The Problem with America’s National Parks

This week, we’re sharing an episode from The Experiment, a podcast from The Atlantic and WNYC that tells “stories from an unfinished country.”

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Each episode explores elements of the experiment that is the United States, from the evangelical influence on American politics to alcohol use in the United States… and to “America’s best idea:” its national parks.

In an essay for The Atlantic, David Treuer, an Ojibwe author and historian, says we can make that idea even better—by giving national parks back to Native Americans.

“By virtue of the parks returning to Native control, I would like people, when they’re standing at the foot of El Capitan, to look up knowing they’re on Native lands, to look up knowing that they’re standing on the graves of Native people,” says Treuer, who grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota as the nearby Voyageurs National Park was being established. “I would like, when people look up at vistas, like at Yosemite or at Yellowstone, that they’d look up as a way to look back at the history of this country.”

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