national parks

Historically, there has been in the U.S. a problematic (paternalistic, primitivist, romanticizing, etc.) conception of protected areas as places for the preservation of peoples who were projected as ‘wild’ and who were seen as in need of saving along with wildlife and wild spaces. Understanding the history of this model is vital in understanding, not only the experiences of indigenous peoples in national parks, but also the future direction of Indigenous peoples’ movements in their struggles against conservation-induced dispossession around the world.