America’s Best Idea for America’s Indigenous People — Returning the National Parks to Indigenous Jurisdiction

When Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act on March 1st, 1872, the United States embarked on <a href="https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/npsthinking/famousquotes.htm#:~:text=Wallace%20Stegner%2C%201983%3A,best%20rather%20than%20our%20worst.%22" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">“its best idea”.</a> But Grant’s declaration of Yellowstone turned the area’s Indigenous peoples — the Shoshone, Bannock, and others who knew the land as an ancestral home — into trespassers. As the Plains Indian wars erupted around it, the federal government set aside 2 million acres of Indian country for its people — white settlers who have controlled the parks for over 150 years. As reparation for centuries of genocide and land stripping, management, and jurisdiction of America’s National Parks should be returned to Indigenous Americans. <a href="https://medium.com/@dukepolis/americas-best-idea-for-america-s-indigenous-people-returning-the-national-parks-to-indigenous-22e3ed3645b7">Visit Now</a>