Parks

Havasupai, Hopi, Hualapai, and many other native tribes have been living in and around the Grand Canyon for time immemorial. For most of their lives, the threat of uranium mining or Disneyland-like tourist attractions were absent...until now.

On this episode, we hear from three Native women who have spent their life in and around The Grand Canyon, about their knowledge of this area, their work to protect the land today, and what they hope for the Grand Canyon's future.

Yellowstone was the first U.S. National Park, established in 1872. But before Yellowstone was established, Indigenous tribes like Shoshone, Blackfoot, and Crow were living on the land for thousands of years. These are stories of their lives before, the lies and dispossession it took to create the park, and the attempted genocide that followed.

This episode also takes a look at those communities now, the issues that have followed them for decades following their dispossession, and how their culture lives on.

U.S. National Parks were built on the idea of wilderness preservation, “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Today, millions of people still visit places like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon every year with the idea of escaping an overwhelming digital world to commune with “pristine” nature. What visitors don’t know is who’s land they’re standing on.

This podcast is about the Indigenous people who lived, hunted, and created communities on these lands, living reciprocally with nature for centuries before white people arrived. It’s about the racism, violence, and lies that led colonizers and the government to dispossess land from Natives.

These actions have unacknowledged consequence for the people and the environment. We’re going to explore how Indigenous communities were able to live through genocide, continue their traditions, and lead America’s most important environmental victories of the past and present.

Episodes coming summer 2021. Visit parkspodcast.com for more.

This episode focuses on the Wabanaki land that is now known as Acadia National Park. Parks guests Darren Ranco and Suzanne Greenlaw help us learn about the history of colonization around today’s parklands and how it affects the environment. They also discuss the contemporary efforts to increase tribes’ access to harvesting sweetgrass within the borders of the park and how decolonizing research is helping in that fight.

Frog Bay and Ioway are two tribal run National parks in the midwest. Our reporter Yvonne Krumrey takes us to these tribal run parks and introduces us to the people who run them. While these parks are just a few years old, they are tangible examples of tribes taking back their land so they can preserve it and their cultures.