>> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 3 p.m. eastern watch the second part of the calvin coolidge centennial conference marking the centennial of the thirtieth president's ascension to the white house. at 9:30 eastern on the presidency, former white house photographer for presidents ronald reagan and barack obama talks about the day-to-day workings of the presidency including the history making moment he witnessed, exploring the american story, watch american history tv saturdays on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime, c-span.org/history. .. our third and final panel will examine challenges to the public park ideal and we are honored to have, as our moderator allegra happy haines, who is the executive director of denver

parks and recreation. she was born in denver, traveled east she was born in denver, traveled east and found yourself back home where she has worked for the mayors and served on the city council as president. in addition to a public post, shift work through several years as a facility with the national civic league and she was a founding board member of colorado black women for political action, and my high youth corps your copy helpdesk kick o off kickoff olmsted 200 on april 26, 2021. olmsted's 199th birthday and you can see her in action on our youtube channel if you want to look at her a year ago but we are delighted to have her today and she will moderate this final panel. >> thank you so much, dede. and the low. hello. i think it's afternoon already. everyone.noon,

i'm excited to be a part of this final panel, and is going to be a little shift in what we will be doing in this panel this afternoon and hope you will find fascinating and in some ways i think sam set us up for this with some of his challenging questions right at the end about where to, where do we go from here as we engage in this exploration of this history of these phenomenal individuals named olmsted that i'll start with a quick story about how i came to this in first place. i hope you don't mind, dede, so dede asked me because we have some homestead and some homestead inspired parts in denver to participate in the celebration, the anniversary celebration. and right at the same time we had some community gatherings about one of our parks in denver

where one of, the word was getting around the community was that olmsted wasn't as great as he said they were and that they were, in fact, involved in these very, very racist endeavors. ce. i raised that issue with deedee because it disturbs me. i mean, i came to the to understanding parks in the olmstead tradition, like everyone else with a sense of honor and admiration. and i was horrified if if these rumors were true. and as with all rumors, there's always a kernel of truth. but we, the great response and i thank you didn't and the organization for me in engaging in this conversation was let's explore i don't want to give you the answers.

let's talk about what it means to individuals from multicultural backgrounds today as we move forward. and so i have accepted this as an exploration of where we go in the future and how we learn from the past, from the history to guide us in in that in that endeavor. and part of that history in denver. what what underscored that exchange was that when the olmstead kids were having an inflow once on our early park development in denver was at a time when the ku klux klan had had complete control of our city. and so in some ways, it was guilt by association and but it also represented in denver the movement to build parks in the city, beautiful movement was it

you know this the the founding fathers, shall i say. and it was ralph talked about the prerogatives of wealth and influence and that the very notion of olmsted parks was not that, but that it was equitable. yet the people in cities around the country who were who were doing their own version of olmsted parks were in fact representatives of the prerogatives of wealth and influence. and so we have this very mixed bag. and i like to say, like the founding of our country, the the complexities and the paradoxes of our history and the history of olmstead designs and parks and ideas is also equally complex, especially when you think about the relation ships. achim talked about the relationships, the marriage relationship and and like all

relationships they are also complex and multifaceted added. and so you're going to be hearing from this panel a real focus on people. the the we that is that the olmsted envisioned. did i turn that off i don't want to touch it. you should never get me near any technology. what the olmsted envisioned the wi the all the people for all is a very mixed bag as as we move forward as in designing and creating our park system both at at a national and a state and even at the local level. so who is involved and so we have a panel of individuals who are really going to reflect in in really powerful ways about the the relationship of people to this movement and to where we go into the future.

ralph talked about this sense of freedom, that what that the olmsted inspired parks would would create for us. and yet one of those paradox is, is that some people don't feel get that sense of freedom. and in fact, one of the primary goals in my department today still is getting african-american, young, african american and young latino individuals into our parks, into our mountain parks system. we talk about feeling welcome and we're having a conversation about changing that idea of welcome because welcome assumes that it's belongs to someone else and that you're you're being welcomed to a space that's not really yours. and so part of that challenge that we're going to be facing and that these individuals are going to be talking about, is that very

notion of sort of ownership in who we really is when we're talking about equitable access to our park system and reimagining an inclusive system, meet reimagining and thinking differently about the the ideas of ownership in those relationships and and exploring where we have been in even in this conservation movement, where people still look at folks that look like me and wonder how we got into to conservation as though this is a natural something that we should naturally be engaging. so we're going to be addressing some really hard questions here that hopefully will help us in the exploration of history because we don't want to be doomed to repeat it. we want to build on what we have learned. so let me tell you a little bit about the people who are going

to be sharing these ideas today. i'm going to introduce all of them and then they'll come up each individually. first, philip burnham, who is the author of indian country god's country native america sons and national parks and he is going to bring a very, very personal perspective, having lived and worked and taught on the rose at the rosebud indian reservation and really exploring this idea of national parks, where everybody from the perspective of individual jewels who lived on this land and and are now in places designated just for them. so, again, one of those those paradoxes and so we look forward to hearing phil's perspective and currently i asked him last night, currently working on.

four on work about the the impact of indian boarding schools on many of the indigenous people today. so a very, very, you know the legacies of of a of oppression of our past at the same time, these marvelous new ideas about our national park system. secondly, we have priscilla solis ybarra to who is the associate professor in the department of english at the university of northern texas. and we're going to hear really, priscilla is going to turn us this whole conversation upside down and on its head. i think she gave us a a little bit of of a clue earlier today about really challenging our basic premises, about parks and national parks and access. and even this notion of

ownership. and so we're going to be looking forward to that. and finally, shelton johnson national park ranger and educate educator extraordinaire who has landed in yosemite national park and just refuses to go away. is also the author of glory land, a really interested thing perspective about national parks and the and the dilemmas that many of us people of color in this country face when we celebrate, on one hand, this marvelous invention of national parks in these beautiful places. and yet the prices that some of us paid for for them to even exist. and what in those tensions all the time so wonderful exploration of that in his his

book of glory land. but he's going to be bringing a very, very person sort of perspective about what it means to be in these places that he is now the steward and helps guide the rest of us in that notion of stewardship. so i leave you finally with this, and it is about that notion of stewardship, about that collective responsibility we now have. we inherit, we pick up the legacies of the homestead. we continue the legacy. and in denver, we start every meeting and every event with a what we call a land acknowledgment. i i'd say it's actually a people acknowledgment and a hiss and a and an acknowledgment of our history. but we moving forward, i think we'll hear from these folks today about what we should shape our future stewardship of public lands as we move forward.

so let us start in a first. first up is philip. on my thanks to the national association of olmsted parks parks for inviting me to talk today. i guess this is my time to sing for my dinner, so to speak. last night's dinner. i'm not going to be singing, but i am going to tell you a story. i don't have any pictures, so i'm going to ask you to follow the story in your mind's eye because it unravels over quite a substantial period of time. the title of the story is the badlands, a national park service parable, a landscape is a sculpted point of view, a framed perspective of space. it is in the hands of people like frederick law, olmstead,

senior and junior, a place groomed with exception care. we tend to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image focus in time and space. look over there. isn't that a beautiful view? some landscapes, however, can only be understood after the passage of decades, perhaps centuries. our national parkland scapes have been pulled from the land, almost like found monuments through forces that are partly geological and environmental, partly political, and more often than we like to think, sharpened on the cutting edge of cultural conflict. but if you ever visit the south dakota badly ends, you won't soon forget them. a stunning panorama of balding, eroded formations that have been described without doing them full justice as lunar or other

worldly before the badlands were ever a tourist destination, and however they were a richly inhabited ecosystem. one trapper in the 1880s called him, and i quote, the greatest game country that i ever saw. but the era area was heavily hunted in subsequent years by farmers, ranchers, tribal people, even the federal government, the u.s., biological survey exterminated coyotes and wolves as part of their predator control program. buffalo, black and grizzly bear and lope. elk and deer were killed and chased from the region by local and market hunters. what had been a teeming, mixed grassland crossed by badly end draws and cutaways was transformed within half a century into the equivalent of a final desert. the government, though, had

visions of something bigger and better. a federal report from 1919. this is three years after the park service organic act noted that, quote, stocking the entire bad land and the pine ridge indian forests with game and using all the bad land and indian forests for park and game purposes would become an object enthusiast critically sought by the general public. it's worth thinking about for a moment what the writer meant by the general public at the outset america's parks were envisioned to compete with a grand monuments of europe early national park legislation offered the prospect of public playground sounds and wonderlands whose stewardship and ownership would be jointly held by the american people. the easiest way to obtain or reserve such lands was to show they were unfit for economic

development. the lands in question were to be of incomparable inspiration. priceless, really, but also worthless from the viewpoint of making money through private investment. the only industry that stood to profit was the western railroads, and only then by bringing visitors to the newly created parks. the new parks like yellowstone and yosemite, had poorer cousins scattered across the west in the form of indian reservations. reservations were generally regarded as economically marginal or next to worthless, in the parlance of the interior department, as a result, indian land lands were obvious. candidates for inclusion in the parks because they were regarded as unproductive and already under the hand of federal trustees. here, the badlands of south

dakota were themselves part of the great sioux reservation and established four years before yellowstone national park was created in 1889. a government commissioned strong arm, the lakota sioux and to selling 9 million acres of their land, including the badlands, at which point they became part of the public domain. in 1922, the first congressional bill was introduced to create an entity called wonderland national park in the western reaches of south dakota, not many settlers may have wanted to live in the badlands anymore, but someone was betting that people would want to come and marvel at their mysterious beauty. a paradox about the national park service is worth noting here. it's a conservation action bureau charged with a mission to expand in other words, entrusted with protecting public land. the nps also aims to acquire it

through donation purchase, exchange and eminent domain. when you think about it, such an expansive agenda was likely to create hard feelings sooner or later in indian country, our parks are natural, of course, but they're also humanly shaped, stocked with large ungulates, blessed with old railroad hotels, with magnificent views and promoted to represent a time of untamed wilderness. the parks became in a few decades, the equivalent of unspoiled islands expanses where tourists could camp, hike and fish with the sense of re inhabiting a prehistoric past. but there was a problem to tourists weren't the first ones in the so-called wilderness and the parkland had been used and managed by human beings to one degree or another for

generations and even centuries, with business boosters at its back, congress authorizes in 1929 the establishment of badlands national monument, a lesser designation than a national park to a maximum of 15,000 acres. seven years later, in the midst of the great depression, congress authorized monument boundaries to extend to five times their original area by including the addition of lands declared sub marginal or unproductive. the expansion brought the monument to the doorstep of the pine ridge indian reservation home of the oglala lakota sioux. at that point, thanks to a far away war, the park service wasn't finished with the badlands in 1942. washington the war department that is announced, plans to confiscate a chunk of the oglala

reservation adjacent to the monument 43 miles long by 12 miles wide. think of that 43 miles by 12 miles, roughly 350,000 acres to create the pine ridge aerial gunnery range. the land was to be used for high flying target practice. this area is rough, worthless land, wrote south dakota congressman francis case, owned for the most part by the government in trust for the pine ridge indians and could be had on a long term lease for a small amount. in fact, there were 125 indian families on the proposed gunnery range lands, not to mention several day schools. churches and cemeteries. scores of other families used the land for subsistence or leased it to outsiders for cash income. the wedge of rangeland was equal in size to a good sized western

county, about half the size of rhode island. the war department offered the oglala sioux $0.01 per acre per year to lease tribally owned lands within this gunnery range area. the going rate according to the interior secretary, was between seven and a half and $0.25. they were offered, one said the tribe eventually settled because it was a time of national emergency. the tribe eventually settled for $0.03 an acre. some of the land was owned outright by individuals indian and non-indian, who were given 30 days notice to move all possession and vacate their homes through eminent domain. they were paid an average of $2.85 per acre, not much more than the going rate for one day's manual labor. permanent improvements left behind houses, barns, corrals largely went uncompensated.

little did any of the oglala sioux suspect gathering up their possessions in the act of being evicted. that one day a large part of the gunnery range would be can't become a part of badlands national park, a place where people would come from thousands of miles away to camp like the lowlands and roar through the gullies in pricey off road vehicles. 20 years and two and two wars pass, at which point the air force declared surplus almost 300,000 acres in 1963. that year, a park service report discussed how local poverty might be addressed through road improvements and tourist facilities. a dance center, a motel, a picnic center, craft sales, all in reservation communities. it rent. it even recommended an authentic sioux indian village with real

teepees, a point that had to raise eyebrows among the oglala in an area where adequate housing was barely obtainable, the tribe reluctant to hand over control of any treaty land to an outside authority, resisted so the bureau of indian affairs and the park service sister agencies in the interior department joined forces to devise a plan that would make part of pine ridge a tourist attraction, badlands national monument was to annex a south unit, consisting of some 130,000 acres of the old gunnery range and additional lands. more than doubling the monument size. 76,000 of those acres would revert to the oglala sioux tribe, which would provide an easement compatible with park administration. the park service then wouldn't have to buy the land at all.

it would only need to. coleman, agent with the tribe. there was no need for interior to own any acreage when it could zone. it just as effectively. again, the tribe resisted, but if the oglala wouldn't make the the exchange counter, the senate committee on interior affairs, the remaining free range land, they said, will be subject to disposal under surplus property procedures. in other words, if the tribal council didn't agree, there was no hope of regaining most of the gunnery range lands once controlled by the oglala. in 1968, congress passed public law 9468, approving the annexation as a way to pressure the tribe and formalize its intention to establish a badlands national park. the badlands, at least as a park service landscape, were still growing.

it took seven more years before the tribal council consented. a memorandum of agreement was signed by the park service and the tribe in. 1976, and two years later, badlands national park was born in 78, so it was that the south unit, newly created there already was. what was there before became the north unit was to become, if not an emerald necklace in the olmstead manner. hopefully a native jewel of the oglala prairie, the truth was more sobering, however, in exchange for allowing the park service onto the reservation, the oglala were merely returned land. they had been forced to surrender in a national emergency. time hasn't been kind to the south unit since i reported on the badlands. in a book about the national parks 20 years ago.

washington has done little to live up to its written promises. training of oglala personnel has been haphazard, if not nonexistent. ordinance mitigation of the old bombing range lands is still unfinished. proposed studies to assess whether bison should be introduced into the south unit have been shelved. signage and infrastructure to push traffic away from the reservation and a small visitor center in a converted trailer is all that visitors will find. the tribe has been denied first right of refusal for park concessions. and while it's true that oglala people were promised all jobs in the south unit, there have never been more than a handful at any given time. the conditions or clauses of the memorandum were as carefully crafted to washington's advantage as were those of congressional treaties a century

before. finally, the tribe has political problems of its own powerful ranching interests have prevented the oglala council from endorsing the idea of making the south unit a tribal national park. a long held dream of many to be administered in dependently from pine ridge, many on the reservation acknowledge the tribal government is in need of reform, but without appropriations. the vision of an oglala oglala scenic byway connecting the badlands to the black hills and bringing some prosperity in its wake is, for now, a hollow wish still through such organizations as the thunder valley community development corporation, the oglala continue to work for meaningful change and advocate for it, such as the restoration of bison to the south unit for all of the sun, wind and rain have done to shape them.

the badlands are still an unfinished piece of work in the best sense of frederick olmstead, senior vision a landscape is a place the integrates natural beauty and human use in a way that benefits and supports not only those who come to camp and hike and admire the sites, but also the communities who have lived there for generations. if only it were so today in the badlands. thank you. when i started this year, your soi priscilla solis ybarra to

you had the marikina solis, ibarra encarnacion, pena, ibarra and priscilla solis ibarra, the daughter of maria, acting as a lizzie borden in corazon pena. ibarra i come to you from denton, texas, which is north of dallas. my mother was an immigrant to the united states, and my father is a second generation mexican-american in who was a migrant farm worker. my personal land acknowledgment is to share with you that i travel here today from the lands of the wichita and caddo affiliated tribes. and as i mentioned, the town where i live and where i teach at the university of north texas is called denton, named after john b denton, who committed genocide against indigenous peoples and against the wichita caddo, comanche and apache peoples in that area in the 19th

century. that was also the time when the texas rangers were committing violence against my people, mexican-american people, as well as against indigenous peoples. i'm very grateful to be here. thank you for the invitation to to join you today. i believe these moments, as i mentioned earlier, are very important moments to reflect on what has come before and you know what? what we can do in the future. so let me get my present tation up here. okay. so thank you also to happy. i was going to say for that wonderful introduction of the panel and the way you can contextualize what we're doing on this last panel and what has come before.

oh, okay. so i feel like i was invited here to offer a perspective of, you know, what we've been talking about and in the context of racial justice, which happy offered in her overview and the introduction. i've also been working for some years now on another american conservation legacy, which is the aldo and estella leopold family legacy. and i'm currently writing a book called in light of los lunas, mexican american womanhood, abolition and abundance and that book is to really offer the estella leopold old part of the story of that leopold legacy, as well as the five children who were all mexican american, like their mother, who was from mexico and who all became

environment scientists. three of them were inducted to the national science. what is that called? national academy of science. thank you. how could i get that wrong when i'm here in d.c.? national academy of sciences. and four of them were professors at research universities. so this is, to me, a story a mexican-american leading family of american conservation. and that's not a hidden story, but it's certainly not very well known. so i've been working on that, but i'm approaching it through a kind of braided narrative style that is somewhat memoir, is stick, and it's a story about my mother and about estella leopold and some about myself. so what i'm going to share with you today is just like a brief and very condensed excerpt of part of that manuscript that's in process.

ever since at least 2006. i have been putting myself through a process of learning from native and indigenous scholars, writing on the topics of climate change. extractivism settler colonialism and environmental issues. by the summer of 2021, i felt both a personal and intellectual investment in finding my place as a chicana feminist in solidarity with indigenous led actions to protect the earth. so when an opportunity came to join a water walk, i went for a water walk is an extended ajiboye led tradition honoring waters life sustaining gift. the first water walk took place in 2003, led by josephine mondawmin, an ojibway grandmother. joseph bean was asked, what will you do for the water? after reflecting on the

question, she felt moved to. gather a group of women and start to walk the shorelines of lake superior. they ended up walking around the entire lake and the walk was born. entually, grandmother mondawmin walked to the shorelines of all the great lakes all together, some 17,000 miles before mondawmin died in 2019. she passed the ceremony on to other leaders. sharon and day, an ojibwe artist, writer and organizer based in minneapolis, continues the walk ceremony. she has walked nearly 10,000 miles of river. it was her walk that i joined on july 23rd,. 20, 21 day. leads, walks along the length of rivers. she starts with the ceremony at headwaters of a river. she, her fellow water walkers, take turns hand carrying a

copper pail filled with the river's headwaters. they walk from the headwaters to the mouth of the river, where another ceremony is held to reunite the waters. everyone sings and, prays and speaks to the water. their path follows the banks of the river and they camp along the way. the water walk falls into a multiplicity of rhythms. the walkers who carry the water set. the central rhythm. the day begins with the gathering of all the walkers and opening ceremony where walkers set their intentions for the day. then the first walker carries the water for about a mile. the group moves ang as a caravan. the carrier makes a commitment when accepti the water, uttering the phrase and god is . you get to be on j. on her turn is complete, the water carrier passes the copper pailo e next woman in the

day's rotation and offers the same ceremonial utterance,hi means i do it for the water in ojibwe from the beginning of the day to the final ceremony, the water never stops moving, flowing like the river, and we move along with it. according to each walkers pace. it's an audacious thing to carry water by hand over hundreds of miles. walkers, transit along waterways, paths and logging. roads busy with summer traffic. the walk that i joined was a line three walk, which was tracing the line of the line three enbridge pipeline. the line three walk across the scars dug into the soil, injuries inflicted to install the pipe sections and aching site. the many vehicles of varying tonnage that support pipe line construction whizzed past us, blowing written to our faces, our hair into our eyes, road and motor heat across our bodies and

hundred degree weather. we held steady. the water guide and strengthened us even as we carried it, cherished it, saying to it and chanted as we walked upon my arrival to the walk. sharon stayed close to me for a while, discussing some past walks, telling me about her theater group for youth in minneapolis, and i mostly listened. at a certain point, she opened a space for me to reveal where i stood in terms of this kind of ceremony. she shared that newcomers sometimes worry that water carrying and singing is perhaps ineffective in the face of the large scale, destructive force of oil companies. i told her directly, i hold a steady belief that the water is absolutely stronger than the oil companies. i didn't know. i felt so strongly until i said it to her out loud. upon reflection, the ceremony allows for such declarations and commitments to take root.

i also learned from sharon and eventually from the other women too, that from the walk blossoms a community each walker with distinct talents and commitments hailing from diverse parts of the continent. i didn't know it then, but i was in the process of a new kinship becoming part of a ceremony. as i reflect on my experience on the line three water walk, i'm deeply grateful for the community that welcomed me. i'm also grateful that the walk offered an important ontological lesson. my deepest experience of the walk was my nearly absolute removal from chronological time. the roughly 28 hours for which i joined the walk opened up into multiple dimensions where it defies my irrational mind to fathom how so much learning, connection and energy fit into a comparatively minuscule span of time.

the constant repetition of the cycle, the rotation, the walk held me aloft in its rhythm. i felt it as a sense of suspension, the way you feel when floating on on your back in calm waters. i was focused on the present moment, a kind of moving meditation. this suspend in may seems subtle, but it's a subversive sensibility to cultivate. the water walks the d water walks developing the participants and attunement to cyclical time, to community, to commons, if you will. in contrast to the dominant values of the late capitalist neoliberal contacts that we usually inhabit in the united states, the space of linearity, isolation of accumulation. water walks enact the values of the comments and for many in the environmental community that values of the comments are understood and relation to all the leopolds land ethic, quote

right when it tends to preserve the integrity stability and beauty of biotic community and it's wrong when it does otherwise, when it tends otherwise better lamentably, leopold did not factor on going and indigenous ethics are present into his vision of the u.s. when he wrote a sand county almanac pick another quotete frm his essay the land ethic, leopold says quote there is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land into the animals le animals and plants which grow upon it, and quote soon after, leopold observes that the public in the inset of the southwest in pre-columbian times but they happen not tost be equipped with range livestock their civilization expired but not because of the lamp expired, in court. all of the second quote includes a perfunctory recognition of the pueblo care for the land in both statements leopold erases centers of indigenous knowledge, practice and ongoing presence.

that passive structure of the statement their civilization expired is both inaccurate andth avoid confronting the violent committed against indigenous nations by colonizers. in her 2015 book, trace, memory, race, history of the american landscape, quote, leopolds call for an extension of ethics to labor relations seem to express the sense of responsibility and reciprocity that get embraced by the country but embedded in many indigenous people's traditions of experience, the land is fully inhabited, intimate with the immediate presence. following the logics of sequence in linearity leopold considers only the history of western approaches to land as relevant to the story he tells and relegates indigenous knowledge and practices to the distant past. he proposes his land ethic as an

innovation. he explained that the first ethics dealt with relation between individuals and that later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. beforehand accumulation was the land is the next logical step in the development of ethics. what he calls the ethical sequence peer however, did although leopold consider me? the ethical relations between individuals as well as between individuals and society were far from settled in 1948, or today. lauret observes in a quote so concerned with america's' past, the only reference to slavery, to human beings of property was about ancientan greece. leopold never reliance onn a history that reinforces white supremacy in the logics of sequence linearity and

accumulation get in the way of his ambitions for the land ethic. even leopold critiques of capitalism and consumerism in his call for advanced ethics, they were accurate but still too narrow in the way he overlooked the systems as extensions of enslavement and colonization. those very dynamics of enslavement and colonization of what animate today's multi cost and coalition based visions of abolition feminism and indigenous land restoration movements. abolition feminism and indigenous land restoration organized against the logics of enclosure, incarceration, and the commodification of bodies in the land. today's environmentalism becomes most effective when at least locating itself along a spectrum with or especially by working alongside abolition feminism and land restoration. the more clearly one can see the connections twin systems ofem

oppression, the less likely it is that one will get sucked into fighting under the ineffective paradigm of single issue causes. although leopold did not invent the land ethic but he did forward one vision of land ethic. he wrote the land ethic after living for years in arizona and new mexico sharing life m with s mexican-american wife and children, visiting his mexican-americanla in-laws homes and sheep ranchers, and he and his family were storing an old dysfunctional farm in wisconsin into a beautiful prairie and pine forest. these are all lands soaked by generations ofon colonial violee yet he was still able to elicit the connection. how closely did he listen to what the land was saying? this speaks not o only to leopold's individual avoidance of colonial history but it's also telling other social and culturalxt context that updated his blindness. how many generations of erasure

helped to set the conditions for leopold and so many others to sound an urgent o call on behalf of the environment without also calling just as urgency, urgently for abolition and land back? on my first day of the watermark i watched the light shift from the gentle donning of day to the clarity of morning admin to the intensity of mid-day heat once our shadows started going longer on the pavement the heat let up a little andnd shared letters tt we were to bring the ceremony to a close with a final circle. the details of the closing ceremony belong to that place in time and in the hearts of those gathered and shared. i felt overwhelmed with gratitude. it rained overnight pulling things off for the next days walk, and relieving that summers ceiling of drought just a little bit. i didn't stay long because i had

commitments to get back to in wisconsin. i carried the water twice a before departing the walk. it was very difficult for me to leave. i said goodbye to sharon before her next turn to carry the water i held back tears were trying to express to her what the watermark meant to me, and i promised to stay in touch. after say goodbye to everyone else, i slowly started driving back to wisconsin but had to stop my car one more time period as i watched sharon tearing the water, ans flock of white pelics soared above her following her past.s i took a few photos. this is one of them. then pulled myself away. i was leaving with a whole new part of my heart opened to a beautiful community and ceremony. i now know that powerful forces regularly gather to honor the water and fight for the land, and that knowledge offers me a degree of comfort and strength.

i ask you to consider the ways that conventional american environmentalism to easily isolate its ethical concerns for the land from efforts to dismantle white supremacy. this ease of isolation reveals of violence at the core of environmentalism that may prove difficult to eradicate. the watermark offers just one example of how to operate otherwise. forging solidaritys across typical divides can be one way to dream new worlds, to create new ways of being built on ceremony and reciprocity. and before eight and i would just like to recognize also that my partner, chas, who is here with me is also a water walker and i would like to thank her for being here with me today. thank you very much. [applause]

>> our closer. [laughter] >> no pressure. >> hello. welcome. before i began, and i want to thank the organizers for having me here and bring me here. it's aner honor to be here. it's's a pleasure to speak to ts group. my name is shelton johnson, i've been a national park ranger since 1987. i've worked in national parks since 1984 but i was born and raised in detroit, michigan. and i had no childhood national park visit and as a result felt somehow impoverished by the

absence of that particular type of inhabiting of the landscat inspires one. and then at some point i realized that i'm haunted by a family, as a o family that hauns me goes by the name of olmsted. and must credit as for keeping the spirit of my connection and affinity to the national world alive. and it did not realize this until i received the invitation to speak here, because i have not been conscious of that. what i'm primarily known for his bring about the history of african-american soldiers come the buffalo soldiers who served in yosemite and sequoia national park in 1899, 1903 in 1904 pick. the obsession by obsession my personal connection with the history let me -- that's called dramatic pause. i'll do that again in case you missed it. led me -- 20 before my buffalo soldier presentation for the national park foundation and at

that point was that aware of the fact that dayton duncan was the honorary chair of the national park foundation. and dayton duncan is ken burns best friend so essentially i was performing my presentation for the right of the national parks america's best idea. and afterwards he said s somethg alongel the lines of what you shared with this group we might be able to get that into the filter i think that has a place in it. and then they begin to annoy him over time by calling him at your site is still there? if you still going to happen? to make t a long story short, which i'm loath to do because i love epic poems, i especially homer and virgil, the upanishads. my background actually is classical music and literature father put it, unemployment. [laughter] my father put it that way because my dad served in the infantry in korea after he was a

combat veteran. he served in the air force in vietnam, and my brother served in the navy in operation iraqi i come from a military family so that's one of the reasons why military history speaks to me, because it's in my blood, it's in my bones and it's a fire that lights the night that no one else can see but me. and so when the buffalo soldier story found me, i didn't discover it, it found me, i'm the third interpretive writer to tell the story of african-american soldiers serving in yosemite and supported in 1899, 1903 in 1904 fully conducted before the creation of the national park service there were african-americans serving at some of the first park rangers in the world. them only around a dozen national parks on planet earth at that time around 1900 and it just boggled my mind and to detroit by the way it is illegal to say boggled if you're african-american. but it boggled my mind that people who look like me were in

a position of protecting the second and third oldest national parks in the united states. so they're protecting the mariposa grove of giant sequoia which was initially under the state grant and protecting yosemite valley. when they were there, the mariposa grove still belong to the state of california. yosemite valley still belong to the state of california. second looked into the valley but very rarely with eight in the valley itself but they were there in yosemite. so when i meet african-americans that seek to me why would i go to a national park course that's not a black thing, not something that we duplicate do y to them actually people who look like you were some of the first protectors of national park anywhere in the world. then there is a pause, and that's a pause of absolute astonishment because they were not and we were not told as a people that we had a role in the national park movement because it is a movement just like essentially the civil rights is

a movement, and movement i think of ways. when he think of ways i think of water and you at the fee and we've been writing that wave that shockwave have changed since the beginning of the republic. but it moves so slowly, that wave, sometimes it goes back on itself and so when what i d thinking about my connection via the olmsted's to yosemite, i realize they had always been there. i a renter today because my father served in germany and i was there with him with my mom and my brother in germany and there was a family trip to a sister park to yosemite and it is high in the bavarian alps. is also a trip to the black forest what i'm saying is if not happened i would not be here speaking to you right now because i would never have become ase park ranger at the sd was planted and when the seed is planted in the child's mind can think ofho it this way when you were five years old how many of you remember being five years old course how many of you

remember as if it were yesterday? i like you right off. those experiences don't just go through the visual aspect if we are as human being but they don't just build an auditory sense what we're hearing. it just comes to us, it goes within us and it stays there like a seed that's been planning that will take it's time to sprout, to flour, to blossom and to become who you were meant to be. i had no choice but to become a park ranger. it was not destiny but it was preordained because that five years of age you are like this when you see something new. and by a the way when you're fie years of age everything you are think of something new. and get this look of wonder that's like this. even if some is just handing you glasses you go -- glasses. this mayes not seem miraculous t through the eyes of a child who's never seen a pair of glasses before, it is a miracle. the way it is changing, that is a miracle.

when you put a child like that any child into a grove of giant sequoia at the edge of the grand canyon by moonlight, by the river to watch an eruption of old faithful it is a transformed experience that will get into the cellular structure of the body, thermite and the spirit and it will never forget. that's what happened to me. berchtesgaden became part of who i am at the black forest became part of who i am and that is why i became a park ranger that's why when the buffalo revealed itself to be it had that visceral emotional psychological connection. but that was before i realized that there was this connection to the olmsted spirit i arrived in yosemite and, therefore, yosemite arrived in meat, and i was overwhelmed by the beauty of yosemite. i think people who are not overwhelmed by the beauty of yosemite should seek medical care. [laughter] ii remember being on the bus wih

woman that said it's not all that, it's that all that and i was thinking how sad? thatha she thinks that this is t all that because yosemite is all that and more. should have it on the center yosemite is all that and more. because the thing that i realized, when i walk out from the valley visitor center i've walked out into a painting by thomas cole or thomasville or bierstadt. when i first saw the artwork i thought oh, the romantic periods which is exaggerating this and sometimes bierstadt had a tendency to move things around that were made out of granite because it looked looe dramatic and light and shadows and all that when i was in yosemite i walked out after closing the visitor center into a abuse debt paid to come into a thomasville painting and i realized they are not romantic painters they are realists. this is really happening. when you seein horsetail falls n the springtime lit up by the last light of the setting sun and decrease what is called the

fire fall but it is horsetail fault illumined by that light, you realize you are in an incredible place where i put it this way, where the extraordinary is ordinary, and rangers didn't like that one thing i think they're walking along oh, my god, there's a beer for yes, there's a bear. because we see them all the time. it's like oh, my god, it's a double rainbow. yes, it's a double rainbow. human beings can get used to just about any environment, and i'm saying this to you because reading and rereading the olmsted report reminded me of the value of national parks, the power of national parks, and the democracy that is implicit in the foundation of national parks. i never thought to myself it would read the phrase for the benefit and enjoyment of people that i was part of the people because i recognized when thomas jeffersonwe wrote we the peoplee was referring to land owning your new american owners of

property free of debt. he was not referring to limiter he was not referring to native americans that he was not referring to people of color. he was referring to the men that were in the room with him. and when you first read that you think that's terrible. oh, it'sstart thinking a good thing he was so vague. [laughter] or when i had a conversation with s ken burns about this ande said, something along the lines of if they have spelled out what they meant, we would be screwed. [laughter] and it's the best way i think the cloaked or used as a best way to describe it because now we can reinvent what those words need to weaken we read what those words and get a different connotation come atom different denotation to it mean something different for us to take just a special parts today will have a different meaning tomorrow. evolved if all through til ideas evolved through time, and those ideas that shape us are ideas that we achieved in turn

soth that's a very powerful thig and i'me thinking of this and communicate this to you because i'm still astonished by the fact thatng i'm wearing his uniform, that i do ranger because i was raised in detroit and would have raised in detroit i live next door to the parents of norman whitfield or norman whitfield songwriting in the hall think he wrote poppa was a balding stinker i hurt it to the great fight that he wrote music e supremes and dianah ross and oh yeah, marvin gaye. and all i knew that he was he had a red jaguar so all i was to get some rest i don't know what this meant is prolific but whatever it is i'm going to be doing that. it didn't work out my background i get is music and poetry but that is the mill you, that is a landscape that is the atmosphere with which i was raised and the only reason i'm here is i hold onto those memories of germany and it wasas easier to do that. .. nts were black indians from oklahoma.

my grandfather again that i mentioned this i just love talk about my grandfather he's from enola, a farming community and he's african and cherokee. my grandmother maternal is from mcallister and mcallister is the second largest town in the choctaw nation. but as far as i know, she's african and cherokee as well. my father's side of the family is african and seminole. so i always think about the fact that i have relations who were on >> relations on the trail of tears who survived because that's the only reason why the cherokee would be in oklahoma, i have relatives, relations that fought the u.s. army to a standstill and technically speaking, they never really lost. the government realized we keep sending troops to florida, but they never make it out and then we send more troops and they didn't make it out and suddenly, we better just stop this particular protocol here and that gives you a little bit of attitude as well. so, that's part of my background and so when i started telling the story of buffalo soldiers, i realized if

the characters i portrayed was african and indian that would make had a greater story and a story that's more true because there is a complexity to all of us that usually we do not acknowledge. we just have a tendency to say, look, there's a black guy, a hispanic person, a native person, but we're so much richer than that. and when we look at the human de-- genome study, less than -- we're a race of identical twins. why shouldn't this be on the page of every newspaper, we're basically the same family, why? because it didn't work that way. you see the history of the underpinnings, and i'm arriving in yosemite and reading the

report. the first thing if i could go back in time and hand the report to martin luther king when he was writing the letter from a birmingham jail. why? because he never made it 0 a national park. there's a story of him potentially invited to go to a national park in canada and it never happened because the superintendent at the park in canada there are many guests to that particular park to the deep south and an issue whether there might be a slight, a racial slur of some kind and could not guarantee there wouldn't be impropriety that would take place and that was never issued. and ironically his home is part of a national park system. there's all of these varaarees with history and when i was

reading the book, it was about the civil war and then about emancipation or the park idea and i realized, wait a minute, you've got a president in a divisive war in the 1860's, abraham lincoln. president or presidents in the 1960's in a divisive war, vietnam, where my father served and you have the passions of the wilderness act in the '60s, and the yosemite in the 1860's, and you can't talk about america without talking about race and space and you can't talk about america from anyplace else, and i think our epic poem should be based op lewis and clark, and that's when things started going bad or going good because it depends on your perspective, on your point of view, but what fascinated me about lewis and

clark, his man servant was with him and the indigenous people, he had a facility with language. part of being african in the new world as the ability to adapt quickly or you will die and you had to make quick adjustments and that's why my father left south carolina, and joined the army and my father found is safer to be in korea in the infantry than the fullness of his humanity in spartansburg, south carolina. and a notion that war would be safer than just being a citizen claiming your rights of citizenship. and to give you an example of this, how things could change and i wished my father had lived long enough to see this. a few years ago i got a call from the spartanburg library system and picked my novel

glory land and took me to my great grandfather's home i had no idea where it was, with are my father was raised and found out my great grandfather ran a school for the blind in the late 1800's outside of spartanburg, south carolina. the first state to secede from the union. and most history is forgotten, most history is lost and that's profound in and of itself. that most of us right here and everyone that we know, that in terms of the historic record will be lost and that's the reason why i've spent so much time and effort and sweat equity bringing this history of buffalo soldiers and yosemite back. they built the first trails in mount whitney, and the wagon road in the sequoia's giant forest, the most giant sequoias in the world.

and that's the reason i devoted my life to this and i had no idea to the olmstead connection and i'm barely touching because it's kind of scary. first connection, i'm in new york and i'm in new york because i'm with kim burns and we're in central park. my first experience of central park was in front of 20, 30,000 people and i'm back stage with carole king, jose feliciano, counting crows and alison krauss, the usual people and peter of peter paul and mary. i'm looking, something is wrong here and why am i here with these people and i was sitting there and someone was tapping me on the shoulder and there was david rockefeller, and i worked with hill at telluride, and he said i want today say

high. i usually don't get e-mails from david rockefellers. but that's what happened. and there's a connection between with the rockefellers and the buffalo soldier story. and there's that's what i realized delving into this. and when i was rereading the olmstead report i realized, oh, my god, this would have been perfect if i could have handed it to martin luther king, jr., because this in my mind, my work as a specialist to bring people of color into national parks and connect them to their own inheritance. it doesn't matter who they are, a person of color, least likely to have that experience and i want to build that bridge, i'm a bridge builder, a communication specialist and

when people ask me what i do, an astonishment facilitator, and better than an interpretation ranger. i say i'm an astonishment facilitator. seeing what they say will do it. and i had the opportunity to drive to the southern part of the park and yosemite valley daily for two months and every day the end of the day i drove through the tunnel. and the tunnel was designed by frederick law olmstead, jr., and so, when you drive through, i don't know how many folks, anyone has driven through the tunnel at sunset? oh, yeah, you can't see it, but he's aglow now having that memory. you come through it and there's this pinpoint of light off in the distance and it's like the birth canal, like if you're having a memory of being in the

womb and about to be born, it looks like it could be great, i don't know, i never received the memo and bigger and bigger, right before you get to the opening there's water dripping down and all of a sudden there's a waterfall to the right and el captain and off in the distance incredible valley and looks because of how you got there, how you get to a place can shape how you see it and how you react to it and when people take that drive through that tunnel, it can be a religious experience. if you do it every day, the things that i found, it was different every single day. it's always different. i'm upset now because i'm here because i'm missing something in yosemite. >> yes, you can see why he's our closer. [laughter] >> i'm just getting warmed up. got to wrap up.

okay. >> give him a -- [applause] >> the program said you got a park ranger, but you can see you did get a poet and in his background. do we have a few moments for q & a or should we wrap up? we should probably wrap up. s -- okay. so let me wrap it up. i think what you heard from this panel was a challenge. i think a number of questions on the table for us to ponder that sense of wonder and the

connection to olmstead is an invitation for all of us to move forward, like what does that mean for all of us today. i think of a young african-american student when i was in college, we took to -- lived on 110th and amsterdam within walking of central park, who had never seen the place. we took them every weekend to visit this. i think shelton saying it's a, you know, it's a wonder that i'm, you know, a park ranger. well, unfortunately, it is still a wonder, too much of one, that an african-american young man or woman would be considered to be a park rank ranger in yosemite or any of our other national parks and that on indian reservations and across this nation people are still walking, you know, thousands of miles to remind us

of the nature which we have-- the olmsteads led us to preserving special places, but now we realize in the face of climate change and water scarcity, that that idea has to expand dramatically and that the idea of stewardship involves an inclusive idea of how do the compatriots of today's olmstead look like all of us do here. so i leave you with that as we go and look at -- for a wonderful tour of the capital grounds. so let's give this panel -- [applause] >> i, too, want to give a thank you to all of our terrific panels today. obviously, we had an immense topic and could have gone on for some time and we will call

it a day for now. i want to end where we began thinking about the 1865 yosemite report and its focus on the importance of access to nature, that it not be the prerogative of just the wealthy and the privileged and that there is an importance of public spaces for civic engagement, for community and inclusivity, for mental and physical well-being and these were all principles of olmstead and we're rethinking and reimagining in the course of this bicentennial. i'm glad that all of you are here and i appreciate the could he sponsorship in the capital and hope you'll leave thinking about these public spaces, about inclusion, about mental and physical welcome being and sustainability. all issues that olmstead vigorously engaged in the 19th century and that we need to keep engaging in our time. so, thank you for being here

and enjoy the rest of your day and your tours. we'll be happy to tell you the details of those tours once we conclude. [applause] >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including cox. >> the syndrome is extremely rare. >> hi. >> but friends don't have to be. >> this is joe. >> when you're connected you're not alone. cox, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> if you're enjoying american history tv then sign up for our

newsletter using the qr code on the screen for upcoming programs like lectures in history and more. sign up for the newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv every saturday or anytime online at c-span.org/history. >> a healthy democracy doesn't just look like this, it looks like this, where americans can see democracy at work. when citizens are truly informed, our republic thrives. get informed. straight from the source. on c-span, unfiltered, unbiased, from the nation's capitol to wherever you are. because the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like. c-span powered by cable. >> i'm very pleased tonight to have steve dryden as our