Moderator he was executive director of parks and recreation. She was born in denver traveled east and found herself back home where she has worked and served on the city council as president. In addition to a public post shes worked for several years as a facilitator with the National Civic league. She was a founding board member of colorado women for Political Action in mile high. Helped us kick off olmstead 200 onon april 26, 2021 print opus s 199th birthday. You can see her in action on our Youtube Channel if you want to her a year ago. We are delighted to have her today. She will moderate this final panel. Thank you so much. Hello i think its afternoon already. Good afternoon everyone. I am excited to be part of this final panel. Its going to be a little shift and what we will be doing in the panel this afternoon. I hope you will find fascinating in some ways set us up for this with some of his challenging questions right at thekn end of where do we go from here. As we engage in this exploration of the history of these phenomenal individuals name the olmsted spirit start of the quick story about how i came to this in the first place. I hope you dont mind but dede asked me because we have some olmsted inspired to participate the subtle anniversary celebration. And right at the same time we had some comedic gathering about one of our parks in denver where the word that was getting around the community was olmsted was not as great as they said they were. They were in fact involved in these very, very racist endeavors. And wehe should not be celebratg them. I raise that issue with dede. Because it disturbs me. I came to understanding parks in the olmsted tradition like everyone else with a sense of all and admiration. I was horrified if these rumors were true. As with all rumors there is a kernel of truth. The great response and i think you dede and the organization for me for engaging in this conversation was lets explore. I dont want to give you the answers but lets talk about what it means to individuals for 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 and from the history to guide us in that endeavor. And a part of that history what underscored that exchange was when the olmsteds were having an influence on our early Park Development in denver was a time when the ku klux klan had complete control of our cities. Some ways it was guilty by association. It also represented in denver the movement to build, parks ad cities a Beautiful Movement was the Founding Fathers shall i say. And talks about the prerogatives of wealthh and influence. The very notion of olmsted parks was not that. It was equitable yet the people in cities around the country were doing their own version of olmsted parks were in fact representatives of the wealth and influence. With this very mixed bag of her like to say it like the founding of our countries the complexities and the paradoxes of our history and the history of olmsted designs, parks, ideas were equally complex. Especially when you think about the relationship. Kim talked about the relationships the marriage relationship like all relationships they are also complex and multifaceted. You are going to be hearing from this panel a real focus on people. In the we the olmsted envisioned you should never give me near any technology. Whether it envisioned the we all the people for all is a very mixed bag as we move forward in designing and creating our parks system at a national, state, and even local level. To who is involved . We have a panel of individuals who are really going to reflect and really powerful ways about the relationships of people to this movement into where we go into the future. Also talked about a sense of freedom would create for us. And yet one of those paradoxes is that some people do not feel at that sense of freedom. In factma were the primary goals of my department today, still, is getting africanamerican young africanamerican and young latino individuals into our parks. We talk about feeling welcome. We are having a conversation about changing that idea of welcome. Because welcome assumes that belongs to someone else. And that you are being welcomed to a space its not really yours. Part of that childs beer going toin be facing in these individuals are going to be talking about is the very notiol of who the wii really is when we are talking about equitable access to the park system. Reimagining inclusive system reimagining and thinking differently about the ideas of ownership in those relationships. And exploring where we have been even in this conservation movement. Folks that look like me and wonder how we got into conservation. This is something we should naturally be engaging. Some really hard h questions. On the exploration of history we do not want to be doomed to repeat it. Let me tell little bit about how the people are going to be sharing these ideas today. 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 american and National Parks. He is going to bring a very, very personal perspective having lived and taught at the Rosebud Indian Reservation really exploring this ideafr of nationl parks for everybody from the weperspective of individuals who lived on this land and are now in places designated just for them. Again one of those paradoxes. And so we look forward to hearing phils perspective. Currently i asked him last night, currently working on on work about the impact of indian boarding schools on it many Indigenous People today. A very, very you know our legacies of oppression, of our past. At the same time these marvelous new ideas about our National Park system. Secondly, we have Priscilla Solis Ybarra who is the associate professor in the department of english at the university of northern texas. We are going to hear purcell is going to turn this whole conversation upside down and on its head. She gave us a little bit of a clue earlier today really challenging our basic premises about parks, National Parks and access. Even this notion of ownership. We are going to be looking forward to that. Andlt finally, shelton johnson. National park ranger and educator extraordinary who has landed in yosemite nationalat pk and just refuses to go away. [laughter] is alsond the author of glory land. A really interesting perspective about National Parks and the dilemmas many of us people of color in this country face when we celebrate on one hand this marvelous invention of National Parks and these beautiful places. And yet the prices that some of us pay for them to even exist. And the tensions all of the time but wonderful exploration of that. Its going to bring a very, very personal perspective about what it means to be in these places that he is now the steward. Helps guide the rest of us in that notion of stewardship. So i leave you finally with this. It is about that notion of stewardship. About that collective responsibility we now have. We inherit. We pick up theth legacy ofeg olmsted. We continue the legacy support in denver we start every meeting and every event with what we call a land acknowledgment. I would say it is a people acknowledgment and acknowledgment of our history. But we,ks moving forward will hr from these folkse today about what we should shape our future stewardship of public land as we move forward. So let us start. First up is philip. My thanks to the National Association of olmsted parks for inviting me too talk today. I guess this is my time to sing for my dinner sorted so to speak. I am not going to be singing. But i am going to tell you a story. I dom not have any pictures so im going to ask you to follow the story in your minds eye. Because it unravels oak under over quite a substantial period of time. The title of the story is the badlands and 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 senior and junior a place groomed with exceptional care. We tend to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image, focused in time and space. Look over there, isnt that a view . Ful some landscapes however can only be understood after the passage of decades or perhapsie centuri. Our National Park landscapes pas have been pulled from the land. Almost like found monuments for their forces that are geological or environmental. Partly political and more often than we like to think, sharpened on the cutting edge of cultural conflicts. If you ever visit south dakota badlands he will not soon forget them. A stunning panorama of eroding formations that have been described without doing them full justice as lunar or otherworldly. Before the badlands were ever a Tourist Destination they were a richly inhabited ecosystem. One trapper in the 1880s called them and i will quote the greatest greatest game country that i ever saw. The area was heavily hunted in subsequent years by farmers, ranchers, tribal people even the federal government. The u. S. And biological exterminate coyotes and wolves is part of their predator control program. Buffalo, black, grizzly bear, antelope, elk, deer were killed and chased from the region right local in market hunters. What had been a teeming mixed grassland cross by band lent draws in cutaways was transformed within half a century into the equivalent of the desert. The government had visions bigger and better. Federal 19 this is three years after the Park Service Organic act noted stocking the entire bad land in the pine ridge Indian Forest indian force forec park and game purposes would become an object enthusiastically sought by the general public. Its worth thinking about what the writer meant by the general public. At the outset compete with the green monuments of europe. Early National Park legislation public playgrounds and a wonder lands whose stewardship and ownership will be jointly held by the american people. The easiest way to obtain or reserve such land is to show they were unfit for economic development. The land in question were to be incomparable inspiration, priceless really. But also worthless from the viewpoint of making money through private investment. The only industry that stood to profit with the westernrn railroads and only then by bringing visitors to the newly created parks. The new parks like a yellowstone and yosemite had poor cousins scattered across the west in a form of indian reservations. Reservations are generally regarded as economically marginal port next to worthless in the department of the interior department. As a result, indian lands were obvious candidates for inclusion in the parks because they were regarded as unproductive and already under the hand of federal trusteeship. The badlands of south dakota were themselves part of the great sioux reservation established for years before yellowstone National Park was created. In 1889 a Government Commission strongarmed into selling 9 million acres of their land including the badlands. At which point they became part of the public domain. In 19202 the first congressional bill was introduced to create an entity called wonderland National Park and the western reaches of south dakota. Not many settlers may have wanted to live in the badlands anymore. Someone was betting people would want to come and marvel at their mysteriousty beauty. A paradox about the National Park service is worth noting here. It is a Conservation Bureau charged with a mission to expand. In other words the nps aims to acquire through donation, purchasen. Exchange and imminent domain. When you think about it, such an expansive agenda it was likely to create hard feeling sooner oa later in the indian country. Our parks are natural but theyare also humanly shapeds, sd 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 were tourist good camp, hike, fish with the sense of re inhabiting a prehistoric past. But there was a problem too. Tourists were not the first ones on the socalled wilderness. The parkland had been used and managed by human beings to 1 degree or another foran generations and even centuries. With the business of boosters at its back congress authorized 19209 the establishment of badlands and National Monuments. A lesser designation to a maximum of 50000 acres. Seven years later in the midst of a Great Depression congress authorized monument boundaries to extend to five times their original area by including the edition of lands declared sub marginal or unproductive. The expansion brought the monument to the doorstep of the pine ridge indian reservation home of the sioux. At that point thing so far away for the park service was not finished with the badlands. In 1942 the washington or codepartment announced plans to confiscate a chunk of the reservation adjacent to the monuments. 43 miles long by 12 miles wide. Think of that 43 miles by 12 miles. Roughly three and 50000 acres to create the pine ridge aerial gunnery range. The land was to be used for highflying target practice. This is a rough worthless land wrote congressman francis case. Found inn government for trust with the pine ridge indians could be have on a longterm lease for a small amounts. In fact there were 125 indian lafamilies on the proposed l rangeland churches schools and senators. Scores ofe other families use e land for subsistence are outsiders for cash income. The wedge of rangeland was equal in size to a good size western county, about half the size of rhode island. The War Department offered them a 1 cent per acre, per year to lease why billy owned lands within the gunnery range area. The going rate according to the interior secretary was between seven and a half and 25 cents. They were offered one cent by the tribe eventually settled ate time of National Emergency the tribe is settled for 3 cents an acre. Some of the land was owned outright by individuals indian and non indian or given 30 days notice to move possession and vacate their homes breakthrough imminent domain are 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 suspect gathering up their possessions in the act of being evicted that one day a large part of the gunnery range would become a part of badlands National Park a place where people would come from thousands of miles away to camp, hike the low lands, and rural through the goalies in gun priceless offroad vehicles. Twenty years and two wars passed 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 even recommended an authentic sioux indiania village with real teepees, a point that had to raise eyebrows in an area where adequate housing was barely containable. The tribe reluctant to hand over any treaty land to outside authority resisted. So the bureau of Indian Affairs the park service, sister agencies, and the interior interiordepartment joined forceo devise a plan that will make part of pine ridge a tourist attraction. Badlands National Monument was to annex a south unit consisting tof an additional lands more tn doubling the monument size. 76000 would revert to the tribe omwhich would provide easement compatible with parking ministration. The park service would not have to buy thene land at all it woud need to comanagement with the tribe. Itit would no reason to own it when they can zone it just as effectively. Again the tribe resisted. But if they would not make the exchange on interior affairs the remaining gunnery range land they said will be subject to disposal under surplus product procedures. In other words ofl the Tribal Council did not agree there was no hope whats controlled. In 1968 Congress Passed a public law 9468 approving annexation was a way to pressure the tribe informal as itsbl intention to withstand that balance National Park. At least as a park Service Landscape are still growing. It took seven more years before the Tribal Council consented. A memorandum of agreement in 19762 years later badlands National Park was born in 78. So it was the south unit newly created what was there before became the north unit was to become if not an emerald necklace hopefully a native jewel of the prairie. The truth was more sobering in exchange for lenny park service onto the reservation they were merely returned land had been forced to surrender in a National Emergency. Time has not beenn kind. 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 personnel has been haphazard if not nonexistent. Ordinance mitigation of the old bombing range land is still unfinished. Proposed studies to assess whether bison should be introduced into the south unit have been shelved. Signage and infrastructure push traffic away from the reserva