to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency and more. be sure to watch american history this saturday or anytime online at c-span.org/history.le >> our third and final panel will examine channels for the ideal. we are honored to have as our

moderator who is the executive director of denver parks and recreation. she traveled east and then found herself back home where she has worked for a couple mayors and served on the city council as president. in addition to her public post, she worked for several years as a facilitator with the national civic lead and she was a founding boarde member for political action in mile high youth corps. april 26, 2021. you can see her in action on our youtube channel but we are delighted to have her today and she will moderate this final panel. >> thank you so much.

hello. good afternoon, everyone. i am excited to be part of this final panel. y it will be a shift in what we will bean doing in the panel ths afternoon that i hope you will find fascinating and in some ways is hope sam has set us up with some of the most challenging questions about where do we go from here as we engage in this exploration of the history of these phenomenal individuals. i will come to a quick story about how i came to this in the first place. we have some olmsted inspired parks inn denver to participate in the celebration, the anniversary celebration. right at the same time, we had

some community gatherings about one of our parks in denver where the wordmu that was getting arod the community was it was not as great as they said they were and they were involved in these very racist endeavors. i raise that issue because it disturbed me. i came to understanding parks like everyone else with a sense of awe and admiration and i was horrified if these rumors were true. with all rumors there is always a kernel of truth, but the great response and i think you and the organization for me and engaging in this conversation was let's

explore. i don't want to give you the answers, let's talk about what it means for individuals from multicultural backgrounds today as we move forward. i have accepted this about where we go and how we learn from the past and from the history to guide us in that endeavor. part of that history in denver, what underscored that exchange was that when they were having an influence on our development in denver, a time at our city. in some ways guilty by association. it also represented the movement to build parks it was the

founding fathers, shall i say. talking about the prerogatives of wealth and influence. the very notion was not that. the people in cities around the country who were doing their own version were in fact representatives of the prerogatives. we haveba this very mixed bag ad i like to say the founding of our country, the complexities in the paradoxes of our history and the history of the designs and parks and ideas is also equally complex. you think about the relationships that were talked

about. the marriage relationship the multifaceted. you will be hearing from this panel a real focus on people. the thing that we envisioned -- you should not give me any technology -- [laughter] >> all the people is a very mixed bag as we move forward in designing and creating our parks system both at a national and state and local level. who was involved. we have a panel of individuals that will reflect in powerful ways about the relationship of

people to this movement and where we go into the future. ralph talked about a sense of freedom that the parks would create for us. one of those paradoxes is that some people do not feel, get that sense of freedom. one of the primary goals in my department today still is getting african-american, young african-american and latino individuals into our parks, and to our mountain parks. we talk about feeling welcome. having a conversation of changing that idea of welcome. you are being welcome to a space that is not really yours.

part of that challenge we will be facing in these individuals will be talking about is that very notion into the we really assume we are talking about equitable access to our parks system. reimagining and inclusive system reimagining and thinking differently about the ideas of ownership in those relationships exploring where we have been in this movement. people still look at folks that look like me and wonder how we got into conversation. we will 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. let me tell you about the people first, philip burnham who is the author of indian country, god's country, native americans and national parks. he is going to bring a very personal perspective. having lived and worked and taught at the rosebud indian reservation and really exploring this ideact of natural parks for everybody from the perspective of individuals that lived on this land and are now to designate just them. again, one of those paradoxes.

currently, i asked him last night, currently working on work about the impact of indian boarding schools on many of the indigenous people today. the legacies of oppression, of our past, at the same time, these marvelous new ideas about our national park system. secondly, we have priscilla who was the associate professor in the department of english at the university of northern texas. priscilla will turn this whole conversation upside down. i think she gave us a little bit of a clue earlier today about really challenging our basic premises about parks and

national parks and access and even this notion of ownership. we will be looking forward to that. finally, shelton johnson, a national park ranger and educator extraordinaire who has landed in yosemite national park adjust refuses to go away. [laughter]gl also the author of glory land. a really interesting perspective about national parks and the dilemmas that many of us, people of current color in this country face. when we celebrate on one hand this marvelous land and yet the prices some of us paid for some of them to even exist.

wonderful exploration of that in hiss book, but he will be bringing a very personal 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. i leave you finally with this. it is about that notion of stewardship. about that collective responsibility we now have. we inherit, we pick up the legacies. we continue the legacies. in denver we started every meeting andnt every event with e land acknowledgment. i would say it is a people knowledge and acknowledgment of our history. as we move forward, i think we

will hear from these folks about what we should shape our public stewardship of public lands as we move forward. first up is philip. >> all of my things to the national association of olmsted parks for inviting me to talk today. i get this is my time to speak for my dinner. i i will not be singing, but i m going to tell you a story. i will ask you to follow the story in your minds 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 framedit perspective of space.

it is in the hands of people a place groomed with exceptional care. we tend to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image focused 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 parks landscapes have been pulled from the land. through forces that are partly geological and environmental, partly political and more often than we would like to think, sharpened on the cutting and of cultural conflict. if you ever visit the south dakota badlands, you will not soon forget them. a stunning panorama, a balding

bolding formation that has been described without doing them full justice as lunar or otherworldly. they were ritually inhabited ecosystem. one trapper in the 1880s called them, and i quote, the greatest game country that i ever saw. but the area was heavily hunted and 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, antelope, elk and grizzly bear were killed and chased from the region by locals and market hunters. what had been a mixed grassland cross by badlands draws and cutaways was transformed within half a century into the

equivalent of a desert. the government, though,an had visions of something bigger and better. i federal report from 1919 noted thatat "stocking the entire badlands in the pine ridge indian forest with game and using all the bad land and indian forest would be an object enthusiastically sought by the general public. it is 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 the grand monuments of europe. early parkpu legislation had the prospect of playgrounds and wonderland's whose stewardship and ownership would be jointly held by the american people.

the easiest way to retain or reserve is to show that they were unfit for economic development. the landns in question was to be of incomparable inspiration, priceless. but also ruthless 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 cousin scattered across the west in the form of indian reservations. reservations were generallyon regarded as economically marginal or next to worthless in the interior department. as aou result, indian land was obvious candidates for inclusion in the parks because they were regarded as unproductive and already under the hand of federal trusteeship.

the badlands of south dakota were themselves part of the greatow reservation established four years before yellowstone national park was created. in 1889 a government commission strong-armed into selling 9 million acres of theirir 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 regions of south dakota. not many settlers may have wanted to live in the badlands anymore, butom someone was bettg that people would want to come and marvel at their mysterious beauty. a paradoxa about the national park service is worth noting here. it is a conservation bureau charged with admission to expand

in other words, entrusted with protect public land, they also aim 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 parksks are natural, of coue but they are also humanly shaped stocked with large ungulates, old railroad hotels the parts came in a few decades. expanses whereto a risk at camp, hike and fish with a sense every inhabiting a prehistoric past. there was a problem, too. they were not the first ones in

nathe so-called wilderness. the parkland has been used by 1 degree or another by generations or even centuries. with business boosters at its back, congress authorized in 1929 the establishment of badlands nationalig monument. a lesser designation for park to a maximum of 50,000 acres. seven years later in the midst of the great depression, congress authorized monument boundaries to extent to five times their original area by including the addition of land declared sub marginal or unproductive. the expansion brought the monument to the doorstep of the pine ridge indian reservation, home of this tribe. thanks to a faraway war, the park service was not finish with the badlands. in 1942, washington, the war

department that is, announce plans to confiscate a chunk of the 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. it was to be used by highflying target practice. this area is worthless land wrote south dakota congressman francis case. own for the most part by the government in trust for the pine ridge indian's and could be had on the long-term lease for a small amount. in fact, there were 125 indian families on the proposed lands. not to mention several day schools, churches and cemeteries scores of other families use 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 $0.01 per acre per year to lease tribally owned land 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 $0.01. the tribe eventually settled because it was a time of national emergency. they 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 noticeer to move all possessions and vacate their homes. through eminent domain they were paid an average of $3.85 per acre. not much more than the going rate for one days manual labor. permanent improvement left

behind largely went uncompensated. little did any of them suspect gathering up their possessions in the act of being evicted that one day a large part of the gunnery range would become a part of badlands national park. a place where people would come from thousands of miles away to camp, hike the low lands and roar of the goalies and pricey off-road vehicles. twenty years and two wars past at which point the air force declared surplus almost 300,000 acres in 1963. that year a park service report discussed how local poverty may be addressed through road improvements in tourist facilities. a dance center, motel, pick accenture, craft sales all and

reservation communities. it evene recommended and authentic sioux indian village with real teepees, a point that had to raise eyebrows among the tribe 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 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 somend 130,000 acres of the d gunnery range and additional land more than doubling the monument of size. 76,000 of those acres would revert to the tribe which would provide an easement compatible with park administration.

they would not have to buy the land at all. it would only need to comanagement. again, the drive resisted. if they would not make the exchange countered the senate committee on interior affairs, the remaining gunnery land will be subject to disposal under surplus property procedures. in other words, if the tribal council did not agree, there was no hope of regaining most of the gunnery range land once controlled. 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 in the tribe in 1976 and two years later badlands national park was born in 78. so, it was that the south unit newly created, already was what was there before became the north unit was to be, if not an emerald necklace, hopefully a native jewel of the prairie. the truth was more sobering however. in exchange for allowing the park service onto the reservation they were. merely returned land they had been forced to surrender in a national emergency. time has not been kind.

nsince i reported on the badlas in the book about the national parks 20 years ago, washington has done little to live up to its written promises. training of the personnel has been haphazard, not nonexistent. ordinance mitigation of the old bombing range land is still unfinished. proposed studies to assess whether bison should be introduced into the south unit have been shelved. signage and infrastructure pushed traffic away from the reservation. a small visitor center in a converted trailer is all that visitors will find. the tribe has been denied first right of a refusal for cart part concessions. while it is true that these people were promised all jobs in the south unit, there have never been more than a handful at any given time. the conditional clauses of the memorandum whereas 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 interest have prevented the council from endorsing the idea of making the south unitng a tribal national park. a long-held dream of many to be administered independently. many on the reservation at college the tribal government is in need of reform. without appropriations, the vision of a 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 they continue to work for meaningful change and advocate for it such as the restoration of bison.

all 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 olmsted seniors vision, a landscape is a place to integrate natural beauty and human views in a way that benefits and supports not only those that come to camp and hike and admire the sites, but also the communities that have lived there for generations.e if only it were so today in the badlands. thank you. [applause]

[speaking in native tongue] i am priscilla the daughter. i come to you from texas which is north of dallas. my mother was an immigrant to the united states and my father is a second generation mexican-american who was a migrant farmworker. my personal land acknowledgment is to share with you that i traveled here today from the lands of the wichita affiliated tribes. a town where i live in teach at the university of north texas. named after john b who committed genocide against janet indigenous people and against the comanche and apache peoples.

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 people. i am very grateful to be here. thank you for the invitation to join youli today. i believe these moments as i mentioned earlier are very important moments to reflect on what has come before and, you know, what you can do in the future. let me get my presentation up here. okay. thank you appeared thank you for that wonderful introduction of the panel in the way you

contextualized what we were doing on the last panel and what has come before. okay. so, i feel like i was invited here tot offer perspective of, you a know, what we've been talking about it in the context of rachel -- racial justice. i have also been working for some years now on another american conservation legacy which is the aldo and estella leopold family legacy. i am currently writing a book. ana mexican-american womanhood evolution and abundance. that book is to really offer the estella leopold a 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 new mexico and to all became environmental scientist. three of them were inducted into the national science, what is called? national academy off sciences. thank you. how can i get that wrong while i am here in d.c. national academy of sciences. four of them were professors at research universities. this is, to me, a historian of mexican family leading to a story of conservation. certainly not very well known. i've beenin working on that. i am approaching it through a braided narrative style that is somewhat memory stick. a story about my mother and a fellow leopold and some about myself. what i will share with you today is just like a brief and very condensed excerpt of part of

that manuscript that in the process. ever since at least 2016, i have been putting myself through a process of learning from native and indigenous scholars writing on the topics of climate change, extractive -ism, colonialism and environmental issues. by the summer of 2021, i felt both a personal and intellectual investment in finding my place as aty feminist in solidarity wh indigenous led actions to protect the earth. so when an opportunity came to join i went for it. a water walk is an extended tradition honoring waters life sustainingng gift. the first water walk took place in 2003 led by josephine a grandmother.

josephine was asked, what will you do for the water pressure mark after reflecting on the qution she felt moved to gather a group of women and start to walk the shorelines of lake superior. they ended up walng around the entirere lake. the walk wasorn. eventually, grandmother wald to the shorelines of all the great lakes. altogether some 17,000 miles. before she died in 2019, she passed the ceremony onto other leaders. an artist writer and organizer based in minneapolis continued the walk ceremony. she hasas walked nearly 10,000 miles of river appeared it was her walk that i joined on july 23, 2021. she leads walks along the rivers she starts with the ceremony at

the headwaters of a river, she and her fellow water walkers take turns hand carrying a copper pail filled with the rivers 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 in the camp along the way. the water walk falls into a multiplicity of rhythm. the walkers who carry the water set the central rhythm. a gathering of all the walkers and opening ceremony where walkers set their intentions for theth day. the first walker carries the water for about a mile. the group moves ang as a caravan. they make a cmient when accepting the water i dri the phrase.

once the turn is complete the water carrier passes the copper pail to the next woman in t days rotation and offers the samedo ceremonial utterance whih means io it for the wer. 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 is an audacious thing to carry water by hand over hundreds of miles. walkers transit along waterways and roads busy with summer traffic. the walk that i joined was a line three walk which was tracing the line of the line three pipeline. thee line three dug into the sol , injuries inflicted to install the pipe sections and aching site. the many vehicles of varying tonnage that supports pipeline construction whizzed past us.

blowing our hairs into our eyes. heat across our bodies in 100- degree weather. the waterd guided and strengthened us even as we carried it, cherished it, saying to it and chanted as we walked. upon my arrival to the wall, 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 listen. at a certain point she opened a space forof me to reveal where i stood in terms of this kind of ceremony. she shared that newcomerstirr sometimes worry that water carrying and singing is perhaps ineffective in the face of the 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 did not know i felt so strongly until i said it to her out loud. upon reflection, this ceremony

allows for such declarations and commitments to take root. i also learned from sharon and eventually the other women, too, it blossoms a whole community. each walker with distinct talented and commitments hailing from diverse parts of the continent. i did not know it then, but i was in the process of developing a new kinship. becoming part of a ceremony family. as i reflect on my experience on the water walk, i am deeply grateful for the community that welcomed me. i am also grateful that the walk offered a lesson. my deepest experience of the walk was my absolute removal from chronological time. the roughly 28 hours for which i joined the walk opened up into multiple dimension where it defied my national mind to fathom how much learning connection and energy fit into a

comparatively minuscule span of time. the constant repetition of the cycle, the rotation of the walk held me, i felt it as a sense of suspension, the way you feel when floating on your back and calm water. i was focused on the present moment. a kind of moving meditation. this suspension may seem subtle, but it is a sub cursive sensibility to cultivate. the water walk developed in their participants and an attunement to sensible time to community. in contrast to the dominant values of the late capitalist neoliberal context that we usually inhabit in the united states, a space of linearity, isolation of accumulation, the water walked enacted values of the commons and for many in the environmental community, the value is understoodnd in relatin

to all the leopold land ethics. a saying is right when it intends the stability of the communities and is wrong when it does otherwise. leopold did not factor ongoing indigenous ethics or presence into his vision of the u.s. when he wrote the almanac. another quote from his essay leopold says "there is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. ". soon after leopold observed that the indians settled the southwest in pre-columbian times but not to be equipped with livestock. it expired but not because of their land expired. although the second quote includes a recognition of a public chair for the land, and both statements leopold erases centuries of indigenous

knowledge, practice and ongoing presence. the structure of the statement their civilization expired is both inaccurate and avoids confronting the violence committed against indigenous nations. as observed in the 2015 book memory, history, race and the american landscape "leopold call for an extension of ethics to land relations seem to express a sense of responsibility and reciprocity not yet embraced by the country but embedded in many indigenous peoples traditions of experience that land is fully inhabited intimate with immediate presence". following the logic of sequence and linearity, considering only the history of western approaches to land is relevant to the story he tells and he relegates knowledge and practices to the distant past.

he proposes his land as an innovation. he explains that the "first ethics was the relations within individuals" and that "later accretions dealt withwe the relation between the individual and society". four him, the human relation with the land is the next logical step in the development of ethics. what he calls the ethical sequence. however, as was pointed out when she asks did leopold consider me the relations between individuals as well as between society was far from settled in 1948 or today. observing that "a book so concerned with america's past the only reference to slavery, to human beings of property was about ancient greece".

leopold now reliant on a history that reinforces white supremacy and the logix of sequence linearity and accumulation get in the way of his ambitions for the land ethics. even leopold's critiques of capitalism and consumerism in his call for land ethics were accurate, but still too narrow and the way he overlooked the systems as extensions of enslavement and colonization. veryry dynamics are what animate today's multi- causing coalition based visions of abolition feminism and indigenous land restoration movement. organized against the logix 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 in land c restoration.

the more clearly one can see the connection between systemst of oppression, the less likely it is that someone will get sucked into fighting under the paradigm of single issue causes. although leopold did not invent the land ethic he did forward one vision of a land ethic. he wrote the land ethic after living for years in arizona and mexico -- arizona and new mexico sharing homes in cheap ranches and he and his family were storing an old dysfunctional farm in wisconsin into a beautiful prairie and prime forests. soaked by generations of colonial violence. he is still able to miss the connection. how closely did he listen to what the land was saying. this speaks not only to leopold 's individual avoidance but also telling of his social and cultural context that abetted his blindness.

how many generations of erasure help to set the conditions for leopold andnd so many others to sound anal urgent call on behalf of the environment without also calling just as urgently for abolition and land back. on my first day of the water walk, i watched the light shift from the gentle dawning of day to the clarity of morning and then to the intensity of mid-day heat. once ourre shadow started growig longer on the pavement that he let up a little and sharon let us know we were to bring the ceremony to a close with the final circle. the details of the closing ceremony belong to that place and time and in the hearts of those that gathered and shared. i felt overwhelmed with gratitude. it rained overnight cooling things off or the next day's walk. relieving that summer searing drought a little bit.

i did not stay long because i had commitments to get back to in wisconsin. i carried the water twice more 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 when trying to express to her what the water walk meant to me. i promise to stay in touch. after saying goodbye to everyone else i slowly started driving back to wisconsin. but i i had to stop my car one more time. as i watched sharon carrying the water a flock of white pelicans soared above her. following her path. i took a few photos, this is one of them,a then pulled myself ay i was leaving with a whole new part of my heart open to a beautiful community and ceremony i now know that powerful forces regularly gathered to honor the water and fight for the land.

that knowledge offers me a degree of comfort and strength. i askon you to consider the way that conventional american environmentalism to easily isolate its ethical concern for the land from efforts to dismantle white supremacy. this ease of isolation reveals the violencee at the core of environmentalism that may prove difficult to eradicate. the waterpl walk offers just one example of how to operate otherwise. forging solidarity's across typical divides can be one way to dream new worlds. to create new ways of being built on ceremony and reciprocity. before i end, i would just like to recognize also that my partner who is here with me is also a water walker. i would like to thank her for being here with me today. thank you very much.

[applause] >> hour closer. [laughter] noou pressure. >> hello. welcome. before i begin, i want to thank the organizers for having me here and bringing me here. it is an honor to be here. a pleasure to speak to this group. i have been a national park ranger since 1987. i have worked in national parks since 1984. i washa born and raised in detrt michigan. i had no childhood national park visit and as a result somehow

impoverished. that type of particular type of inhabiting landscape that inspires one. at some a point i realize that i am haunted by a family. the family that haunts me goes by the name of olmsted. i must critic them for keeping the spirit of my connection to the natural world alive. i did not realize this until i'd received the invitation to speak here. because i had not been conscious of that. what ith am primarily known fors bringing back the history of the african-american shoulders who served in 1899 in 1903 in 1904. the obsession, myio obsession, y personal connection led me -- i will do that again. [laughter] led me to one day perform my

buffalo presentation for the national park foundation. and at that point, i was not aware of the fact that dated duncan was the honorary chair of the national park foundation. dated duncan is cambron's best friend. essentially, i was performing my presentation for the writer of the national parks. afterwards he said something along the lines of you know what you just shared with this group, we may be able to get that into a film. i began to annoy him over time by calling him and saying is it still there, is it still going to happen? to make a long story short, i love these poems, especially homer and virgil, my background is actually classical music and literature. as my father put it, unemployment. [laughter] my father puthe it that way because my dad served in the

infantry in korea. he was a combat veteran. he served in the air force in vietnam and my brother served in the navy. so i come from a military fami'y that is one of the reasons why military history speaks to me because it's in my blood. it's in my bones. a fire that ignites that no one can see but me. when they found to be, i did not discover it, if found me. i am the third interpretive ranger touo tell the story. in 18991903 in 1904 only a decade before the creation of the nationalin park service essentially serving inpa some of the first park rangers in the world. only around one dozen national parks on planet earth at that time around 1900. it just boggles my mind, it is illegal to say boggled if you are african-american. that will get you in trouble

right there. it boggled my mind that people that look like me were in the position ofte protecting the second and third oldest national park in the united states. protecting initially under this grant and protecting yosemite valley. that is part of the state grant. when they were there it still belong to the state of california. yosemite valley stillni belong o the state of california. they looked into the valley but very rarely were the in the valley themselves. they say to me why would i go to a national park, that is not a black thing, that is not something that we do. actually, people that look like you were the first protectors of national park anywhere in the world. then there is a pause. and that is a pause of absolute astonishment. they were not and we were not told as a people that we had a role inti the national park

movement because it is a movement just like essentially the civil rights is a movement. i thinkat of water. i think of a seachange. we have been writing that wave of change since the beginning of the republic. it moves so slowly, that wave. sometimes it goes back on itself when i start thinking about my connection to yosemite, i realize that they have always been there. i am a ranger today because my father served in germany and i was there with him with my mom and my brother in germany. there was a family trip. a sister park of yosemite. also ad trip to the black fore. what i'm saying is if that had not happened, i would not be here speaking to you right now because i never would have become a park ranger. but a seed was planted. when a seed is planted in a child's mind, put it this way,

when you are five years old, how many of you remember being five years old. those experiences do not just go through the visual aspect of who we are as a human being. not just an auditory sense of what we are hearing. it just comes through us and stays in their like a planet that will take it's time to sprout the flour, blossom and 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. at five years of age you are like this when you see something new. by the way when you are five years of age everything you are seeing is something new appeared it is the look of wonder that is like this. even someone who is just handing you glasses and you go glasses. [laughter] this may not seem miraculous but to the eyes of a child who has

never seen a pair of glasses before, it is a miracle the way it is changing. 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 to watch it is a transformative experience that will get into the cellular structure of their body, their mind and their spirit and they will never forget. that is what happened to me. becoming part of who i am. the black forest became part of who i am and that is why became a park ranger. that's why when it was revealed to me it had that emotional psychological connectionol. but that was before i realized that there was a connection to the homestead. i arrived in yosemite and therefore yosemite arrived in me and i was overwhelmed by the beauty. i think people that are not overwhelmed by the beauty of yosemite should seek medical care.

[laughter] the bus, it is not all that, i was thinking, how sad. that shee thinks that this is nt all bad. yosemite is all of that and more we should have that on a sign. yosemite is all that and more. because the thing that i realized was when i walk out from the visitor center, i walked out into a painting by thomas cole or thomas hill and when ie first saw their artwork, i thought they are just exaggerating this. having a tendency to move things maround that were made out of granted hundred granite because it made more dramatic. i walked out after closing the visitor center into a painting. into a thomas hill painting and i realize they are not romantic painters. they are realist. this is really happening. horsetail fall in the springtime laid up and it creates a fire

fall. it is illumined by that light. you realize that you are in an incredible place. where the extraordinary is ordinary. and rangers get like that when they are there. yes, it is a bear. because we see them all the time oh my gosh, it's a double rainbow. yes. it is a double rainbow. [laughter] human beings can get used to just about any environment. i am saying this to you because reading and rereading the olmsted report reminded me of the value of national parks. the power of national parks in the democracy that is implicit in the foundation of national parks. i never thought to myself that when i read the phrase for the benefit in the enjoyment of the people that i was part of the

people. i recognize when thomasof jefferson wrote we the people, he was referring to landowning males. he was not referring to women. he was not referring to native americans. he was not referring to people of color. he was referring to men that were in the room with him. when you first read that, that's terrible. then you start thinking, oh, it was a good thing he was so vague [laughter] when i had a conversation about this with ken burns, he said boy they had spelled out what they meant, we would be screwed. and it is the best way, i think it is the best way to describe that becausewh now we can reinvt what those words mean. we can get a different connotation in a different denotation. it means something different for us today just as national parks today will have a different meaning tomorrow. all ideas evolve through time. and those ideas that shape us are ideas that we shape in turn.

that is a very powerful thing. i am communicating this to you because i'mca still astonished y the fact i'm still wearing that uniform. that i am a ranger. i was raised in detroit and when i lived in detroit i live next to thero parents of norman wellfield. he wrote papa wasas a "rolling stone." i heard it through the grapevine and diana ross and, oh, yeah, marvin gaye. and all i knew about him was that he had a red jaguar appeared aller i was thinking about that the time was i to know what he does for a living but whatever it is i'm going to be doing that. [laughter] it did not work out. .... .... and the only reason w'e is that i held on to those memories of germany and it was easier to do that. why? because on sundays in the summertime time, my grandparents

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 my grandmother's internal is the mcallister and mcallister is the second largest town in the nation and as far as i know she is african and cherokee as well. my father said the family is african so i always think about the fact that i have relations who were on the trail trail of tears and who survived that. that's the only reason the sheriff would be in oklahoma. i have relations that fought in the u.s. army to advance it to stand still and technically speaking they never lost for the government relies they kept sending troops to florida. they'd never make it out. then they sent more troops and they didn't make it out and suddenly stopping on this particular protocol and that gives you a bit of attitude as well. that's part of my background so

when i started telling the soldier buffalo soldier the character that i iterate -- portrayed with african and and that would make a greater story and one that's more true because there's a complexity to all of us that usually we do not acknowledge.nc we have a tendency to say oh there is a guy or a person that we are so much richer than that. the difference in dna between human beings0 is less than 1% d a geneticist said we are a race of identical twins. when i read that i thought why shouldn't this be on the front page of the newspaper because we are basically the same family. why because the world doesn't work that way. when you read history you see the underpinnings of the day and what was yesterday and that goes back to the olmsted's.

i'm reading thet olmsted reportd in what was my first thought when i read it? if i could go back in time i would hand the olmsted martin luther king when he was jailed riding the letter from the birmingham jail.l. why would they do that? he never to a national park. there's a story of him intensely being invited to go to a national park in clanon -- canada but it never happened because that park in canada realized there were many parts of thats park that were from te south so was an issue of whether there might be a fight or a racial slur of some kind in the couldn't guarantee they would not be impropriety that would take place so the invitation was never issued an ironically it's part of the national park p system. there's always a big with history and when i delved into the story and i delved into my own personal history i realize

they were basically on a parallel track and when i was reading the book about the civil war and then it was about emancipation for the park idea and i realized you have president in the 1860s abraham lincoln and you have precedence in the 1960s in a war in vietnam where my father served and the passage of thes, wilderness act and the passage of the use of mini-grant in the 1860s i realized we hardly ever put those two things together. you can't talk about america without talking about race and you can't talk about america and anyplace else without talking about the west because that divides us. our home should be based on lewis and clark. that's when things started going bad or things started going good because it's in perspective

depending on your view. what's fascinating is the fact that york was there with him and he became in effect the interpreter. his facility with language. part of being african in the world is the ability to adapt quickly or you will die. you how to make quick adjustments and that was survival and that's why my father left left south carolina joined the army and that's the irony of that situation. my father would rather be in the infantry in then be a human being in spartanburg south carolina. and the notion that war would be safer than being a citizen and claiming your rights to citizenship. to give an example of how things cann change and i could see this a few years ago i got a call from the spartanburg county library system and they had

picked my novel glory a land for the program so they invited me to spartanburg south carolina and they took me to my great-grandfather's home that i had no idea where it was or where my father was raised. my father and great grandfather ran a school for the blind in the late 1800's outside of spartanburg south carolina and south carolina was the first. i had no idea this history may realized most history is forgotten. most history is lost. and that's profound in itself. that historical be lost and that's the reason why spend so much time and effort in sweat equity bringing this history of december the back because the built the highest mountain in the united states and the first wagon road in the sequoia giant and the giant -- biggest

employers in the world. they did these things but it was not acknowledge. i hada no idea of this olmsted connection which i'm barely touching because it's actually kind of scary. first connection i'm in new york and i'm in new york because i'm with ken burns i and we are in central park. my first experience in central park was in front of 20 or 30,000 people and i'm backstage with carol king counting crows and alison krause. the usual people, oh and and paul of, paul and mary. why am i here with these people and they couldn't figure it out in some point i was sitting there and some untapped in on the shoulder and i looked up and it was david rockefeller. i worked with david rockefeller at the mountain film festival and he said i heard you were i just wanted to drop by and say hi and i don't

usually get messages from david rockefeller but that's what happened there was a connection to the rockefeller family and the story. they are all these connections with history like having a conversation with your left finger and expecting your right thumb not to know about it. but it binds the two together and that's what i realized when i delved into this history of stewardship in this history of protection and when i read and was rereading the olmsted report i realized this would be perfect and it would have been perfect if i would have handed it to martin luther king, jr. because this in my mind and my work as a specialist is to bring people of color into the national parks and connect them to their own inheritance and it doesn't matter who a they are. if they are person of color they are least likely to have that experience and i want to build thata bridge.

when people ask me what i do i tell them i'm a facilitator. it works so much better than interpretive ranger because i see interpretive rangerr. and people usually say what what language to use the? i speak the language of creation and that throws them off anymore so what i say is i'm a facilitator. seeing what olmsted saw denied the experience of having to drive down to the southern part of the park to yosemite valley daily for two months and every day at the end of the day i drove through the lone tom all and it was designed by olmsted jr.. i don't know how many here, anyone driven through the will lone tunnel at sunset? you come. and there's this pinpoint of light off in the distance and

it's like the birth canal bike if you're having a memory of being in the womb and you are about to be born and it looks like it could be great but i don't know. i never received the memo and i don't know what's happening. before you get to the opening there's water in the spring down in the windshields are going at all of a sudden there's el capitan and off in the distance this incredible valley, yosemite valley and it looks because of how you got there how you get to place can shape how you see it and how you react to it and when people take that drive through the tom all it can be a religious experience and to do it every day i found it was different every single day. it's always different. i'm upset now because i fear i missing something. >> i'm not finished yet. >> you conceal why he's our closer.

[laughter] >> i'm just getting warmed wra . [applause] the program said you will you got a park ranger but you can see youu got a poet and just the background. do we have a few moments for a q&a or should we wrap up? we should probably wrap up so okay. i think we what you heard from this panel was a challenge and i think a number of questions on the table for us to ponder that

sense of wonder and a connection to olmsted and it's an invitation for all of us to move forward like what does that mean for all of us today? i think of the young african-american student when i was in college and who lived on 110th in amsterdam who had never seen the place. we took him every weekend to visiti it. i think shelton saying it's a wonder that i'm a park ranger, fortunately it's still a wonder that an african-american young man or woman would be considered toem be a park ranger in yosemie or any other park or any national park and on reservations and across the nation people are still walking

thousands of miles to remind us of the nature which the olmsted has led us to preserving special places that now we realize with basic climate change and water scarcity that idea hasn't expand dramatically in the idea of stewardship involves an inclusive idea of how do the compatriots of today's olmsted look like all of us do here? so i leave you with that as we go and g look at for one or full tour of the capitol grounds. let's get this panel a round of applause. [applause] >> i too want to give a thank you to all of our terrific panel is throughout the day and obviously we have an immense

topic and have had for sometime but we were call it a day for now. i want to and where we began, thinking about the yosemite report and focus on the importance of accessss to nature that it not be the prerogative of just the wealthy and the privileged and there's an importance of public spaces for civic and gauge my poor community in exclusivity the mental and physical well-being. these are principals that we are celebrating but that we will also be rethinking in. imagining. i'm glad that all of you were here and i appreciate the sponsorship of the capitol and i hope you will leave today's session thinking again about these public spaces and about inclusion and mental and physical well-being and sustainability all the issues that olmsted figuratively engaged in the 19th century and we need to keep engaging in

our time. so thank you for being here and enjoy the rest of your day and your tour we will be happy to tell you that details of the tour once we get them. [applause]

i'm very