Each summer, huge crowds of travelers flock to America’s National Parks to experience pristine landscapes and marvel at natural wonders like Old Faithful, El Capitán, Horseshoe Bend, and the Grand Canyon.
Now, a new first-of-its-kind donation program is giving the more than 300 million tourists who visit National Parks each year an opportunity to compensate the Indigenous people whose ancestral homelands and sacred sites are located within the US National Park system.
The new program, called The Sacred Defense National Parks and Monuments Initiative, was created by the Lakota People’s Law Project and aims to empower Native communities as well as educate tourists about the true history of the parks and how their formation devastated Indigenous tribes. “Many Native communities are still struggling to heal from historic traumas, residential schools, forced removal, and the dispossession of our homelands,” says Chase Iron Eyes, director of the Lakota People’s Law Project. “When we saw the gap in what people know about the real history of the National Parks and Monuments, and when we realized how hard it is for people to compensate the tribes for traveling to their land, we wanted to build something that bridged that gap.”
The new intertribal fund officially launched on July 4 and is currently accepting donations for 14 US National Parks and National Monuments, including parks that consistently rank as the most popular with tourists. Among the initial 14 parks on the donation list are: Arches National Park; Bear Ears National Monument; Crater Lake National Park; Death Valley National Park; Devils Tower National Monument; Grand Canyon National Park; Grand Teton National Park; Haleakalā / Hawaii Volcanoes National Parks; Rocky Mountain National Park; White Sands National Park; Wind Cave National Park; Yellowstone National Park; Yosemite National Park; and Zion National Park.
Travelers can log onto the program’s donation page and choose the site they’re visiting in order to give money directly to the people whose ancestral homelands are located within that specific monument or park. The program then annually disperses 100 percent of the donations to the tribal nations and groups who elect to participate in the new fund.
So far, more than 90 tribes are set to benefit from the donations in the initiative’s first year. The Lakota People’s Law Project plans to expand annually until all US National Parks and Monuments, as well as their tribal beneficiaries, are included. The group hopes to have all national parks and monuments and their relevant tribal groups added to the program in the next three to four years, according to Iron Eyes.
As for how much travelers should donate, any amount is welcome. “We hope that anyone visiting these sacred places will feel compelled to donate whatever they can,” Iron Eyes says. “We know money is tight for a lot of travelers and this may be the only vacation they have this year, so if you think of it like a 10 or 20 percent tip, that would be most appreciated.” Tourists who are able to donate $100 or more will also receive a membership to the Lakota People’s Law Project, which includes updates from the organization and access to news from Indigenous populations.
The donations are a small step travelers can take toward showing their commitment to empowerment and healing for Native communities. “As the original peoples of this land, we know how powerful these places are, we have tended to them, and treated them as a relation throughout our history,” says Iron Eyes. “So we’re asking the public to donate directly to the peoples of these lands so we can rebuild our own agency, stewardship, and enhance the ways in which we all understand these powerful, beautiful places that people hold in such regard.”
