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parks and public lands

Tuesday 3rd of March 2026

The American West The American West began with war but concluded with parks. David Treuer, The Atlantic, May 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Greed Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded. John Muir © 2017 Kwiple.com
Native Americans As the efforts to assimilate us largely failed and we remained, mostly, in our homelands, Americans have gradually assimilated to our  cultures, and our  worldview, and our  modes of connecting to nature. The parks enshrine places, but they also emphasize and prioritize a particular way of interacting with the land. In the nation's mythic past, the wilderness may have been a dangerous environment, some- thing to be tamed, plowed under, cut down. But that way of relating to the land is no longer in vogue. For many Americans, our wildplaces are a solace, a refuge — cathedrals, indeed. America has succeeded in becoming more Indian over the past 245 years than the other way around. David Treuer, The Atlantic, May 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Parks All 85 million acres of national-park sites should be turned over to a consortium of federally recognized tribes in the United States. (A few areas run by the National Park Service, such as the National Mall, would be excepted.) The total acreage would not quite make up for the General Allotment Act [1887], which robbed us [Native Americans] of 90 million acres, but it would ensure that we have unfettered access to our tribal homelands. And it would restore dignity that was rightfully ours. To be entrusted with the stewardship of America's most precious landscapes would be a deeply meaningful form of restitution. Alongside the feelings of awe that Americans  experience while contemplating the god-rock of  Yosemite and other places like it, we could take inspiration in having done right by one another. David Treuer, The Atlantic, May 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Parks  Viewed from the perspective of history, Yellowstone is a crime scene. David Treuer, The Atlantic, May 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Parks Yellowstone is more valuable than gold mining slogan of local residents and businesses opposing efforts to allow gold mining on the fringes of Yellowstone National Park and in the upper Yellowtone River watershed © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public lands We also have a pretty good idea of, certainly, the oil and gas potential – not much! So Bears Ears isn't really about oil and gas. Ryan Zinke's mockingly reassuring announcement that the Trump administration would review the status of Bears Ears National Monument created in Utah in 2016 by Barack Obama, which review – surprise! surprise! – resulted in shrinking it by 85% to allow more than a million acres to be leased to coal and uranium miners © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cutting funding for national parks is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Giving away or selling public lands is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Increasing pollution and waste in national parks by overturning the ban on selling plastic water bottles there is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Limiting public participation in managing public lands in order to enhance the influence of oil and gas companies is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Keep public lands in public hands  Placard, town hall meeting, February 9, 2017, Cottonwood Hieghts, Utah © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say The federal government does not have the authority to come down into the states and control its land and resources. Ammon Bundy © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Snapshot Yesterday, Trump signed an order slashing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments. Hey, come on – it's reasonable that he doesn't care about them: they're just national monuments; they're not Confederate monuments. Donald Trump portrayed by Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, December 5, 2017, after Trump withdrew protections from two million acres of federal land in Utah sacred to Native Americans to open it up to miners, loggers, oil and gas companies  © 2017 Kwiple.com