Abstract

As national parks saw a significant uptick in traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, so too has scholarly attention to these public symbols increased. The Enjoyment of the People: The Creation of National Identity in American Public Lands by Mary E. Stuckey offers a complex understanding of how America's national parks and public lands do “political work” (22). By evaluating how American presidents have rhetorically positioned public lands, Stuckey argues that these spaces invite specific discursive lenses to national identity, citizenship, patriotism, and stewardship. She interweaves criticism of presidential rhetoric with case studies of policies involving lands run by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS).For the Enjoyment of the People opens with the story of Mount Rushmore: land stolen from Indigenous peoples and quite literally carved up. Stuckey calls attention to this harm while noting that the NPS has been attempting (although not particularly well) to negotiate their harmful past actions by working with Indigenous people when interpreting the parks. This narrative sets the tone for the rest of the book, pointing “to the importance of rhetoric in understanding the nature and implications of these interpretive struggles” and positioning conflicts about identity—Indigenous identities especially but not exclusively—at the center (1). This book emphasizes how Indigenous voices are neglected within U.S. national narratives. Throughout For the Enjoyment of the People, Stuckey revisits conflicts surrounding Indigenous representation. She emphasizes the importance of using Indigenous-preferred names for places, despite each artifact's clear centering of white settler colonial perspectives. Overall, Stuckey's newest work leans on ideological analyses of American presidential rhetoric, interspersed with criticisms of discourse found within the spaces themselves, to illuminate how America's public lands discursively negotiate national identity. In doing so, Stuckey has crafted a thorough, thoughtful, and deliberately critical guidebook for rhetorical scholars and the American public generally to recognize how the nation's lands perpetuate certain American identities and values.Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of national identity as it is discursively manifested within American public lands. The first chapter explores the erasure of colonialism as seen in overseas national parks: the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa. In “Establishing National Origins: Erasure, Dispossession, and American Empire,” Stuckey discusses how time and space intersect to form explanations and accommodations of identity by examining how U.S. policies regulated Indigenous people and their lands. For instance, by grouping all Indigenous peoples together as “Indians,” white settler-colonists conflated space and time; they applied policies generally to vastly different Indigenous communities across decades despite their unique locales and histories. Political discourse erased Indigenous communities from their lands through erasure by discovery, entitlement, visibility, and interpretation. Stuckey weaves this history with two contemporary case studies. Colonialism is both erased and displayed in the U.S. Virgin Islands as the park is portrayed as scenic and economically beneficial. Colonialism is negotiated in American Samoa as the park is naturally wonderful and contains “pure culture worth preserving” (48). Stuckey presents a thoughtful evaluation of the NPS's interpretations, recognizing that their efforts to improve are “embedded in a colonialist web of historical and cultural interpretation from which it cannot be completely disentangled without foregrounding that colonial history” (42). The first chapter clearly depicts how American public lands were founded on colonial white supremacy and how these effects still resonate. This theme lingers with the reader for the remainder of the book.Chapter Two, “Claiming a National Past: Patriotism and Citizenship,” reveals how patriotism and citizenship are negotiated at Gettysburg National Historic Park, Gateway National Park (formerly known as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial), and Manzanar National Historic Site. Stuckey discusses how these become “places of considerable contestation over what constitutes American patriotism” (55). The chapter brings together theories about citizenship, rhetoric, place, and memory, evaluating how these memorial sites portray authenticity. Each example shows the complex discursive negotiation performed within and around places with shameful pasts, like Manzanar's Japanese American internment camp. At Manzanar, the NPS makes specific interpretive choices, such as whether to freeze oppression in the nation's past or encourage the visitors to relate with the victims.The third chapter asks how history is preserved and interpreted and narrated in NPS museums. Stuckey focuses the entirety of “Asserting a Singular National Narrative: Whose History and Whose Heritage?” on Mesa Verde National Park and on how its museum appropriates, displays, and memorializes antiquities. The evaluation of park museums is complemented by criticisms of the park's advertising, which portrays Mesa Verde—and thus both contemporary and ancient Indigenous peoples—as either primitive or romantic. The chapter concludes with critique of how the NPS interprets marginalized communities, arguing that the federal agency might be “doing better,” but their efforts also expose ongoing conflicts about recontextualizing national history and the accessibility of Indigenous cultures (114).Chapter Four, “Protecting Natural Resources: Citizen Stewards and the Nation's Future,” evaluates how the NPS's education and park management construct visitors as citizens and stewards of American lands. When evaluating Everglades National Park and the public lands of the California desert, Stuckey notes how the NPS educates through park interpretation and how the parks themselves are oriented to establish visitors as citizen stewards (119). As the first park to be set aside primarily for wildlife preservation, Everglades NP exemplifies the debate around what land deserves to be “preserved.” The discourse around the California Desert Protection Act shows how policies can affect American citizenship and stewardship of public lands. Finally, in “Measuring Value: Entitlement in the Land of Opportunity,” Stuckey considers Bears Ears National Monument and Alaskan public lands, noting how “public” lands are valued and their rightful ownership discursively assigned as entitlement. Stuckey links political decision making, land “ownership,” and citizenship through case studies. “Measuring Value” draws attention to the complicated debate around land value and entitlement.While For the Enjoyment of the People is far from the only scholarship about American public lands, its methodology sets it apart. Stuckey skillfully joins rhetorical criticism of presidential discourse about American public lands, evaluations of policy debates about expanding or reducing the lands, textual analysis of the NPS's interpretations of the lands, and rich descriptions of their historical contexts. Rooted in a political rhetorical tradition, this book spans disciplines in its methods and applications. Unlike recent works in rhetorical field methods, For the Enjoyment of the People is far more discursive than material in its approach to space. While this work contributes to the discipline as a rhetorical criticism, embodied work is also needed to investigate these spaces further.This book provides a much-needed update to the literature on parks and public lands as it is intentionally critical of American institutions like the NPS. Multiple chapters are devoted to how the NPS has repeatedly neglected Indigenous voices in park interpretation. Stuckey offers attentive and serious criticisms of the NPS, arguing that “Based in dispossession and erasure on one hand and displacement on the other, [the NPS] remains mired in the rhetoric and other practices of colonialism despite interpretive efforts to overcome those legacies” (53). This criticism recognizes the context of the contemporary moment when American federal agencies are asked to reckon with their colonial legacies. Stuckey concludes with clear calls to the NPS, emphasizing the need for action. Stuckey recommends that the NPS include this complex discourse in their interpretations rather than pretending parks are apolitical. Stuckey also calls for the NPS to position Indigenous voices as contemporary and not just histories, to “include consistent and clear interpretations that speak to Indigenous presence, removal, genocide, and contemporary lives . . . become foregrounded and made manifest in the present” (179). The reader is left with a deeper understanding of how America's parks function politically and, imperatively, with precise calls to public action.For the Enjoyment of the People interrogates identity in a way that is accessible to a public audience. America's national parks, monuments, memorials, and public lands are often depicted as non-controversial symbols of national unity. Quite the opposite is true, as Stuckey reveals, and their history and continued interpretation have profound implications on broader conceptions of what it means to be “American.” Stuckey's engaging style, in-depth case studies, and comprehensible analyses of complex policies and presidential rhetorics make this book eminently readable. For the Enjoyment of the People could serve as a helpful textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses about a variety of topics, from presidential discourse to environmental communication. Alternatively, Stuckey's political-rhetorical lens provides a contemporary perspective on the ongoing conversation surrounding identity and place, an important addition to the cross-disciplinary literature linking political power, space, and identity.