The Trump administration is reviewing material about slavery, the destruction of Native American culture, climate change and more at federal parks after employees flagged information that could be \u201cdisparaging\u201d to Americans, according to screenshots shared with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> in March directing the Interior Department \u2014 which manages parks, monuments and other designated land \u2014 to ensure public property doesn’t contain elements that \u201cinappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Instead, it said to \u201cfocus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people\u201d and \u201cthe beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.\u201d <\/p>\n The National Park Service had until July 18 to flag \u201cinappropriate\u201d signs, exhibits and other material, according to a document shared with the AP by the National Parks Conservation Association, which obtained internal information from an anonymous source within the Interior Department. The public was also encouraged to participate. <\/p>\n \u201cAs we carry out this directive, we\u2019ll be evaluating all signage in the park along with the public feedback we\u2019ve received,” said Elizabeth Peace, spokesperson for the Interior Department. \u201cThis effort reinforces our commitment to telling the full and accurate story of our nation\u2019s past.” The department said any signage inconsistent with the executive order will be removed or covered and reinstated once edits are made. The administration said it would remove all \u201cinappropriate\u201d material by Sept. 17, according to The New York Times<\/a>, citing internal agency documents. <\/p>\n The directive has raised concerns about sanitizing and erasing dark sides of American history.<\/p>\n \u201cPretending that the bad stuff never happened is not going to make it go away,” said Alan Spears, a senior director with the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan group separate from the national parks system that advocates for it. \u201cWe need to be able to talk about these things if we’re going to have any hope of bringing people together.”<\/p>\n A look at some of the material that was flagged for review:<\/p>\n WHAT’S IN DISPUTE: A sign titled \u201cThe Air We Breathe\u201d was flagged because it discusses the importance of clean air. Pollution from human-caused ozone, it explains, threatens people’s health and vegetation, and power plants, cars and industries that burn fossil fuels are the pollutant’s primary sources.<\/p>\n In North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore, there are signs about sea level rise due to climate change. \u201cWe do not believe it to be in violation, but would like someone to review if messaging of climate change and sea level rise reduces the focus on the grandeur, beauty and abundance,\u201d one employee wrote. <\/p>\n THE BACK STORY: Emissions from burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, causing ice sheets and glaciers to melt and seawater to expand. Rising seas threaten the people and ecosystems that live by the coast. <\/p>\n THE REACTION: Carlos Martinez, climate scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks the agency should be educating the public about the threats national parks face. <\/p>\n These public parks are places to learn about pollution, climate change and environmental degradation, he said, and eliminating this information \u201climits the ability for our population, especially for the younger generation, to understand these issues that allow them to then take action.\u201d <\/p>\n WHAT’S IN DISPUTE: At a gift shop in Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in South Carolina, marked for review were books for sale, including \u201cIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl\u201d by Harriet Jacobs. Similar books were flagged elsewhere, including at the Washington Monument, where someone identified a book discussing George Washington as a slave owner. <\/p>\n In Pennsylvania’s Independence National Historical Park, flagged were descriptions of the whipping, kidnapping, rape and other brutality slaveholders inflicted on Black people. At another, an employee identified an exhibit about Black Americans escaping to freedom that names slave owners. <\/p>\n THE BACK STORY: The legacy of slavery and racism has laid the foundation for the inequalities Black people face in the U.S., including greater rates<\/a> of poverty, disease and illness, and incarceration at more than five times<\/a> the rate of white people.<\/p>\n THE REACTION: \u201cSlavery is not a side story. It\u2019s the engine of American economic growth for more than two centuries,\u201d said Cedric Haynes, vice president of policy and legislative affairs with the NAACP. \u201cAnd there are individuals who played a part in this.\u201d <\/p>\n It’s important to name the people who perpetuated slavery’s atrocities, he said, because that legacy is embedded in American laws, institutions and the nation’s wealth.<\/p>\n WHAT’S IN DISPUTE: At Sitka National Historical Park in Alaska, an employee flagged a panel about missionaries who sought to destroy the language and culture of Alaska Natives and forcefully remove them from their lands. The \u201cconcerning text\u201d says: \u201cThe history of this land includes a series of actions that attempted to remove the Sheet\u2019ka Kwaan from their land, culture, and language which includes forced relocations under both Russian and American governance.\u201d <\/p>\n In Florida’s Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, tagged was a panel discussing imprisonment of Plains Indians. \u201cText of panel needs review for language referring to tribes having choice of extinction or assimilation. Language of U.S. Government giving the \u2018choice\u2019 of extinction could be considered negative towards the United States,” they wrote. <\/p>\n THE BACK STORY: \u201cThe relationship between the United States and Indigenous nations has been fraught, violent, dispossessive and complex over the centuries, and the national parks are part of that story,\u201d said Jessica R. Cattelino, American Indian studies professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. \u201cTo cut off parts of those stories because they might make someone uncomfortable, that\u2019s a disservice to the ecological and cultural value of these lands.\u201d <\/p>\n Brenda Child, a Red Lake Ojibwe tribe member and American and American Indian studies professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said it’s only been about two decades since we started telling the accurate history of the United States and Native Americans. <\/p>\n THE REACTION: It’s sad to think about efforts to rewrite it now, she says, at a time when more accurate portrayals of Indigenous history in the U.S. finally exist. “But the way I always look at these things is: You can try to suppress it, but the cat\u2019s out of the bag. We know what happened. The books have been written.\u201d<\/p>\n WHAT’S IN DISPUTE: Is Florida\u2019s Everglades National Park<\/a> a slight to industrial development in America? Stories of the lands\u2019 urbanization, agriculture and more presented across the park \u201ccould be conceived as being disparaging to the development of Industrial America,\u201d one employee wrote.<\/p>\n THE BACK STORY: The Everglades is a subtropical wilderness that protects 1.5 million acres of habitats and biodiversity and is a vital source of drinking water for millions. The Seminole and Miccosukee<\/a> tribes have called these lands home for centuries. <\/p>\n Decades of urban and farming development degraded the ecosystem, until, in 1947, the park was established to protect what remained. Underway is a massive state-federal project, approved by Congress in 2000 with bipartisan support, that aims to undo the damages. <\/p>\n THE REACTION: People committed these harms \u201cgenerations ago without knowing better. And we know better now, and we cannot lose sight of the lessons learned,\u201d said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. \u201cIf we don\u2019t keep in clear view that history and the mistakes that we made in our past, then we are doomed to repeat them.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n