Parks Stewardship Forum

In this "Letter from Woodstock," our columnist Rolf Diamant considers the Trump administration's abrupt termination of the National Park Service's participation in the Mellon Humanities Fellowship Program.

A personal chronicle of self-discovery from an entrepreneur working in sustainable agriculture whose work is based in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Across the National Park System, visitors, community partners, descendant communities, and researchers are engaging with stories that seek to explore the full breadth of American history. Since 2018, the Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program has helped drive this effort. Thirty-five scholars, representing more than a dozen disciplines, have taken part in the initiative, leading efforts such as those described above. Their work has been both challenging and inspiring. They have questioned long-standing agency narratives and norms, while also affirming—often quite vigorously—the capacity of public humanities to bring people together in dialogue and debate. As the national coordinators of the Mellon Humanities Program, we are honored to be guest editors of this special issue of Parks Stewardship Forum. The featured articles offer insight into the depth and breadth of the Mellon Humanities Program’s achievements over the past seven years.

Reflections on the Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program from its project director in the National Park Service.

What is the value of digital work in park-centered or place-based interpretation? This article offers an answer to this question by reflecting on the work of the ACE (American Conservation Experience) Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program’s digital humanities (DH) team. Thanks to deliberate investment from the ACE Mellon Program, we were able to support broad and boundary-pushing digital work—applying the wider field of DH to specific program goals. This work focused on three main categories: producing engaging digital projects and storytelling, preparing fellows and their partners to create their own digital products, and propelling fellows forward into their next career stages through professional development opportunities. The ability for the DH team to work collaboratively, flexibly, and remotely has enabled us to find creative interpretive solutions for Fellows’ individual projects as well as for telling the story of the program as a whole. In this article, members of the DH team offer examples, resources, and lessons learned that can be applied to programs or organizations at various scales who are interested in creating their own DH projects.

The National Women’s History Landmark Project (NWHLP) was the most influential, concentrated effort to improve women’s history representation across the National Historic Landmarks (NHL) Program. Between 1989 and 1993, representatives of the NHL Program, Organization of American Historians (OAH), and the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (NCCPH) collaboratively generated 39 landmark nominations. Throughout the collaborative process, dissension emerged as project participants disagreed on how to define the two terms most integral to the NHL nomination process: “significance” and “integrity.” This article examines the root causes of these debates and outlines recommendations for productive academic–federal collaborative partnerships.

This article looks at the origins of Compared to What, a non-profit arts program that was in operation during the 1970s in Washington, DC. It focuses on the organization’s collaboration with the National Park Service in several DC-area parks, among them the National Mall, Anacostia Park, and Rock Creek Park, and argues that such engagement prepared the founders of the organization to be a major player in the go-go promotion scene of the 1980s, notably in organizing the Go Go Live at the Capital Centre concert.

This interview reflects on recent efforts by the National Park Service (NPS) to commemorate and interpret the Transcontinental Railroad. Themes explored include public memory, community engagement, and the potential role of the humanities in NPS research and education initiatives.

In June 2025, the Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Program separated from the National Park Service. This significantly altered the projects of each Fellow. As part of the second cohort of Fellows, Shanleigh Corrallo has embarked on a research project on enslavement in New York in collaboration with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP, or Parks) and Skidmore College. Corrallo has applied her scholarship on African American history to positions in executive-level policy and advocacy, data analysis, and higher education for reentering students. In her partnership with OPRHP, Corrallo will work with Lavada Nahon, interpreter of African American History at OPRHP. Nahon has over 25 years of experience in New York State (NYS) Black history, with an emphasis on the 17th–19th centuries, including culinary and Black culture. In this interview, which evolves into an exploratory conversation, Nahon and Corrallo discuss what guided them to study histories of enslavement in New York, the “nuts and bolts” of their research, and how to break through to public audiences when faced with calcified narratives of Revolutionary history. The two scholars also share thoughts on the historic “roots and routes” of Black resistance and White reticence regarding histories that challenge hero narratives and recenter enslaved people, and offer differing perspectives on “empathetic” or “emotional” history. The conversation concludes with behind-the-scenes details about OPRHP’s initiatives Our Whole History and Enslavement to Freedom, and wisdom from Nahon on how to counteract the heightened silencing of African American history.

This article reflects on the theory and process of The Measure of Work: Sounds of Labor in Lowell, an interdisciplinary project that uses sound as an interpretive lens to explore labor history at Lowell National Historical Park. Drawing on sound studies, literary theory, and principles of dialogic interpretation, this project asked two interrelated questions: How might an emphasis on sound change the way we interpret labor history? and, How could the creation of a sound-centric museum experience open up new interpretive pathways? In partnership with the local arts and culture non-profit Mosaic Lowell, the park enlisted six composers to create original music that incorporated the sounds of work from different periods of Lowell’s long history. Workshops with community members, archival research, and field recordings informed compositions, which represent a wide breadth of musical styles. The resulting installation intervenes in the Boott Cotton Mills Museum’s current exhibits by juxtaposing established stories of progress, productivity, and decline with soundscapes that illuminate changing conceptions of work over time. The article shows how aesthetic forms have the capacity to both expand and destabilize dominant historical narratives.

This essay examines how the spatial history of Thomas Edison National Historical Park, New Jersey, reveals long-time tensions between exclusivity and public accessibility. At the center of this study is Glenmont, the Edison family home, located within Llewellyn Park—the nation’s first gated residential community. While Llewellyn Park embodied 19th-century elite ideals of seclusion and pastoral retreat, residents like the Edison family operation relied upon the labor of predominantly female domestic workers and the industrial workforce at Edison’s nearby laboratories. I draw on archival research, cultural landscape studies, and heritage theory to illuminate how class-based insulation at Llewellyn Park both obscured and depended on working-class labor. I argue that these dynamics continue to shape visitor experiences at Thomas Edison National Historical Park: the laboratories remain easily accessible on West Orange’s Main Street, while seeing Glenmont requires a multistep, carefully managed process that deters casual visitation. This geography risks reinforcing cultural divides by privileging narratives of one person’s inventions over those of the working-class labor that actualized those ideas. By situating Glenmont within broader debates on gated communities, universal design, and museum inclusivity, I propose strategies for interpreting the invisible labor that sustained Edison’s household and for re-embedding the estate into its diverse local community. Ultimately, this essay calls for a reimagining of Glenmont not solely as a memorial to Edison’s genius but as a site where histories of work, migration, and community belonging can be made visible and usable for contemporary audiences.

This article summarizes the work I undertook from 2023–2025 as a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail (Anza NHT). It identifies long-standing gaps in Indigenous representation and participation on the trail and reviews the perpetuation of settler-colonial narratives that minimize the violence of settler invasion and marginalize the contributions of Native peoples in interpretive materials. These critiques are set alongside the significant interpretive and relational shifts initiated by Anza NHT staff following the adoption of revised themes and interpretive approaches in the 2023 Foundation Document. The report details the creation of internal onboarding materials designed to reorient the staff’s understanding of the impact of Indigenous dispossession, settler occupation, and the legal and structural violence that shaped the United States federal government and the National Park Service. The report also outlines the development of external Tribal outreach materials that build on this understanding of settler violence and articulate the trail’s commitments to accountability that exceeded the minimum federal requirement within an inherently asymmetrical system. The work concludes by summarizing updates to interpretive materials and highlighting new projects and partnerships along the trail, including the development of the Anza 250 commemorative logo, a revised Anza NHT brochure, and enhanced support for Tribes and Native-led organizations made possible through the Mellon partnership’s funding.

This article is based on two years of postdoctoral research at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Juan Bautista de Anza Historic Trail. Using visual anthropology, ethnographic site visits, and participatory data collection, I explore how these public lands, often seen as spaces of heritage, recreation, and preservation, also function as sites of surveillance, violence, and contested memory. My research highlights how over-policing, resource shortages, and colonial narratives continue to influence these two National Park Service locations. Despite efforts toward reconciliation and “healing” through co-stewardship with Indigenous groups, both sites’ histories remain deeply tied to settler-colonial violence and ongoing state militarization. This complicates the implementation of practices that could foster community trust and engagement. Drawing from data and projects developed at both sites, I analyze the limitations of federal and community partnerships in addressing historical and present-day inequalities that affect not only the landscape but also how migrants, residents, employees, and tourists interact physically with these spaces. This work contributes to the scholarship on public lands, race, and memory by highlighting the often-overlooked human impact amid the social and political tensions of borderlands embedded within so-called protected and public lands. Community-led, ethnographically grounded approaches offer a promising path forward. By prioritizing Indigenous sovereignty, migrant experiences, and local stories, heritage practices can evolve toward more just and accurate representations of the complex interplay between federal oversight, legal policies, human movement, and public discourse at the US–Mexico borderlands.

This article examines recent efforts to include Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into the stewardship and governance of US national parks and historic sites in the National Park Service (NPS) Northeast Region. Drawing on Mellon postdoctoral research conducted in collaboration with Tribal communities and NPS between 2023 and 2025, it traces both the transformative possibilities and structural constraints of these initiatives. Under Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s leadership (2021–2025), federal agencies began to institutionalize new pathways for equitable Tribal engagement, grounded in principles of sovereignty, relational stewardship, and the inclusion of Indigenous governance practices. Yet the abrupt termination of NPS’s involvement with the postdoctoral program in early 2025 and policy reversals under the Trump administration disrupted these developments, undermining fragile relationships of trust and severing institutional commitments. Through ethnographic insights and policy analysis, the article interrogates the conditions that enable—or foreclose—meaningful Tribal collaboration in federal conservation efforts. It highlights the enduring gap between symbolic inclusion and actual power-sharing, arguing that the rapid reversal of policy illustrates how settler-state governance continues to reproduce historical patterns of dispossession and erasure within US environmental management.

This article explores the creation of the Marianas Wartime Oral Histories Portal, a public-facing digital archive of island memory that presents first-hand accounts of World War II in the Mariana Islands. It highlights the creative use of public programs to gain feedback from community members on the most appropriate mechanism for accessing oral history interviews. It also details the culturally sensitive transcription and editing techniques employed by lead project partner Guampedia. The oral history portal and supporting programming were undertaken as part of a National Park Service Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship project. The article offers an overview of the scope of the fellowship, as well as insights into successfully blending place-based learning with public-facing digital work.

In this article, we detail our approach to digitizing, researching, and developing a messaging plan around the archival records from Pipestone Indian Boarding School, a federally run industrial training school that operated from 1893–1953 in southwest Minnesota. We begin by discussing the history of the sacred Pipestone quarries, why the federal government built a boarding school there, and how the quarries went from being protected treaty land to being designated a national monument. We then describe how our project was initiated in response to feedback received in government-to-government consultation between Pipestone National Monument and 23 Tribal Nations with historical ties to the sacred quarries. Tribal partners expressed that they want the full truth about the school known and acknowledged, and they want the public to be educated about what they and their relatives experienced at the school. Our team worked closely with consulting Tribes and Native communities to develop a research plan, bring archival documentation to light, and discuss future public engagement.

Conservation planning protects habitats, supports biodiversity, and sustains ecosystem functions that support human and ecological well-being. Natural resource managers are expected to make sound management decisions and balance competing interests in a social-ecological context. However, they face challenges related to effective collaboration, public participation in decision-making, and the application of climate information. This study describes conservation planning challenges in South Dakota, a predominantly rural state where over 80% of land is privately owned, and natural resources are highly valued. We used an inductive, qualitative research approach, including in-depth interviews with 35 experts and content analysis of 56 conservation plans. Our study identifies the absence of complementary goals among federal, state, and non-profit organizations. Managers have concerns that current methods of public engagement are inadequate and often result in low engagement during the public participation process. Limited understanding and application of climate data were prevalent among managers. Our findings indicate that managers face multiple, complex demands in conservation planning. Conservation outcomes can be more sustainable when collaborative efforts are complementary, public perspectives are incorporated, and clear guidance exists for using climate tools. This study positions relationships as an important social foundation for conservation success. The insights from this study inform policy and practice by offering considerations for improving collaboration, public participation, and the use of scientific data.

The George Wright Society (GWS) has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current US administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). The Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. RISEs are leaving conservation-related government service, academia, non-profit employment, or for-profit contractor positions for reasons unrelated to their job performance. Losing the wisdom, experience, and service of RISEs is doing incalculable damage to American society. The Society would like to contribute to stemming this loss by providing a platform for RISEs who worked in place-based conservation to share their insights and experience as part of a permanent repository that will be made available to the public: the RISE Declarations: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned.  Beginning with this issue of Parks Stewardship Forum, we will publish RISE Declarations for as long as we receive them.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

A poem in the "Verse in Place" section of Parks Stewardship Forum.