https://newslj.com/kinney-blasts-removal-native-american-history-signage

CHEYENNE (WNE) — A candidate for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat is criticizing the removal of signage at Grand Teton National Park that described 19th-century explorer Gustavus Doane’s role in a massacre of Native Americans, calling the move an attempt to rewrite state history.

The signs were taken down under a federal executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The administration has described the removed material as “improper partisan ideology.”

Lisa Kinney, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House, said the order does neither.

“This is neither ‘truth’ nor ‘sanity.’ It is outrageous,” Kinney said in a news release. “Why should we allow Washington to determine and rewrite Wyoming history?”

Kinney said the federal government should not have the final say over how the state’s history is told.

“Wyoming is independent, and we do not just roll over when told to do so by the federal government,” she said. She added that the removal amounts to “a disparaging and significant insult to the Native Americans in our state.”

The same order also stripped information from the Fort Laramie National Historic Site that addressed the persecution, forced relocation and displacement of Native Americans, according to the release. In Yellowstone National Park, several signs were flagged for removal, but conflicting guidance has so far kept them in place.

The order’s legality is being contested in federal court. A federal judge had ordered the signs restored by July 4, but a U.S. Court of Appeals has temporarily blocked that ruling, leaving the case unresolved.

Wyoming is not alone: signage and interpretive exhibits have been ordered removed at national parks in other states as well. Roughly 400 National Park Service employees nationwide say they are now barred from discussing the removed historical material with visitors.

“National parks teach our tourists about the history of Wyoming, and the signs should be immediately restored and the teachings resumed,” Kinney said. “We need to stop this Washington attack on our tribes and on Wyoming.”

— The above item was written by Claude.ai off a news release from the Kinney campaign.

This story was published on July 10, 2026. 

On July 1, the U.S. Forest Service proposed a rule in the Federal Register eliminating public input regarding how “national forests get run, who gets a grazing permit, how a timber sale gets reviewed for damage to water and wildlife, what deadline you have to object before a decision goes final, etc.” All of us can find and comment on the proposed rule here. These decisions are made by the Forest Service in handbooks, not Congress.

Will Pattiz just wrote in “More Than Just Parks” an article entitled “Forest Service to Remove Your Voice from Public Lands Decisions” that describes the situation. The public can read the entire Substack article here.

Lisa Kinney, former Wyoming State Senator and current candidate for US House of Representatives, is passionate about keeping public lands in public hands. “If the public is no longer able to comment on public lands decisions, are the lands really in our hands?” she asked.

Kinney sees no benefit in eliminating public comment. “Our recommendations have been important to the Forest Service for decades, but suddenly they propose to eliminate our input. Why?” Her questions continued: “Where is this coming from? If they decide to sell public lands, what is the objective?”

Lisa simply doesn’t trust what is happening here and she and her campaign believe that the people of Wyoming need to be aware before it is too late.

“We need to make our voices heard,” Lisa said. “Wouldn’t it be great if the Forest Service received thousands of comments from all of us who are public lands supporters?” Please submit your comments directly to the US Forest Service here.

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I recently attended the Wyoming Healthcare Policy Summit with Faith Jones, who is currently Vice-President of the Wyoming Nurses Association. The summit was a comprehensive, intense analysis of rural healthcare hosted by the Wyoming Medical Society. Ten percent of Wyoming is without healthcare and six rural hospitals are at risk of closing altogether. When rural hospitals close, the three hardest hit groups are the ranchers, the small business owners and nonprofits. We must invest money in Wyoming people and healthcare and bring back the ACA subsidies.

The U.S. Department of Education has also recently excluded nursing from its internal list of “professional degree” programs which drops the annual federal graduate student loan limit for advanced nursing degrees from $50,000 to $20,500. This hurts both students and healthcare facilities even more.

In Wyoming, 81% of our voters believe the cost of health care is too high. I will work with other legislators in a bipartisan manner to find a solution to this problem.