The creation of the United States National Parks is often framed as a triumph of conservation, but for Indigenous peoples, it was a process of systemic dispossession and forced removal. To create what early conservationists called "unpeopled wilderness," the federal government had to physically and legally erase the presence of the people who had stewarded those lands for millennia.

To learn more about what the lands were and the people who stewarded them before White settlers came and the national parks were established, watch this PBS documentary, “Before There Were Parks.”

Below includes some discussions and talking points about why we must understand and acknowledge the original peoples of these places.