Dennis Kelley is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He received his Master’s and Doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with emphases in American Indian Religious Traditions, Religion in American Culture, and Myth and Ritual Theory. His most recent book is Tradition, Performance, and Religion in Native America: Ancestral Ways, Modern Selves, and is currently working on a book tentatively titled Having Had a Spiritual (Re)Awakening: Religion and Alcohol Addiction Recovery in Indian Country.
From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the propulsive and vividly told story of how Yellowstone became the world’s first national park amid the nationwide turmoil and racial violence of the Reconstruction era.
Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park—one of the most popular of all national parks—but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey’s discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world.
Now, author Megan Kate Nelson examines the larger context of this American moment, illuminating Hayden’s survey as a national project meant to give Americans a sense of achievement and unity in the wake of a destructive civil war. Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America(Scribner, 2022) follows Hayden and two other protagonists in pursuit of their own agendas: Sitting Bull, a Lakota leader who asserted his peoples’ claim to their homelands, and financier Jay Cooke, who wanted to secure his national reputation by building the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Northwest. Hayden, Cooke, and Sitting Bull staked their claims to Yellowstone at a critical moment in Reconstruction, when the Grant Administration and the 42nd Congress were testing the reach and the purpose of federal power across the nation.
A narrative of adventure and exploration, Saving Yellowstone is also a story of Indigenous resistance, the expansive reach of railroad, photographic, and publishing technologies, and the struggles of Black southerners to bring racial terrorists to justice. It reveals how the early 1870s were a turning point in the nation’s history, as white Americans ultimately abandoned the higher ideal of equality for all people, creating a much more fragile and divided United States.
Megan Kate Nelson is a writer and historian living in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She has written about the Civil War, US western history, and American culture for TheNew York Times, TheWashington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Preservation Magazine, and Civil War Monitor. Nelson earned her BA in history and literature from Harvard University and her PhD in American studies from the University of Iowa, and she has taught at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. Nelson is the author of Saving Yellowstone, The Three-Cornered War, Ruin Nation, and Trembling Earth. Twitter. Website.
Brian Hamilton is Chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website
We'll update you about the war in Ukraine: from what Russian troops are doing now to any progress from peace talks to the impact of sanctions.
Also, how businesses and sports organizations are pushing back against Russia.
Plus, what to expect from President Biden's State of the Union address, where negotiations stand for Major League Baseball after the deadline for players and owners to make a deal, and what Mardi Gras celebrations may look like this year.
On Monday, Russian forces made progress in their efforts to encircle Ukraine’s capital Kyiv despite being slowed down by continued resistance from Ukrainian forces. Russia and Ukraine also sent delegations to southeastern Belarus for initial talks amid hopes that the two countries could come to some kind of agreement, but did not come to a resolution.
Today, Texas holds the very first primary of the midterms. The elections will tell us a little bit about how strong of a hold former President Trump has on the GOP, and show us if the state is ready to elect more progressive candidates. Jessica Cisneros, a progressive-backed candidate who’s running for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, joins us to discuss how she’s feeling about her race.
And in headlines: A new study shows that Pfizer-BioNTech shots offer barely any protection from infection in kids 5 to 11 years old, a new climate change report found that countries are not doing enough to combat global warming, and jury selection began in the first criminal trial related to the January 6th insurrection.
Show Notes:
Vote Save America: Texas – https://votesaveamerica.com/state/texas/
Joe Biden prepares a State of the Union as war rages in Ukraine, Melissa Murray joins to talk about Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, and a look at the good, bad, and ugliest moments from this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
The streets of Seattle are filled with drug needles, homeless tents, and violent political agitators. What used to be a city known for its Space Needle and Nirvana has now become one of a series of case studies for the consequences of leftist rule over America's cities.
Jason Rantz, a Seattle-area radio host, has seen firsthand the horrific impact the radical left has had on his city.
"It looks like a hellscape at this point," Rantz says. "You have tent cities everywhere. You have used needles on the ground. You have human waste on the ground ... . The Pacific Northwest in general is known as being just beautiful. Really, supposedly, we respect nature. Not anymore, not with how bad it's gotten. You've got graffiti all over the place, which just doesn't feel good to live in that kind of area anymore."
Rantz joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to share his experiences of living in Seattle.
We also talk with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, about his concerns about Congress' select committee on the Jan. 6 riot and what it is doing. You can read a write-up of that conversation here.
We also cover these stories:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally requests European Union membership for Ukraine.
Former President Donald Trump answers the question of whether he would have behaved similarly to Zelenskyy were he in charge of Ukraine.
President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address is set for Tuesday night.
Texas’s Republican governor and attorney general are pursuing a new crackdown on trans kids and their families. Their directive compelling Child Protective Services to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse is raising alarms among trans rights advocates, who say the order, if enforced, will prove dangerous for a vulnerable population.
Why did Republican leaders pick this moment to trumpet an anti-trans effort? How does it fit into a wider culture war—or perhaps a larger effort to drive trans people from public life?
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Ceora shouts out Mermaid, a JavaScript-based diagramming and charting tool that creates diagrams dynamically based on Markdown-inspired text definitions.
Coinbase’s bouncing QR code ad proved so popular it crashed the app. Considered passé pre-pandemic, QR codes have obvious value now: they’re touch-free, easy to scan, and ubiquitous. (Just don’t call it a comeback.)
In preparation for his move from New Zealand to Canada, Matt is overhauling his hardware and transitioning to an M1 MacBook Pro for performance and efficiency.
Author Charmaine Wilkerson's new novel, Black Cake, is all about identity; who we are and how we fit into this world. Estranged siblings, Benny and Byron are left a recording by their late mother after she dies. The recording is full of secrets about their family that force Benny and Byron to reevaluate everything about their lives. Wilkerson told NPR's Kelsey Snell that even though Benny and Byron didn't know everything about their mother, she is still their mother who loved them very much, and that's also a part of their identity.
