Dispossessing the wilderness

"Mark David Spence examines the complex origins of the national parks and the troubling consequences of the American wilderness ideal. He explores the idealization of uninhabited wilderness in the late nineteenth century and the policies of Indian removal developed at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier national parks between the 1870s and the 1930s. Concerned with the historical and cultural importance of national park areas to the peoples who previously inhabited them, Spence also analyzes the efforts of various American Indian tribes to maintain a connection to these places after their dispossession. The first study to place national park history within the context of the early reservation era, this book details the ways in which national parks have developed into one of the most important arenas of contention between native peoples and non-Indians in the twentieth century." "Spence's rich study will interest scholars and students of environmental history, Western history, American studies, and American Indian studies, as well as native scholars, environmentalists, and members of the National Park Service."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.