fact, the origins of these hugely popular landmarks remain hidden and very few individuals understand and acknowledge this violent history. Multiple studies conducted as a part of a larger initiative called “Reclaiming Native Truth to gauge Americans understandings and attitudes towards Native American people found that only 34 percent of Americans even agree that “Native Americans face a great deal or a lot of discrimination.” With this minimal level of public understanding concerning Native Americans’ historical and modern struggles for equality, it is not surprising that individuals visit sites such as Yosemite without knowledge about the brutality behind the landscape. In a Huffington Post article, “The Forgotten History of Violent Displacement that helped Create the National Parks,” the author discusses the land of Yosemite as once being inhabited by indigenous peoples and rural poor who were forced out. If they wished to remain in their homeland, they “were forced to work humiliating jobs entertaining tourists as Indian performers.” Eventually, however, they [Native Americans] were all evicted by the national park burning down their homes. In fact, the federal government either ignored, invalidated, or simply refused to recognize the claims tribes had to ownership of lands including but not limited to Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. Historians have only recently begun to explore the histories of forgotten indigenous peoples in these areas, and their findings have provided insight into to the romantic notions associated with the land which eventually became national parks.

Manipulated ideas about conservation and protection of the environment also played a large role in the lands later designated as national parks; however, historians such as Karl Jaccoby argue that these conservationist ideas were racially motivated: “The only way you can come in and say ‘We [the state] need to manage this space and manage the environment,’ is you have to in some ways present the current managers of it the native peoples as incompetent.” Protection of these lands from those who lived there resulted in the case of Yosemite Valley with the forced labor of indigenous people as workers in tourist attractions across the park. An article written by Hunter Oatman-Stanford discusses how over time Native Americans have been erased from U.S National Parks, for example, following the immediate usage of Natives worked at Yosemite’s hotels, concession businesses, and selling merchandise to tourists as they walked through the now paved roads of the park.

Although the history of national parks remains disturbing and unveils a plethora of ethical questions concerning the education available at these tourist hot spots about the individuals who owned this land before. It also begs the question of what individual obligations are to preserving the culture of such lands and whether visiting is an ethical decision, or if understanding the past of these coveted locations is enough to free oneself from guilt. Hunter Oatman-Stanford said it best, “Uninhabited wilderness had to be created before it could be preserved.” Understanding this concept of a fabricated wilderness created for only a sector of the American people will be critical as we move forward and advocate for more comprehensive knowledge about the true history of our national parks.

From the Field to the Podium, Appropriating Native American Culture

An image of a protest outside a Washington Redskins football game.

A stereotypical Native American profile—skin the color of cherry oak, braid twisting over his right shoulder, pensive expression, large nose, and feathers in his hair—is branded onto helmets, the stadium’s field, banners, hats, shirts, couches, shot glasses, rugs, slippers, and robes. You name it, and the Washington Redskins sell it as the football team’s merchandise.

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In Canada, Apologizing for Forced Adoption

A school photo from a Canadian residential school.

For decades in the 20th century, the US, Canada, and Australia took thousands of indigenous children from their families and either put them in residential schools or found non-indigenous adoptive parents for them. These practices ended in the 1970s, but only now are governments in Canada and Australia trying to make amends. Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard apologized in 2013, while the government of Manitoba apologized for forced adoptions in 2015.  At the beginning of this month, the Canadian government agreed to pay reparations to victims of the “Sixties Scoop”—the forced adoption of indigenous children in the 1960s and 70s. 750 million Canadian dollars will be paid out in legal settlements.  

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The Demagoguery of Shamanism in Latin America

It’s no secret that indigenous populations in Latin American countries have suffered all sorts of abuses ever since Columbus’ arrival to the so-called “New World” 500 years ago. It is undeniably true that there is the ethical obligation of bringing social justice to these peoples, and that ever since independence from the Spanish Crown in the 19th Century, criollo governments have failed to do so.

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A Clash of Cultures Atop New Zealand’s Mount Taranaki

A New Zealand Playboy model and popular Instagrammer is in hot water for offending her own country earlier this month. 25-year-old Jaylene Cook recently posted a controversial picture on her personal Instagram page, capturing her in a precarious position: standing nude atop New Zealand’s Mount Taranaki. While many of her Instagram followers seemed to enjoy her picture, locals did not.

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