Interpretation Under Attack

Why US Interior Secretary Burgum’s Order Undermines the Purpose of National Parks

There’s a new directive from the U.S. Interior Secretary that should alarm anyone who cares about the integrity of public history. Doug Burgum has instructed all national parks to post signs asking visitors to report any interpretive content that presents a “negative” story about the site or its history.

This is not just poor policy—it is a direct threat to the role that national parks play in civic life.

Parks are not theme parks. They are not curated to comfort the visitor or flatter national pride. They are places of memory, inquiry, and sometimes reckoning. The interpretive staff within these institutions serve as trusted guides through complex, often contested histories. That trust is not easily earned—and it is easily lost.

To call a story “negative” because it grapples with injustice, displacement, or moral failure is to mistake history for propaganda. Sites like Manzanar, Sand Creek, and Little Bighorn do not exist to make us feel good. They exist so we do not forget. They remind us of what we’re capable of—at our worst as well as our best.

Interpretation is not public relations.
It is not designed to soothe.
Its purpose is to reveal meaning, provoke reflection, and deepen understanding.

Secretary Burgum’s order risks silencing the very stories that most need to be told. It invites censorship by popular opinion. It tells front-line staff—historians, educators, interpreters—to second-guess their professional judgment based on what might be considered too upsetting or too controversial.

But the truth of our shared past is not always convenient. It is, however, essential.
And the moment we begin discouraging honest, evidence-based interpretation in public spaces, we erode the very foundation of civic trust those spaces are meant to uphold.

If we value national parks as places of learning, empathy, and transformation, we cannot afford to let them become sanitized. We must resist efforts to turn them into instruments of national self-congratulation.

The stakes are too high.

If you’re a park interpreter, educator, historian, or visitor who values truth over comfort, now is the time to speak up. Because if we let this stand, we’re not just gagging the parks—we’re gagging ourselves and our future.

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