Don’t rehash American history by tagging local books

By Kerry Malloy, special to CalMatters

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The bookshelf in the visitor center doesn’t look like a battlefield. But at Redwood National and State Parksrecently became one when park staff marked with a flag Indian books which help visitors understand whose land they are standing on and how it was taken.

They were trying to comply with a directive from the Trump administration to flag material deemed “critical” or not sufficiently “uplifting” to Americans. They were parks reportedly ordered to be removed or review displays aimed at mistreatment of settlers Local peoples and the harms of climate change, affecting at least 17 national parks.

In Redwood, the books didn’t disappear; they were flagged for possible removal. This includes works by California Native American authors including California through local eyes, We dance for you and We are the earth.

When federal officials insist that parks label books written by local authors and tone down what visitors see on shelves, exhibits and signs, they are not restoring history. They narrow the record. When the truth becomes inconvenient, the discomfort is reframed as bias and removal is reframed as recovery.

This is not a distant culture war. This is happening in California, in parks that the state manages jointly.

Redwood is not just a federal park; it is a managed jointly unit where federal and state agencies work under a cooperative agreement that shapes staffing, interpretation and the visitor experience.

The state of California has promised truth-telling and counseling. The question is whether state leaders will fulfill that promise where public remembrance is given. of California Order N-15-19 engages the state to consult and a fuller historical record.

California State Parks says the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park the visitor center that is part of the jointly managed unit will follow state policy, but other federally managed visitor centers are “undergoing changes” to comply with current federal policies.

This is how deletion often works, not only through removal but also through administrative pressures that make accurate display feel risky. California’s response should begin with a clearer distinction: sovereignty vs. storyline.

In co-managed units, where management already integrates staff, translation and visitor experience, the state can set conditions for its own participation. California leaders should treat this as a governance issue, not a comment dispute.

In state spaces, the rule should be clear: tribally created books and tribally directed interpretation are part of the public record. If the material is disputed, the burden should be to show a factual error, not to argue that the correct story is too political or not uplifting enough. Any limitation must require a written justification related to accuracy.

It should also require documented engagement with affected tribal governments and applicable standards for shared visitor centers, programming, and interpretive review. Federal pressure must not be allowed to quietly harden into politics.

Because the pressure is federal, part of the response must also be federal.

California’s congressional delegation should require the criteria used to mark materials; a complete list of what has been flagged, removed, or revised, and a timeline for those decisions. If the Department of the Interior and the Park Service do not publicly defend these actions, Congress should insist on an immediate halt to the removals and interpretive changes pending review.

Park shelves, exhibits, and signs are institutional statements about whose authority matters. When local history is treated as something “too negative” to present clearly, the nation’s self-image once again transcends the survival of the local population.

California must enforce its commitment to truth-telling and counseling where it matters most. If it shares the management of the redwoods, it must protect its management of the record.

The stakes are not academic. Covering the record does not avoid controversy; produces ignorance.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.