The notion that the country’s most beautiful places are preserved for everyone to enjoy overlooks a complicated history of imperialism, particularly of Indigenous women. In order to bring this story to the forefront, the National Park Service teamed up with a group of researchers who combed through the archives to find the women at the center of the park service's history.
Visit most national parks, and you’ll see, read or hear about explorers, labor leaders or even some of the Native people whose homelands are part of park regions. But few of these stories, monuments or even trail signs feature women, especially Native women or other women of color, despite the roles women played in shaping the landscape and its uses.
[Trigger warning: This transcript and related audio recording contains material about sexual violence.]
Today we’re going on record with Professors Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor and Lisa Materson. Both women are historians at UC Davis who specialize in women’s and gender history. Together they co-edited The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History, which consists of 30 analytical chapters covering topics such as women in U.S. imperialism, interracial unions and state power, gender and sexuality in popular culture and women’s work under free and unfree labor regimes.
Caitlan McCafferty: Welcome professors.
Lisa Materson: Thank you for having us.