Transcripts For CSPAN2 The 20240704

Get informed, straight from the sources on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word on the Nations Capital to wherever you are and continue the matters that most. This is what democracy looks like. Our third and finalil panel. We are honored to have a moderator, executivenv director was born in denver and found herself back or she has worked his worked for several years with the National Civic lead and a founding board member for political action. Cap he helped us take off april 26, 2021 and you can see her in action but we are delighted to have her today and she will moderate. I believe its afternoon already, good afternoon everyone. Im excited to be part of this panel, a little shift and what we are doing and i hope you will find it fascinating and some of the challenging questions about where we go from here as we engage in exploration of history of phenomenal visuals and ill start with a quick story how i came to this the first place. I hope you dont mind but we have inspired to participate in the anniversary celebration and at the same time we had Community Gatherings where the word around the community that olmstead wasnt as great as they said they were involved in these endeavors and we shouldnt be celebrating them. I raised the issue because it disturbed me. I came to understanding parks and traditionon like everyone ee with a sense of awe and admiration and i was chloroplast these were true and with all rumors, theres always a kernel of truth. The great response, thank you for engaging in this conversation. I dont want to give you the answers, but talk about what it means to individuals from multicultural backgrounds today as we move forward. I have accepted this week on the future and how we learn from the past, from the history to guide us in this endeavor and for history is what underscored when the olmsteads had an influence on early developments was a time when the ku klux klan had complete control of our city so in some ways it was killed by association but represented in denver the movement was the Founding Fathers and the prerogatives of the notion of most of thet park was not that but the people around the country doing their own version were representatives of this influence so we have this mixed bag and the founding of our country, the complexities and paradox of our history and history of this design is parks and ideas is equally complex especially when you think about relationships the real focus is on the people do not give me any e technology. [laughter]pl all the people for all is a mixed bag as we move forward signing and creating park systems s and at the local level who is involved. We have a panel of visuals were going to reflect and powerful ways about where we go into the future. Lets talk about the freedom the parks would create for us. One is that some people dont feel and one of the primary goals of my Department Today still is getting young africanamerican youngo latino individuals into our parks. We talk about feeling welcome and having a conversation about changing that idea. Local assumes it belongs to someone else and youre welcome to a space thats not yours part of that challenge is individuals will talk about that notion, who we and perks is remotely and thinking different about ideas about those relationships and exploring where we have been in people with folks who like me in wonder how we got in as though this is something we should naturally be engaging so we are going to address them hard questions that hopefully will help us because we dont want to be doomed to repeat history, want to build on what we can learn so tell me about the people sharing these ideas, im going to introduce all of them. First, philip is be author of indian country, native american and National Parks and is going to bring a very personal perspective having lived and worked and taught at the Rosebud Indian Reservation and really explore this idea of National Parks from the perspective of individuals lived on this land and are now in places designated to that and one of those paradoxes so we look forward to hearing this perspective and i asked him last night, currently working on the impact boarding schools so legacies of oppression, of our past in the same time model new ideas about the National Park systems. Second, we have select, and associate professor at the university of northern texas and priscilla is going to turn this conversation sent down and she gave us a clue earlier today about challenging the basic premises about parks and National Parks and access notion of ownership. National park ranger and educator, extraordinary to plaintiff in yosemite National Park and refuses to go away. [laughter] also author of glory land the most interesting perspective about National Parks and dilemmas many of us in this country face when we celebrate on one hand this marvelous invention of beautiful places get prices some of his pay to even exist so when is a book of glory land but hes being a personal perspective about what it means that he is now the steward and gods rest of us in that stewardship and it is about that notion. We pick up the legacies and we ntstart every meeting with whate call land acknowledgment. It is this acknowledgment of our history but moving forward, i think we will hear from these folksou today what we should she our future stewardship as we move forward. Thanks to the National Association for inviting me to talk today. I guess this is my time. Im not going to be singing but i am going to tell a story. Ill have pictures so much ask you to follow the story in your minds eye because it unravels over a substantial period of time. The title of the story is badlands, National Park service. Landscape is a sculpted view, framed perspective. It is inke the hands of people like olmstead senior and junior, groomed with exceptional pay we tend to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image focused time and space. , over there, isnt that a beautiful view . Some landscapes can only be understood after the passage of decades, perhaps centuries. National park landscapes have been pulled from the land almost like sound monuments, forces that are partly geological and environmental, partly political and more often than we like to think, the cutting edge of cultural conflicts. You ever visit the badlands, you wont soon forget. Formations that have been described wherever there is a Tourist Destination is an ecosystem, one trapper in the 1880s called them and i quote, the greatest game country i ever saw. Farmers, ranchers and tribal people in the federal government. In part of the control programs. Elk and deer were killed and chased in the region but rest and within a century and equipment of the desert. The government had visionssi of something bigger and better. A federal report from 19903 years after the parks there was organic act noted that stalking the badlands and indian force will be using all the badlands and will be an option enthusiastically sought. Its worth thinking what the writing meant. The asset, americas perks were envisioned to compete with grand monument of europe. Virtually legislation offered public playground and wonderland stewardship and ownership would be held by the american people. Easiest way to observe was to show they were unfit for economic development. Lands in question were to be incomparable explorations but also worthless from making money through private investment. I it was the western railroad and only then bringing visitors to the newly created parks. Yellowstone and yosemite edit scattered across the west in the formal indian reservation. Reservations were regarded asly economically marginal or worthless in the interior department. As a result, indian land was obvious candidate for inclusion in the parks because they were regarded as unproductive and under the hand of federal. Badlands of south dakota were part of the great reservation established four yearse before yellowstone National Park was created. They became part of the public domain. Ll the entity called wonderland National Park. The paradox about the National Park Service Worth noting, its a conservation charged with a mission to expand. Entrusted with protecting public land, it aims to acquire it through donation, purchase, exchange and Eminent Domain. Expense of an agenda is likely to create hard feelings sooner or later. They are naturalal but humanly shaped. Were tours with the scent of rain having prehistoric past. The human beings to 1 degree or another for generations. The designation in the national acreso a maximum of 50000 in seven years later in the midst of the Great Depression congress authorized monument boundaries to extend to five times the original area including the edition of declared sub marginal or unproductive. Gh in 1942, washington, the War Department announced plans to confiscate a chunk of reservation adjacent too the monument. 43 miles long by 12 miles. Fortythree by 12, roughly 350,000 acres to create the range. It was to be used for target practice. The area is worthless land. Owned by the government for the pine ridge indians and a longterm lease or small amount. There were 125 indian families, land. Not to mention the schools, churches senators. Scores of has land or who used it to cytosine for cash income. The range and was equal in size hato western county about half e size of rhode island. 1 an acre for you to please land within this area in the going rate according to the interior secretary was between seven and a half to 25 and they were offered 1 cent. Some of the land was owned outright who were given 30 days notice to vacate their homes. Through Eminent Domain they were paid an average of 2. 85 an acre, not much more than the going rate. Houses and barns and they were confiscated. City did they suspect gathering upup and be is a good one day large part of the range would become part of the badlands National Park, a place where people would come from thousands of miles away to camp, hike low land and go to the police. Twenty years and two wars asked and there was surplus, 300,000 acres in 1963. They discussed local poverty might be addressed through road improvement. A motel, picnic center, all in reservation. Communities. Raised eyebrows in area where adequate housing was barely obtainable. Hand over control of any treaty land outside Authority Bureau and park service in the interior department joined forces to devise a plan that would make it a tourist attraction. The National Monument was a south unit consisting of ones 30,000 acres of the gunnery range and additional land more than doubling. 76000 would revert and provide easement with the administration. The park service wouldnt have to buy the land of all, it would only need to manage it with the tribe. Again, the tribe resisted but they wouldnt make the exchange on interior affairs, remaining range will be subject to disposal. Tribal council didnt agree, there was no hope of these plans once control. Ninetyfour 68 proving the annexation a way to pressure the tribe and establish badlands National Park. And they were still growing. It took several years before the tribal council. In 19762 years later and more in 78. So it was at the south unit created and the north unit was in the olmstead and hopefully in this area. It was more sobering and ashamed for allowing the park service under the reservation, a returned land and forced to surrender. Time hasnt been kind since i reported on the badlands in the National Parks 20 years ago, washington has done little to live up to its promise. Training of personnel has been haphazard, not nonexistent. The old plumbing rangeland is still unfinished. Studies to assess whether bison should be introduced have been killed. Signage and infrastructure pushed traffic away from the reservation, small Visitor Center in trailer is all that visitors will find. The tribe has been denied for suche concession and while it is true people were promised all jobs, they have never been more than a handshake any given time. Traditional clauses of the memorandum carefully crafted to the advantage of congressional treaties a century before. Finally the tribebe has politicl problems of its own and they prevented this counsel from endorsing the idea making a south unit National Park. Dream of many administered independently. Many of the reservation acknowledged the need of reform without acculturation, the scenic byways connecting badlands to the hills and spring posterity is for now, a hollow wish. Still such organization as underbelly Development Corporation we are going to break away briefly from this American History tv to keep our 40 year commitment to covering congress. We take you to the floor of the u. S. Senate where law makers are holding what we believe will be a brief session today. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. The parliamentarian washington d. C. , august 4, 2023. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable peter welch, a senator from the state of the vermont, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed patty murray, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until 10 00 a. M. Tuesday you august 8, the u. S. Senate is not in session for the month of august and a portion of september 2 were to work in their home states. Moderators will be back for legislative business tuesday september 5th. We will bring you live coverage here on cspan2. From new mexico, and who all became environmental scientists, three of them were inducted to the national science, what is it, National Academy of science, thank you. How cann i get that wrong women here in d. C. . National academy of sciences and four of them were professors at research universities. So this is to meet history of the Mexican American leading family of american conservation thats not a hidden story but certainly not very well known here so i been working on that but im approaching it through a kind of braided narrative style that is somewhat minimalistic and a story about my mother and about a fellow leopold and some about myself so what im going to share with you today is like a brief and very condensed except of part of that manuscript thats in process. Ev. 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 arod the entire lake and the walk was born. Eventually, 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 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 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 along as a caravan. The carrier makes a commitment when accepting the water, teng the phrase and god is it. You get toe j. Once her turn is comple, e water carrier passes the copper pail to the next woman in the days rotation fers the same ceremonial utterance, which means i it for thwar 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. Its 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 didnt 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 didnt 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, im deeply grateful for the community that welcomed me. Im 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 its a subversive sensibility to cultivate. The water walks develop in their participants and attunement to cyclical time, to community, to commons ing, if you will. In contrast to the dominant values of the late capitalist neoliberal context that we usually inhabit in the united states, a space of linearity, of isolation and of accumulation. The water walks enact the values of the commons and for many in the environmental community, the values of the commons are understood and to aldo leopold land ethic quote a thing is right when it tends preserve the integrity, stability, stability and beauty of the biotic community. And its wrong when it does otherwise. When it tends otherwise lamentably. Leopold did not factor ongoing in indigenous ethics or presence into his vision of the u. S. When he wrote a sand county almanac. In another quote from his essay, the land ethic, leopold says, quote, there is as yet no dealing with mans relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. End quote. Soon after, leopold observes that, quote, the pueblo indians settled the southwest and precolumbian times, but they happened not to be equipped with range livestock. Livestock. Their civilization expired, but not because their land expired and quote, although the second quote includes a perfunctory recognition of the pueblos care for the land. In both statements, leopold erases centuries of indigenous knowledge, practice and ongoing presence. The passive structure of the statement their civilization expired is both inaccurate and confronting the violence committed against indigenous nations by colonizers. As lorette savoy observes in her 2015 book trace memory race and the american landscape, quote, leopolds for an extension of ethics to land relations seemed to express the sense of responsibility and recipe paucity not yet embraced by the country, but embedded in many Indigenous Peoples traditions of experience. That land is fully inhabited, intimate with immediate presence and quote following the logic of sequence and linearity, leopold considers only the history of western approaches to land as relevant to the story he tells, and he relegates indigenous knowledge and practices to the distant past. He proposes his land ethic as an innovation. He explains that the quote, first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals and quote and that quote later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. End quote. For 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 savoy points out, when she asks, did aldo leopold consider me the ethical relations between individuals as well as between individuals and society, were far from settled in 1948 or today. Savoy archly observes that, quote in a book so concerned with americas past, the only reference to slavery to human beings as property was about ancient greece and quote, leopolds narrow reliance on a history that reinforces White Supremacy and the logics of sequence linearity and accumulation get in the way of his ambitions for the land ethic. Even leopolds critiques of capitalism and consumerism in his call for a land ethic, they were accurate but still too narrow in the way he overlooked these systems as extensions, enslavement and colonization. Those very dynamics of enslaved and colonization are what animate todays multi cause and coalition based visions of abolition. Feminism and indigenous Land Restoration and movements. Abolition and indigenous Land Restoration and organize against the logics of enclosure, incarceration and the commodification of bodies and the land. Todays 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 between systems of 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 a land ethic. He wrote the land ethic after living for years in arizona and new mexico, sharing life with his mexicanamerican wife and children, visiting his mexicanamerican inlaws homes and sheep ranches. And he and his family were storing an old, dysfunctional farm in wisconsin into a beautiful prairie and pine forest. These are all ends soaked by generations of colonial violence. Yet he was still able to miss the connection. How closely did he listen to what the land was saying . This speaks not only to leopolds individual avoidance of colonial history, but is also telling of his social and cultural context that abetted his blindness. How many generations of erasure or helped to set the conditions for leopold and so many others to sound an urgent call on behalf of the environment without also calling just as urgency urgently for abolition and land back. On my first day of the lyon three water walk, i watched the light shift from the gentle dawning of day to the clarity of morning, and then to the intensity of midday heat. Once our shadows started growing longer on the pavement, the heat let up a little and sharon let us know that we were to bring the ceremony to a with the final circle. The details of the closing ceremony belong to that place in time and in the hearts of those who gathered and shared. I felt overwhelmed, gratitude. It rained overnight, cooling things off for the next days walk and relieving that summers searing drought just a little bit. I didnt 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. Carry the water. I held back tears when trying to express to her what the water walk meant to me. And i promise to stay in touch. After saying goodbye to everyone else, i slowly started driving back to wisconsin. But 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. Then pulled myself away. I was leaving. 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 americans environmentalism too easily isolates its ethical concerns for the land from and from efforts to dismantle White Supremacy. See, this ease of isolation reveals a violence at the core of environmental lives that may prove difficult to eradicate. The water walk offers just one example of how to operate otherwise. Forging solidarities across typical divides can be one way to dream new worlds to create new ways of being built on ceremony and reciprocity. And before i end, i would just like, recognize also that my partner, charles, who is here with me, is a water walker. And like to thank her for being here with me today. Thank you very much. Yeah. All right. So you bring our closer. No pressure. On you at all. Up to the task. Hello. Welcome. Before i begin and i want to thank the organizers for having me here and bringing me here. Its an honor to be here. Its a pleasure to speak to this group. My name is shelton johnson, i ive been a National Park ranger since 1987. Ive worked in National Parks since 1984. But i was and raised in detroit, michigan. And i had no childhood National Park visits and as a result felt somehow impoverished by the absence of that particular type of inhabiting of a landscape that inspires one. And then at some point, i realized that im haunted by a family and the family that haunts me goes by the name of olmstead. And i must credit the homesteads for keeping the spirit of my connection and affinity to Natural World alive. And i did not realize this until i received the invitation to speak here, because had not been conscious of that. What im primarily known for is bringing back the history of the African American soldiers, the Buffalo Soldiers who served in yosemite and sequoia National Park in 1899, 1903, and 1904. The obsession, my obsession, my personal connection with that history led me thats called dramatic pause. Ill do that again. In case you missed it. 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 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 writer of the National Parks americas best idea, and afterwards he said something along the lines of, you know, sheldon, what you just shared with this group, we might be able to get that into the film. I think that that definitely has a place in it. And then i began to annoy him over time by calling up and just saying, is it still there is its still going to happen. And to make a long story short, which im loathe to do, because i love epic poems, i especially homer and virgil the upanishads. My background actually is Classical Music and literature. Or as my father put it, unemployment. My father put 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 in Operation Iraqi freedom. So i come from a military family. So thats one of the reasons why military History Speaks to me, because its in my blood, its in my bones. And its a fire that lights night that no one else can sleep with me. And so when the buffalo soldier story found me, i didnt discover it. It found me. Im the third interpretive ranger to tell the story. Africanamerican soldiers serving in yosemite and sequoia in 1899, 1903 and 1904, fully decade before the creation of the National Park service. There were africanamericans essentially serving as some of the first park rangers in the world. There were only around a dozen National Parks on planet earth at that time. Around 1903, around 1900. And it just boggled my mind. And in detroit, by the way, it is illegal to say boggled if youre africanamerican. They will get you in trouble right there. But it boggles my mind that people who look like me were in the position of protecting the second and third oldest National Parks in the united states. So theyre protecting the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia, which was initially under the state grant and the protecting Yosemite Valley. No, because thats part of the state grant. When they were there, the Mariposa Grove still belongs to the state of california. Yosemite valley still belongs to the state of california. So they looked into the valley, but very rarely were they actually in the valley itself. They were there in the cemetery. And so when i meet africanamericans that say to me, well, why would i go to a National Park that has nothing . Theres not a black thing. Thats not something that we do. And then i say to them, well, actually, people who look like you were some of the first protectors of National Parks anywhere in the world, then theres a pause and theres a pause of absolute astonishment. They were not and we were not 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 i think of waves when i think of waves, i think of water and i think of a sea change. And weve been riding that wave that shock wave of change since the beginning of the republic. But it moves so slowly that wave and sometimes it goes back on itself. And so when i started thinking about my connection via the olmsteds three yosemite, i realized that they had always been there. Im a ranger today because my father served in germany and i was there with him, with my mom and brother in germany. And there was a family trip to berchtesgaden. Berchtesgaden is a sister park to yosemite and its high in the bavarian alps. There was also a trip to the black forest. And what im saying is, if that hadnt happened, i would not be here speaking to you right now because i would never have become a park ranger. But a seed was planted. And when a seed is planted in, a childs mind. I think of it this way. When youre five years old. And how many of you remember being five years old . How many you remember it as it were yesterday . Hey, i liked you from right off. Yeah, yeah. Those experiences dont just go through the visual of who we are as a human being. They dont just go in an auditory sense. What were hearing. It just comes through us. It goes within us and it stays there like a seed thats been planted that will take time to sprout, to flower, 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 at five years of age, youre like this. When you see something new. And by the way, when youre five years of age, everything youre seeing is something new. And its this look of wonder thats like this. Even if someone is just handing you glass as you go, glass is this may not seem miraculous, but through the eyes of a child whos never seen a pair of glasses before, it is a miracle. And the way its changing and distorted the light, that is a miracle. So 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 Fire Hole River to watch an eruption of old faithful. 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. And thats what happened to me. Berchtesgaden became part of who i am, and the black forest became part of who i am. And that is why i became a park ranger. And thats why when the buffalo soldier story revealed itself to me, it had that visceral, emotional, psychological connection. But that was before i realized that there was this connection to the homesteads. I arrived in yosemite and therefore yosemite arrived in me. And i was overwhelmed by the beauty of yosemite. I actually think that people who are not overwhelmed by the beauty of yosemite should seek medical care. I remember being in the on the bus with a woman that said, its not all that. Its not that. And i was thinking how sad that she thinks that this is not all that because yosemite is that and more we should have that on signs yosemite is all that and more because if because the thing that i realized is that when i walk out from the valley Visitor Center ive walked out into a painting by thomas cole or thomas hill or bierstadt. And when i first saw their artwork, i thought, oh, the romantic period, there are just exaggerating this. And sometimes, you know, bierstadt had a tendency to move things around that were made out of granite because it looked a little bit more dramatic. And the lights and shadows and all of that. But when i was in yosemite, i walked out after closing the Visitor Center into a bierstadt painting into a thomas hill painting, and i realized theyre not romantic painters, theyre realist. This is really happening when you see horsetail fall in the springtime, lit up by the last light of the setting sun, and it creates what is called the fire fall. But its horsetail fall illumined by that light. You realize that you are in an incredible place where i put it this way, where the extraordinary is ordinary and rangers get like that when theyre there, theyre walking along. So i said, oh my god, theres a bear in the region. Yes, its a bear because we see all the time, its like, oh my god, its a double rainbow. Represents. Oh, yes, its a double rainbow. You in a breeze, somebody fall. Human beings can get used to just about any environment. And im saying this to you because reading and rereading the olmsted report reminds 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 that when i read the phrase for the benefit and enjoyment of the people that i was part of the people. Because i recognize when Thomas Jefferson wrote we the people, he was referring to land owning your American Mills of property free of debt. Thats what he was referring to. 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 the men that were in the room with him. And when you first read that, you thinking of thats terrible. Then you start thinking, oh, its a good thing. He was so vague. Or when i had a conversation with ken about this, ken burns and he said he said along the lines of, boy, if they had spelled out what they meant, wed be screwed. And its the best way. I think the colloquial use is the best way to that because now we can reinvent what those words mean. We can reread what those words and get a different connotation, get a different denotation. It means Something Different for us today, just as National Parks today will have a different meaning tomorrow. They evolve through time because all ideas evolved through time and those ideas that shape us are ideas that weve in term. So thats a very thing. And im thinking of this in communicating this to you, because im still astonished by the fact that im wearing this uniform, that im a ranger because i was raised in detroit. And when i was raised in detroit, lived next door to the parents of norman whitfield. Norman whitfield is this in the songwriting hall of fame . He wrote, papa a rolling stone. I heard through the grapevine. He wrote music for the supremes and diana, diana ross and oh yeah, marvin gaye. And all i knew about him was that he had a red jaguar. So all i was thinking at the time was, i dont know what this man does for a living, but whatever it is, im going to be doing that. It didnt work out. My background again is as music and poetry. But but that is the milieu, that is the landscape, that is the atmosphere within which i was raised. And the only reason why im here 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 hes from enola, a Farming Community and hes 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, shes african and cherokee as well. My fathers side of the family is african and seminole. So i always think about the fact that i have relations who were on the trail of tears, who survived that because thats the only reason why the cherokee would be in oklahoma. I have relatives relations that fought the u. S. Army to a standstill, to a standstill. And technically speaking, they never really lost. Its just the government realized we keep sending troops down into florida, but they never make it out. Then they sent more troops and they didnt make it out. And suddenly it we better just stop this particular protocol here. And that gives you a little bit of attitude as well. So that thats part of my background. And so when i started telling the story of Buffalo Soldiers, i realized that if my the character that i betrayed was african and indian, that would a greater story. And that also would be a story thats more true because there is a complexity to all of us that usually we do not acknowledge. We just have a tendency to say, oh, look, theres a black guy or theres a hispanic person or theres a native person, but we are so much richer than that. And i think that when you look at the human genome study that has just determined that the difference in dna between any two human human beings is less than 1 10 of, what, 10 , 1 . Were basically when a geneticist said were a race of identical twins. And then when i read that, i thought, why shouldnt this be on the front page of every newspaper in the country . Because it were all basically the same family. Why . Because the world doesnt work that way. And when you read history, you see the underpinning of today and what was yesterday day. And that gets us back to the onset when im arriving at a cemetery im reading the olmstead report was my first thought when i read it is if i could go back in time i would hand the olmstead report to Martin Luther king when he was in jail, writing the letter from a birmingham jail. Why would i do that . Because he never made it to a National Park. There is a story of him potentially being invited to go to a National Park in canada, but it never happened because the Supreme Center of that park in canada realized that there are many guests to that park who are from the deep south. So there was this issue of whether or not there might be a slight there might be a racial slur of some kind, and they couldnt guarantee that there would not be some sort of impropriety that would take place. So the invitation was never issued. And then, ironically, his home, of course, now is part of the National Park system. You know, theres all these vagaries with history and when i delved into this story and i delved into my own personal, i realized that they were basically parallel tracks. And when i was reading ralphs book and it was about the civil war, and then it was about, you know, emancipation or or the park idea. And i realized that what it was the same thing sort of happened. You have a president in a divisive war in the 1860s, abraham lincoln. You have a president or president s in the 1960s in a divisive war. Vietnam, where my father served and you have the passage of the wilderness act in the 1960s, and you have the passage of the yosemite grant in the 1860s. And i realized that we hardly ever talk and put those two things together. But you cant talk about america without talking about race and space, and you cant talk about america to anyone from anyplace else without talking about the west, because that defines us. I think our epic poem really should be based on lewis and clark. I mean, thats that when things started going bad or things started going good because it depends completely on your perspective, on your point of view, but but whats fascinating to me about about lewis and clark was the fact that york is massive. It was there with him and he became a de facto interpreter for some of the indigenous groups that he encountered because he had this facility with language. Why does he have a facility with language . I think part of being african in the new world is the ability to adapt very quickly or you will die. You have to make quick adjustments. And that was survival. Thats what my father left South Carolina. Thats my father joined the army. And thats the irony of that situation, that my father found it safer to be in korea, in the infantry, than to be a human being, suggesting that he was the fullness of his humanity. In spartanburg, South Carolina, thats why he and and that notion that the war would be safer than just being a citizen and claiming your rights of citizenship. And to give you an example of this and how things can change and i wish my father had long enough to see this. A few years ago, i got a call from the Spartanburg County Library System and they had picked my novel glory land for the reads program. And so they invited me to spartanburg, South Carolina, and they took me to my great grandfathers home that i had never been to, that i had no idea where it was, where my father was raised. And i found out that my great grandfather ran a school for the blind in the late 1800s outside of spartanburg, South Carolina. And, of course, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union. I had no idea of this history. And then i realized that most is forgotten. Most history is lost. And thats profound 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 is the reason why ive spent so much time and effort and sweat equity bringing this history of Buffalo Soldiers and yosemite back because they built the first trails at the top of mount whitney, the highest mount the united states. They built the usable wagon road into sequoias, giant forest, the most famous grove of giant sequoia in the world. They did these things, but it was not acknowledged. And thats the reason why ive devoted my to that. But i had no idea of this owns that connection, which im barely touching because it is actually of scary. First connection im in new york and im in new york because im with ken burns and in central park, my First Experience of central park was front of 20 or 30,000 people, and im backstage with carole king jose feliciano, counting crows and alison krauss, the usual. Oh, and and peter and paul of peter. Paul and mary. Were all backstage and im sitting around looking, somethings wrong here. Why am here with these people . I just couldnt figure that out. And at some point i was sitting there and someone tapped me on the shoulder, i looked up and it was David Rockefeller. And i had worked with David Rockefeller at a telluride mountain film festival, and he said i heard you were here. I just want to drop by and say hi. I want to get this across to you. I dont usually get emails or messages from David Rockefeller, but thats what happened. And there is a connection between the Rockefeller Family and the soldier story. Theres all these connections with history. Its like having a conversation with your left finger and. Youre expecting your right thumb to not know about it, but theres a circulatory system that combines the two together, and thats what i realized when i when i started delving into this history of stewardship and this history of protection. And when i read and was rereading the olmstead report and i realized, oh, my god, this would be perfect and would have been perfect if i could have handed it to Martin Luther king jr because this in my mind, my work as a communication with specialists is to bring people of color into the National Parks and to connect them to their own inheritance. And it doesnt matter who they are, theyre a person of color. Theyre least likely to have that experience. And i want to build that bridge. Im a bridge builder. Im a communique, a committed engagement specialist. But when people ask me what i really do, i tell them, well, im going facilitator. Thats really my job title. It works so much better than interpret of ranger because i say interpretive ranger. People usually say, what language do you speak . And i said, i speak the language of creation, and that just throws them off even more. So what i say is that im an astonishment. Why is that . Because seeing what olmstead saw and is somebody valuable will do it. And i had the experience of having to drive down to wawona in the southern part of the and back to Yosemite Valley daily for about two months. And every day at the end of the day, i drove the wawona tunnel and. The wawona tunnel was designed by frederick law olmstead jr and so when you drive, i dont know if any of my folks here, anyone who has driven the wawona tunnel at sunset. Oh yeah, you cant see it. But hes aglow now. Just having that memory. There you come through it and theres just this pinpoint of light off in the distance and its, its like the birth canal, like if youre having a memory of being in the womb and youre about to be born and you dont know whats coming, it looks like it could be great, but i dont know. I never received the memo. I dont know whats happening and it gets and bigger. And then suddenly right before you get to opening, theres water in the springtime dripping down and it can get over the windshield. Windshields are going and then all of a sudden theres bright of a fall to the right. Theres el capitan right there. And then off in the distance theres this incredible valley, Yosemite Valley. And it looks because how you got there, how you get to a place can shape how you see it and you react to it. And when people that drive through that will want a tunnel it is it can be a religious experience and and if you do it every day, the thing that i found was that it was different every single day. Its always different. Im upset now because im here, because im missing in yosemite. I know im that person. Is it . Yes. You can see why hes our closer. Im just getting warmed up. I was going to wrap up. Okay. Yeah. Give him a. The program said you got a park ranger, but you can see you got you did get a poet in that and in his background and so we have a few moments for a q a or should wrap up we should probably wrap up so well have to. Okay, so let me let me wrap it up. I think what you heard this panel was, a challenge and i think a number of questions on the table for us to ponder that that that sense of wonder and the connection to olmstead is an invitation for all of us to continue to move forward. Like, what does that mean for all of us today . I think of a young africanamerican students. When i was in college, we to we lived on 110th and amster dam within walking of central park, who had never seen the place. We took them every weekend to visit this. I think shelton saying a you know, its a wonder im a you know, a park ranger. Well unfortunately, it is still a wonder, much of one that an African American young man or woman would be considered to be a park ranger, 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 homesteads led us to preserving special places. But now we realize in the face Climate Change and water that that idea has to expand dramatically and that the idea of stewardship involves an inclusive idea of how how to the compatriots of todays homesteads look like all of us do here. And so i leave you with that as we go and look at for a wonderful tour of the capitol grounds. So lets so lets give us pale again a wonderful [applause] i, too, want to give a thank you tout all of our terrific panels throughout the day. Obviously, we have an immense topic and could have gone on for some time, but we will call it for now appear going to end where we began, thinking about the 1865 yosemite report and its focus on thef importance of access to nature, that it not be the prerogative of just the wealthy underprivileged. And that there is an importance of public spaces for civic engagement, for community and inclusivity, fundamental and physical and wellbeing. Theseed are all principles of Frederick Law Olmsted perfumes or principals were celebrating but were t also rethinking and reimagining in the course of this bicentennial. And so im glad that all of you are here. Appreciate the cosponsorship of they architects of the capital and hope you leave todays session thinking again about these public spaces, about inclusion, about mental and physical wellbeing and sustainability, all issues that olmstead vigorously engaged in the 19th century and that we need to keep engaging in our tide. So thank you for being here and enjoy the rest of your day and your tours. Will be happy to tell you the details of those tours once we conclude. [applause] weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History to the documents americas stories and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more including midco. Idco along with these Television Companies supports cspan2 as a public service. If youre enjoying American History tv than sign up for a newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency, and more. Signed up for the American History tv newsletter today and be sure to watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online at cspan. Org history. A healthy democracy doesnt just look like t