Four years ago, the employees of the National Park Service seeking to provide a more robust overview of the history of the National Monument of Muir Woods in the county of Marin revealed the exhibition “History Unle Construction”.
The concept of the work was to extend an existing panel with a calendar detailing the preservation of Muir Woods. The park rangers placed adhesive tape on the panel in the founders of Grove and superimposed a heavy and waterproof sticker on its surface to add facts and dates that lacked in the original chronology. Among the added information was the efforts of the natives who originally maintained the land, as well as the role of women in the creation of the national monument.
A letter on the plaque assured passers -by that “everything on this sign is correct, but incomplete. The facts are not under construction, but the way we tell it. ”
But, since this month, additional historical facts have not been.
The enlarged exhibition became the first of the country to be modified following a decree of President Trump in March to rid the signs of the park of Any language he deem antipatriotic.
The president’s objective was to restore the federal sites which, according to him, had been modified since 2020 to perpetuate a “false reconstruction of American history”, including an “inappropriate partisan ideology”. The change in muir woods was reported for the first time by SF door.
Elizabeth Villano, a former forest ranger who helped create the new version of the panel, criticized the move, Write in an article on medium that the Trump administration “actively censures the American history of the public”.
She said that the objective of the project was to make sure that nothing on the original sign was eliminated, but to add details so that people can see the difference in the way history was told and how it could be widened to include more votes. Now she said that history is erased.
“I think that one of the most underestimated components of the National Park Service is that we are paid for public historians,” she said in an interview with The Times. “We are paid to tell the stories of all Americans and not choose who we say. And yet, over time, stories that tend to be told many times are those that tend to be told through the perspective of people who have the most power. ”
A spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, who includes Muir Woods, could not be joined immediately to comment on Wednesday.
Before the grades were added in 2021, the first date included in the panel calendar, called “path to preservation”, was the creation of the first national park in the United States, Yellowstone, in 1872. The following was in 1892 when the Sierra Club was founded in San Francisco with John Muir as the first president.
But the staff at the time found that certain key information lacked in the calendar, namely the work of the Miwok coast and the south of Pomo who took care of the country before the arrival of Europeans in North America. They also included the first campaign to save the region launched by a women’s club in 1904.
Of course, all the information added to the calendar was not positive.
The staff detailed the Spanish missionaries operating the work of indigenous peoples in the Bay region to build Californian missions and actions in the congress by undressing the Miwok coast of the title of title on their ancestral lands, including Muir Woods.
The revised calendar did not hesitate to indicate the complex inheritances of the key characters who helped direct the creation of the national monument. He noted that John Muir referred to indigenous peoples using racist language in his newspaper, which has been published years before his death, and underlined William Kent’s vote in Congress to prevent non-citizens from possessing or renting land.
The Rangers did not blame omissions, claiming that the enlarged stories reflected growing diversity among the employees of the Park service in the years following the first evolution of the calendar.
“From the conservation of the sesist to the heritage of the founders of the country, American stories are enriched by complexity, dimension and challenge. It is not our job to judge these stories or to promote a singular story. As the Rangers of the National Park, it is important that we hear them National Park Service Post on changes.
Trump decree ordered the Ministry of the Interior to identify all public monuments, memorials, statues or markers that had been deleted or modified since 2020 to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history”, minimize the value of historical events or figures or include “a bad partisan ideology” and to reintegrate the previous monuments.
The order also ordered the authorities to ensure that the monuments do not contain content that denies the Americans. Instead, the monuments should focus on “the greatness of the achievements and the progress of the American people or, with regard to natural characteristics, beauty, abundance and grandeur of the American landscape”, indicates order.
Critics have said that Trump’s directive requires a pink vision of more complex events that make up American history.
Villano, the former ranger of the park, said that it was derogatory to believe that the Americans cannot manage all aspects of history and refuse them the opportunity to learn.
“What this Trump administration project does is just not trusting people to find out more about difficult things and to make their own decisions about it,” she said.
