Indigenous History Censored at National Parks

Gustavus Cheney Doane was a U.S. Army officer who participated in the Marias Massacre of January 23, 1870, in which a 675-man Army force attacked a peaceful Piegan Blackfeet village, killing approximately 170–200 people — predominantly women, children, and elders suffering from smallpox. The soldiers attacked the wrong band: when scout Joe Kipp warned Major Baker they had the wrong group, Baker reportedly said, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans and we will attack them." No soldiers faced disciplinary action. Doane bragged about the massacre for the rest of his life.

In June 2022, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted 15–0 to rename Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain in neighboring Yellowstone, following consultation with 27 associated tribes. The Grand Teton exhibit panel that asked visitors to reckon with Doane's legacy was removed under the same directive that prompted the renaming effort — effectively reversing the park's own attempt at honest historical interpretation.

The Grand Canyon has been home to Indigenous peoples for at least 12,000 years. Eleven tribes have cultural ties to the canyon, including the Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Hopi, and Paiute nations. The Havasupai — whose name means "people of the blue-green waters" — were forcibly confined to a tiny reservation at the bottom of Havasu Canyon in 1882 after being expelled from their ancestral winter grounds on the plateau above. They did not regain part of those lands until 1975, and the park itself was carved from territory the Havasupai had used for centuries.

Additional items flagged but not yet confirmed removed include a video about Native American history and roadside displays on climate change, pollution, and mining. The park receives over 6 million visitors per year, making these exhibits among the most widely viewed in the entire National Park System. Sources: Washington Post, NPCA.

The Ahwahneechee people — a band of Mono and Miwok peoples — inhabited Yosemite Valley for approximately 7,000 years, practicing intentional burning to manage the landscape and depending on black oak acorns for roughly 60% of their diet. In February 1851, the Mariposa Battalion, a 197-man militia, became the first non-indigenous group to enter the valley — not as explorers but as a military force. They systematically burned villages and food stores, and on May 22, 1851, surrounded the Ahwahneechee at Lake Tenaija, forcing their surrender and removal.

The word "Yosemite" itself comes from the Miwok word yohhe'meti, meaning "they are killers" — the name neighboring tribes used for the Ahwahneechee, whom they feared. The U.S. government forcibly removed Native Americans from the valley in 1851, 1906, 1929, and again in 1969. The exhibit panels now flagged for revision are among the few materials that tell this story to the 3.5 million people who visit Yosemite each year.

On November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led 675 soldiers of the Third Colorado Cavalry in an attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village that was flying both an American flag and a white flag of truce, signaling its protected status under an agreement with Fort Lyon. Approximately 150 people were killed — about two-thirds of them women and children. Soldiers mutilated bodies and burned the village. Congress's Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War later called it "a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage."

The site was authorized as a National Historic Site by Public Law 106-465 on November 7, 2000, and formally established in 2005. It is the first unit of the National Park System to label American troops as perpetrators rather than heroes. Its entire reason for existing is to tell this story — a story that four flagged entries now threaten to silence.

The Wabanaki Confederacy — comprising the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, and Penobscot nations — were the original stewards of Pemetic ("the sloping land"), the area now known as Mount Desert Island. European colonization displaced the Wabanaki from their ancestral lands beginning in the 1600s. Today the park collaborates with the Wabanaki on cultural interpretation and climate monitoring, recognizing their deep ecological knowledge. The flagged entries represent an intersection of climate science and Indigenous knowledge that SO 3431 has targeted from both angles. See also: Climate Censorship →

The Taíno arrived in the U.S. Virgin Islands around 300 CE and established complex agricultural and fishing communities across St. John. Archaeological sites at Cinnamon Bay and Trunk Bay contain ceramic fragments, shell tools, and zemí artifacts. Columbus's arrival in 1493 initiated a catastrophic decline: within decades, the Taíno population was devastated by enslavement, disease, and violence. The Danish colonizers who later built Annaberg Plantation in the 1720s constructed it on land the Taíno had cultivated for centuries. The removed signs at Annaberg contextualized this layered history, connecting Indigenous displacement to the establishment of chattel slavery. See also: Slavery & Plantation History →