Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Wednesday that the National Park Service is launching an initiative with Native American tribes to tell a more complete story of American history at the countrys 428 national park sites.

I want to talk about how we tell our stories, Haaland, who is the first Indigenous U.S. Cabinet secretary, said in remarks at the White House Tribal Nations Summit.

There are parts of our history that are painful, but they do not define us, she said. We define ourselves by the world we collectively build for current and future generations. It is up to all of us to tell our stories. And not just the stories of the bad times but of those that we celebrate. Those that show our resilience, our strength and our contributions.

In that vein, Haaland announced that the park service is teaming up with tribes and academics for a theme study on the Indian Reorganization Period, one of the most consequential periods of our history. The centerpiece of this era, which spanned from the 1930s to the 1950s, was the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act a federal law also referred to as the Indian New Deal that enabled tribal self-government and focused on improving the economic and social conditions of Native Americans.

We saw for the first time since colonization federal support for Indigenous cultures, economic recovery, self-determination and governance, said the interior secretary. While injustices and the continued implementation of assimilation policies persisted in many Indigenous communities, this is a period that deserves our attention. I look forward to seeing what the service creates with the help and input of our communities.

The countrys national park sites are all, in a sense, sites of storytelling. Every year, the federal agency logs hundreds of millions of visits at its parks, and each site, with its placards and monuments, tells a story about the history of the region. Often missing at these sites, though, are the stories from the Indigenous peoples who lived on that land for thousands of years, way before colonizers came and claimed the land as their own.

HuffPost talked to National Park Service Director Charles Sams about what the new theme study will do, why it matters that Indigenous people be given the chance to tell their stories about the land in national parks, and what it means for how visitors will experience national parks after it is done. Sams, like Haaland, brings a fresh perspective to the idea of who tells the story of American history, as the first Indigenous person to lead the park service.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for brevity.