Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 4

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 4 of 4:  The National Park Service-- Falling Short of the Challenge

By including Sites of Conscience into the National Park Service system, the NPS has created a mission mandate for social integrity and social leadership.  This mandate is implicit in the directives of the NPS Director’s Orders, which define the key components of informal interpretation for Site of Conscience as facilitating opportunities for visitors to make emotional and intellectual connections with the site and in prescribing that the interaction with visitors should be based on the visitor’s needs.  This mandate places interpreters into the intense emotional situations associated with Sites of Conscience on a daily basis.  These stressful emotional environments have the same potential of affecting the health and welfare of both visitors and staff as do the fumaroles and geysers of Yellowstone.  Yet, to date, the NPS has no system in place to monitor how these highly emotional interactions are affecting either visitors or staff.*  The Critical Incident Debrief may provide a good model for assessing the emotional effects and stresses on the staff at Sites of Conscience.  Yet because these emotional stresses may be cumulative, it would be important to have regularly scheduled debriefs (as with base-line hearing testing for staff working in noisy environments) rather than wait for the damage to manifest.

As interpreters at Sites of Conscience, we are in uncharted territory.  We have become the explorers of the social landscape created by these sites.  It is up to us to define, refine, and clarify our mission.  It is up to us to find effective and sustainable ways for visitors to make emotional and intellectual connections with the injustices represented by our sites without putting coworkers and ourselves at emotional risk.  It is up to us, through our informal interpretation to initiate a process for the visitors that may lead to healing, if they choose to do so. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

The author originally wrote this in 2011 when he was still idealistic and naive enough to believe that NPS had the honor, integrity, and dignity to operate Sites of Conscience.  From a 2013 perspective, the NPS most certainly does not posess any of these attributes.  Read the other postings on this blog if you have need of more information on the criminal dysfucntion of the NPS.

*The NPS does offer a free Employee Assistant Program (EAP) to help staff through emotional and psychological difficulties.  This program, however, is confidential and is forbidden by statue from communicating with the NPS.  The EAP counselors can neither provide “monitoring” information back to the NPS as to how the working environment is affecting the staff nor can EAP make recommendations to management as to improving the emotional health and welfare within the working environment. 

The EAP program and all leadership, team building, and employee training programs in the NPS exist so that NPS management can detract attention away from their own abusive and incompetent actions and to enable management to psychologically rape NPS employees.  Stay tuned to the blog for in-depth  details of this process.