So, I’ve been putting my best foot forward with the Ken Burn’s special, “National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” As Stephen Colbert said, this show is basically 14 hours of nature porn–and he’s right. So it’s hard to walk away from it. But I have to admit, last night I almost called the whole thing off.

I feel tricked. Betrayed. Pissed off.

After four nights (with two hours each night), of Ken telling me that these parks are the best thing that the U.S. ever did–that they are representative of the greatest Democracy has to offer, that they make U.S. citizens unique to the rest of the world, that they “ground” immigrants in the U.S. in a way nothing else could–that DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY is in our parks…

I’ve finally had it.

Now, of course, I’ve had a critique of the “Democracy is our national parks” argument since it started. Native peoples must really love How Great Democracy Truly Is, right? Especially when Democracy=kill/forcibly removed all native peoples from a given plot of land so that white men can parcel it out to others.

Oh, and all the women who weren’t allowed generally weren’t hired to work at the parks (HIRING: 320 Strong Men to do …!!!) must really appreciate the Democracy, and the Japanese man who was called a “jap” by his coworker and who nobody could find enough money to bury when he died must really appreciate this Democracy, and the other Japanese man who stayed in the U.S. to devote his life to the parks and was eventually imprisoned by the U.S. in concentration camps with his wife must really appreciate the Democracy.

Whew.

But–ok. Honestly, with the exception of Native peoples’ story, I wouldn’t have known of any of these injustices if I hadn’t been watching the series. Burns didn’t exactly *go into* these stories, for the most part (with the exception of the Japanese man who was imprisoned). But he did bring them up. He did make sure to mention them. So his basic argument is, “yes, this stuff happened and it was tragic, but…while it may not have been *worth* it per say…the *idea* was good, and worth working for.”

Basic liberal theory.

And knowing that made it easier for me to deal with. Easier for me to just glory in the story telling and admire the nature porn.

But then last night, FOUR NIGHTS into the series, I find out that these little epicenters of light and DEMOCRACY–these pantheons of joy and DEMOCRACY, these schools of enlightened thinking and DEMOCRACY–were actually racially segregated until at least the late 1930s.

And silly me, here I was thinking that the eight hours of picture after picture of hundreds of white folks enjoying the parks was really just speaking to class and how few people of all races could actually afford to go to the parks.

Nope. The parks were actually racially segregated and carried all the same “Negros to the back” bullshit signs that every other apartheid Jim Crow segregated public space did at the time.

After *eight hours* of being told that these parks were “for everybody” and represented “true Democracy,” I find out, well, no, they weren’t. And they hadn’t been since the beginning. And they were *systematically* segregated, which means that the people *running* these parks knew all about and endorsed or helped to continue the policy of segregation.

Which means that Ken Burns and his team knew about it too.

Which means to me, as a viewer of his work, that he has just lost all credibility as a film maker/documentarian.

I feel like an English teacher (oh, wait…) talking to her students. You don’t wait until the bottom of the forth page to mention a major argument in the middle of a paragraph–and then never bring it up again. That’s not the way arguing, rhetoric or theory building works.

Well, maybe in today’s cheap climate of corporate mainstream news it does–but this is PBS. This is Ken Burns. Who, for all the liberal politics and theory, are supposed to be more thorough and professional. They aren’t supposed to use cheap tricks that English 101 students use. Right?

Would it have done anything to Burn’s argument if he had confronted the fact that these parks were segregated from their inception right up front and at the beginning of the series?

Well, it might’ve taken time off of various National Park celebrity figures like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. But even more so, it makes all the white talking heads waxing poetical about the Great Democracy that are our National Parks look ignorant and…well…white. As they go on and on about how meaningful and amazing these parks were to them, how it was a place for them to forget their problems and recharge their run down batteries…black and other visitors of color got reminded at the front entrance that even in the wilderness they were unequal–subservient to the same whiteness they were back home.

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So, the final episode ended. The stuff I wrote above was written on Friday morning, then my computer shut down so I didn’t get back to it until today.

The final episode did not do much to scratch the irritated radical in me. It did do a much better job of incorporating a race analysis, including many references to urban Parks. It also included the voice of a black ranger from Detroit, Michigan, who made the pointed critique: “Growing up, National Parks were not on my radar.”

But…

There have been multiple and *continuous* challenges to the National Park system by Native peoples. Everything from protests on the top of Mount Rushmore to attempts to legally shut down sacred areas during specific times of the year have been an ongoing part of Native people’s critique, analysis and irritations with the parks. Many museums on the parks have sacred Native objects that were stolen by anthropologists etc in the name of “learning” and “war sites” that glorified the U.S. army were often little more than sites of genocide, where pictures of Native peoples who were massacred were sold as “tokens.” The site where the Battle of Little Big Horn happened used to act as a dedicated memorial to George Custer and his troops.

Which is why I guess I was especially irritated that 1. not ONE of these examples of Native critiques of the park was presented in the entire series–not even the continuous and ongoing critiques of Mount Rushmore by Native peoples (while, at the same time, as not one critique of Mount Rushmore was allowed into the series, Mount Rushmore DID make it into the series–one of the last images of the series was a close up of the Teddy Roosevelt section of Rushmore!). and 2. One of the last speakers in the show was the Native Park Ranger declaring why we, as U.S. citizens, need these parks so desperately. Surely he is plenty aware of how Native peoples interact with the parks. Surely he knows their critiques. Surely his declarations of support of the parks comes firmly anchored in a much different space than the space all the white talking heads made their analysis.

And I feel like Burns was cheating again. Like–if he allowed a Native man (or woman or tribe) to make a critique from a space that firmly questions the right to U.S. existence, his overall argument of “democracy=National parks” would either fall apart–or, god forbid, be infinitely more nuanced and complex. And what would be wrong with that, except that a whole bunch of liberal white folks might not be as eager to sit and watch the series night after night?

Overall–I am really glad that he made the series. I’ll even watch it again. He makes a compelling argument against unfettered capitalism that I think many mainstream liberals really desperately need to hear. And if his show manages to get a few conservatives talking about the environment in a way that endorses and respects conservation, well, I’ll be happy. When we have massive political gatherings with thousands of people chanting Drill Baby Drill–I understand that Burns is coming from a space where he can not be the last voice to speak out–but for now, it’s ok if he’s the first voice (i.e. first mainstream white voice, native peoples have been speaking about this for decades). He’s used his privilege and his power to put the environment and a different way to understand masculinity, public service and nationalism on the table.

I respect that.

Now, the (mainstream) conversation needs to expand. And I would argue that the value of National Parks existing solely within the theory of Democracy needs to be firmly and resolutely challenged. If National Parks define our democracy, what does Detroit, Michigan do? Or Flint Michigan?

And what very real history are we forced to hide or present in a certain context so that the theory of democracy makes sense?