See democracy at work. Get informed straight from the source on cspan, unfiltered, undiced word for word from the nations capitol to wherever you are. This is what democracy look like. Cspan powered by cable. Third and final panel will examine challenges to the public park ideal and we are honored to have as moderator executive director of parks and recreation, she was born in denver and traveled east and went back home where she worked for federico pena. In addition to republic posts, abby has worked as facilitator with the National Civic league and she was founding board colorado black women for Political Action in mile high youth corps. Kathy helped us kick off olmstead and you can see her in action in the Youtube Channel if you want to look at her a year ago but we are delighted to have her today and she will moderate this final panel. Thank you so much ddianne. Good afternoon, everyone. Im excited to be part of this final panel and its going to be a little shift of what we will be doing in this panel this afternoon that i hope that you will find fascinating and in some ways some set us up for this with some of his challenging questionsal 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 of the phenomenal individuals named the olmstead and i will start with a quick history how i came in the first place. I hope you dont mind. Didi asked because we have some olmstead in parts of denver to participate in the anniversary celebration and right 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 they were, in fact, involved in the very racist endeavors and we shouldnt be celebrating them. I raised that issue with didi because it disturbed me. I came to the to understanding parks and olmstead tradition like everyone else with sense of awe and admiration and i was horrified if the rumors were true. And as with all rumors, theres always a kernel of truth. The great response and i thank you tedee and the organization for me in engaging in this conversation was lets w explor. 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 that endeavor and part of that history in denver, what underscored that exchange was that when olmsteads were having on our Early Development was a time when the ku kluz klan had complete control of the city and in some ways it was guilt by association but it also represented in denver the movement to build parks in the city. The Beautiful Movement was , you know, the Founding Fathers shall i say and what our wealth talks about and the notion that olmstead was not that but was equitable and yet people in cities around the country who were doing their own version of olmsted parks were, in fact, representative of the prerogative of wealth and influence and so we have this very mixed bag and i like to say the founding of our country, the complexities of paradoxies of our history and the history of olmstead designs, parks and ideas is also equally complex especially when you think about the relationships. Kim talked about the relationships, the marriage relationship and like a all relationships they are also complex and multifaceted and so youre going to bed hearing frm this panel a real focus on people. The we that is that olmstead envisioned did i turn that off . You should never get me near any technology. [laughter] what the olmstead envision, we the people for all is a mixed bag as we move forward in designing and creating our park system both at a national and a state and even at a local level so who was involved. And so we have a panel of individuals who are really going to reflect in really powerful ways about the relationships of people to this movement and to where we two into the future. Ralph talked about the sense of freedom that olmstead inspired parks would create for us and yet one of those paradoxes is that some people dont feel dont get that sense of freedom. In fact, one of the primary goals in my the president today still is getting africanamerican young africanamerican and young latino individuals into our parks, into our Mountain Park system. We talked about feeling welcomed and we are having a conversation about changing that idea of welcome. Youre being welcomed to a space thats not really yours and part of the challenge that these individuals are going to talk about is the notion of ownership and who we really is when were talking about equitable access to our park system and reimagining an inclusive system, we imagining and thinking differently about the ideas of ownership and those relationships and and exploring where we have been even in this Conservation Movement where, you know, people still look at folks that look like me and wonder how we got into con certifiation as though this is something that we should naturally be engaging. So we are addressing hard questions here that hopefully will help us in the exploration of history because we dont want to be doom today repeat it. We want to build on what we have learned. Let me introduce all of them and theylln come up each individually. First Philip Burnham who is the author of indian country, gods country, native americans and National Parks, and he is going to bring a very, very personal perspective havingin lived and worked and talked at the Rosebud Indian Reservation and really exploring this idea of National Parks for everybody from the perspective of individual who is lived on this land and and are now in places designated just for them. Again, one of those those paradoxes and so we look forward to hearing philips perspective. And i asked him last night, currently working on for on work about the impact of indian boarding schools on many of the Indigenous People today. So a very, very, you know, the legacies of of oppression, of a past at the same time the marvelous new ideas about our National Park system. Secondly, we have priscilla soliss ibarra who is the associate professor in the department of english at the university of northern texas and we are going to hear a really priscilla is going to turn this conversation upside down and on its head. I think she gave us a little bit 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 we are going to looking forward to that and finally shelton johnson, a National Park ranger and educator and landed in Yosemite Park and refuses to go away and also author of glory land, a really interesting perspective about National Parks and the themas that many of us people of color in this country face when we celebrate on one hand this marvelous invention of National Parks and beautiful places and yet the prices that some of us paid for them to each exist and what those tensions and exploration of that in his book ofd. Glory land but hes going to be bringing a personal perspective about what it means to be in these places that he is now the steward and helps bide 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 the collective responsibility we now have. We inherit the legacies of the home homestead and we continue to legacies. In denver we start every meeting and every event with what we call a land acknowledgment. Idi say its actually a peopls acknowledgment and acknowledgment of our history but we moving forward i think will hear from these folks today about what we should shape our future stewardship of public landsla as we move forward. So let us start and first first up iss philip. My thanks to the National Association of olmstead parks for invite knowing talk today. I guess this is my talk 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 follow the story in yourou minds eye as it unravels over quite a substantial period of time. The title of the story is the bad lands, National Park service parable. A landscape is a scoped point of view, framed perspective of space and it is in the hands of people like frederick law omlstead, senior and junior and came to think of landscapes as consisting of a fixed image focused 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. Through forces that are partly geological and environmental and partly political and more often than we would like to think sharpened on the cutting edge of cultural conflict. If you ever visit the south dakota bad lands, you wont soon forget them. A stunning pan ramma of balding eroding formation that is have been described without doing them full justice as lunar or other worldly. Before the bad lands were a touristt destination they weria richly inhabited ecosystem. One trapper in the 1880s and i quote, the greatest game country area that i ever saw. The area was heavily hunted by farmers, ranchers, tribal people even federal government. The u. S. Biological survey exterminated coyotes and wolfs as part of predator control program, buffalo, black and tabrizlyk bear, elk, tier were killed by local and market hunters. What had been a. Teaming mix grassland wastr transformed witn half a century within equivalent of final desert. The government had a different vision that was bigger and mo its worthying about what the writer meant by the general public. Americas parks weree envisioned tome compete with the grand monument of europe. They offered public playgrounds. The stewardship is held by theth american people. The easiest way to obtain that was to show they werecandidatese 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, and eminent domain. And eminent domain. The agenda was likely to create hard feelings sooner in the indian country. Our parks are natural of course but humanly shaped. Stocked with large items and promoted to represent untamed wilderness. Theca parks became the equivalet of unspoiled items. You could camp, mike, and fish with reinhabiting a prehistoric past. There was a problem too. Tourist werent the first one in the wilderness. The parkland was used and managed by humans for one degree orev another in generations and centuries. With Business Boosters at its back, congress authorized in 1929 t the establishments of Badlands National monument. A lesser designation than a maximum park of 50,000 acres. Years Later Congress authorized boundaries to extend to five times the original area by including the additional lands declared submarginal or unproductive. They brought thenume monument te of the pinewood indian reservation. At that point, thanks to a far away war, the park service wasnt finished with the badlands. In 1942 washington war a part of the reservation adjacent to the monument. 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. Thiswo is rough worthless land. Injurior owned for the pine ridge indians. There were 125 indian families on the land no to mention several day schools, churches and cemeteries they leased it to c outsiders for income. The wedge was equal in size to a county halff the size of rhode pisland. They offered one cent per acre to lease the land they were offered one cent. The tribey settles for threect per acre. Some of the land was owned out right by indian and nonindian to remove all possessions and vacate the homes they were paid two dollarshe per acre little kidney of them suspect gathering up their possessions that one day it would be come a part of dsthe park to camp a hike the lowlands. 20 years and two wars past. At which point the air force almost 300,000 acres in 1963. They discussed how poverty might be addressed through theimpr facilities. Be addressed through theimpr center. Itit recommended an authentic aa with real tepees in an area where adequate housing was barely obtainable. The tribe was on treaty land. So, the bureau of Indian Affairs joined forces to devise a plan for a tourist attraction. Badlands national mown monument was a south unit. They used the additional lands doubling the monument size. They would revert to the tribe that would provide an easement compatible with park service and they wouldnt have to buy the land at all. They would only need the tribe. No need to own any acreage when they. Could zone it as effectively. Again, if they wouldnt make the exchange countered the Senate Committee on interior affairs. The remaining is subject to disposal under property procedures. If the council didnt agree there was no hope of regaining most o of the gunnery rangelands once controlled. In 1968 Congress Passed a aid approving the annexation as a way toli pressure the tribe into establishingng a badland nationl park. The badlands, as least as a landscape was still growing. It took several more years memorandum of agreement was signedan in 1976 and two years later the badland National Park was newly created. What was there became the north unit. A small visvi i v is tor centern a tailor is all visitors will find. Tr the tribe has been denied first right of refusal for park concession. Its true the people were promisedhe all jobs there were never more than a hand full at any given time. The conditional clauses of the memorandum wereas as carefully crafted to washingtons advantage as of those of congressional finally the tribe prevented thete council from endorsing the ideaa of making te south unit a tribal National Park. Along held dream of many to be administered independently from pine ridge. Many on the reservation acknowledged the tribal government is in need of reform. Without appropriation the vision of the scenic byway connecting theo badlands to the black hils and bringing prosperity to its wake is a hallow wish. There are such organizes as the thunderle Valley Community development corporation. They continue toon work for meaningful change and advocate for it such as the restoration ofon bison. All that the sun, wind, and rain did to shape them the band lands is a bad piece of work. A landscape is a place that intergrades Natural Beauty and human usage in a way that benefits and support, not only those who come to camp, hike, and admire the sites but the communities that l lived there r generations. If only it was so today in the badlands. Thank you. K you. [ applause ] from that when i started this yer soi Priscilla Solis Ybarra to you had the marikina solis, [ speaking nonenglish ] im priscilla. Theac daughter of pinia. Im from denton, texas. My mother was an immigrant and my father was a Second Generation mexicanamerican that was a migrant farm worker. My personal land acknowledgement i travel from the lands of the wichita and cato affiliated tribes and the town i live and teach at the university of north texas is called denton, named after john b. Denton. He committed genocide against Indigenous People against the wichita and apache people. That was the time when the texas rangersce committed violence against my people, mexicanamerican people, and Indigenous People. Im grateful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to join you today. I believe these moments, as i mentionedme earlier are very important moments to reflect on whats come before. Let me bring my presentation up here. Okay, so, thank you you all. For the wonderful introduction of the panel and contextualize. They adhered to offer prospectives of what we have beeng talking about in the context of Racial Justice that was offered in an interview and introduction. I have been working for some years now on another american controversial legacy. Thee liapold family. Theol stories of mexicanamericn womanhood and abundance. That book offers the part of the tstate of the legacy. They see were all mexicanamericans from new mexico. They became environmental scientist. Three were inducted to national science. Theal National Academy of science. How can i get that wrong while inca d. C. National academy of signs and sciences. Four ofs them were at universities. This was the story of a mexicanamerican leading conversation thatat wasnt hiddn story. Its