The Trump Administration Is Erasing American History Told by Public Lands and Waters

American history comes alive during visits to national public lands and waters, where many historical moments, people, and ideas are enshrined. It is one thing to read about the horrors of slavery and the Civil War, but it is quite another to visit battlefields like Gettysburg National Military Park. Similarly, Americans can walk in the footsteps of John Lewis to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, now preserved as a national historic landmark, and reflect on the lives of the civil rights marchers who were forced to undergo “bloody Sunday” beatings while fighting for the right to vote. These places—and others like them across the country’s national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, sanctuaries, and more—are indispensable to America’s national identity.

Yet through a series of orders changing names of public places, censoring historical exhibits, and reducing access to public areas, the Trump administration is erasing the multicultural and multiracial stories of the people who built and shaped this country—stories that are meant to be permanently enshrined by national public lands and waters. Through a multipronged strategy that includes pushing for changes in school curricula and censoring museum exhibits, the Trump administration is attempting to erase nonwhite history. No corner of the country is safe from this purge, not even sacred public lands and waters. The Trump administration’s actions denigrate the idea that public places are for everyone. Whitewashing American history robs visitors of an accurate and complete education, making it harder to learn from that history.

George Orwell warned in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” The erasure of history and communities is part of the Trump administration’s agenda to undermine democratic processes and principles, a tactic long used by extremists and authoritarians—from the burning of books by the Nazis to the Taliban destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These tactics aim to eliminate different points of view, quell social movements and calls for justice, and, ultimately, consolidate power in the hands of authoritarian regimes.

Changing names of public places

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to only honor “visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past” when considering names for national treasures. The order also changed the name of Denali in Alaska to Mount McKinley. Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, means “the high one” in the Athabascan language, a name that honors the Native people who live there today and are descended from those who have lived there for thousands of years. Trump’s order erases the Native connection to instead memorialize former U.S. President William McKinley—who never even visited Alaska. McKinley is best remembered for his tariffs and for expanding American territory by annexing the Hawaiian Islands and colonizing the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Notably, the Denali name change is opposed by Alaska Natives, both of Alaska’s Republican senators, and the Alaska Legislature.

Name changes such as this erase America’s multicultural and Indigenous roots and advance a narrative that America is a place that only remembers and honors white history while ostracizing Indigenous communities and making them less likely to access their nearby public lands. Legacies of racism, discrimination, and dispossession are inextricably tied to the history of federal lands. Representation—through place names, stories, management, and visitation—is key to ensuring public lands are publicly accessible to all.

Censoring people and stories

Public lands tell the stories of marginalized communities, narratives essential for the public’s understanding of past injustices and trailblazers who fought for justice. But President Trump has deemed the telling of civil rights histories about women and minorities as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed” and that they foster a “sense of national shame.”

In March 2025, The New York Times identified nearly 200 words that the Trump administration had flagged to limit or avoid on government websites and other materials. The list includes seemingly innocuous words such as “women,” “Tribal,” “disability,” and “race and ethnicity” while also setting up censorship of broad swaths of public records. It is impossible to tell the stories of minority communities on our public lands when the government shadow-bans mention of their very existence. This censorship erases narratives about marginalized communities and promotes a singular and biased view of the past.

In February 2025, the National Park Service eliminated any reference to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website, changing any references to the LGBTQ+ community to “LGB.” Sacrifices made by transgender women of color were a critical part of the Stonewall Inn protests in 1969, and erasing them paints an incomplete history. At the date of this article’s publication, the original language has not been restored.

In March 2025, President Trump ordered the Smithsonian Institution and the secretary of the interior to identify sites that may include “improper partisan ideology.” The New York Times reports that the administration is reviewing scores of exhibits across the country that mention slavery, climate change, or Native Americans, such as exhibits on displays at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The National Park Service has also been directed to review all items in gift shops for “anti-American content.” As a result, the administration is considering banning books from gift shops, including The 1619 Project on the history of slavery in America and a picture book about former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary.

The removal of physical exhibits on public lands began in July 2025 when the administration removed an exhibit at Muir Woods National Monument called “History Under Construction.” This exhibit brought attention to the Native Coast Miwok people, who have lived in the region for thousands of years, as well as a women’s movement that was among the first to protect Muir Woods. It also addressed the racist ideologies of many of the people who helped protect the monument across the 19th and 20th centuries.

Erasing the stories of diverse communities on public lands sends the message that the only contributions to our history worth celebrating are white, straight, and male. All Americans deserve to have their stories told by our public lands and waters, even when this accurate telling means grappling with difficult history.

Selling control of public lands and reducing access

The Trump administration is selling out public lands and waters to extractive industry at breakneck speed—88 million acres and growing—while also limiting public access and defunding the agencies that manage these shared resources. Such efforts prevent Americans from connecting with the places where history happened.

For example, in April 2025, Trump opened the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to industrial fishing. These waters are a biocultural resource for Indigenous Pacific Islanders across Micronesia and Polynesia, serving as a training ground for new generations of traditional voyagers who use the stars and other cues from the natural world to navigate across vast stretches of the Pacific. Opening these waters to industrial fishing takes resources away from Native people and hands them to corporate fishing fleets, threatening Indigenous practices. Courts reclosed the area in August as part of an ongoing legal battle.

Honoring history is an act of democracy and patriotism

The stories told on public lands and waters and the names given to these places reflect America’s values and self-identity. Telling the real stories of all Americans is patriotic and critical to maintaining democracy. A balanced portrayal of American history helps to cultivate informed and engaged citizens, understand the present, and prevent future atrocities. It is a form of democratic self-defense. But when democracies allow historical distortions to take root, it leads to the creation of nationalist myths that extremists can exploit.

For much of American history, the roles of certain communities in national stories were suppressed and ignored even as they faced extreme acts of violence and discrimination. As a result, attempts to tell an accurate history of America are often incomplete and one-sided. But there has been progress. During the 20th century, the advances in equity for women, Native Americans, Black Americans, immigrants, and others extended to many aspects of life, including the designation and management of public lands and waters.

The first national parks were designated as scenic landscapes for mostly wealthy, white men to use for recreation. But over the decades, these places have come to celebrate a more complete tapestry of American history and ideals. For example, Mesa Verde National Park, designated in 1906, was the first national park created specifically to protect Indigenous cultural heritage; George Washington Carver National Monument, designated in 1943, was the first monument dedicated to African American history; and, in 2016, New York’s Stonewall National Monument became the first monument to honor LGBTQ+ history. Additionally, the Christiansted National Historic Site in the Virgin Islands, established in 1952, and the San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico, established in 1949, tell the stories of people living under centuries of colonialism in the U.S. Caribbean territories. These are just some of the sites that honor historically marginalized communities.

The story of America is one of granting more freedom to more people over time—and pushing back against the status quo of patriarchy, white supremacy, and homophobia. In 1983, Wallace Stegner famously wrote, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Many of the nation’s public lands reflect these stories of expanding freedom, from ending slavery at Civil War battlefields such as Gettysburg National Military Park, to the struggles of farmworkers at the César E. Chávez National Monument, to the Civil Rights movement at the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.

While these stories illustrate the scope of progress our nation has faced over the centuries, they also tell the difficult stories of when freedom has stumbled—from the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II at the Honouliuli National Monument to the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, which commemorates the forced removal of the Cherokee people, to the role that slavery played in shaping New York at the African Burial Ground National Monument. These monuments and the history attached to them are important reminders to learn from history and to keep progressing forward.

In Europe, the way societies choose to remember their histories, whether through memorials, museums, or place names, has been central to resisting the return of authoritarian and fascist movements. White supremacy maintains its power when the stories of people of color are hidden, inaccurately told, or erased completely. And when women’s contributions are excluded from the great moments in history, it allows patriarchy to persist.

Attacks on cultural institutions or programming that support multiculturalism, such as national parks and monuments, attempt to delegitimize the stories they tell and inch the country away from democracy and toward fascist-inspired memory politics. Moreover, name changes such as that of Denali drive democratic backsliding and white Christian nationalism by targeting minority groups for erasure. This combination deepens polarization, fosters disillusionment with democracy, and paves the way for the normalization of extremism and the acceptance of authoritarian practices.

Conclusion

Public lands and waters play a crucial role in defining the multicultural ideals and national identity of the United States. But the Trump administration is attempting to change the public understanding of American history by taking actions to rewrite the stories told by public lands and waters. These actions will make it more difficult for all Americans to experience and appreciate American democracy and deprive the people who have been connected to such lands for millennia of representation in our national story.

U.S. democracy relies on the education of its difficult and messy history alongside the hopeful and aspirational. But erasing the darker parts of that history muddles the allegory that everyone can participate in democracy and conceals the fact that individuals can start social movements that lead to greater freedoms and liberties. This erasure is an attempt to undermine the history of America and, in doing so, redefine who America is for.

The authors would like to thank Robert Benson, Steve Bonitatibus, Debu Gandhi, Nicole Gentile, Peter Gordon, Kendra Hughes, Devon Lespier, Drew McConville, Rafael Medina, Doug Molof, Mariam Rashid, Christian Rodriguez, Jenny Rowland-Shea, and the local and national conservation leaders who are building impactful and equitable conservation solutions every day.