Transcripts For CSPAN2 The 20240704

Our third and final panel will examine challenges to the public park ideal and we are honored to have, as our moderator allegra happy haines, who is the executive director of denver parks and recreation. She was born in denver, traveled east, and then found herself back home, where she has work for mayors. Federico pena and John Hickenlooper and served on the city council as president. In addition to her public posts, happy as works for several years as a facilitator with the National Civic league and she was a founding board member of colorado black women for Political Action and mile high youth corps. Happy helped us kick off olmstead 200 on april 26, 2021. Olmstead is 199th birthday, and you can see her in action on our youtube channel. If you want to look at her a year ago. But were delighted to have her today and she will moderate this final panel. Thank you so much, didi and hello. I think its afternoon already. Good afternoon, everyone. Im excited to be a part of this final panel and then its going to be a little shift in what will be doing in this panel. This afternoon that i hope you will find fascinating. And in some ways, i think sam set us up for this with some of his challenging questions right at the end about, you know, where to where do we go from here as we engage in this exploration of this history of the of these phenomenal individuals named the homesteads . And ill start with a quick story about how i came to this in the first place. I hope you dont mind, but so did asked me because we have some olmstead and some olmstead inspired parks in denver to participate in this the celebration the anniversary celebration. And right at the at at the same time we had some Community Gatherings about one of our parks in denver where one of the the word that was getting around the community was that olmstead wasnt as great as they said they were and that they were, in fact, involved in these very, very racist endeavors. And we should you know, we shouldnt be celebrating them. I raised that issue with deedee because it disturbs me. I mean, i came to the to understanding parks in the olmstead tradition, like everyone else with a sense of honor and admiration. And i was horrified if if these rumors were true. And as with all rumors, theres always a kernel of truth. But we, the great response and i thank you didnt and the organization for me in engaging in this conversation was lets explore i dont want to give you the answers. Lets talk about what it means to individuals from multicultural backgrounds today as we move forward. And so i have accepted this as an exploration of where we go in the future and how we learn from the past, from the history to guide us in in that in that endeavor. And part of that history in denver. What what underscored that exchange was that when the olmstead kids were having an inflow once on our early Park Development in denver was at a time when the ku klux klan had had complete control of our city. And so in some ways, it was guilt by association and but it also represented in denver the movement to build parks in the city, Beautiful Movement was it you know this the the founding fathers, shall i say. And it was ralph talked about the prerogatives of wealth and influence and that the very notion of olmsted parks was not that, but that it was equitable. Yet the people in cities around the country who were who were doing their own version of olmsted parks were in fact representatives of the prerogatives of wealth and influence. And so we have this very mixed bag. And i like to say, like the founding of our country, the the complexities and the paradoxes of our history and the history of olmstead designs and parks and ideas is also equally complex, especially when you think about the relation ships. Achim talked about the relationships, the marriage relationship and and like all relationships they are also complex and multifaceted added. And so youre going to be hearing from this panel a real focus on people. The the we that is that the olmsted envisioned. Did i turn that off i dont want to touch it. You should never get me near any technology. What the olmsted envisioned the wi the all the people for all is a very mixed bag as as we move forward as in designing and creating our park system both at at a national and a state and even at the local level. So who is involved and so we have a panel of individuals who are really going to reflect in in really powerful ways about the the relationship of people to this movement and to where we go into the future. Ralph talked about this sense of freedom, that what that the olmsted inspired parks would would create for us. And yet one of those paradox is, is that some people dont feel get that sense of freedom. And in fact, one of the primary goals in my Department Today still is getting africanamerican, young, African American and young latino individuals into our parks, into our mountain parks system. We talk about feeling welcome and were having a conversation about changing that idea of welcome because welcome assumes that its belongs to someone else and that youre youre being welcomed to a space thats not really yours. And so part of that challenge that were going to be facing and that these individuals are going to be talking about, is that very notion of sort of ownership in who we really is when were talking about equitable access to our park system and reimagining an inclusive system, meet reimagining and thinking differently about the the ideas of ownership in those relationships and and exploring where we have been in even in this conservation movement, where people still look at folks that look like me and wonder how we got into to conservation as though this is a natural something that we should naturally be engaging. So were going to be addressing some really hard questions here that hopefully will help us in the exploration of history because we dont want to be doomed to repeat it. We want to build on what we have learned. So let me tell you a little bit about the people who are going to be sharing these ideas today. Im going to introduce all of them and then theyll come up each individually. First, philip burnham, who is the author of Indian Country gods country native america sons and National Parks and he is going to bring a very, very personal perspective, having lived and worked and taught on the rose at the Rosebud Indian Reservation and really exploring this idea of National Parks, where everybody from the perspective of individual jewels who lived on this land and and are now in places designated just for them. So, again, one of those those paradoxes and so we look forward to hearing phils perspective and currently i asked him last night, currently working on. Four on work about the the impact of indian boarding schools on many of the Indigenous People today. So a very, very, you know the legacies of of a of oppression of our past at the same time, these marvelous new ideas about our National Park system. Secondly, we have Priscilla Solis Ybarra to who is the associate professor in the department of english at the university of northern texas. And were going to hear really, priscilla is going to turn us this whole conversation upside down and on its head. I think she gave us a a little bit of of a clue earlier today about really challenging our basic premises, about parks and National Parks and access. And even this notion of ownership. And so were going to be looking forward to that. And finally, Shelton Johnson National Park ranger and educate educator extraordinaire who has landed in yosemite National Park and just refuses to go away. Is also the author of glory land, a really interested thing perspective about National Parks and the and the dilemmas that many of us people of color in this country face when we celebrate, on one hand, this marvelous invention of National Parks in these beautiful places. And yet the prices that some of us paid for for them to even exist. And what in those tensions all the time so wonderful exploration of that in his his book of glory land. But hes going to be bringing a very, very person sort of perspective about what it means to be in these places that he is now the steward and helps guide the rest of us in that notion of stewardship. So i leave you finally with this, and it is about that notion of stewardship, about that collective responsibility we now have. We inherit, we pick up the legacies of the homestead. We continue the legacy. And in denver, we start every meeting and every event with a what we call a land acknowledgment. I id say its actually a people acknowledgment and a hiss and a and an acknowledgment of our history. But we moving forward, i think well hear from these folks today about what we should shape our future stewardship of public lands as we move forward. So let us start in a first. First up is philip. On my thanks to the National Association of olmsted parks parks for inviting me to talk today. I guess this is my time to sing for my dinner, so to speak. Last nights dinner. Im not going to be singing, but i am going to tell you a story. I dont have any pictures, so im going to 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 framed perspective of space. It is in the hands of people like frederick law, olmstead, senior and junior, a place groomed with exception care. We tend to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image focus in time and space. Look over there. Isnt that a beautiful view . Some landscapes, however, can only be understood after the passage of decades, perhaps centuries. Our National Parkland scapes have been pulled from the land, almost like found monuments through forces that are partly geological and environmental, partly political, and more often than we like to think, sharpened on the cutting edge of cultural conflict. But if you ever visit the south dakota badly ends, you wont soon forget them. A stunning panorama of balding, eroded formations that have been described without doing them full justice as lunar or other worldly before the badlands were ever a tourist destination, and however they were a richly inhabited ecosystem. One trapper in the 1880s called him, and i quote, the greatest game country that i ever saw. But the era area was heavily hunted in subsequent years by farmers, ranchers, tribal people, even the federal government, the u. S. , biological survey exterminated coyotes and wolves as part of their predator control program. Buffalo, black and grizzly bear and lope. Elk and deer were killed and chased from the region by local and market hunters. What had been a teeming, mixed grassland crossed by badly end draws and cutaways was transformed within half a century into the equivalent of a final desert. The government, though, had visions of something bigger and better. A federal report from 1919. This is three years after the Park Service Organic act noted that, quote, stocking the entire bad land and the pine ridge indian forests with game and using all the bad land and indian forests for park and game purposes would become an object enthusiast critically sought by the general public. Its worth thinking about for a moment what the writer meant by the general public at the outset americas parks were envisioned to compete with a grand monuments of europe early National Park legislation offered the prospect of public playground sounds and wonderlands whose stewardship and ownership would be jointly held by the american people. The easiest way to obtain or reserve such lands was to show they were unfit for economic development. The lands in question were to be of incomparable inspiration. Priceless, really, but also worthless from the viewpoint of making money through private investment. The only industry that stood to profit was the western railroads, and only then by bringing visitors to the newly created parks. The new parks like yellowstone and yosemite, had poorer cousins scattered across the west in the form of indian reservations. Reservations were generally regarded as economically marginal or next to worthless, in the parlance of the interior department, as a result, indian land lands were obvious. Candidates for inclusion in the parks because they were regarded as unproductive and already under the hand of federal trustees. Here, the badlands of south dakota were themselves part of the great sioux reservation and established four years before yellowstone National Park was created in 1889. A government commissioned strong arm, the lakota sioux and to selling 9 million acres of their land, including the badlands, at which point they became part of the public domain. In 1922, the first congressional bill was introduced to create an entity called wonderland National Park in the western reaches of south dakota, not many settlers may have wanted to live in the badlands anymore, but someone was betting that people would want to come and marvel at their mysterious beauty. A paradox about the National Park service is worth noting here. Its a Conservation Action bureau charged with a mission to expand in other words, entrusted with protecting public land. The nps also aims to acquire it through donation purchase, exchange and eminent domain. When you think about it, such an expansive agenda was likely to create hard feelings sooner or later in Indian Country, our parks are natural, of course, but theyre also humanly shaped, stocked with large ungulates, blessed with old railroad hotels, with magnificent views and promoted to represent a time of untamed wilderness. The parks became in a few decades, the equivalent of unspoiled islands expanses where tourists could camp, hike and fish with the sense of re inhabiting a prehistoric past. But there was a problem to tourists werent the first ones in the socalled wilderness and the parkland had been used and managed by human beings to one degree or another for generations and even centuries, with Business Boosters at its back, Congress Authorizes in 1929 the establishment of Badlands National monument, a lesser designation than a National Park to a maximum of 15,000 acres. Seven years later, in the midst of the great depression, congress authorized monument boundaries to extend to five times their original area by including the addition of lands declared sub marginal or unproductive. The expansion brought the monument to the doorstep of the pine ridge indian reservation home of the Oglala Lakota sioux. At that point, thanks to a far away war, the park service wasnt finished with the badlands in 1942. Washington the War Department that is announced, plans to confiscate a chunk of the oglala reservation adjacent to the monument 43 miles long by 12 miles wide. Think of that 43 miles by 12 miles, roughly 350,000 acres to create the pine ridge aerial gunnery range. The land was to be used for high flying target practice. This area is rough, worthless land, wrote south dakota congressman francis case, owned for the most part by the government in trust for the pine ridge indians and could be had on a long term lease for a small amount. In fact, there were 125 indian families on the proposed gunnery range lands, not to mention several day schools. Churches and cemeteries. Scores of other families used the land for subsistence or leased it to outsiders for cash income. The wedge of rangeland was equal in size to a good sized western county, about half the size of rhode island. The War Department offered the oglala sioux 0. 01 per acre per year to lease tribally owned lands within this gunnery range area. The going rate according to the interior secretary, was between seven and a half and 0. 25. They were offered, one said the tribe eventually settled because it was a time of national emergency. The tribe eventually settled for 0. 03 an acre. Some of the land was owned outright by individuals indian and nonindian, who were given 30 days notice to move all possession and vacate their homes through eminent domain. They were paid an average of 2. 85 per acre, not much more than the going rate for one days manual labor. Permanent improvements left behind houses, barns, corrals largely went uncompensated. Little did any of the oglala sioux suspect gathering up their possessions in the act of being evicted. That one day a large part of the gunnery range would be cant become a part of badlands National Park, a place where people would come from thousands of miles away to camp like the lowlands and roar through the gullies in pricey off road vehicles. 20 years and two and two wars pass, at which point the air force declared surplus almost 300,000 acres in 1963. That year, a park Service Report discussed how local poverty might be addressed through road improvements and tourist facilities. A dance center, a motel, a picnic center, craft sales, all in reservation communities. It rent. It even recommended an authentic sioux Indian Village with real teepees, a point that had to raise eyebrows among the oglala in an area where adequate housing was barely obtainable, the tribe reluctant to hand over control of any treaty land to an outside authority, resisted so the bureau of Indian Affairs and the park Service Sister agencies in the interior department joined forces to devise a plan that would make part of pine ridge a tourist attraction, Badlands National monument was to annex a south unit, consisting of some 130,000 acres of the old gunnery range and additional lands. More than doubling the monument size. 76,000 of those acres would revert to the oglala sioux tribe, which would provide an easement compatible with park administration. The park service then wouldnt have to buy the land at all. It would only need to. Coleman, agent with the tribe. There was no need for interior to own any acreage when it could zone. It just as effectively. Again, the tribe resisted, but if the oglala wouldnt make the the exchange counter, the Senate Committee on interior affairs, the remaining free range land, they said, will be subject to disposal under Surplus Property procedures. In other words, if the Tribal Council didnt agree, there was no hope of regaining most of the gunnery range lands once controlled by the oglala. In 1968, Congress Passed public law 9468, approving the annexation as a way to pressure the tribe and formalize its intention to establish a badlands National Park. The badlands, at least as a park service landscape, were still growing. It took seven more years before the Tribal Council consented. A memorandum of agreement was signed by the park service and the tribe in. 1976, and two years later, badlands National Park was born in 78, so it was that the south unit, newly created there already was. What was there before became the north unit was to become, if not an emerald necklace in the olmstead manner. Hopefully a native jewel of the oglala prairie, the truth was more sobering, however, in exchange for allowing the park service onto the reservation, the oglala were merely returned land. They had been forced to surrender in a national emergency. Time hasnt been kind to the south unit since i reported on the badlands. In a book about the National Parks 20 years ago. Washington has done little to live up to its written promises. Training of oglala personnel has been haphazard, if not nonexistent. Ordinance mitigation of the old bombing range lands is still unfinished. Proposed studies to assess whether bison should be introduced into the south unit have been shelved. Signage and infrastructure to push traffic away from the reservation and a small Visitor Center in a converted trailer is all that visitors will find. The tribe has been denied first right of refusal for park concessions. And while its true that oglala people were promised all jobs in the south unit, there have never been more than a handful at any given time. The conditions or clauses of the memorandum were as carefully crafted to washingtons advantage as were those of congressional treaties a century before. Finally, the tribe has political problems of its own powerful ranching interests have prevented the oglala council from endorsing the idea of making the south unit a tribal National Park. A long held dream of many to be administered in dependently from pine ridge, many on the reservation acknowledge the tribal government is in need of reform, but without appropriations. The vision of an oglala oglala scenic byway connecting the badlands to the black hills and bringing some prosperity in its wake is, for now, a hollow wish still through such organizations as the Thunder Valley Community Development corporation, the oglala continue to work for meaningful change and advocate for it, such as the restoration of bison to the south unit for all of the sun, wind and rain have done to shape them. The badlands are still an unfinished piece of work in the best sense of frederick olmstead, senior vision a landscape is a place the integrates Natural Beauty and human use in a way that benefits and supports not only those who come to camp and hike and admire the sites, but also the communities who have lived there for generations. If only it were so today in the badlands. Thank you. When i started this year, your soi Priscilla Solis Ybarra to you had the marikina solis, ibarra encarnacion, pena, ibarra and priscilla solis ibarra, the daughter of maria, acting as a Lizzie Borden in corazon pena. Ibarra i come to you from denton, texas, which is north of dallas. My mother was an immigrant to the united states, and my father is a Second Generation mexicanamerican in who was a migrant farm worker. My personal land acknowledgment is to share with you that i travel here today from the lands of the wichita and caddo affiliated tribes. And as i mentioned, the town where i live and where i teach at the university of north texas is called denton, named after john b denton, who committed genocide against Indigenous Peoples and against the wichita caddo, comanche and apache peoples in that area in the 19th century. That was also the time when the Texas Rangers were committing violence against my people, mexicanamerican people, as well as against Indigenous Peoples. Im very grateful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to to join you today. I believe these moments, as i mentioned earlier, are very important moments to reflect on what has come before and you know what . What we can do in the future. So let me get my present tation up here. Okay. So thank you also to happy. I was going to say for that wonderful introduction of the panel and the way you can contextualize what were doing on this last panel and what has come before. Oh, okay. So i feel like i was invited here to offer a perspective of, you know, what weve been talking about and in the context of racial justice, which happy offered in her overview and the introduction. Ive also been working for some years now on another american conservation legacy, which is the aldo and Estella Leopold family legacy. And im currently writing a book called in light of los lunas, Mexican American womanhood, abolition and abundance and that book is to really offer the Estella Leopold old part of the story of that leopold legacy, as well as the five children who were all Mexican American, like their mother, who was from mexico and who all became environment scientists. Three of them were inducted to the national science. What is that called . National academy of science. Thank you. How could i get that wrong when im here in d. C. . National academy of sciences. And four of them were professors at research universities. So this is, to me, a story a mexicanamerican leading family of american conservation. And thats not a hidden story, but its certainly not very well known. So ive been working on that, but im approaching it through a kind of braided narrative style that is somewhat memoir, is stick, and its a story about my mother and about Estella Leopold and some about myself. So what im going to share with you today is just like a brief and very condensed excerpt of part of that manuscript thats in process. Ever since at least 2006. I have been putting myself through a process of learning from native and indigenous scholars, writing on the topics of Climate Change. Extractivism settler colonialism and environmental issues. By the summer of 2021, i felt both a personal and intellectual investment in finding my place as a chicana feminist in solidarity with indigenous led actions to protect the earth. So when an opportunity came to join a water walk, i went for a water walk is an extended ajiboye led tradition honoring waters Life Sustaining gift. The first water walk took place in 2003, led by josephine mondawmin, an ojibway grandmother. Joseph bean was asked, what will you do for the water . After reflecting on the question, she felt moved to. Gather a group of women and start to walk the shorelines of lake superior. They ended up walking 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 d 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 give this panel again a wonderful. I too want to give a thank you to all of our terrific panels throughout the day. Obviously, we have an immense topic and could have on for some time, but we will call it a day for now. I want to end where we began thinking about the 1865 yosemite report and focus on the importance of access to nature that it not be the prerogative of just the and the privileged, and that is an importance of public spaces for civic engagement, for community and inclusivity, for mental and physical wellbeing. These were all principles of frederick law olmsted, and these are principles that we are celebrating, but that we are also rethinking and reimagining in the course of this bicentennial. And so im glad that all of you were here. I appreciate the cosponsorship of the of the capitol. And i hope you will leave todays session thinking again about these public spaces 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 time. So thank you for being here and enjoy the rest of your day and your tours. Well be happy to tell you the details of those tours once we conclude. Weekend on your Program Guide or at cspan. Org history. I am very pleased tonight to have steve as our speaker who is going to be telling us about who as a young