Carolyn's Various Travels: Grand Canyon Day 2

Our second day began with a delicious breakfast from our chefs and then we dived into learning more about the park service from Brian Drapeaux - Deputy Superintendent of Grand Canyon NP and Louis "Bucky" - Director of Albright Training Center. Both were amazing storytellers and very generous with their time with us. They spoke for a while, but then took tons of questions from the group.

Brian Drapeaux - Deputy Superintendent of Grand Canyon NP. He opened his talk with the W for WSU but I didn't get a picture, so I asked him to pose with me afterwards. lol.

Brian told a powerful personal story of his own path into the Park Service that was very thought provoking. He is a native of the Sioux tribe in SD. He laughed and said he was 2nd generation Scotish (his mom's mom came from Scotland). He took on leadership roles from a very early age and was selected as VP of his tribe at age 29. His first career was in education as a teacher in Juneau Alaska and on his own reservation. Then he worked in the Bureau of Indian Education in the federal government. He eventually moved over to the National Parks in the Department of the Interior as the Deputy Superintendent of the Grand Canyon park. As he tells it, he had never set foot in a National Park. In fact he scoffed at them and had considerable scorn for them growing up. They had taken land from his people and were 'white places' that did not consult with or honor indigenous peoples about policies for managing land that had been in their care for centuries. It was hard for him to make the transition to work for this agency that he did not respect, but he saw an opportunity to do good. After his first few months, in the NPS he was struggling to find his way and he returned to his reservation to convene a sweat lodge meeting with the men of his tribe. Through the ceremony they shared their wisdom and he found his purpose at the Park. He didn't spell it out for us, but it was clearly to be an indigenous voice in a work force that had only 2% indigenous employees managing land that was mostly indigenous. Finding ways to bring those voices back into the stories that are told about these special places - our National Parks.

When he was young, his life was filled with violence, fist fights with peers, etc. He wasn't good at fighting this way, so he decided to fight through knowledge and politics. He got his bachelors degree and for a time he worked for Senator Tom Daschel and learned a lot about how politics works. He never wanted to be a politician, but he understands political dynamics that affect us all. He shared his own leadership wisdom with the group. The words he repeated several times were "Decide, and take action". When he first came into the park, it was clear that there was a culture of abuse 'on the river', by guides and others who were down in the canyon. It was "what happens in the canyon stays in the canyon". It was clear that this was wrong and needed to be addressed. He took it on directly and spoke at length about how everyone needs to decide where they will stand when they are confronted with similar abusive situations. Are you the abuser, the victim, a bystander, someone who will stand up? What role do you play? He said he was prepared to stand up and not be afraid of the consequences. He laughed about the "white discipline" that he witnessed when he left the reservation for work in the federal government. At one point a supervisor wrote him up for something and he just laughed - all that happened was he got a piece of paper. On the reservation, he would have gotten beaten up because violence was a way of life. He didn't care about paper reprimands. He was not afraid to act with integrity, even if others didn't like it. He was able to clean things up, and started teaching all employees the RISE principles - Be Respectful, Inclusive, Safe and Engaged in the work place. He was very clearly a confident leader with a ton of integrity. He eventually came to love the work and reconciled himself with the challenge of working for the NPS. He laughed and said he also really liked the moderate Arizona winters (its about 20-30 degrees here all week - quite warm compared to winter in South Dakota).

He shared some about the use of the canyon by native people in the area, including the belief by some of them that their ancestors return to the canyon after death. Basically the canyon is Heaven for them. These kinds of stories were powerful reminders that the canyon is more than just a beautiful natural site.

He wrapped up by talking about funding for the Grand Canyon. I didn't jot down a ton of notes, but he was quite transparent about the different funding streams. It broke down to about 20% from congress, 20% from concessions (payments from private vendors who were permitted to operate in the park), 20% from entrance fees, and 40% other (which I think means money that comes from their Foundation - non-profit fund raising).

This was a fun welcome in the lobby!

The next speaker was Louis aka "Bucky". He was the director of the Albright training center which operates independently of the GC park. Its the national training center. He shared his background, career path and current work as well. He was Cuban and came to the US as a child in the 1960s after the revolution (he was from the west coast of Cuba). He lived in NYC growing up, served as a seasonal park ranger in several parks on the east coast (NJ, FL) doing interpretation - storytelling. He got his BA in History and loves to share geology and history with visitors. Now he oversees the training facility. He has lots of non NPS groups (like us) come through, including the FBI, Fish and Wildlife Service, AZ State troopers, etc. It is a popular location and books out 2 years in advance. He has visited 312 of the 460 National Park sites.

After hearing from the two speakers, we did some service around the training center. Part of the group cleaned up the woodpiles outside for the bonfire area. Inside we re-stocked the table caddies with pens, markers, sticky notes, etc. We also vacuumed the chairs. With 41 of us, it didn't take us long to finish these tasks, so we got a little extra free time at the end of the day.