It’s a Sign: Understanding Variations in Telling Indigenous Histories Within Public Outdoor Spaces

Abstract

Interpretation plays a significant role in the visitor experience at cultural sites by painting a picture of the layers of history present in an environment. On public lands in the United States, over 800,000 estimated signs serve various purposes, from wayfinding, safety, and resource protection to interpretation. The large number of visitors to national parks, monuments, and other public lands speaks to interpretive signs' impact on visitors’ understanding of these sites and their cultural history. Here I ask, how are Native American histories, cultures, and communities represented on interpretive signage found in areas near the visitor centers of national parks, monuments, and other public lands? Because these areas have very high visitation, the interpretive signage located at them may have a disproportionate impact on visitors’ understanding of the cultural history of these sites. To carry out this work, I developed a novel application of the Six R’s Framework to conduct content analysis of the text of interpretive signs. I collected photographs of interpretive signs at 14 different sites within the Southwest region. I adapted the Six R’s Framework to see how well national parks, monuments, and other public lands include Native American histories and stories. Overall, I found a large amount of variation from one site to another. No sites managed by US federal agencies showed a consistent presence of respect, representation, and relevance in their interpretive signs. In contrast, Navajo Tribal Park showed the most promise compared to other sites analyzed. There are a variety of reasons why national parks, monuments, and other public lands may have inconsistent interpretations. These include the age of interpretive signage, written mostly in past-tense language that does not share the present-day tribal communities, and use of problematic language choice for example the use of “colonization”. This is important for the future of interpretive signage development and ensures that there is a framework in place to measure how well national parks, monuments, and other public lands are engaging and including authentic stories and histories from Tribal communities. By sharing initial findings of how various locations measure up to a variation of the Six R’s framework it will help federal agencies recognize the need to update interpretive signage and form more meaningful relationships with Tribal communities.