{"id":522,"date":"2025-06-17T11:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T11:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canoeinstructor.com\/?p=522"},"modified":"2025-06-19T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T12:04:07","slug":"trump-and-burgum-are-erasing-history-one-national-park-at-a-time-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canoeinstructor.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/17\/trump-and-burgum-are-erasing-history-one-national-park-at-a-time-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Burgum are erasing history, one National Park at a time (Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the philosopher George Santayana said, \u201cThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.\u201d It\u2019s true that we humans easily forget the past, and we seem to repeat our mistakes–think of large and small conflicts around the globe. Yet now the Trump administration is moving that process forward with a brand-new spin.<\/p>\n

In response to President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History<\/a>,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued an order to counter what he calls a revisionist movement that \u201cseeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, to comply with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s plan to eliminate any “negative” depictions of U.S. history, the Interior Department has asked national parks and other public land agencies to remove, cover or replace all non-complying signs.<\/p>\n

This could take some doing, as rewriting the past to remove conflict requires not just artfulness, but ignoring important people and their actions.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the issue of the very purpose of national parks and monuments. Parks and other public lands are the commons that belong to all Americans, and the Park Service is charged with preserving these places and their backgrounds for the public. That means including the stories that might reveal bigotry and cruelty.<\/p>\n

Think of the national places dedicated to the dark history of slavery and the struggle for civil rights, the migrant farm workers movement, the coal miners\u2019 labor movement, women\u2019s rights, LGBTQ rights, Japanese internment camps, and sites of massacres of Tribal members.<\/p>\n

How can park rangers tell a happy story about eastern Colorado\u2019s Amache National Historic Site, where thousands of Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II– never charged with any crime but treated as suspicious solely because of their Japanese roots. They were deprived of their homes and businesses and sent to live in primitive barracks across America. That shameful story is the truth.<\/p>\n

At the nearby Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in southeast Colorado, about 270 Cheyene and Arapaho people — mostly women and children \u2013\u2014 were slaughtered by a well-armed white militia in 1874. According to Congress’ Joint Committee on the Conduct of War, the attack was a \u201cfoul and dastardly massacre… a cowardly act.\u201d These blunt words present a problem for the rewriters of history. Is there a way for the Interior Department\u2019s new historians to make a slaughter sound positive?<\/p>\n

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, established in 2016, was conceived by a coalition of five Tribes to protect their cultural and sacred landscape and to establish a new model for Tribal co-stewardship with federal agencies. In part, this was a long overdue recognition that all western public lands once belonged to Indigenous tribes. President Trump, who shrunk the monument by 85 percent before it was restored by President Biden, is proposing to again alter the monument\u2019s size. How do you tell a positive story without mentioning the long struggle of tribal people to become involved in managing the land that once was theirs?<\/p>\n