Ken Burns on “The National Parks”

Well I think we’ve been surprised certainly in a lot of the work that we done but
particularly so in the National Park by the amazing diversity of the story. This is not just
a top-down history.

Most people think that American history is just a series of presidential administrations
punctured by wars. And then, that gives you a fairly—I supposed superficial handle on
things but it’s much more complicated than that and the bottom up-view that we’ve
always tried to adopt are delivering much more complexity and undertow.

It allows you to penetrate more fully into the number one sub theme of American life
ways born as we were in the idea that all men are created equal but they guy who wrote
that sentence owned a hundred other people and never saw the contradiction, never saw
the hypocrisy and more important never saw fit in this lifetime to free any of those
people. And set in motion in American then in almost every way is constantly bumping
up against this question of race.

The civil war, the most important abandon our history wouldn’t have happened, had
slavery not existed in the country that was proclaiming to the world this new idea of
individual liberty. So that’s there in diversity.

Naturally occurring diversity is an important part of the films that we make. And in this
one to understand that the buffalo soldiers, they celebrated African-American Calvary
Men of the late 19th and earlier 20th century where the first park defenders in California is
here on the mountains. Somebody in General Grant—what was then called General Grant
National Park in Secoya National Park.

And what an amazing phenomenon that in the first decade over 20th century, a decade by
the way when more African-Americans were lynched than in any other time in our
history that African-Americans might be telling other Americans what to do—and the
National Park was interesting. And that compliments the top-down or the more top-down
story of John Mure, the Scottish born naturalist beaten by his father until he memorize the
entire new testament and three quarters of the old testament. He could find the new faith
in nature that was utterly American, utterly transcendental therefore.

In wild nature that he could dispose of the dogmatic devotion that the European tradition
worshiping cathedrals and representatives of God and could free himself and his
countrymen—his adopted countrymen and women by sharing a new faith in the
mountains and he is the most important prophet of not just the national parks but the idea
behind the national parks. And that’s why we made the film.

This is not a travel or going nature film per say. This is a history of individuals and ideas.
And we say it’s America’s best idea knowing for well as provocative ad challenging. But
once you’ve started the country on the idea of individual liberty, you’ll be hard pressed to
find a better idea than setting aside for the first time in human history.

Lands are not for kings or noblemen of the rich but for everybody and for all times. We
invented it as an utterly American idea and curve only happened where people stag on to
figure out how to govern themselves. However, flowed that original conception might
have been.

I finished the film on the civil war in the 1990. And a couple of years later, I was back at
Gettysburg which is a national park site. We walked and crossed the lawn of the busier
center with superintendent. And I - he scooped down at one point and picked up a
Popsicle wrapper and waved it in my face and said. “It’s All Your fault.” And what he
meant was that his attendance of gone up 100, 200 or 300% after my film on the civil war
and had stayed there.

So I guess what I want is for every superintendent of all the national park unit and with
392 are to be then at me because I’ve got people coming and they don’t know what to do
with them. And that’s already happened. All of the things I want have already taken
place. We had huge tens of millions of years on public television. People are rearranging
their plans to go the national parks.

And that in it of itself without having specific political agenda will change the agenda of
the United States with regard of parks. The parks have undergone years of neglect. The
previous administration allowed up wares of or eight or nine billion dollars worth of
maintenance, deferred maintenance to take place. And we’ll now have to go back and
figure out where that money comes from and how to bring the parks back up to snuff and
how to think about wild places for the 21st century. And that’s a challenge which I think
the parks remind the people that they were invested in.

They say you’re working in the national parks and this like “uh uh”. It doesn’t sound so
cool and everybody is assuming they’ve always been there. They haven’t and therefore
that threatens them.

They assume the national parks or this is always been there to take care and they haven’t.
They don’t share up into 50 years into the existence of the national parks. And therefore
they are threatened. They will assume they’re always there and that people believed that
and they are most often threatened.

Because once you lose a place, it’s loss forever. Once you saved it, the saving is like
liberty itself, and it requires a kind of eternal vigilance. I think that what we did was
helped re-instill some of our fellow citizens with that sense of the vigilance required. And
that case, it’s already a success and we've got what we've wanted.