Breaking new ground

Many of the country's most celebrated national parks were created on land whose former owners had little say in the transfer. At Glacier and the Grand Canyon's South Rim, the government obtained territory through purchase, maneuvering, borrowing, or force, often over the objections of the Indigenous people who lived there. Depending on who is telling it, the history of the parks and Native Americans is either a costly win for the public good or a sharp betrayal of the country's first peoples.

Historian Philip Burnham examines how Native Americans were pushed out, moved elsewhere, or otherwise kept at a distance from places that later became revered national landscapes. He concentrates on five parks: Glacier, the Badlands, Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. Drawing on archival sources, repeated site visits, and interviews, he looks at the founding of the national park system, the first years of the National Park Service, and later congressional efforts to bring American Indians into the mainstream and to expand and modernize the parks.

The closing chapters describe the parks as they operate today, drawing on the views of superintendents, rangers, tribal leaders, archaeologists, ranchers, community figures, curators, and elders. Burnham traces the hard-won agreements that have given tribes more self-governance and wider cultural recognition, and he also documents the persistent disputes that still shape relations between tribes and the parks.

The book shows how the role of the national parks in American life has shifted, how deeply Native peoples are tied to the land, and how commerce, tourism, and environmental protection are tangled together in the park system. It will appeal to readers interested in Native American culture and history, the history of the American West, the national parks, and environmental history.