Remembering Yellowstone: Nature Conservation, Popular Culture and Belonging

Abstract

Yellowstone is globally recognised as the world’s first national park, but the depth of its meaning goes beyond the history of nature conservation. This paper presents the park as an assemblage of landscapes, memories and popular environmental discourses. It interweaves the debate around Yellowstone as a landscape idea with an analysis of its representation in popular culture, from The Yogi Bear Show to the more recent Yellowstone television series. Coupled with personal and subjective memoryscapes, the Yellowstone assemblage is presented as capable to inform the global debate on the role of protected areas, especially in relation to climate change, tourism and recreation, as well as matters of natural heritage kinship and belonging.