A female park ranger holds a puppy for NPS Director William J. Whalen to pet, likely in Denali National Park. Denali has a long-running sled dog kennel program.
While many women's clubs wrote to Congress asking for the preservation of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, women's club from San Francisco tended to support the idea of building a dam in the Valley. In their petition, the Hypatia Women's Club of San Francisco stressed that the Hetch Hetchy Valley provided the only source of pure and safe drinking water for San Francisco. They questioned the desire of preservationists to sacrifice the needs of people to preserve every tree.
Women played a key role in organizing and maintaining the occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969-1971) yet their story is often overlooked. This panel, moderated by original occupier Dr. La Nada War Jack, explores the role of women in the indigenous rights movement from the occupation to the present. Please join us to hear the stories of these remarkable women who continue the hard work of positive change.
Dr. LaNada War Jack is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes where she lives on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho. In January of 1968 she was the first Native American student enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley and graduated with honors in an Independent Major of Native American Law & Politics. While attending UC Berkeley, Dr. War Jack participated as the first Native American component of the first Ethnic Studies Program in the UC statewide effort in establishing Native American Studies, African American Studies, Chicano Studies and Asian Studies. She is the author of Native Resistance An Intergenerational Fight for Survival and Life.
Presidential proclamation of August 24, 2016 declaring the establishment of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, signed by President Barack Obama and recognizing Roxanne Quimby's contribution of funds for establishment of the park:
"WHEREAS, the Roxanne Quimby Foundation has established a substantial endowment with the National Park Foundation to support the administration of a national monument..."
With this resolution, the Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs urged Congress to defeat the Raker Bill, a bill to grant San Francisco the right to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley. In 1913, women's clubs from across the country voiced their desire to protect nature and build a stronger National Park system for the sake of both moral and physical health. The Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs here argued that both women and men found health and inspiration in the beauty of the Valley. Although not using strict preservationist arguments, the Federation stressed that with more hotels and better transportation, the Valley could be enjoyed by more citizens. According to their resolution, San Francisco had no need to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley and its damming would be an irrevocable sacrifice by the whole nation.
When Congress first began debating whether to grant San Francisco the Hetch Hetchy Valley in December 1908, women’s clubs provided some of the strongest opposition. Tied to women’s larger effort to extend their traditional “housekeeping” role into the public sector, resolutions like this one from the Graffort Women’s Club of Portsmouth argued that the Hetch Hetchy Valley belonged to all people as a public playground. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs drafted the language for this petition, and dozens of affiliated clubs submitted their own versions.
Shows Mount Rainier in the background. Text on verso of image: "An unforseen incident concluding in a summertime tobaggan slide in Paradise Valley, Rainier National Park"
