Researcher ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9525-6601
Graduation Year
2021
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Anthropology
Reader 1
Professor Gabriela Morales
Reader 2
Professor Char Miller
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
@ 2021 Madison I Gates
Abstract
By examining closely how the National Park Service misrepresents their history and current relationships with Indigenous communities I work to demonstrate the depths of this misrepresentation and the impacts it has on various Indigenous communities and nations. In the first chapter, I explain how the history of national parks is founded on fundamentally opposed conceptions of land between Indigenous people and settlers and how this difference was used as justification for settler violence. In chapter two I explore the ways in which the National Park Service uses cultural collaboration to further tourist experience at the expense of respecting and properly representing local Indigenous communities. Finally, in chapter three I explore how projects of ecological conservation by the National Park Service further misrepresentation through the way they operate as unequal collaborative projects and how different conceptions and relations to land create differing goals between the National Park Service and Indigenous communities that leads to very different types of conservation efforts.
Recommended Citation
Gates, Madison, "America's Best Idea: Settler Colonialism and Recognition In The United States National Park Service Website" (2021). Scripps Senior Theses. 1689.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1689
