"I know that there are some people who think that if you tell particular stories, like LGBT stories, that that is divisive, but I think given the nature of the culture of the United States and how we have come to be, that each of those strands of narrative are threads in the fabric that make this country strong.”

Join us for a conversation with Superintendent Ed Keable to hear about why the NPS celebrates Pride, how Grand Canyon is becoming more inclusive, and which side of the Canyon is his favorite!

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

Ed: First thing I’ll say is being Gay is part of who I am, it’s not who I am... Julia: Hello there! I’m Ranger Julia, and for the last two years, I have been working as a seasonal interpretive ranger on the North Rim at Grand Canyon National Park. In that time, I’ve written a few social media posts in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride month, which takes place each June. This year, the post featured myself wrapped in a pride flag, with a short caption highlighting diversity and inclusion in the parks. While the post received widespread support from other parks, visitors, and our park partners, it was also met with vitriol, ignorance, and hate. People were confused about the post’s relevance to the Grand Canyon, and to the National Park Service in general. In response to these comments, I sat down with Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Ed Keable, to discuss his thoughts on diversity and inclusion in terms of the NPS mission. To explain Superintendent Keable, I need to explain the role of a Superintendent. The National Park Service is a part of the Department of the Interior, and is spearheaded by one director, currently Chuck Sams. Under the director there are deputy directors, each with their own staff and area of expertise. Next down the list are the regional directors, who oversee many parks. Each park in the region then has its own superintendent. For Grand Canyon, that Superintendent is Ed Keable. You can think of him as the person in charge of Grand Canyon; Superintendents are essentially the chief executive officers of individual parks and can be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior. By the time I sat down with Superintendent Keable, he had been hard at work at Grand Canyon for about three years.

Acoustic guitar music.

Julia: Welcome to the North rim. First, can you introduce yourself? Ed: Sure! I'm Ed Keable, I’m the Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park. Julia: Can you briefly tell me about your path to becoming Superintendent of Grand Canyon? Ed: Sure. So first, this is my first National Park Service job. So my path here is unusual. I spent the previous 23 years as a lawyer in the Department's office of the Solicitor, which is their legal office. And spent seventeen of those years in different executive level jobs, basically in various jobs, and managing the solicitor’s office, and had an area of practice that included administrative also, the nuts and bolts and how to manage federal organizations and then of course I manage the Solicitors Office. So I had that background. The superintendency at the Grand Canyon had been vacant for almost 2 years before I got here. The Department of Parks Service had advertised the job twice- weren't satisfied with the applicants they got, most of which were outside of the National Park Service. I think in either both -- one or both of them, nobody in the Park Service applied because it's a really hard job for lots of different reasons. So the secretary of the Interior has the authority to reassign executives in the department to any jobs they’re qualified to do, and the Secretary of the Interior is - what at the time was David Bernhardt and I've known him for almost 20 years. He was my boss when he was the solicitor of the Department of the Interior and I gave him legal advice when he was the Deputy Secretary and the Secretary. So he knew me really well, and as he thought about the challenges of the Grand Canyon, he thought, after failing to recruit anybody, who could he reassign into the job? And he told me that he kept thinking of my name as somebody who could do this job. So, 24 hours before he called me into his office, I got a call from my boss, my political boss in the solicitor’s office telling me "Hey, I think the Secretary is gonna ask you to be the superior of the Grand Canyon. And he's gonna ask you tomorrow.” So I had 24 hours to think about it and so the secretary did call me into his office on what turned out to be my birthday. And told me, “Hey, I really am having a hard time filling the Superintendency of the Grand Canyon, as I think about it, I think you'd be really good at it. So I'm going to ask you a question and you can say no” because the deal is with the senior executives in the federal government is, if the Secretary of the Interior asks you to take a job, to reassign you to a new job, you either have to say yes or you have to resign. Julia: Wow. Ed: That's part of the law that established the Senior Executive Service. So the secretary knew that I knew that because I'd given him advice in the past on how to reassign executives. So he prefaced his question with “you can say no,” but he asked me, would I take the job and I, having thought about it for 24 hours, I said yes. Julia: What was your first thought when you were told you would be asked that question? Ed: Wow! You know, I had been to the Grand Canyon twice as a tourist. The first time was in 1994. My husband, he wasn't my husband at the time, but my husband and I were traveling the southwest and we stopped at the north rim. And you know, I had one of those iconic Grand Canyon experiences where I walked up to the rim and was just awed by its grandeur and its beauty, and and had that sense of the divine that this is really a special place. And shortly after that I had a random thought: “This would be a really cool place to work and to live!” And 26 years later, the secretary of the Interior asked me if I would become the Superintendent of the Grand Canyon.

Acoustic guitar music.

Julia: Ed Keable's tenure as Superintendent started just after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he is no stranger to working through new and complicated challenges. What are you most proud of accomplishing during your time as Superintendent so far? Ed: There's a lot to choose from. We're doing just amazing work across multiple issues and fields. I think if I had to pick one - by the way, this question is a lot like, you know, who's your favorite child? - But if I had to pick one, it would be the work we're doing around the welcoming Indigenous people back into the Park. Grand Canyon National Park, like so many other federal land units, certainly National Park units, was established over 100 years ago against the will of the people who lived in this place from time immemorial. And the Park Service then, like other federal agencies, for 100 years kept them away from what they still today view as their home. And that's caused all sorts of challenges within Indigenous communities; dispossessing them from their home, keeping them away from their home for 100 years. I believe it's created social and economic challenges that tribal leaders are dealing with today. And so this park, before I got here, began working really hard at trying to welcome Indigenous people back. We have an initiative to create the first Inter-Tribal Cultural Heritage Site at Desert View at our east entrance gate on the South Rim, and in order to really accomplish that in a meaningful way, the park established an Inter-Tribal Working Group; representatives from the 11 Associated Tribes to the park have formed to work with the park to help give us guidance on how to really effectively welcome people back. And that process has taken time to mature because there was distrust between the tribes and the park, but the park has been really mindful to work that process well. So we work with our park partners, the Grand Canyon Conservancy, to fund a facilitator who themselves are indigenous, not from the 11 associated tribes from other from another tribe, but that's really important for our tribal partners to have a facilitator who understands their perspective generally. And so, the park is a part of that dialogue. We're not leading that dialogue, and in fact, in many ways, we're working with the tribal leaders to lead that process. We're taking our lead from them. So at the Desert View Inter-Tribal Cultural Heritage Site, the Tribal leaders of the Inter-Tribal Working Group have established a strategic plan, we’re following that strategic plan. They've established a theme, which is that “we are still here.” It's important to them that that not only our visitors, but the park, understands that this is their home, and they are still here and so that has informed how the Park Service is engaging with them. And when I got to the park, that work had been going on for a number of years and within a couple of weeks I went to Desert View, got the briefing on what's going on there, and my only question walking away from that briefing was “Why are we doing this only at Desert View? Why aren't we doing this throughout the whole park?” So we've made sufficient progress with Desert View and we're following that strategic plan. We're now engaging with the Inter-Tribal Working Group to expand what I call the Desert View Vision to the rest of the park and we're having really meaningful conversations with some of the associated tribes to identify co-management opportunities and we're beginning some long term plannings on how to implement co-management effectively including infrastructure issues. So if we want our Indigenous partners to come into the park and work with us, for example, they're going to need housing. So as we manage our housing program for the future, we're building into our future housing needs opportunities for our Indigenous partners to come to and live into the park.