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 JohnsonNational 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 i