Trump admin orders agencies to censor Indigenous info
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- Trump administration ordered the Fish & Wildlife Service to review and potentially alter materials at more than 30 wildlife refuges, fish hatcheries, and agency offices for content on climate change, Indigenous peoples, and wetland destruction.
- Interior Department gave contradictory guidance, recommending removal of a video line about “violent disruption” of Indigenous peoples at the National Wildlife Refuge System Headquarters in Virginia, while deeming signage about European displacement of Indigenous peoples at two Virginia refuges as factual and leaving it unchanged.
- Interior Department flagged the “Hall of Shame” exhibit title at Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma for removal, citing concerns over its portrayal of near‑extinction of American bison.
- Interior Department left unchanged signage at Occoquan Bay and Elizabeth Hartwell Mason Neck refuges that described how Europeans forced Indigenous peoples off their lands, calling the statements factual.
- Interior Department flagged climate‑change signage at Audubon National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota and wetland‑destruction signs at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah, but did not order their removal.
- Sierra Club obtained nearly 300 public comments on the QR‑code feedback process, many of which opposed the executive order and called for more funding for public lands.
- Sierra Club notes this is the third batch of FOIA documents related to the executive order, following similar releases from the Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management.
Why it matters: The contradictory guidance forces Fish & Wildlife Service staff to decide which historical and scientific displays to keep, curtailing public education about Indigenous peoples and climate change while giving the Sierra Club concrete evidence to contest the administration’s rewrite of history.
