Mark David Spence

This is a concise history of the creation of three of America's most cherished national parks: Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park. Spence argues, however, that these are far from the "natural wilderness" areas that we would like to believe. Instead, drawing on nineteenth century cultural conceptions about nature and the relationship of native people to wilderness, the U.S. government set about "dispossessing" native peoples of their ancestral homes. Spence convincingly shows that the idea of nature as an uninhabited, untouched wilderness remains nothing more than a convenient fiction designed to conform to Anglo ideas about wilderness as devoid of human life and to subsequently remove and control the movements of native peoples. The three examples given in the book amply demonstrate these points. Additionally, Spence suggests that park visitors (in other words, us) are complicit in these processes as we insist on a vision of nature divorced from human history. Well worth reading!… (más)