Meet our Guests: Elizabeth Parra

Elizabeth Parra

Interpretive Ranger, Texas State Parks

Hueco Tanks State Park, TX

11/5/21

Elizabeth Parra works as a State Park Ranger at Hueco Tanks State Park, near her hometown of El Paso, Texas. Elizabeth grew up camping and hiking with her family in a nearby forest, Ruidosa, which inspired her love of science and natural world. As an adult, Elizabeth works to help people emotionally connect with the natural resources around them. “It’s super special when you see someone out here, young or old, and they go ‘Wow, I never knew.’”

The Hueco Tanks area is ancestral land to many different communities, including the Jornada Mogollan, Mescalero Apache, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples. Hundreds of Jornada Mogollan petroglyphs are tucked away in corners of the mountains at Hueco Tanks. “What makes this place special is the geology and the amount of human history we have here,” Elizabeth says.

Part of Elizabeth’s job is to protect cultural resources like the petroglyphs from damage. However, visitors have carved into walls containing petroglyphs in numerous areas around the park, resulting in a separation of Hueco Tanks into self-guided and ranger-guided tours. Over the past two years, new graffiti has increased, as the pandemic has brought greater crowds into the park. Elizabeth says that the desire to protect the pictographs from other writing is based on their historical importance and the effort that went into creating them. “A lot of these images are grounded in ceremony, tradition, their own historic record as well — compared to me buying a Sharpie at Walmart for five dollars and just writing my name.”

By Emma Fletcher-Frazer

Meet our Guests: Richard Graymountain

Richard Graymountain

San Juan Southern Paiute Tribal Councilmember and medicine man

Navajo Mountain, AZ / Navajo Nation

9/26/21

Sitting next to a crackling fire beneath Navajo Mountain, medicine man Richard Graymountain describes the frictions associated with Diné (Navajo) and San Juan Southern Paiute tribal membership in the age of ever-expanding modernity. He observes that young Diné people who have grown up with indoor spaces and the luxuries they provide—electricity, heating and cooling—do not realize the importance of becoming familiar and comfortable on their ancestral land.  

Graymountain is a vestige of declining customs, believing in the importance of traditional cultural values. Passing those on has become more and more difficult with the imposition of Western society, and a pandemic that prevents people from gathering in their typical tight-knit fashion. However, with a spot on the San Juan Southern Paiute tribal council, Graymountain is able to have some influence over the direction and values of the tribe. One impactful and direct way he’s achieved this recovery is by emphasizing the cultural importance of oral tradition. Historically, all accumulated knowledge was passed down in this manner. During his time on the tribal council, Graymountain has endeavored to pass on the Navajo and Paiute languages. Most notably, he has revived forgotten songs by teaching them to children. Through ceremonies, storytelling, and song, Richard Graymountain helps to breathe life into the Navajo and Paiute languages, igniting new generations.

By Ruthie Colburn

Meet our Educators: Joe Pachak

Joe Pachak

Artist & Archeologist

Bluff, UT

10/01/2021-10/08/2021

     “We don’t take this,” says Joe Pachak, holding a pre-historic chisel in his right hand. As an archeologist, Joe recognizes the importance of leaving artifacts in place, their story and context intact. He has been searching the red rock desert for indigenous remnants since he was a young boy roaming Pueblo, CO with his father.  Joe has made home the small town of Bluff, UT working as an artist. With an attentive eye and a kind demeanor, he offers detailed interpretations of rock art pecked into the sandstone panels of Sand Island, along the rim of an oxbow of the San Juan River, Wolf Man, and The Procession. He explains that the petroglyph styles on the panels are Basketmaker, Ute and Glen Canyon Linear. 

Westies hike with Joe over sandstone slabs, stopping to look at flakes, pottery sherds or rusted milk cans. Joe sees charred rocks and determines a pit where a fire burned centuries before. He points to carvings of animals and people desert bighorns playing flutes, snakes, processions on stone – stories from centuries before etched into rock. Every step with Joe is intentional: “we’re walking in the remains of a culture.”

The teachings he has learned from Native American cultures are significant to him. He contributes to documenting panels through drawings and sketches. Each year, Joe constructs wooden sculptures to burn as a symbol of renewal. A pair of 28-foot-tall ravens were burned last winter solstice.To Joe, it is creativity that will “make us actual.” It will help us “find out who we are as individuals and a community.” Placing the chisel back where he found it, he grins, “I say let’s go look at rock art.”

By Neave Fleming

Meet our Guests: Brett Isaac

Brett Isaac

Founder and Co-CEO, Navajo Power

Navajo Mountain, AZ / Navajo Nation

9/25/21

Brett Isaac grew up next to the Peabody Coal Mine and surrounded by the effects it had on his Diné (Navajo) community in Shonto. Specifically: contaminated drinking water, depletion of the drinking water aquifer, and respiratory illness among the local population. Additionally, the electricity generated by the coal from this mine was not accessibly to Diné families.

After graduating from Arizona State University, Brett came home to the Navajo Nation in hopes of bringing money and electric power back. He started by building solar panel arrays for individual houses far off the grid as well as providing mobile power units that have been used by Diné residents and by protestors at Standing Rock to power their camps.

In 2020, Brett co-founded Navajo Power: a public benefit renewable energy corporation that aims to brings the economic and environmental boons of solar energy to the Navajo Nation and other indigenous communities across the country. While he does not think solar energy is the “silver bullet” in dealing with climate change, he believes that it is a step in the right direction and sees first-hand how beneficial it is for the communities he has brought power to.

By Wes Johnston

Editor’s note: the photo of Brett Isaac above is from SITW 2016 as SITW 2021 met with Brett at night and did not get a more recent portrait.

Meet our Guests: Jason Nez

Jason Nez

Fire Archeologist

Navajo Nation

09/26/21

“I’m always looking at signs and putting together stories,” says Jason Nez, kneeling to examine a sherd of Diné pottery patterned with rusty stalks of corn. As an archaeologist, Jason reads complex stories of people and place from the minutia of human markings and artifacts. As a wildland fire crew manager with the National Park Service, he puts his archaeological literacy to uncommon use.

The process of corralling and extinguishing fires leaves its own scars on landscapes. Fire line trenches and vehicular tracks disturb landscapes in the name of park protection but threaten to erase sites of native artifacts should they collide with the path of fire. Thus, Jason proactively identifies sites and develops plans to spare them from damage by fire crews.

Lasting artifacts have been a vital source of power for the Diné and other indigenous tribes whose nativity, as Jason articulates, is constantly questioned. “So when we see these [artifacts],” Jason emphasizes, “it’s our proof that we were here. They couldn’t take us from this landscape because we were able to argue in court that these were our ancestors’ and it’s indisputable. So having enough respect to leave these things here, protects these connections far into the future in bigger ways than we can ever imagine.”

By Nicki Caddell

Meet our Guests: Norman Benally

Norman Benally

Interpreter, activist, sheep herder, and assembly line worker

Black Mesa, AZ / Navajo Nation

9/25/21

Self-proclaimed “old timer,” Norman Benally meets Westies outside his home in Black Mesa on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. His house adjoins a retired coal processing plant. Peabody Energy moved into the region in 1968, mining coal and pumping water from the Navajo aquifer to power cities off the reservation – Tucson, Flagstaff, Las Vegas. For years, many Diné (Navajo) people depended on the coal plant for work and the aquifer for water, yet their proximity to these resources did little to increase their access.

Today, the plant is shut down. A pipeline borders Norman’s house, but no water runs through his faucet. “The politics are as dirty as the coal plant,” he states—not to mention the drinking water. This summer, 86 of his sheep died after drinking from a nearby spring. He holds up a plastic water bottle, “we never drank out of these [until now].”

Before the backdrop of an arid, industrial landscape – his backyard – Norman expounds on the “struggle to maintain a way of life we were raised in,” when any extra cash goes into feeding his livestock, and the local resources “to keep all those AC units running in the Southwest.” Norman has pushed through this struggle. He resisted removal, fought, and remained. Norman’s activism, working as a translator for Navajo matriarchs to speak out against the coal plant and pass down Diné stories, has brought him to locations such as Standing Rock and the United Nations. His story is what he calls “the hard truth.” He intends to continue resisting.

By Neave Fleming

Meet our Guests: Kurt Tardy

Kurt Tardy

Anadromous Fish Biologist, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes

Stanley, Idaho

09/13/21

Kurt Tardy is an anadromous fish biologist who has been working with the Shoshone-Bannock tribes in central Idaho for nearly a decade. Kurt’s focus is on fish restoration, with the long-term goal of restoring salmon and steelhead populations to their historic abundance and the short-term goal of saving them from impending extinction.

Using the term “50,000-foot view,” Kurt advocated for a more holistic approach to restoration—one that goes beyond just habitat restoration. He used the metaphor of a newly built hotel, saying that numerous habitat-focused organizations have spent copious amounts of time, energy and money building a five-star hotel for fish in the upper Snake River. However, because of out-of-basin factors like dams, high water temperatures, and juvenile fish mortality, there are no fish to put in those hotel rooms. 

     Kurt brought Westies on a tour of a fish weir that was recently constructed on Pettit Creek in the Sawtooth Mountains. The fish weir is designed to catch sockeye migrating to and from Pettit Lake for biologists to count. Kurt’s passion for fish restoration shone through as he talked about the sockeye captive brood program, a project in which sockeye are genetically matched to produce the most successful offspring, who are then reared in their natural lake environment. Through projects like this, Kurt is dedicated to making concrete progress on achievable short-term goals without losing site of the big picture dream for a return to historic salmon runs. 

By Livvie Bright

Meet our Guests: Morgan Moomaw

Morgan Moomaw

Methow Valley Interpretive Center

Twisp, WA

8/27/2021

On a sunny afternoon in the Methow Valley, Morgan Moomaw stands beside a pit house, the traditional dwelling of the Okanagan people, and explains the tribe’s connection to this valley. Morgan is a member of the Okanagan Tribe and works at the Methow Valley Interpretive Center and the accompanying Native Garden, a facility dedicated to reconnecting the tribes of the Methow Valley to their homelands. After helping develop regenerative agriculture projects in Native Hawaiian communities, Morgan was inspired to bring these experiences back home and work to bridge the gap between present day members of the Okanagan Tribe and their ancestral knowledge of plants and the Colville-Okanagan language. In addition to working at the Methow Valley Interpretive Center, Morgan teaches in schools on the Colville Reservation about the language and traditional foods. Educating about the dying language is so important for the Okanagan Tribe because as Morgan describes it, it is “the water to all of our roots.”

Morgan shared about some of the traditional plants used by the Okanagan people, from ts’kwikw (elderberry) used for immune system support, to łexwłáxw (chokecherry) which is mashed into a paste and eaten. She talked about the idea of breaking the word “restoration” into the words “re” and “story:” a reflection of the way she and many other community members are working to return the Tribe’s story to the Methow Valley. She implores all who visit the Methow to feel a connection to the land, walk lightly, and carry an awareness of the people who have been living here since time immemorial.

By Morgan Sharp

Meet our Guests: Angela Bombaci

Angela Bombaci

Executive Director, Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland

Wallowa County, Oregon

08/26/21

Passion lights up Angela Bombaci’s faces as she talks about her role as Executive Director of the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, a nonprofit that manages a 320-acre property in Wallowa, Oregon, that aims to reconnect Nez Perce people with their ancestral homeland. With miles of walking trails, a longhouse and beautiful dance arbor for gatherings and ceremonies, and a major salmon restoration project, the Homeland has become a hub for native culture in Wallowa County.

In 1877, the Nez Perce people were violently displaced by white settlers and the US government from what is now Wallowa County. Angela believes that the mission of the Homeland is even more important because of this. She is dedicated to helping provide the Nez Perce people the platform to tell their own story and a physical place to gather on the land that was once occupied by their ancestors since time immemorial. 

Angela says that “The highest priority [of the Homeland] is to create space for people to celebrate their culture.” This has included large, joyful gatherings like the Tamklik powwow, smaller events like naming ceremonies and celebrations of life and death, and groups like Semester in the West visiting to learn about Nez Perce story.

Angela has worked hard to facilitate positive relationships between current Wallowa residents and Nez Perce tribal members and has been thrilled by the joy and excitement she has received in response.

By Livvie Bright

Photo courtesy Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland

Meet our Guests: Joe McCormack

Joe McCormack

Tribal Fisheries Biologist, Nez Perce Department of Fisheries

Wallowa, OR

8/26/21

The Nimiipuu people, known by most as the Nez Perce, were forced from their homeland in what is now Wallowa County, Oregon in late 1877 by white settlers and the US Army. Since the infamous Flight of the Nez Perce, most tribal members live on a reservation in Idaho, hundreds of miles from their traditional territory. Joe McCormack is a biologist for the Nez Perce Department of Fisheries and one of the few tribal members still living in Wallowa County, working to revive populations of the salmon his ancestors subsisted off of since time immemorial.

Salmon historically spawned in the Wallowa River basin, but more than a century of stream channelization and habitat degradation has pushed their numbers close to extinction. After earning a degree in fish biology from Washington State University, Joe moved to a ranch in Wallowa County and today spends his time working to restore salmon to the Wallowa River. Most days, that means monitoring fish populations or adding structure and native vegetation to river banks. Joe considers himself lucky to have studied fisheries biology, as it gave him the privilege of living in his ancestral homeland, and he thinks education is an important step for other Nimiipuu to return to their ancestral land: “Young people now are getting undergrad degrees, graduate degrees, doctorate degrees... and that I think is key to people moving to Wallowa County, with those tools.” Joe is using his education and Western science as a lever to return culturally significant animals and tradition to his people’s home.

By Kevin Faeustle

Photo credit: Phil Brick

Meet our Guests: Rich Wandschneider

Rich Wandschneider

Library Director, Josephy Center for Arts and Culture

Joseph, OR

8/25/2

     In the small town of Joseph Oregon, so named for the famous Nimiipuu (also known as the Nez Perce) leader Chief Joseph, there lives a storyteller. Rich Wandschneider is an animated local historian and Library Director at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture. Rich tells the stories of the Nez Perce tribes who inhabited and still inhabit the West: stories of cultural annihilation, land expropriated from the tribe by white settlers, and promises unkept. These stories aren’t his own, but he explains that when white settlers came to the West, they kept written notes detailing of all their journeys and conquests. With these stories, outreach and extensive research, Rich put together the Nez Perce Treaties and Reservations Exhibit at the Josephy Center. The exhibit includes detailed maps, historic drawings and paintings all to illustrate the impact treaties have had and still have on the Nez Perce tribe. Rich is a steward of Native American history in the West working to share the stories of the Nimiipuu with his community of Joseph, Oregon and all of its visitors.

By Jade Strapart

Meet our Guests: Angel Sobotta

Angel Sobotta

Nez Perce Language Program Coordinator and Storyteller

Wallowa, OR

8/26/21

Wearing traditional beaded moccasins, a ribbon skirt, and an intricate necklace, Angel Sobotta welcomes us with a Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) greeting. She greets Semester in the West in the dance arbor at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homelands, a site reclaimed for the celebration and recognition of the first people of the region after they were forced out by the US Federal Government 100 years ago.

Angel is dedicated to reclaiming Nimiipuu tradition through language. “You must rename it to claim it” she says. In her culture, names are a source of guidance—something to live up to. Angel’s Nimiipuu name means “the red glowing part of the sunset.” Both of her names remind her of beauty and grace and have helped to guide her through troubling times. She believes that bringing Nimiipuu language back into the lives of her people can do the same. She refers to the revival of language as a medicine to heal her peoples’ spirits, provide understanding of their culture, and connect to their ancestors.       

Angel shares the story of the sáplis- a symbol sacred to the Nimiipuu derived from the rotation of Hiyumtaxto around Luk’upsmey (the Big Dipper and the North Star, respectively) that creates a map of the sky. Based on the location of Hiyumtaxto, the Nimiipuu know when to harvest and hunt and when to migrate each season. This sacred symbol has been appropriated by other entities—the Nazi Swastika has the same basic shape—and through the telling of the origin of Hiyumtaxto and the sáplis, Angel works to reclaim the symbol and its meaning.

To conclude the morning, Angel led the group in a traditional friendship dance, stepping clockwise to the beat of a drum. Circling around the center of the dance arbor, Angel smiled and shook hands with each student she passed.

By Katie Wallace

Photo credit: Phil Brick