Marginal voices in "wild" America: race, ethnicity, gender, and "nature" in "The National Parks".

The preservation of land as national parks has been arguably the most successful feature of a nationwide increase in environmental awareness, referred to as the “greening” of America. The many and varied units in the national park system provide collective reassurance that, despite environmental excesses in other areas, the people of the nation understand the value of nature in its purportedly pure and wild form. At the same time the parks are viewed as both repositories and expressions of cultural ideals that illustrate U.S. Americans to be a unified people: as one nation, under God as expressed in the spectacular majesty of American landscapes, and defined by democracy in the form of public ownership and collective wisdom. Americans have for generations drawn upon these values to promote cherished cultural mythologies of uniqueness and exceptionalism. This connection between nature and core American values is expertly presented in The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, produced by renowned documentarian Ken Burns and presented nationwide on public television in 2009. The twelve-hour-long series, divided into six episodes, provides a rich and detailed chronology of the emergence and development of the park system from its precursors in the mid-nineteenth century through the extensive Alaska additions to the system achieved by 1980. Two key themes run throughout the series and structure its narrative. First, while the national park system comprises a variety of holdings that represent both natural and cultural/historical values, the major emphasis in The National Parks is on pristine and sublime landscapes and the