Itss my pleasure to welcome you todays program places of healing and expression, National Parks and the next century. I would also like to welcome those of you who are watching us live on the National Archives youtube channel, as well as on pleased span. Were pleased everyone is here to jien us. The National Archives is honored to clollaborate with program a tha will explore issues of public dialogue and personal meeting and National Parks and what this means moving forward into the next century of americas best idea. Before we get to todays program, i would like to tell you about two upcoming programs that will take place in december, in september, september, the people and the police, produced in the aftermath of 1968 riots in washington, d. C. In an effort to highlight the district pilot project, created to foster the development of Community Programs and improve the shattered relationship between the citizens and its police force. After the screening nbc foreign reporter will moderate a legacy of the project and current state of Police Community relations, frank smith, jr. , one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who relocated to washington in late 1960s and long time activists. Sue van, on october will be here to discuss. To fiend out more about these and other programs exhibits and events, please consult our calendar of events and its also available on our web site nor, and our record riegs ration and the materials were created by the federal Government Agencies including, of course, the National Park service. Through wednesday, august 71 on displi, the original organic act, the legislation that created the National Park service 300 years ago today. If you havent done that yet, ill take time. Also part of our holdings related, there are several reels of Motion Picture film. To get us started i would like to show excerpts from three of these films. First well look at a clip from great smokey mountains, which it driens the conservation core and that park. Now well see an excerpt from the 1934 film, the travel which shows people over time interacting with the parking, montana and this film was silent, so if spirit moves you, you can feel free to hum along or whatever. Well move 50 years ahead in time and see it from the 1984 film produced by the park service, the fountain of life, Rocky MountainNational Park. Without further adieu, lets roll those clips, please. Most of them from new york and nvj nj, they know their in fifth avenue, the river side drive and the metropolitan hotel. But these National Institutions have not added much enjoinment to their lives, they didnt know the Great Outdoors where perhaps the greater opportunities for their future may lie. Theyre happy, healed. And theyre paying their way with my service and making it competition to health and happiness of men now living and still more millions on the future. In the leisure time, well organized Educational Program which is part of it is using their mag snificent surrounding. Practical knowledge, more applicable to present day needs than any theyve admired before theyre not giving them. And they look to the future with high hopes. By 1909 the idea for Rocky MountainNational Park was borne. The issue was an emotional one and so, it pitted commercial interest against those who would preserve such places. Let music say the things that words can never teach. Forget the language of the world. To him the Rocky Mountains were a fountain of life. This was his home and inspiration. Became the chief spokesman for the parked cause. The greatest resource of the people is that which empowers and inspires them to do their best. People are wrestless for the medicine and spell of the wi wilderne wilderness. After six years, mills saw his dream achieved, Rocky Mountain became the tenth National Park in america. What do people see. Why do they come. The answers are as varied and numerous as the people themselv themselves. For me they mean a trail to the top of the continent. To stand in the alpine world where waters diverge to either the atlantic or pacific ocean. For some it is a place to savor a pace of living not easily found in todays world. So that was the past, now to bring us to the present and look to the future its now my turn to program over. Will you please help me welcome julia and our panel to the stage. [ applause ]. Thank you very much, tom, good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming today. Its a pleasure to see all of you and to see those of you from a distance. I would like to first begin by introducing our panel. Ill start with wayne rogers who actually began his National ParkService Career as a volunteer and worked at several parks and currently a park ranger at Independence National historical park in pennsylvania. Our next panelist is julie, is the ceo and president of the names project, which is the organization that cares for and interprets the aids quilt, welcome julie. Ronda, here is our next panelist, ronda started her career at mount rush more where she grew up and then became a classroom teacher for 20 years and has then returned to the park service, worked at several parks and now the chief of Museum Services and interpretation at jefferson service of National Memorial in st. Louis. We have carol mcbryant. Mcbryant is a relevance diversity and inclusion strategist at the National Level for the National Park service. She has more than 30 Years Experience in the park service and one of her jobs of many that she held, was the chief of interpretation of the lewis and Clark National historic trail during the by centennial of the lewis and clark expedition. And did a lot of work with the native peoples route of the trail making sure that all sides of that story were told, welcome panelists. And i am just going to get us on to the correct slide here. Its a pleasure to be here to talk with you about National Parks as places of healing and resiliency and expression. like to say that the National Park service is probably the only Government Agency with the word joy invite you all to go and look at that in the ro tun da today and see the exact words there. That word enjoyment can be interpreted in many different ways. One really important way is returning to a sense of peacefulness and health and healing and making a deep connection with place and with yourself. And parks can be places for deep healing and they can also be places for healing on a societal level. Thats what were going to be exploring today in our panel. I grew up here in washington, d. C. And my father, avid wash burn, was a warrior during the 50s and 60s. And he credits Rock Creek Park here as saving his life. What made him able to do that important peacemaking work that he was doing during those periods. And we understand that and embrace it in the white house the Obama Administration also understands that and embraced it. Which is why we have National Park our x day and weve started a Prescriptions Program you can see the Surgeon General there in that picture we have doctors across the country who are beginning to write prescriptions to people to go outside, mover their bodies, get into parks, these are great prescriptions for both physical and emotional healing. Were excited to be able to take that and sort of help doctors embrace it. Our National Parks represent our American Heritage and they represent the american narrative. Therefore places when we commemorate that struggle. We can have important conversations. If youll note here this is selma to mobt gom ri back in march we were able to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march from selma to montgomery. One of the ways we commemorated it was to bring 150 young people from across the country together to recreate if march. We called it a learning march because every day they did a little piece of the walk and would have dialogue in the evenings about what freedom means to them and what social justice issues are we working on today and how can a country heal from its past injustices. Parks are platforms for these kind of conversations. We have a distinguished panel here today to talk with us about their own work in relationship to parks with healing and resilience as were going into this next century, we move from conservation to conversation and to that end we will be inviting you to join us in a conversation after we watched several film clips and im going to turn it over to wayne right now who is going to start us off with introducing a film. Ive been with the park Service Three years now. Just past my threeyear anniversary. I did spend it here as a volunteer. It was just a chanced outing, family outing, i saw signs volunteers, so i inquired, talked to the big boss wife. She gave it thumbs up and here i am today. Coping with ptsd something weve started to learn throughout the park service is that a lot of veterans and even Current Service members visit National Parks to get away. And i wrote a story a couple of years ago about my experiences and the question i like to ask is for those of you who need healing or those that you know need healing, what are the thing that is have helped you or your loved ones in that healing process and have the National Parks been a thought help in that process. Its a veteran who served in iraq also came home diagnosed with severe ptsd. He decided the to take his camera and went and travelled for 25 days, 12 National Parks and hell i dont want to get too much into it, but it really experiences how it helped him just in that short amount of time yet that next foot forward to that next step that he needed to get to in that healing process. With that well roll the clip. And i recently spent 25 days ton road going to the National Parks. Roughly 7,200 miles from coast to coast and in california. The parks i visited wfr great falls National Park and battlefield, lincoln memorial, big ben, carls bad. Yellow stone, Mount Rainier and redwood National Park. I want to reconnect before i started having issues with posttraumatic stress disorder. In 2000, i joined the u. S. Army. Spent almost a year there, came back. And shortly after diagnosed with ptsd. For me, its just unwanted Anxiety Stress and aggravation on my normal every day life. A good example of that is going through the grocery store. I try to go in the early mornings or midafternoon, i know the least amount of people there, the more people im around, the more anxious i get, i become hyper aware, as you can say. I try to avoid situations that might trigger any negative thoughts or emotions in my every day life. I usually tend to stay at home as much as possible. Over the years i have researched how others have dealt with the stresses of getting in the military and readjusting back into life and the one common thing that i actually saw there eesz a lot of veterans that will go out and explore the National Parks. The more i thought about it, they seem like something that can benefit me as well. So i jumped and started researching the National Parks. Theyre going to be celebrating centennial. In fact i own a camera and i use that as part of my therapy for my ptsd, i figured stwoub a Good Opportunity to take my camera and put myself in the situation of getting out of the house, but also capturing beautiful footage of parks at the same time and hopefully challenging myself along the way. Once i commit today myself, i went ahead and started mapping out where i wanted to take my trip and i made that coincide with friends and family i havent seen in a while. I think i started breaking out of my old comfort zone and started feeling a little bit more open. And helping to open those barriers. I felt like it was going to be problematic for me because it reverts back to the whole ptsd aspect. Once i got there and kind of settled in little bit. I tried to focus on getting footage and focuses myself on my camera work and what i was doing. It was a Beautiful Day to get out there and sun was out and people were out. Definitely got me anxious, im glad i did it. Every park conference is zoned middle per se. I was out of shape, so i knew that going on hikes and different terrain would kind of help me a little bit, another challenge, on top of other things i would try to deal with. Its a challenge i welcome. I think one of the first big physical challenges for me was carls bad cabin. I forget 1. 2 miles downhill to massive cave. The temperature drops as you go down and theres lots of stuff but i made it. One thing i liked about the military it put me in situations that forced me to, you know what i thought they were. I think theres a parallel with the National Parks. Once you get out there you find yourself in situations that you otherwise would not have. Before you know it youve accomplished a big hill, youve travelled through streams for me it was getting out where there were a lot of unknowns and getting out of my comfort zone. The tragedy that it brings, i can honestly say the National Parks did give me a sense of peace that i had not felt probably since i was a teenager, but that person by i think is not only limited for someone like myself or other veterans but anyone can experience, all you have to do is get out there and go visit some National Parks. Good afternoon. Im here to talk to you a little bit about the aids memorial. And i think our interpretation is a little bit different than being with Many Park Service folks. But we have been an entity thats been in operation for 30 years and who would have thought that 30 years ago, a simple act of beginning to make a quilt panel to testify to work through your greech and lo for a loved one who was lost to aids would turn into this incredibly ep pick monument that is testament to 94,000 lives created by over 100,000 individuals. Our founding story comes at a time in 1987 when there were tens of thousands of people who were sick and dying and it felt like no one cared an it felt like the group that was being impacted the most was the other and we were being talked about in statistics and it was terrifying. Young man named clooef jones had an idea. He asked people that harvey from San Francisco to carry a plaque card, a poster board simply with a name written on it of someone you loved who had been lost to this disease. When they got to the end of this march, they had hidden ladders in the bushes and they take these names up aside of the wall. What happened people stayed and they started talking about the person whose name was on the plaque card. I didnt know he was gone. It looked like a quilt, you know, we need a National Memorial. We need to wake people up and we need them to talk about people rather than statistics, he knew that this would change the face of the epidemic, for two years he told people we needed quilt and for two years they told him it was the craziest idea ever. In 1987 he made that first memorial and today, as i said. We have over 100,000 lives engaged in this conversation. Our connection to the National Park is about our National Mall and our civic stage where we brought this quilt in 1987 it was the first time we had the voices of tall people, short people, white people, black people. All engaged in a conversation about changing the dialogue about hiv and aids. And it changed our conversation from one of the other to one of were all invested and involved in this conversation. This particular photo is from that first display and. One of the things i think about is its epic and intimate at the same time. Had the intimate details of individual like sewn in which approximates the size of the human grave. We are laying out our dead in washington in the hopes that washington would wake up and help us and its now so epic in scope and i feel like that is part of the joy of the National Parks every time youre in an epic kind of situation, theres an intimacy to it as well. As we set up this clip, this clip is from 2012 when we came back to d. C. And we were here for two particular events. One was the folk life festival and the other was the International Aids Conference and this film was produced by the park