Wallace Stegner called our national parks “America’s Best Idea.” Based on that premise, award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns spent six years creating a documentary series that portrays our national parks as uniquely American, a symbol of democracy and the “most special places in the nation” that should be preserved for everyone. A diversity of Americans including Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans have all played important roles in the protection and stewardship of our national parks, yet people of color have been visibly absent from scenic vistas and the backcountry trails. According to a recent visitor study by Yosemite National Park, 88% of park visitors were White; 10% were Asian; 3% were American Indian or Alaska Native and only 1% were Black or African American. By ethnicity, 16% of visitors were Hispanic/Latino.

Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite

More and more, parks and partnering nonprofits are hosting field seminars that explore the lesser-known history of people of color in the national parks. In addition to being a social equity issue, park leaders are realizing that our national parks need an informed, diverse and supportive constituency to ensure the long-term stewardship of these treasures.

In Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” scheduled to air on PBS this September, one of the leading storytellers is African American Yosemite Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, who shares these ideals: “There is nothing more democratic than a national park. You are going into a wonderland. You are going into a different world… So why should only one part of the population have that sense of wonder and that experience of discovery? Why can’t African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and everybody have that experience? Because that is part of the experience of being an American, it belongs to everyone.”

In the documentary, Burns reveals “untold stories” of our national parks and the contributions by people of color in their conservation and preservation. Recently called “a rising star” by one reporter, Johnson is profiled in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson grew up in Detroit, where the national parks seemed like unreachable places. Four years ago, co-producers of the new documentary, WETA and Florentine Films, received support from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund to launch the “Untold Stories project,” in which Johnson brings to light the story of the Buffalo Soldiers and the role of African Americans early in the history of the national parks. The purpose of the project is to engage new and traditionally underserved audiences in the “educational richness of the national parks.”

The film series weaves together stories of people transformed and inspired by the parks today, like Johnson, as well as historical accounts. Chiura Obata, a Japanese artist who moved from Tokyo to San Francisco in 1903, also gained inspiration from Yosemite and the High Sierra. Obata’s studio in Berkeley was recently named a historic landmark. Through his art he also promoted cross-cultural understanding and offered new perspectives on nature, including many Yosemite landmarks. His 1930 color wood block prints titled, “Evening Glow of Yosemite Waterfall;” “Lake Basin in High Sierra” and “Evening Glow of Mono Lake and Before Thunderstorm, Tuolumne Meadows;” are among my favorite works of Yosemite landscapes.

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea is a six-episode series directed by Ken Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan. You can view film clips on the PBS Web site and also share a story of your own experiences in the national parks. The film series will air on PBS beginning September 27, 2009.

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Now in its eighth year of publication, Berkeley-based Bay Nature magazine recently announced the launch of a new content-rich Web site (baynature.org). While many nonprofits have good stories to tell, Bay Nature now has over 700.

The concept of Bay Nature magazine began as a conversation in 1997 between publisher David Loeb and Malcolm Margolin, author of the much-admired Ohlone Way and founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley. With seed funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and other local funders, the inaugural issue covered by a majestic great blue heron photograph hit local magazine racks in January 2001. Now, just over ten years after that initial conversation, the magazine is one of four programs that make up the nonprofit Bay Nature Institute.

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In recent months, nonprofit presses in Berkeley have released new books that highlight diverse Bay Area neighborhoods and unexpected ways communities come together.

In September, Heyday Books, publishers of books about California history, arts, and culture, released “Under the Dragon – California’s New Culture.” The book is also the subject of a new Oakland Museum exhibit called “Trading Traditions” beginning in January 2008. Written by locals Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg, Under the Dragon follows the lives of a diversity of Bay Area communities while capturing the poignancy of individual struggle in a way that goes beyond the personal. The stories are raw and authentic, and the photographs are stunning.

Another nonprofit Berkeley-based publisher, New Village Press, is celebrating revered community activists at a launch party on December 9, 2007 for “Building Commons and Community” by the late Karl Linn and “Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing” by Louise Dunlap. The event will be held from 3:00 to 6:00 pm at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) Hall at Cedar and Bonita Streets, and is co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee and the NorCal Chapter of Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility. Speakers will include Louise Dunlap and Karl Linn’s longtime friend and colleague, Carl Anthony.

For over 40 years, Linn devoted himself to bringing people together in the spirit of reclaiming what he called “neighborhood commons,” creating urban oases, combined park-playground projects from vacant and blighted plots of land.

Linn, who grew up on a farm in Germany before his family was forced to flee Nazi persecution, worked as a child therapist and later established a distinguished landscape architecture practice in New York. By the late 1950s, he had decided to devote his career to social justice, teaching, and creating these neighborhood commons.

In the late 1980s, when Linn retired to Berkeley, he helped found the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility and the Urban Habitat Program at Earth Island Institute. In 1993, Linn’s wife Nicole Milner, environmental justice activist Carl Anthony, and others banded together to convince Berkeley officials to name a city-owned community garden after Linn.

Soon thereafter, Linn teamed up with a UC Berkeley professor, her students, local craftspeople, and neighbors to rejuvenate the dilapidated garden, located in Berkeley’s Westbrae neighborhood. The Karl Linn Community Garden’s transformation inspired the creation of the nearby Peralta and Northside community gardens, the demonstration home known as the Berkeley EcoHouse, and a natural and human history project along the adjacent Ohlone greenway.

A Web site on Linn’s life and work can be found at www.karllinn.org.

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