Indian Country, God's Country: Native Americans and the National Parks by Philip Burnham. . - Reviews - book review

American Forests, Wntr, 2002 by Carl Reidel

$27.50. Island Press, 2000.

This is a compelling hook about conflict over the lands that are now part of five national parks: Glacier, Badlands, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. It is, in the author's words, "about stubbornness, compromise, cooperation, and betrayal."

And it is a sad story about the involvement of public agencies in removing Indians from lands that were to become these national parks. While its focus is on the National Park Service (NPS), other USDI agencies and the Forest Service are clearly implicated in the wrenching history of native Americans since the 1880s.

Part I covers the early history of the National Park System, federal commissions that acquired Indian territory by forced land sales and nefarious policies intended to negate tribal land claims, and congressional actions from 1950 to 1980 to expand and develop parks at the expense of native sovereignty.

Part II is the story of the author's travels in the five parks and visits with NPS personnel, tribal officials, and locals. Most disconcerting are his descriptions of the role early park leaders like John Muir, Horace Albright, and Stephen Mather played in removing native Americans from the parks and the tacit support of organizations like the National Parks Association, Sierra Club, and National Geographic Society. While one might challenge Burnham's indictment of these institutions and people for the loss of tribal lands, his statement that the "national parks system was a major beneficiary of this loss" is irrefutable.

There is no happy ending here. While he recounts some positive changes in public policy toward native tribes in the past decade, he warns that this "shouldn't lull anyone into believing that greater understanding is bound to come with time.' Like other conflicts over land use in the West, we have an enormous task ahead to reach reconciliation.