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Descendants of plantation owners, sharecroppers, and slaves at
Louisiana's Cane River Creole National Historical Park . . . anglers
casting into the surf at Cape Cod National Seashore . . . neighborhood
gardeners plying the soil at Washington DC's Fort Dupont Park.
NPS ethnographers--under federal and NPS legal
and policy mandates--focus on these
and other groups linked to the parks by religion, legend,
deep historical attachment, subsistence use, or other aspects
of their culture.
A park can be integral to the identity of a people,
whose relationship to the land may be centuries old. Yet, in some
cases, the park's reason for being may diverge from a culture's
way of life. Naturalist John Muir, one of the founders of Alaska's
Glacier Bay National Park, saw the place as untrammeled wilderness;
to the native Tlingit or Haida, however, the bay is home, a source
of food and security, where their people began. Using research
tools and other methods, ethnographers identify these constituents,
giving them a voice in how parks are planned and run.
Ethnographers also assist parks in developing
brochures, exhibits, and the like to tell the stakeholders' stories
to the visiting public. John Pitzecker, superintendent of New
Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in Massachusetts, commissioned
an ethnographic study of surviving whalers in the neighborhood.
Another study describes the Timbisha Shoshone who have long lived
in Death Valley National Monument.
By shining local spotlights, NPS ethnographers
enrich our diverse heritage as a nation.
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