Yes, You Can Change History (Erasure, Addition, and the Fight Over Whose History Gets Told)

**A federal judge’s ruling caught my eye a few weeks ago — a court ordering the Trump administration to restore national park signs about slavery, Indigenous history, and climate change that had been stripped under an executive order targeting anything that “disparages” America. I started digging, just to understand the ruling. I ended up somewhere much bigger.** **In this episode, Jay and I get into the real people and real places behind that court case — a soldier whose statue at Grand Teton leaves out a massacre, a Philadelphia house where George Washington invented the American presidency while keeping nine named people from a freedom that was legally available to them, a climate sign at Fort Sumter that vanished along with the history, and a redwood forest where a few sticky notes told a fuller story than the official signage ever had. Then we head north, to a quieter version of the same instinct: Ontario’s restoration of the John A. Macdonald statue at Queen’s Park, and the residential school memorial that didn’t come back with it. And we look at Parks Canada’s century-old, deeply imperfect system for actually adding context back into the historical record — plaque by plaque, sometimes ninety years too late.** **We also talk about why the hit show Yellowstone, fictional as it is, sits on the same real land and the same real questions this episode is asking.** **Because here’s the thing: yes, you can change history. People do it constantly, in both directions. The only question worth asking is which direction it’s moving in — are we adding back what got left out, or erasing what makes someone uncomfortable? One of those is honesty. The other is control.** **In this episode:** - **​ The June 2026 federal court ruling restoring National Park Service signage, brought by the National Parks Conservation Association and a coalition of historians and scientists, before U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley (D. Mass.) — verify exact case caption before publishing show notes** <!--THE END--> - **​ Gustavus Cheyney Doane and the 1870 Marias Massacre — Grand Teton National Park** - **​ The President’s House and the nine people enslaved by George Washington — Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia** - **​ The climate change sign removed at Fort Sumter National Monument** - **​ The “History Under Construction” signage at Muir Woods National Monument** - **​ The John A. Macdonald statue and residential school memorial at Queen’s Park, Ontario** - **​ The Rideau Canal and Duncan Campbell Scott plaque reviews — Parks Canada / Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada** - **​ Where Yellowstone (the show) intersects with the real history of the American West**