Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

America's Best Idea: Settler Colonialism And Recognition In The United States National Park Service Website, Madison Gates

Scripps Senior Theses

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 …