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Environmental Gentrification Since Yellowstone & Its Underlying Themes

Environmentalism and gentrification is the dynamic-duo catalyst of America's economic agenda painted across a racially charged backdrop, thus conceiving what is called environmental gentrification. In the name of progressive ideology, the United States and the beneficiaries of its settler-state society have implemented numerous policies at the expense of indigenous populations’ and people-of-color’s well-being. The term “gentrification” was first coined in 1964 by German-British sociologist and city planner, Ruth Glass, when she witnessed wealthy people in London – who had the funds to renovate old houses – displace long-standing, blue-collar communities who couldn’t get their hands on bank loans. Although the idea was only beginning to be introduced to the western world in the ‘60s, this phenomenon had taken place long before with new manifestations of gentrification conceived in each unique context since then. Earlier instances of environmental gentrification – and gentrification in general - within the United States can be traced back to its very own National Park Service in the establishment of Yellowstone, from which similarities in settler-state processes and ideologies can be drawn to modern instances – particularly that of Hurricane Katrina and the bicycle gentrification of Portland, Oregon.

Established in 1872 to preserve its natural beauty, Yellowstone was America’s first national park. Although the National Park Service emphasizes Yellowstone to have been inhabited for more than 11,000 years, it also claims “many…tribes and bands lived in and traveled through…Yellowstone…after European American arrival” as well. But for how long after and to what extent were the original inhabitants of Yellowstone permitted to use the land? George Catlin, who coined the term “national park,” believed in establishing a designated park that contained “…man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty” as he put it in an 1833 New York newspaper article. Although Catlin was believed to have an avid appreciation for Native American way of life, he was the embodiment of outsiders’ ignorance and assumed privilege. As settlers began encroaching on Natives’ territories, altercations began bubbling up, creating an anti-Indian sentiment. Meanwhile, white intellectuals of the time pondered upon Yellowstone’s sentimental value, believing it to be a treasure that must be available to and enjoyed by all. Thus, the illusion of inclusionary rhetoric like “beneficial for everyone,” was subtly born in the context of America’s gentrification. The Northern Pacific Railroad however, began pondering upon its monetary value and would capitalize on such rhetoric. But both the businessmen and the intellectuals were nearsighted in their implications. Soon, the establishment of the national park translated into the removal of Native Americans to not only “preserve” the very land they have operated, but to eliminate the potential white tourists’ fear of the natives. By 1879, the last of Yellowstone’s inhabitants, known as the Sheep Eaters, were removed. Yet, bands from various other tribes still used the park seasonally, under the protection of treaty rights regarding off-reservation hunting. According to Isaac Kantor in Ethnic Cleansing and Americas Creation of National Parks, in 1896, the Supreme Court “found that Congress had, and could, unilaterally terminate the treaty rights…by admitting Wyoming as a state.” As a result of aggressive settler-state colonialism, the railroad company along with other entities, and subsequently the government whom they lobbied for, all brought in tremendous revenues by catering to the white man, while suppressing people of color through the use of land. This success translated into not only the physical act of taking land, but into the assumed role of manipulating the use of land. After examining the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, how are the tactics and ideologies of a century ago related to modern instances? What are the motifs Yellowstone National Park reinforced that have carried through to this day?

The Sheep Eater tribe of what is now Yellowstone National Park

In late August of 2005, the destructive tropical cyclone known as Hurricane Katrina made contact with the whole of southeastern United States with up to a category 4 landfall in New Orleans. The result was more than 1,800 fatalities and $81 billion in property damages alone. Not only was the hurricane itself a disaster, but the aftermath was very poorly handled, instigating much controversy - especially in regards to the government’s discriminatory recovery efforts. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright assert in their book, The Wrong Complexion for Protection, that the disaster after Katrina was “unnatural and caused by humans.” Moreover, they bluntly lay out the “…Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans,” of which I will focus on four that fall in line with the focus of the paper.  The first point of interest is the perfect embodiment of gentrification through environment: Policies that required reconstruction projects to “conform to green building materials and flood-proofing codes” ended up pricing many lower-income homes and small-business owners out of their real-estate. The second point is more disturbing: People advocated for black neighborhoods to be “yielded back to the swamp” in the interest of “saving the wet-lands and environmental restoration” while allowing similarly low-elevated white neighborhoods to be redeveloped. The third point of interest was the intentional focus on redeveloping less-damaged neighborhoods which only translated into “a smaller, more upscale, and whiter New Orleans.” Finally, the fourth point was the implementation of mixed-income and integrated housing as a replacement to the former all-black neighborhood. When reading this at first, one might be suspicious of such radical claims. In a FiveThirtyEight article however, Ben Casselman claims that before Hurricane Katrina, African-Americans have accounted for most of the city’s poor, but also “made up a majority of its middle class.” But after Katrina, the poor still remained overwhelmingly black while the middle-class has increasingly become white. The four contentions from The Wrong Complexion for Protection can, in some way or form, be categorized under environmental gentrification seeing as though the recovery efforts were implemented in such a way that the given environment was once again manipulated to exclude people of color and remain either economically feasible or beneficial for the white community. With that being said however, the case of Hurricane Katrina was a lot more explicit given the dramatic and economically disastrous situation it presented. So let us look at another example where just maybe the intentions of gentrification are not explicit - or even existent. But let us examine how the next example might still share the explicit thought processes that preceded both the establishment of Yellowstone National Park and the recovery efforts of Hurricane Katrina and the consequential gentrification of both instances.

African-American population significantly decreased while the population of other ethnicities have been restored since Hurricane Katrina

Residents waiting to be rescued following the events of Hurricane Katrina

A fairly contemporary concern among both scholarly and the disenfranchised, “bicycle gentrification” has been a growing issue in big cities such as Portland. The idea behind bicycle gentrification is that as governments and biking groups advocate for more and safer biking infrastructures – especially in more disinvested communities – such infrastructure will slowly attract a different demographic and bring a different culture along with it. Under the notions of environmentalism and “giving back to the people,” such projects pitch that it is beneficial to everyone. In his book, Bicycle/Race, Adonia E. Luego has an interesting way of describing this phenomenon calling it “a new refrain of the old colonial strategy of managing populations through structuring their living spaces.” He mockingly continues that “these communities could not be trusted to manage themselves, so resources had to be doled out on their behalf as the conquerors saw fit.” Luego explains how this focus on urban design over the original inhabitants of such places “…all too easily naturalizes their market-driven displacement.” Although the biking infrastructures themselves may not be the force of gentrification, they are sub-projects that foreshadow yet another wave of hip coffee shops, art studios, and upwardly mobile, creative, white millennials, who will unintentionally participate in the process of erasing the history and culture of yet another working-class community. Melody L. Hoffman in Bike Lanes are White Lanes explains the cultural sentiment of original residents saying “as neighborhoods shift or gentrify, new residents are able to feel the “grit” without having to deal with the reasons for it, including poverty and prior disinvestment.”

The hip neighborhood of Alberta in Portland - one of the most gentrified cities in the United States

By now there should appear a certain ideological trend in the thought process of a settler-state society which has manifested into the physical concept of environmental gentrification and gentrification in general. Partially stemming from the early years of the National Park Service and carrying through for generations to come in different environmental contexts, the “white man” has assumed the role of determining the allocation of resources while believing and reinforcing the idea that he himself is best fit to do so without any need to regard other inhabitants. As Kollibri Terre Sonnenblume wrote in the Counterpunch article, A Century of Theft From Indians by the National Park Service, this white settler-state society is the product of an assumed “…culture, which gave dominion over the entire earth and all its creatures to Man.”