BAR HARBOR, Maine – At sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, visitors can still read about the volcanic forces that formed the summit, but they will no longer see a sign explaining the mountain’s sacred significance to the Wabanaki peoples. The sign was among 30 interpretive markers removed from Acadia National Park after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered the action as part of a Trump administration effort to eliminate material deemed disparaging to American history.
Federal policy meets local heritage
The removal has strained a decades‑long partnership between the National Park Service and the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Indigenous peoples who have stewarded the coastal region for over 10,000 years. The Wabanaki, known as “the people of the dawnland,” refer to the mountain as Wapuwoc, or “white mountain of the first light.” Their leaders say erasing the language from park signage undermines the progress made toward inclusive storytelling.
“Getting to a place where our language is in these parks and it is educational … erasing that or setting that back has big implications for how far we’ve come,” said Maulian Bryant, executive director of the Wabanaki Alliance. Bryant noted that the removed signs did not contain the most graphic statistics about disease or population loss, but they represented “the good stuff” of Indigenous history.
Climate and history content also targeted
Other eliminated signs warned that Acadia’s future will be warmer and wetter and noted a six‑inch increase in average annual precipitation over the past century. The Trump administration’s 2025 campaign flagged and removed exhibits on slavery, climate change, and Native American massacres from parks nationwide.
Angelo Villagomez of the Center for American Progress, a progressive policy group, said a leaked database shows roughly one‑third of national parks had flagged exhibits, with Black and Indigenous history most frequently targeted. “Some of it’s been put back, and then some of it has been removed again,” he said.
Legal challenge and agency response
A coalition of conservation, history and science organizations filed a lawsuit in February seeking to restore the removed signs and other interpretive materials. The suit argues that the removals violate the National Historic Preservation Act and the public’s right to a complete historical record.
Joy Beasley, a National Park Service associate director, leads a committee reviewing flagged material. In a June affidavit she acknowledged the spreadsheet may not capture every removal, revision, or replacement, underscoring the difficulty of tracking the policy’s full impact.
Local voices call for preservation
Todd Martin of the National Parks Conservation Association, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, called the parks “America’s storytellers” and said their duty is to preserve and interpret history “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” University of Minnesota librarian Jenny McBurney, who co‑founded the Save Our Signs project, warned that visitors risk learning an incomplete history if the removals remain.
Despite the controversy, Indigenous cultural programs continue at Acadia. The privately owned Abbe Museum, overseen largely by Wabanaki people, hosts music, arts and cultural events in partnership with the park. Drum circles and traditional basket‑making demonstrations bring Indigenous ceremonies back to the mountain and surrounding sites.
Co‑stewardship efforts persist
Since the Biden administration, the National Park Service has signed over 400 co‑stewardship agreements with tribes, including 159 within the Service itself. Scientist Suzanne Greenlaw, a citizen of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, helped launch a sweetgrass study in 2017 that aimed to restore tribal access to this culturally important plant within Acadia.
While the Trump administration’s removal of signage has sparked legal and public backlash, the underlying partnerships between park officials and the Wabanaki Confederacy remain a testament to collaborative stewardship that predates the current policy shift.
Original reporting: Texarkana Gazette — read the source article.
