Chuck Sams reflects on the past, present and future of national parks
In two lengthy interviews, the first Native American parks director in U.S. history discusses the role of public lands in American life, the importance of Indigenous knowledge in stewardship and the consequences of Trump’s budget cuts.
Charles F. “Chuck” Sams, the outgoing director of the National Park Service, said he was “shocked” by the firing of nearly 1,000 NPS employees on Feb. 14 and cautioned park guests that they will see the consequences of the budget-cutting edicts of the Trump administration.
Sams, the first Native American to lead the National Park Service (NPS), sat down for an interview with Underscore Native News on Feb. 13 before cuts to NPS employees were announced by the White House. On Feb. 16, he fired off a strongly worded post on Facebook and then met for a second interview with Underscore on Feb. 18.
“How can the national parks be healthy and happy if their staff are not healthy and happy?” Sams asked from his home in Pendleton during the second interview.
“I have great concerns for the staff of the National Park Service,” he said. “You can feel their angst, their confusion and their frustration and their anger. You know, it’s one thing to be let go because you fail in doing your job or you just don’t meet the bar. It’s another to be fired without any specific reason … There may be rhyme or reason to it. I don’t know what that rhyme or reason is. And nobody’s been able to explain it, at least publicly so far.”
Sams said visitors are going to notice changes due to the cuts, a prediction already coming true amid reports of long lines, visitor center closures, canceled rentals and other negative impacts on park visitor experiences.
Sams said he’s baffled by the politics, too.
“I’m perplexed,” he said, “because, in general, national parks have been nonpartisan. Parks don’t know any party. Flora and fauna don’t have any party. It’s humans who are responsible for being able to be their protector and preservationists. And that’s the expectation that was laid out in the 1916 Organic Act when it was passed to hold these lands for ourselves in perpetuity for the next generations.”
Reflecting on his journey
Sams, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon, returned with his wife, Lori, and 11-year-old daughter, Ruby, to their home in Pendleton in January after his term as parks director under the Biden administration.
In his interviews with Underscore, Sams reflected on his three-and-a-half years in Washington, D.C. overseeing the National Park System, a federal organism that includes 85 million acres of public lands, 20,000 employees, 250,000 active volunteers, tens of thousands of buildings, and 12,000 vehicles in a fleet of aircraft, boats and ships. All told, the National Park Service oversees about $377 billion of assets.
Sams said he had no intentions of re-entering federal government service after serving in U.S. Navy intelligence decades ago to satisfy a treaty obligation to protect the United States. He was stationed with an attack squadron at Whidbey Island Naval Base in the Puget Sound and served in the first Gulf War in 1991.
“I did my time in the military and thought that I was done and had no intention of ever returning back to federal service,” Sams said.
Trump changed all that.
“After the first Trump administration, I saw that there was a need to help rebuild the trust in the American people about what we were doing, especially in federal lands, and what we could do to ensure that balance was there,” he said.
Democrats normally pick a long-serving member of the NPS to lead the organization, Sams said.
But in talking with President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Sams said, “It was very clear that they wanted to see some cultural changes and shifts within the National Park Service.”
As NPS Director, Sams worked in the U.S. Department of the Interior under Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna of New Mexico and the first Native American to head the Interior Department.
Change couldn’t be accomplished by edicts alone, so Sams visited 112 of the country’s 250 national park sites, part of the National Park Service’s 433 holdings, where he talked with staff at all levels.
From left, Megan Wood, executive director of the Ohio History Connection; Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine; Chris Alford, superintendent of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park; National Park Service Director Chuck Sams; Chief Glenna Wallace, of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and Jen Aultman of the Ohio History Connection, unveil a replica of a plaque during the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Inscription Commemoration ceremony, at the Mound City Group at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, Ohio, Oct. 14, 2023.
“The only way I was going to see this change was to get out and visit the parks and talk to the line staff, talk to the GS4, GS5, GS7, GS9 (referring to rank, pay grade and qualification of federal government employees), for the people out there daily,” Sams said. “The guys out there that are trimming trees, that are doing interpretation, that are clearing the roads.”
In his official capacity, Sams traveled from A-to-Z, visiting Arcadia National Park in Maine to Zion in Utah. He went to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by helicopter to check out the Colorado River bed and flew to Banff, Alberta to discuss co-management, particularly for bison, with counterparts in Canada.
“In those three-plus years, I got to see both incremental and grand changes in the way the National Park Service did its work,” Sams said. “I came away with it, still impressed from the first day I ever met a National Park Service ranger, of their dedication and their willingness to serve.”
“I was constantly impressed by the staff at all levels through the Park Service for their willingness to work hard each and every day to be America’s stewards of these resources.”
Haaland directed Sams to “fiercely tell” the stories that were not necessarily being told at sites in the park system, including through interpretive panels popular throughout the National Park System. All this new information, Sams said, was to be shared so that more people “could see themselves in the park.”
During Sams’ tenure, the National Park Service used Great American Outdoors Act funding in parks across all 50 states, several U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Those improvements — new roadways and trails, as well as renovated visitor centers, new kiosks and interpretation — represented an annual investment of about $1.3 billion.
Sams pointed out the new interpretive signs at Whitman Mission, the site of the so-called “massacre” of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and 11 others in Walla Walla, Washington in 1847.
One of the interpretive signs at Whitman Mission says: “One-sided representations that portray the Whitmans as martyrs and depict a Native ‘massacre’ of non-Indians have further marginalized the associated Native peoples. Addressing the mission’s complex historical context — including the complicated legacy of Manifest Destiny and its continued impacts on Native populations — will promote healing and understanding.”
Centering Indigenous knowledge in land stewardship
One of Sams’ own initiatives promoted the expansion of co-management and co-stewardship between the federal government and tribal nations.
Sams took the “education that I got here on the Umatilla Indian Reservation” and applied it to the development of the co-stewardship and co-management policies that he laid out for the National Park Service.
The Interior Department’s most recent Tribal Co-Stewardship Report noted that, by the end of Sams’ tenure, the number of units co-stewarded by tribal nations had more than quadrupled, exceeding 400.
“I took some solace in understanding that if we as Native people have been managing this land for 30,000 years, these 85 million acres could be managed in a way that respects tribal knowledge and ways of knowing,” Sams said.
A memorandum from President Biden in November 2021 promised to use Indigenous knowledge to help further understand the natural world, with an emphasis on understanding climate change.
Sams met early on with his counterparts — Martha Williams at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tracy Stone-Manning at Bureau of Land Management and Camille Touton at the Bureau of Reclamation.
“And we all sat down and said, ‘What can we do on a landscape scale? What can we do together with the funding that we have to look at ecosystem function across our federal landscape and what partners are not currently at the table?”
All four federal bureaus had been working regularly with states, local counties and gateway communities in and around national parks.
“But who was missing from the table was, of course, tribes,” Sams said. “And being able to figure out how we could bring tribes to the table to co-steward these resources was extremely important.”
Chuck Sams and Native staff at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Courtesy of Tony DeYoung / Underscore Native News
In March of 2022, Sams met for the first time with Native leaders and members of Congress to promote the expansion of co-management and co-stewardship between the federal government and the tribal nations that call the parks home.
Sams said he reminded staff at the National Park Service that when they took their oath of office it was an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution and to abide by the Constitution, as well as treaties, which Sam notes are the “supreme law of the land.”
“And if treaties with tribes are the supreme law of the land and supersede the Constitution, then we have an extra obligation to ensure that those treaties are also honored,” Sams said.
Furthermore, Sams said, many treaties — for tribes whose ancestors managed the lands for thousands and even tens of thousands of years — mark out the importance of flora and fauna, and the obligation to protect and preserve lands.
It is logical, Sams said, that tribes should co-manage federal lands.
The Pacific Northwest Fish Wars of the 1960s-70s and the Belloni and Boldt court decisions proved to the federal government that tribes have a right to co-manage resources.
“We have a right to co-manage salmon,” Sams said. “We have a right to co-manage the water that the salmon live in. We have a right to co-manage the trees, then the watersheds where the water runs down to the rivers that help the salmon.”
New forms of public service
Back home in Oregon, Sams is still committed to public service.
On Feb. 18, the Oregon Senate confirmed Sams, who was nominated by Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, to a seat on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, which has the responsibility to develop a regional power plan, along with a fish and wildlife program, to balance the environment and energy needs of the Northwest. Its mission is to ensure, with public participation, an affordable and reliable energy system while enhancing fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin.
Sams was previously nominated for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in 2021 by then Gov. Kate Brown. Shortly afterward, he was nominated by President Biden for the NPS position in August of that year, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November and began his tenure as parks director in December of 2021.
He served eight months on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council before he went to work in the Biden Administration.
Sams said he was surprised and honored when he was asked to serve as the director of the National Park Service, although his resume speaks for itself.
In addition to serving in the Gulf War as a Navy Intelligence Officer, Sams has worked for more than three decades in tribal, state and federal government, as well as in the nonprofit natural resource and conservation management field, with an emphasis on the responsibility of strong stewardship for land preservation.
Sams holds a Master of Legal Studies degree in Indigenous People’s Law from the University of Oklahoma School of Law, plus a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Concordia University.
Sams has had a variety of roles with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, including as executive director. He has also had roles as president/chief executive officer of the Indian Country Conservancy, executive director for the Umatilla Tribal Community Foundation, national director of the Tribal and Native Lands Program for the Trust for Public Land, executive director for the Columbia Slough Watershed Council, executive director for the Community Energy Project, and president/chief executive officer for the Earth Conservation Corps. He also served as director of the CTUIR Department of Communications.
Sams brought to the NPS fresh ideas, as well as an unapologetic command of and demand for treaty obligations in the U.S. Constitution, merged with traditional lessons and beliefs he learned from his elders on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
“Morale has been stricken hard and maliciously”
In his Feb. 16 Facebook post, Sams explained his reaction to the federal cuts.
“The firings on Friday of the staff … hit close to home. Nearly 1,000 lives have been turned upside down; these are people who I have met personally, people who have stepped forward to serve the nation, and thus all of us,” Sams wrote.
Sams said park staff across this nation have been terminated from their positions “for no real or documented reason.”
These positions cover nearly all types of job categories: natural resources, cultural resources, interpretation, education, maintenance, partnerships, administrative, and more.
“The American people and our international guests will see longer lines into parks, we will see visitor centers with limited hours or closed, we will see water treatment plants in danger of failing, we will see delays in response for medical treatment and search and rescue, we will see a reduction in Ranger led programming and we will see degradation and possible destruction of our national treasures both natural and cultural,” Sams wrote.
Sams said he visited thousands of staff members, volunteers and partners during his tenure as parks director.
“The National Park Service has consistently attracted people who love their country; people that are willing to forgo more lucrative opportunities in order to ensure our collective history, special places, natural and cultural resources are protected now and for future generations,” Sams wrote.
Now, Sams wrote, “Morale has been stricken hard and maliciously. Those still in uniform and working will have to dig very deep to keep the faith that America’s best idea will continue. That America’s best idea is worth fighting for today and every day. That America’s best idea will stand for those generations to come. It is up to every American to fight for this idea, that the work of our Rangers continues to be of national importance. We all must stand with our Rangers now and help those who are trying to find their way, now that they have been let go, or those who have been spared and must now do more with less. We need the next generation of stewards, or we will all suffer a fate that lacks integrity in preserving lands, waters, flora, fauna, and our collective history.”
Sams might take some comfort in knowing that, during his stint with the Biden administration, national parks received bipartisan support.
“While I was there, I never met a member of Congress that didn’t love the national parks,” Sams said.
According to NPS data, park visitation has risen steadily following the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 325 million visits across all National Park Service units in 2023. Some parks have implemented timed-entry reservations, parking lot closures, traffic management and other measures to control overcrowding during peak seasons.
Now, park-watching organizations warn that smaller parks may close visitor centers during off-peak hours or entirely for certain days due to staffing shortages. Larger parks are expected to reduce hours for key facilities or limit access to certain areas.
The Los Angeles Times reported that service cuts include “park rangers who respond to medical emergencies, as well as visitor center employees and the crews that clean bathrooms and empty garbage cans.”
Given national parks’ popularity, it can be politically precarious for lawmakers to appear to be even remotely against national parks, which Sams calls the “biggest classrooms in the country.”
“They may not like how we’re managing them. That’s a policy issue at times,” Sams said during his first interview with Underscore. “But they love the parks and they wanted to see their park thrive. They wanted to see their park enjoyed. They wanted to see it protected, preserved, and enhanced.”
“That’s a concern now,” he continued. “Because if we are going to continue with America’s best idea, it’s got to be funded at the appropriate amount to sustain these lands in perpetuity.”
Lessons from his elders
Sams is proud to have led the National Park Service.
“I couldn’t have thought of a better job to have,” he said. “And, you know, coming from a long line of tribes that loves to tell stories, storytellers, preserving those stories and making sure that they are heard and that they are repeated and that they are taught, they have lessons to teach, was a great opportunity to do that on behalf of the American people.”
Sams said the lessons he’s learned from his elders have informed his decisions in life.
He recalled a story from when he was 21 years old, just out of the Navy and fishing with his grandfather, Charles Sams, Sr., on the “big river” at Cascade Locks. Sams, sound asleep in his sleeping bag on the scaffold, slept through his 4 a.m. duty to check the nets. He awoke to the smell of tobacco emanating from his grandfather, who was pulling the net out himself.
“I apologized and was trying to help and he says, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. That doesn’t matter to me.’ He goes, ‘What is your plan?’ And I told him, ‘I’m gonna go to college, I’ll get a degree, I’ll find a job … I’ve done my time.’”
As his grandfather was cleaning a salmon from the net Sams had forgotten to check, his grandfather told him, “You know you’re responsible to ensure that salmon come back year after year. You’re responsible for the water in this river, you’re responsible for the trees and for all the other animals that made you a human being.”
“Your obligation never ends,” his grandfather continued “So, you’re not just going to go to school and get some job. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to uphold your responsibility to Creator’s law. That’s what you’re going to do.”
So that’s what Sams did, and continues to do through his work for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
“I think as a Cayuse-Walla Walla,” Sams said, “the promise that we made through our covenant with the Creator to be the voice for flora and fauna to protect, preserve and enhance them, it never ends.”
Underscore Native News is a nonprofit investigative newsroom committed to Indigenous-centered reporting in the Pacific Northwest.
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