Following Ancient Footsteps in the Southwest, Pueblo People Are Helping Archaeologists Untangle the Science of Human Migrations by Krista Langlois 7 | O

REGULATORY ROLLBACKS | MONEY FOR WATER | SALLY JEWELL SPEAKS OUT

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West Following Ancient Footsteps In the Southwest, Pueblo people are helping archaeologists untangle the science of human migrations By Krista Langlois 7 | www.hcn.org o. 1 N ctober 2, 2017 | $5 | Vol. 49 | $5 Vol. 2, 2017 ctober O CONTENTS

Editor’s note Migrations, old and new

I noticed them immediately: A couple in their late 50s, with salt-and-pepper hair, enthusiastically poring over the menu at my favorite coffee shop in HCN’s hometown, Paonia, on Colorado’s Western Slope. Clearly, they’d never seen it before. “Where are you from?” I asked. “Oh, we live outside Denver, but we just bought a house and we’ll be moving here permanently next year,” said the man. “I just love this place,” the woman added. “It’s so quiet, and it’s still affordable.” It won’t be for long if people like you keep moving in, I thought darkly. In recent months, stories of “outsiders” snapping up local real estate for more than the asking price have become common. Traffic A man hikes past unexcavated remains of a building at Yucca House National Monument in southwest has become just this side of annoying. Our town, Colorado, home to Ancestral Pueblo people from 1150 to around 1300, when they “disappeared.” Bobby Magill once dominated by agriculture and coal mining, is absorbing a new population, mostly aging Anglo baby boomers from the West’s burgeoning cities. It’s unclear how they will reshape the community, but FEATURE change is obviously afoot. Of course, who am I to complain? I’m also an 14 Following Ancient Footsteps aging baby boomer, and 25 years ago I was the spanking-new outsider who was going to ruin the On the cover In the Southwest, Pueblo people are helping archaeologists place. The truth is, very few of us are from here. By Krista Langlois A prehistoric trail untangle the science of human migrations Even the ranchers who cite multiple generations worn into the rock on the land were outsiders 150 years ago. They at Tsankawi Mesa in CURRENTS came after the government forced the Ute people, what’s now Bandelier National Monument, 5 Trump administration erodes environmental protections who had lived here for thousands of years, onto New Mexico, where Climate change initiatives are targeted most frequently reservations elsewhere. the Tewa paused Major human migrations are a fact of history. during the 15th and 6 Money-for-water programs work — for now In the Colorado River Perhaps none has stirred the imagination more than 16th centuries en route Basin, a pilot project wins over skeptical farmers and ranchers the sudden, seemingly mysterious “disappearance” to their current homes 7 of the people of the Four Corners area. Centuries in the northern Rio The Latest: Grand Canyon bison ago, an estimated 25,000 people farmed, hunted Grande Valley. 8 Exit interview – Sally Jewell With Obama’s policies under threat from George H.H. Huey and raised turkeys around Colorado’s present-day the new administration, his last Interior secretary reviews a legacy at risk Mesa Verde National Park. Then, over a few decades 8 The Latest: Nevada groundwater pumping in the 1200s, they left. Where they went, and what 10 Show us your backyard HCN photo contest winners happened to them, has long been the subject of intense scientific inquiry. In this issue, correspondent Krista Langlois reports that researchers are paying DEPARTMENTS new attention to some previously overlooked 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG evidence — the oral histories of the Puebloans living along the Rio Grande River hundreds of miles south. 4 LETTERS Though not everybody agrees on the narrative, the Puebloans say there is no mystery: They have always 11 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends known that they are descended from the people Complete access 22 MARKETPLACE who built Mesa Verde’s cliff dwellings. They still feel to subscriber-only a deep attachment to that landscape. content 25 WRITERS ON THE RANGE It’s hard for me to imagine what a thousand- HCN’s website In the spirit of understanding racism By Evelyn Red Lodge year connection to a place feels like, let alone hcn.org 100 years. As I say goodbye to the couple at the Digital edition 26 BOOKS coffee shop, I wonder how deeply rooted any of hcne.ws/digi-4917 The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir By Ernestine Hayes the millions of us streaming into and out of the reviewed by Rob Rich West can ever be. Then again, the people of Mesa Follow us Verde pulled off a dramatic, successful relocation 7 2 ESSAY in a matter of decades. Maybe we modern-day  A bow, a hunt, and a bond with public land By Sarah Jane Keller immigrants can do so as well. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher

2 High Country News October 2, 2017 From our website: HCN.ORG

A new chief for the Trending Forest Service Memorials With the West experiencing one of its most glorify severe wildfire seasons ever, the newly sworn-in Forest Service chief, Tony Tooke, has walked into inequality a challenging situation. Tooke has worked for With the national con- the Forest Service since he was 18, but unlike versation over Southern his recent predecessors, the Alabama native statues honoring the has held no positions in the West. “It’s hard to Confederacy, Civil War tell how he will translate what he knows about memorials in the West that Eastern fire environment into the West,” have also garnered says Don Falk, a professor in the School of attention. A fountain Natural Resources at the University of Arizona. built in memoriam to Tooke will have to confront the Forest the Confederacy was Service’s long struggle with increasing removed in Helena, firefighting costs, which now swallow up more Montana, after prod- than half the agency’s budget. Though Congress ding by local American recently passed legislation that included Indian leaders. Some emergency funding to fight wildfires this year, locals disagreed with the long-term problem remains unsolved. “We the city’s decision, desperately need a fire-funding fix,” Tooke said saying the memo- during a visit to Oregon to see the damage rial’s creators were caused by the Eagle Creek Fire. If he can achieve not racist. But state that, he’ll have the opportunity — and the Rep. Shane Morigeau, New Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke addresses the audience after his swearing-in by Department budget flexibility — to chart a new course for a member of the of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in the White Mountain National Forest in early September. the agency. Rebecca Worby Confederated Salish Lan ce Cheung/USDA More: hcne.ws/southern-leadership and Kootenai Tribes, pushed back. “The United Daughters of the Confederacy were Why is a Trump operative interested in the Bundys? out to rewrite history, Roger Stone, an on-and-off adviser of President issues. Stone has served as a consultant for four to make the Civil War 10 million Donald Trump, has become a public supporter of past presidents and foreign dictatorships. The Population of Western monarch butterflies in about states’ rights the United States in the 1980s. Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his co-defen- Florida resident worked as a lobbyist on behalf of rather than slavery,” dants, who are currently awaiting federal trial. The Trump businesses in the 1980s and served as a Morigeau said. “When case stems from Bundy’s 2014 armed standoff consultant during Trump’s presidential campaign. you put the monument with the Bureau of Land Management and Na- At a Las Vegas rally in July, Stone told a crowd in (this) context, then 300,000 tional Park Service over his illegally grazing cattle. the “jackbooted” government had “lost all sense you can understand Population today. Stone made public appearances in July in Nevada of law or morality.” That kind of message could it as a glorification of to urge Trump to officially pardon the Bundys, continue to play well, inciting the kind of anger inequality.” Years before and name-dropped them at a conservative leader- and vitriol that have become the hallmarks of this Gabriel Furshong the Western monarch population35 could stop ship conference in Las Vegas in mid-September. presidential era. Whether it would yield a pardon migrating altogether, if current trends continue. Stone is an odd bedfellow for the Bundys, since remains to be seen. Cliven Bundy’s trial begins You say The population of monarchs living west of the he is a longtime Washington, D.C., insider with Oct. 10. Tay Wiles Larry Mammoser:

Rocky Mountains has shrunk by 97 percent lickr no obvious connection to ranching or public-lands More: hcne.ws/pardoning-Bundy “There is nothing admi- in the last 35 years, according to an analysis a F vi rable about Confeder-

published by Washington State University in cc ate monuments. They , r

September. The butterflies take generations e memorialize people

to migrate from overwintering habitat on ill tip form who fought a civil war M

California’s coast to breeding habitat r in order to continue e t

throughout the West. They face serious Pe Send us tips on state land management slavery.” threats, including development, which destroys overwintering trees, and With the push to transfer federal lands to their control. Got any tips for us on how your Marshall Massey: the increased use of genetically states, High Country News is looking into how state is managing — or mismanaging — “While I nearly always modified agriculture, which states are managing the territory already under its trust lands or parks? support the positions encourages farmers to spray of the Native American tribes here in Montana, pesticides that kill milkweed. Yes No where I live, I do not Maya L. Kapoor More: Has your state made significant changes to its approach to managing state lands? hcne.ws/threatened-monarchs share their belief that Is your state a good steward of the revenue it earns from trust lands? the dubious motives of the United Daughters When you have an administration Has your state changed how it approaches management during budget crises? of the Confederacy “ that is in denial mode about Are certain uses prioritized over others on your state lands? For instance, oil and gas justified taking the monument down.” climate change, to have a senator development over grazing and recreation, or vice versa? Brian Erskine: “There as prominent as McCain make an Does your state require industry operators to comply with environmental regulations on state land? If so, how do those regulations compare with rules for federal lands? are places Confederate opening — I think it’s an opening we monuments belong, and Which state? ______reasonable people can should take advantage of. Details: ______differ about what those —Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, ”D-Ariz., the top places are. But Montana Democrat on the House Natural Resources ______isn’t one of them.” Committee, speaking about Arizona Sen. John ______McCain’s appearance on CNN, during which More: hcne.ws/ he suggested the time has come to readdress Name ______Email ______monumental-inequality and Facebook.com/ climate legislation. Elizabeth Shogren State Lands Tip Form, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 More: hcne.ws/state-lands highcountrynews More: hcne.ws/mccain-agenda

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Letters Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News Boat burial Executive director/Publisher Paul Larmer Thanks for the nice article about the Editor-in-Chief Elwha (“The Elwha, Unleashed,” HCN, Brian Calvert 9/4/17). It jogged some memories and SENIOR EDITOR Jodi Peterson provided some amusing solace and clo- Art director sure. Twenty-five years ago, I owned a Cindy Wehling one-quarter interest in an offshore rac- Deputy editor, digital ing sailboat. On the already very event- Kate Schimel ful return trip from a race to Hawaii, Associate EDITORs Tay Wiles, Maya L. Kapoor our boat hit a log in the permanent gyre

off the mouth of the Elwha, and sank m Assistant EDITORS o c Paige Blankenbuehler, within 30 minutes. So close to home. It . Anna V. Smith ns

sank out of reach of salvage, and those oo D.C. Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren on board (not me) got off into a U.S. WRITERS ON THE RANGE Coast Guard rescue boat with only the glecart editor Betsy Marston clothes on their backs. a Associate PHOTO EDITOR I now am pleased to know that the /C

Brooke Warren eefe Copy editOR boat is most certainly being entombed in K Diane Sylvain the silt coming down the Elwha. ike M Contributing editorS Tristan Ahtone, Cally Robert Henry Carswell, Sarah Gilman, Seattle, Washington Dammed if we don’t clude a lava-dam probability in the body Ruxandra Guidi, of decision-making data. Michelle Nijhuis, Krista Langlois’ article “Busting the big Jonathan Thompson No free lunch for hydropower CorrespondentS one” (HCN, 9/4/17) aptly describes the Wendell Duffield Krista Langlois, Sarah Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert described existential dilemma of whether or not Whidbey Island, Washington Tory, Joshua Zaffos dams as “providing clean hydropower” draining Lake Powell into Lake Mead Editorial FellowS (“Compromise amid the canyons,” HCN, would increase/maximize the amount of Expletive (not) deleted Emily Benson, 9/4/17). Actually, a spate of new research water available for human use. Rebecca Worby I read Brian Calvert’s “Down the Dark Development Director shows that there is basically no free If more studies are carried out to Mountain” essay in the July 24 issue. Laurie Milford greenhouse-gas lunch when it comes to determine the best storage of available He is entitled to his opinion; however, Philanthropy Advisor generating electricity, and the burden of Colorado River water now and into the Alyssa Pinkerton his language needs cleaning up! hydropower is increasingly coming into foreseeable future, I suggest that yet Development Assistant I have been very unhappy with the focus. The news is not good. For example, another variable should be evaluated Christine List liberal bias that this publication has Marketing & Promotions a recent peer-reviewed study published and factored into any decision. Based on developed over the last few years, but Manager JoAnn Kalenak in the journal PLOS ONE predicts that a well-documented geologic record, the WEB DEVELOPER seeing the F-word used sealed it for me: Eric Strebel the greenhouse gas emissions from Lake possibility exists that a lava-flow dam D atabase/IT administrator You have now become too liberal for me. Mead, compared against the hydropower may originate about midway between the Alan Wells While I am no stranger to gutter talk, I DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT it produces, are as bad as burning coal on concrete Hoover and Glen Canyon coun- would prefer to hear it on the street and Gretchen King a kilowatt-hour basis. terparts, restricting any “controlled” flow not in the publication I am reading. The A ccountant Reservoirs are basically methane between the two. The probability of such Erica Howard lower classes, with a limited vocabu- factories, and methane is a potent an event taking place within whatever A ccounts Receivable lary, are usually the culprits with such greenhouse gas, carrying more than window of time is considered for the use- Jan Hoffman language, or I would expect to see it in Customer Service Manager 80 times the warming effect of carbon ful life of Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams fiction writing, but not in an essay in a Christie Cantrell dioxide on a pound-per-pound basis. is uncertain, but greater than zero. Circulation Systems admin. publication that should know better. Reservoirs contain a stew of microbes About 20 lava-flow dams serially Kathy Martinez The other problem was Brian’s use that feed on organic matter in the blocked the river in Grand Canyon dur- Circulation of the words “Michael Brown’s murder.” Pam Peters, Doris Teel, water column, and in the deeper depths ing the past several hundred thousand The actions of the police officer were Tammy York where oxygen is depleted, the microbes years. Some of these were as tall as the GrantWriter found to be within standard police Janet Reasoner release methane as a by-product of their Hoover and Glen Canyon dams; one was protocols and black people from the [email protected] metabolism. Concentrations can reach nearly 2,000 feet taller. The youngest neighborhood supported the police- [email protected] extremely high levels in the depths lava dam was created about 100,000 man’s version. The jury and the federal [email protected] from which water is channeled into the years ago. There is no reason to con- investigation failed to uphold murder [email protected] turbines that produce hydroelectricity. clude that yet another will not occur. charges. Brian’s belief that Michael [email protected] Once that methane-rich water exits A key and presently unanswer- Brown was murdered, in spite of all FOUNDER Tom Bell downstream, it’s off-gassed into the at- able question is will this happen before the evidence to the contrary, is just one mosphere, where it joins the increasing- Hoover and Glen Canyon dams have B oard of Directors example of how liberals change around ly dangerous mix of greenhouse gases reached the ends of their useful lives. John Belkin, Colo. facts so they match their beliefs. Chad Brown, Ore. that are radically warming our planet. The youngest eruption in the river- All I want for my money is some Beth Conover, Colo. Manufacturing the concrete used in neighboring area (Toroweap), where Jay Dean, Calif. standard of excellence and the lack of constructing hydroelectric dams also volcanoes repeatedly fed lava for the Bob Fulkerson, Nev. bias when reporting. This is what this Wayne Hare, Colo. carries a giant burden of emissions that dams, happened only about 900 years publication used to provide. I miss the Laura Helmuth, Md. silently continue warming the planet for ago. It begs the question of when will John Heyneman, Wyo. old HCN! Even the newspaper format. Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico centuries to come. the next eruption take place. Planners Samaria Jaffe, Calif. for the continuing use of Hoover and Penelope M. Blair Mark Easter Nicole Lampe, Ore. Glen Canyon dams might be wise to in- Fruita, Colorado Marla Painter, N.M. Fort Collins, Colorado Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Dan Stonington, Wash. media organization that covers the issues that define the offices. OP STMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Rick Tallman, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Luis Torres, N.M. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Florence Williams, D.C. News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Printed on recycled paper. 4 High Country News October 2, 2017 CURRENTS

State University Public Policy Professor Trump administration erodes John Freemuth said environmental impact statements are often long and in- environmental protections comprehensible to most people. “Trying to make this process work better and happen Climate change initiatives are targeted most frequently quicker is probably not a bad thing, unless By Elizabeth Shogren it’s done for surrogate reasons, like to get more coal off the land,” Freemuth says.

President Donald Trump has been steadily onerous and duplicates state rules. FEDERAL COAL undoing Obama-era environmental pro- Congressional Republicans tried un- Obama wanted the federal coal-mining tections, especially rules designed to fight successfully in May to erase the rule using program to better reflect its costs to tax- climate change. The Administrative Proce- the Congressional Review Act. The BLM payers and the planet. So in 2016, Interior dure Act and other laws require agencies has drafted a proposed rule to suspend it, Secretary Sally Jewell placed a three-year to go through a lengthy process to rescind and Zinke plans to rewrite it. moratorium on new coal leases on federal or rewrite rules, but executive orders and land while reviewing the program, which other policies are easier to erase. Some of EPA METHANE RULE produces about 40 percent of the coal the rollbacks have major implications for The 2016 rule was designed to limit meth- burned in the U.S. for electricity. the West and the public lands: ane emissions from new and modified oil This March, Zinke cancelled both the and gas wells, compressor stations, pneu- moratorium and review. Given declining CLEAN WATER RULE matic pumps and similar equipment. It was demand for coal, however, there’s been no The Environmental Protection Agency is a key part of President Barack Obama’s rush for new leases, though Cloud Peak proposing to rescind the 2015 Clean Water climate change agenda; his administra- Energy is seeking to expand operations in Rule. This rule — particularly important tion projected that industry’s costs would Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. in the arid West — mandates, for example, be partially offset by revenues from recov- protecting tributaries that connect to navi- ering and selling more natural gas. EPA NATIONAL PARKS MANAGEMENT gable waterways and adjoining wetlands, head Pruitt has sought to prevent the rule The National Park Service in August re- even if they flow only part of the year. If from going into effect, but environmental- scinded a sweeping December 2016 policy it’s revoked, those tributaries could be ists and the states of New Mexico and Cali- instructing managers to use an adaptive filled in, ditched or diverted for construc- fornia have been fighting him in court. The approach to decision-making, taking into tion or farming without federal review. EPA now has proposed suspending the rule account uncertainties such as climate In October, the Supreme Court will for two years while it redrafts it. change impacts, and erring on the side hear arguments about whether federal dis- of caution to protect natural and cultur- trict courts or appeals courts should hear NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT al resources. The policy also committed several pending cases challenging the rule. REVIEWS to addressing worker harassment. Now, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt plans to In an Aug. 31 secretarial order, the De- the Park Service says revoking the order write a new rule specifying which waters partment of Interior “streamlined” agen- avoids confusion while Zinke establishes and wetlands warrant federal protection cies’ process for analyzing the environ- his own vision for the parks. and which should be left to state discretion. mental impacts of major actions. Now, Also in August, the agency ended a six- agencies may not spend more than a year year policy that allowed parks to ban the FOSSIL FUEL ROYALTIES RULE to complete an Environmental Impact sale of disposable water bottles to decrease Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in August Statement, nor may their final report be waste and greenhouse gas pollution. West- repealed a 2016 Obama-era rule designed more than 150 pages, or 300 pages “for un- ern parks that had banned bottled water to ensure that taxpayers get a fair return usually complex projects.” included Arizona’s Grand Canyon; Arches, on oil, gas and coal. The Obama admin- Environmental groups fear the arbi- Bryce and Canyonlands in Utah; Saguaro istration estimated the rule would have trary deadlines will hinder public engage- in Arizona; and Colorado National Monu- increased by about $80 million a year the ment in public-land decisions. But Boise ment. royalties that fossil fuel industries pay to mine and drill federal lands and waters. The Cholla Power The rule was meant to eliminate a loop- Plant outside Joseph hole that allows companies to sell to af- City, Arizona. The EPA filiated companies that then export and is currently reviewing re-sell the minerals at higher prices, re- the Clean Power ducing royalties. Zinke, who said it was Plan, which sought to too complex, plans to draft a new rule. reduce greenhouse gas emissions 32 percent by 2030 compared to BLM METHANE RULE 2005. This Bureau of Land Management Craig Dietrich/Flickr rule limits how much methane can be released from some 96,000 oil and gas wells on federal and tribal lands. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and the 2016 rule’s goal was to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, smog and health problems, as well as to increase royalties. Industry claims the rule is too

Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren writes HCN’s DC Dispatches from Washington.  @shogrene

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Freddie Botur crosses Cottonwood Creek, where headgates turned off irrigation water to his hayfield downstream. Jim Paussa/Aspen Journalism Money-for-water programs work — but for how long? In the Colorado River Basin, a pilot project wins over skeptical farmers and ranchers By Sarah Tory/Aspen Journalism

hen Freddie Botur, 45, whose the Wyoming Range. For Wyoming ranch- an experiment, launched in 2014 by the W ranch spans 72,000 acres outside ers, he explained, that kind of money could four largest municipal water providers in of Pinedale, Wyoming, first heard about amount to as much as a third of their an- the Colorado River Basin along with the a program that paid ranchers not to irri- nual revenue. Bureau of Reclamation. The goal: Find gate, he was skeptical. But Nick Walrath, Some local ranchers, however, sus- out whether it was feasible to pay ranch- a project coordinator for Trout Unlimited, pected that the program was actually ers to use less water on their fields, so assured him he’d receive about $200 for a secret plot to take away water rights. that more water could flow down the every acre-foot of water that he allowed to When Dennis Schroeder, who ranches on Green, Colorado and San Juan rivers to just run down the river. 355 acres of high desert land outside Pine- Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Colo- For Botur, that would mean over dale, decided to participate, some people rado River system’s two biggest storage $240,000 for fallowing roughly 1,700 acres tried to discourage him. “Once you do buckets. of hayfields for the latter half of the sum- that, you’ll never get it back,” one rancher After three years, the initiative, mer of 2015, letting 1,202 acre-feet of wa- warned him. known as the “System Conservation Pi- ter flow past his headgate on Cottonwood Schroeder understood there was a lot Program,” proved popular even with and Muddy Creeks, tributaries of the trade-off — turning off his irrigation water skeptical ranchers. But the program ends Green River, instead of to his fields. early meant he’d lose out on some hay pro- after this year, while water officials work “Oh, my God,” he thought. “This is duction — but once he did the math, the out some problems. Meanwhile, climate insane.” deal made sense. He participated for the change is altering the hydrology of the This article originally Botur, talkative and athletic, was first two years, receiving almost $15,000 Colorado River Basin — forcing water appeared at Aspen wearing mirrored sunglasses and a cow- each year for turning off his irrigation managers to find ways to adapt a system Journalism, an boy hat when we met in June on his water in mid-July on 81 acres, letting 74 of century-old water laws to a new real- independent nonprofit family’s Cottonwood Ranch at the foot of acre-feet of water remain in Pine Creek, a ity. If they’re successful, a revamped “sys- news organization tributary of the Green River, which flows tem conservation program” could help covering water and Correspondent Sarah Tory writes from Paonia, into the Colorado. reshape water management for a hotter, rivers. Colorado.  @tory_sarah The money-for-water program was drier West.

6 High Country News October 2, 2017 gets really bad, we had no plan.” water project director for Trout Unlimited. The severity of the drought encour- There was a lot of doubt over wheth- aged a new spirit of collaboration among er the farmers and ranchers would even the Colorado River’s competing factions. consent to participate. For many of them Water officials, environmentalists and ir- — wary of the legacy of big-city “water rigators began meeting in conferences, on grabs” — accepting money from Las Vegas river trips, in hotel bars and coffee shops, or Denver seemed like a form of betrayal. choosing negotiation and trust over poten- Entsminger knew they had to tread care- fully; convincing Western ranchers and tial court battles. Bison graze on the During a 2013 brainstorming ses- farmers that Las Vegas was “here to help” North Rim of the sion in Hermosa Beach, California, John would not be easy. The program’s archi- Grand Canyon. Entsminger, the general manager of the tects agreed that it would not look good if Shannon McGee/FLICKR Southern Nevada Water Authority, and Lower Basin water managers were seen the other big municipal water managers as paying for Upper Basin water, so the THE LATEST who relied on the Colorado River came up two basins used the funding separately. with what would become the System Con- The Bureau of Reclamation would fund Backstory servation Pilot Program — a way to strike projects in both basins, but money from In 2003, drought a balance between their need to avoid a Denver Water would fund only Upper Ba- drove a herd of bison catastrophic water shortage and farmers’ sin projects, while funding from the other into Grand Canyon reluctance to sell off their water rights. municipalities was reserved for the Lower National Park from They brought the idea to officials from Basin. the adjacent Kaibab the Upper Basin states and the Bureau Water law, in some states, poses anoth- National Forest, of Reclamation. Together, they created a er hurdle. If farmers use less water than where they had been $15 million fund to compensate people in their allotment, they risk losing some of imported in the the Colorado River Basin for using less their water rights. In the future, Garrison 1930s to crossbreed water. The program targeted ranchers and hopes to see other states adopt legislation with cattle. State- permitted hunts farmers — who own the vast majority of similar to Colorado’s, where enrollment kept the herd under water rights on the river — but munici- in approved conservation programs means 200, but as its usual palities could apply, too. changes in water use cannot cause a farm- range dried up, the It would be temporary and voluntary — er to lose a portion of his water right. huge animals sought and every gallon of water saved would go There is also the question of how to greener pastures directly back to the river. “No one had done guarantee that the saved water actually on the North Rim, that before,” recalls Entsminger. “You’re in- reaches Lake Powell and Lake Mead, as wallowing in riparian vesting money, and no one’s name is on it.” downstream users with the necessary wa- areas and damaging he year 2014 marked a new level of The pilot program worked by soliciting ter rights can divert water from the river, archaeological Park managers, urgency for water managers along the proposals from people who volunteered whether that water was destined for Lake sites. T worried about impacts Colorado. In July, Lake Mead, the nation’s to leave a portion of their water rights Powell under the system conservation pi- to land and visitors, largest reservoir, dipped to its lowest level unused. Applicants submitted propos- lot program or not. sought to remove since it was filled in 1937. Upstream, Lake als describing their intended conserva- This year, heavy snows in the Rocky the unwanted herd Powell was also in bad shape. Climate tion activities, which were then reviewed Mountains helped offset persistent drought (“Bison arrive in Grand models indicated that the drought was to ensure that they would actually leave throughout the Colorado River Basin. Just Canyon uninvited”, a harbinger of a future marked by rising more water in the Colorado River system. how much climate change will reduce the HCN, 4/28/03). temperatures — a future in which city Low-priority water rights, for instance — Colorado’s flow remains uncertain, but water providers could no longer depend those dated after 1922 — were unlikely the pilot program at made least one thing Followup on the Colorado River to meet their needs. to yield much benefit during dry years, clear: Ranchers and farmers proved sur- In September, the For water officials in the Upper Colo- since junior water users would already be prisingly open to accepting money from National Park rado Basin states — Colorado, Utah, required to stop diverting so senior rights- metropolitan water providers in exchange Service announced Wyoming and New Mexico — the ongo- holders could receive their full allotment. for leaving some water in the river. that over the next three to five years, ing drought posed an additional threat. The four municipal water providers Last May, Botur traveled to Washing- it would cull the According to the Colorado River Compact contributed $8 million to the program, ton, D.C., with Trout Unlimited’s Toye North Rim herd, now of 1922, which governs the allocation of with an additional $3 million from the Bu- and several other ranchers who partici- about 600 animals, the river’s water, the Upper Basin has reau of Reclamation. The fund was spread pated in the pilot program, to help secure to fewer than 200. to deliver a required volume of water to among projects in all seven Colorado Riv- more federal funding and support for the The agency plans to Lake Mead from Lake Powell. If it fails to er Basin states, and by this fall, according program’s future. In two years, Botur had round up some bison do so, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, to Michelle Garrison, who managed the gone from skeptic to lobbyist. It was bet- and ship them to Nevada and California could make a so- program’s contracts for the Upper Colora- ter, he believed, to have a voluntary pro- tribes and cooperating called “compact call.” That would force do River Commission, an expected 21,590 gram that rewards people for doing what agencies. Skilled volunteer shooters, the Upper Basin states to stop diverting acre-feet will have been left in the Upper you need, rather than using regulations to chosen by lottery, will all post-1922 water rights from the Colo- Basin (and almost 98,000 acre-feet in the force them to do your bidding. hunt the rest. Without rado River until the Lower Basin got its Lower Basin by 2025). Botur shut off his water even earlier culling, biologists say, share. “The cutbacks would go very deep,” than his contract required, and he knows herd numbers could said Eric Kuhn, general manager of the rue, that’s just a drop in the bucket for other ranchers who did so, too. Saving wa- hit 1,500 within 10 Colorado River Water Conservation Dis- T Lake Powell, which stores water from ter was part of it, but Botur also believes years. trict. And yet, water officials had barely the Upper Basin of the Colorado River and the program helps promote other goals as Jodi Peterson discussed how to avoid such a scenario, had 15,020,378 acre-feet in it as of Aug. well — conservation of wildlife habitat, said James Eklund, former director of 27. But it was the principle, and the ex- fisheries and overall watershed health. the Colorado Water Conservation Board perience, behind the System Conservation Not to mention the value of avoiding fu- and now an attorney in Denver. As the Program that may prove most important. ture conflicts that will likely arise from drought worsened, officials came to an un- “Nobody really knew how (the program) population pressure and climate change. comfortable conclusion. Said Eklund: “If it would go,” said Cory Toye, the Wyoming “It’s more than just money,” he said.

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 HCN It looks like the Obama-era outreach to tribes is already starting to erode. The Exit interview – Sally Jewell Land Buy-Back Program is not going to be With Obama’s policies under threat from the new administration, continued after funds from the Cobell Set- tlement are disbursed. James Cason, the his last Interior secretary reviews a legacy at stake associate deputy secretary for the Bureau By Brian Calvert of Indian Affairs, has suggested the funds Big Spring in Snake be distributed to fewer tribes, especially Valley, where the those with cheap land in rural areas. Sally Jewell was Interior secretary under ness, getting support from Congress, get- Southern Nevada Jewell The settlements we did make with President Barack Obama from April 2013 ting additional funding. Water Authority tribes — over 100 settlements — those holds applications until his term ended in January 2017. At Another area where I feel really good are done and the money is out the door. that still need the the department, the former CEO of Recre- about our term was in engaging the next The water rights settlements we did with state’s approval. ational Equipment Inc. undertook a “for- generation broadly. Recognizing that as tribes, we did a record number, those are Utah Geological Survey ward-looking reform agenda,” emphasizing time marches on and we have new tech- out the door and that helps bring certain- science-based land and water conservation, nologies available to us, we see — and ty to not only tribes but also farmers and renewable energy development on pub- there’s been a fair amount of research on ranchers and others, municipalities that THE LATEST lic land, and better relations with Native this — the growing disconnect between depend on that shared water. So I know American tribal nations. High Country children and nature and in general the that tribes are stronger as a result of the Backstory News recently caught up with Jewell as she great outdoors. We can’t expect future time President Obama was in office, and Nevada has the prepared for a fellowship at the Institute generations to care for these places smallest share of the I think that their voice and solidarity has of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School, that we so uniquely have in the U.S. if Colorado River — just increased during that time. They’ve been where she will educate students in econom- we don’t introduce them and say, “Hey, 300,000 acre-feet. As around for a very long time, they’ve been ics and environmental sustainability. these are your public lands, you belong Las Vegas boomed dealing with the government a very long here.” And that’s particularly true for ur- in the 1990s, the time, and it’s fair to say they’ve had their HCN Which of your achievements as Inte- ban youth and youth of color who have Southern Nevada ups and downs, mostly downs. So they’re Water Authority rior secretary are you most proud of? not felt welcome, or for whom the out- not going to go anywhere, and they’re go- proposed piping doors has represented a scary place for Jewell We really built, I think, a strong ing to continue to stay engaged, and they groundwater from a variety of historical reasons. And so nation-to-nation relationship with Indian will hold this government accountable eastern Nevada, we worked hard on doing that and cre- Country across the board — Alaska Na- as they should. Secretary (Ryan) Zinke home to several ating this continuum, which starts with national wildlife tives, American Indians, and we have talked about being an adopted son of the play — just let kids play unstructured refuges and a a pathway to recognition for the first Assiniboine Sioux and the Fort Peck Res- outdoors. Play, then learn, serve, work. national park. The time with Native Hawaiians, which is ervation. I hope he lives up to that. We got 100,000 young people working project, which would the only Indigenous group in the Unit- on public land. And we had to raise pri- siphon up to 84,000 ed States that has not had any form of HCN What do you make of the claims that acre-feet annually, vate money to do that because we didn’t federal recognition. all parties weren’t heard in the designa- has spent more than have sufficient money in the federal bud- That took the form of prioritizing set- tion of Bears Ears National Monument? a decade in court. get. But I think for all the federal land- tling lawsuits against the federal govern- Its projected cost management agencies, Youth Conserva- Jewell I think that’s nonsense. All parties ment for not upholding our trust and trea- has soared from tion Corps crews are very much on their were heard. We worked very hard, for the $1.5 billion to at ty responsibilities. In some cases these radar, and that will continue. entire four years I was there, with Con- least $15.5 billion lawsuits have been going on for decades gress and Utah Rep. Rob Bishop’s office on (“The water czar who and costing the tribes a lot of money, and reshaped Colorado the federal government had not upheld River politics,” HCN, its trust and treaty obligations. We also 3/02/15). focused a lot on: What’s the pathway to Followup the future for Native Americans, and where are we falling short? One of the In late August, a areas we’re falling short is in tribal edu- federal court ruled on a lawsuit filed by cation. The Bureau of Indian Education environmentalists, just has been dealt a pretty tough hand tribes and local in terms of educating Native youth, many governments over of whom are disconnected — it’s a long the BLM’s granting commute to school on oftentimes very of a right of way rough roads. Sometimes it’s too far out, for the 250-plus- and they have to be in boarding schools. mile pipeline. The And the family situations, there are a judge said the agency variety — fully supportive families and had fulfilled its duties “for the most families that struggle. All of that’s really part,” but needed tough, and we worked very hard to see to provide better what’s wrong with the way we’re struc- plans for mitigating tured. How do we make better use of the wildlife habitat lost to funding we do have to better serve tribal pipeline construction. youth? And there was a big effort there. A separate lawsuit It’s unfinished business and it’s some- challenges the amount thing I will continue to engage in in the of groundwater future, but it’s an area I think we made involved; the state good progress, at least in raising aware- engineer will take Sally Jewell meets with stakeholders during a visit to Utah for a public meeting about public comment until community visions for the management of the region’s public lands. Oct. 20. Brian Calvert is HCN’s editor-in-chief. Chris Wonderly/Department of the Interior Jodi Peterson  @brcalvert 8 High Country News October 2, 2017 As part of the Obama administration’s Every Kid in a Park initiative, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visits Saguaro National Park with a class of Native American students from Santa Rosa Ranch School — funded by the Bureau of Indian Education — in the Tohono O’odham Nation. Tami A. Heilemann/Department of the Interior his public lands initiative. And there were HCN REI is pledging to oppose changes to HCN What are you expecting to teach at many, many players that spent thousands national monuments. Patagonia launched the Kennedy School, and where are you of hours. Congressman Bishop likes to, I’ll a major ad campaign to support public going to go from there? say, brag, that he held over 1,000 meetings lands. How effective can outdoor recre- Jewell I’ve chunked out eight to nine ses- on the public lands initiative. That was not ation companies be as a political force? sions that will address each one of the wasted. We heard many of those comments Jewell I think that this whole monu- various aspects that I feel are important from his staff as we worked with them on ments review has awoken the outdoor in having that economically successful drafting the bill. He talked to me about it recreation industry in recognizing that and environmentally sustainable future in 2013, but he didn’t drop the bill until I if you’re not at the table, you’re on the that I think we all want to leave to our “The fact is was actually visiting the Bears Ears area menu. Outdoor recreation as an indus- children. And the overarching theme is in Utah and meeting with three county these are try is almost as big as automobiles, au- my favorite proverb — I did not invent it, commissioners and tribal members that tomobile parts and pharmaceuticals wish I had — “We don’t inherit the Earth federal public were pro- and con- monument designation, combined. For the entire U.S., it’s $887 from our ancestors. We borrow it from our and when he did drop the bill he changed lands; they billion in consumer spending, $65 billion children.” And so how do you create an the language. But there was a tremen- in federal tax revenue, so when my suc- environment — economic and natural and belong to all dous amount (of public input) between the cessor says oil and gas from the Depart- cultural and historical — that honors the meetings that he held, the meetings that Americans.” ment of Interior generates $12 billion in fact you’re handing this over to the next we held, and the four-day visit that I had —Sally Jewell, revenue to the Department of Treasury, generation, and you want to be proud of down there, which was the largest public former Interior secretary, OK, that’s great, but it’s a small fraction what you give them? on whose voices were meeting with, I think, 1,500 or so people, of what taxes are paid by people enjoying If you’ve got people that aren’t con- heard when determining so to say voices weren’t heard is not true. monument and land outdoor recreation and tourism; $59 bil- vinced climate change is real, what needs I think that what Rep. Bishop would have designation in Utah lion on top of that in state and local tax to be done to help them understand? They preferred is that the voices of a few domi- revenues, 7.6 million direct jobs. That’s may be skeptical of the science, but if you nate the voices of the many. And the fact more than all of the other industries bring it home to them, to where they un- is these are federal public lands; they be- combined that use public lands for other derstand it, you’ve got a different picture. long to all Americans, and the voices of the purposes. And it’s not that those other So all of that stuff is important, and I’ll many are appropriate — with due respect purposes aren’t important, but outdoor be practicing at Harvard and putting it to people in the local community who we recreation and tourism is a very legiti- to use in some way in the next chapter, did hear, and whose concerns were ad- mate use of federal public lands, and the whatever that might be. dressed in the language of the proclama- industry is finding its voice and making I’ll be staying in the West. Other than tion, when we felt our only choice to pro- sure people are aware of that. three more months in the East, I’m a tect this was to do a monument because Westerner. the legislation wasn’t going anywhere.

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

p Reader’s Choice: Double Rainbow, All The Way This bright double rainbow lasted more than 30 minutes in the photographer’s backyard in Carbondale, Colorado.Dve a Mayer

Photo contest winners Show us your backyard

This year’s reader photo contest was dedicated to the “backyards” of our region. Readers submitted more than 300 photos showing the wonders of the West, farm to field, cityscape to wilderness. We offer here the readers’ favorite and our editors’ picks. See more online at hcne.ws/photos-17.

u Editors’ Choice: Tundra Monarch On a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, the photographer waited for the sunset, and an elk happened to walk into his frame. Ken Henke

u Runner Up: Fox Fight The photographer witnessed a foxing match in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone’s Northern Range. It only lasted about 10 seconds, and the defeated fox stayed for half an hour after the fight was over, licking his wounds. Hunter Graham

uu Runner Up: Waking the Sleeping Ute The photographer watched thunderstorms roll in from the Four Corners and light up the Sleeping Ute in Dolores, Colorado. Michael Schmidt

10 High Country News October 2, 2017 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us keep track of the mysterious West

Since 1971, reader contributions have made In memory of Edward Haenlin | Baltimore, MD it possible for HCN to report on the American Phyllis O. Crookston, Native American Victims | West. Your tax-deductible gift directly funds American Fork, UT nonprofit, independent journalism. Paul M. Boden | Albuquerque, NM Thank you for supporting our hardworking Jim & Ann Brauer | Indian Springs, NV journalists. Wendy Chase | Bellevue, ID Terry Coddington | Berkeley, CA Craig Denton | Salt Lake City, UT Philanthropist Karil Frohboese | Evergreen, CO Andrew Darrell | New York, NY Thomas Harding | Whitefish, MT Sarah Grace Jones | Riderwood, MD David Harrison | Denver, CO Dan Hess | Wickenburg, AZ Steward Tom & Carlyn Jervis | Santa Fe, NM Robin Melville, her baby and her daughter Nava, Pyramid Lake, Nevada, 1967. In memory of Joleene C. Kobetich | Donald Jordan | Prescott, AZ Albuquerque, NM Courtesy of the Lisa Law Production Archives Raymond Kamm | Boise, ID The Paul & Mary Holden Family Foundation | Providence, UT Stephen Knapp | Louisville, CO Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest Nic & Mary Korte | Grand Junction, CO Edited by Jack Loeffler and Meredith Davidson GUArantor Carol Lubell | Colorado Springs, CO 208 pages, hardcover: $34.95. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2017. Anonymous Bob & Sandra Lyon | Issaquah, WA As Peter Coyote points out in his contribution to Voices of the Counterculture in the Southwest, Bruce Berger | Aspen, CO George McCollum Jr. | Eagle, CO Mary McCracken | La Grande, OR providing fresh insights into the heavily chronicled 1960s and ’70s is not easy. But through Sandy Buffett | Albuquerque, NM personal stories and thoughtful reflection, this new book seeks to highlight the ways that Alan Moore | Middlebury, VT John & Theresa Cederholm | Marion, MA the countercultural narratives of that era, many of which played out across the sage-dotted Nat & Sarah Cobb | Los Ranchos, NM Bruce & Sue Newell | Helena, MT deserts of the American Southwest, have seeped into and deeply influenced our own. Craig Miller | Vallejo, CA David & Gail Niebruegge | Vista, CA Though some of the means have changed — with underground newspapers replaced by Allan V. Prochazka & Paula Pierce | Jay Pearson | Santa Fe, NM social media — many of the issues rippling through society half a century later hark back to Centennial, CO Rolanda A. Port | Annapolis, MD that earlier time, as racism, violence and environmental crises provoke new calls to “resist.” Sandy Righter | Denver, CO Daren Prouty | San Jose, CA Amid all this, as Meredith Davidson writes, “It seems we are once again seeking a more Leslie L. Resnik | Carbondale, CO wholesome approach to living and an awareness of something greater than ourselves.” Benefactor John J. Reynolds | Leesburg, VA Rebecca Worby Anonymous Scott Smidt | Laramie, WY In memory of Pete Atkins | Clements, CA Philip & Sue Smith | Prescott, AZ John & Linda Taylor, Charitable Account | Steve Smith | Swan Lake, ID In memory of Tucker Thompson | Olympia, WA Robert Grau | Boulder, CO Burlingame, CA Bill Strauss | Big Lake, TX In memory of Timothy Tuthill | Laramie, WY Agnes M. Griffen | Bellingham, WA Ackerman Farm | Ignacio, CO Bill & Gloria Stuble | Cora, WY Ray Cyrus | Terrebonne, OR Beverly Hadden | Fort Collins, CO Bruce & JoAnn Amundson | Shoreline, WA Peter Thompson | Hobart, WA Mike & Sue Daugherty | La Grande, OR Sue Hall | Centennial, CO John Buckley | Washington, DC Richard Vernimen | Grand Junction, CO Gus diZerega | Taos, NM Betsy Hamann | White Sulphur Springs, MT Mark H. Carson | Boulder, CO David & Barbara Viskochil | Salt Lake City, UT Hobey & Ruth Dixon | Alamosa, CO Jean Hanna | Langlois, OR Scott L. Fetchenhier | Silverton, CO Robert Warrick | Oceanside, CA James Donlin | Parker, CO Robert Harper | Rock Springs, WY John Fitch | Boulder, CO Tom White | South Charleston, WV Michael Doro | Reno, NV Norma Heinz | Denver, CO Mike & Karen Fried, Community Education Fund Jack L. Williams & Ellen A. Fallihee | James Dorrough | Denver, CO Linda Hodapp | Ranchos de Taos, NM Sandra Hendrickson | Fort Collins, CO Clackamas, OR Margaret C. Dreyfous | Salt Lake City, UT Brenda J. Hollis | Morrison, CO James & Marcia Hoffmeister | Boulder, CO Bruce Woodside | Valley Village, CA William Dunlap | Lake Oswego, OR Bill Hubber | Townsend, MT Tom & Julie Anne Hopkins | Swall Meadows, CA John & Lavinia Ycas | Boulder, CO Douglas Dunn | Bisbee, AZ Alan & Polly Hyde | Tubac, AZ Peggy Kavookjian & David Nora | Westcliffe, CO Sid & Renée Eder | Moscow, ID Adelaide & Edward Jacobson | Los Alamos, NM Michael Kenney & Anna Moscicki | Dubois, WY Patron Bill Elfring | Philadelphia, PA Bill Jenkins | Leavenworth, WA George Krauss | Lakewood, CO Anonymous (12) Julie Ellison | Missoula, MT Gary & Kathy Johnson | Beaver, UT Susan B. Lynn | Reno, NV In honor of Ruth Drake | Cincinnati, OH Eric Enfield | Santa Fe, NM Janet King | Berkeley, CA Sara Smith | Missoula, MT In honor of Holly McClelland | Denver, CO Sidney England | Davis, CA Wayne King | Chehalis, WA David Thayer | Coralville, IA In memory of Arlene Carvill | Cascade, CO R.C. Farwell | Arvada, CO Peter Kleinman | Boulder, CO Richard & Diana Toth | Logan, UT In memory of Albert Culver | Chico, CA Michael Folsom | Englewood, CO Sue Knight & Glen Lamb | Portland, OR Catherine J. Walling | Arcata, CA In memory of Rory Holloway | Aspen, CO Richard & Sally Fredericks | Moscow, ID John D. Kriesel | Holladay, UT In memory of Al & Alma Krajna Ocean Fredriksen | Longmont, CO Severt & Mary Kvamme | Arvada, CO Sponsor In memory of Bob Landis | Armstrong, TX Elaine & John French | Ketchum, ID Vincent & Nancy Lee | Cortez, CO Anonymous (5) In memory of Bill & Tanya Mandel | Berkeley, CA Peter Gang | Petaluma, CA Clint Loomis | Lewistown, MT In honor of the Upper Frying Pan Caucus In memory of Fred Stevens | Prescott, AZ Gregory Gessay | Phoenix, AZ Continued on next page

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 THE HCN COMMUNITY

12 High Country News October 2, 2017 DEAR FRIENDS

Whitney Painter | Golden, CO Jim & Cyndi Pardikes | Hartsel, CO Taking trips and putting our Craig Park | Reno, NV Charles A. Payton III | Clark, CO tribal coverage to the ‘bingo test’ Brad Petersen | Holladay, UT Earl Pitzer | Denver, CO September has been full of com- Larmer, our publisher, quipped. William Porter | Las Vegas, NV ings and goings. High Country (They didn’t drive here from Eric Pratt | Las Cruces, NM News staffers enjoyed Labor Hawaii, of course; they keep a Louis Regnerus | Bozeman, MT Day weekend, hiking, relaxing camper in Reno for just such Jeanne Reneau | Morrison, CO and visiting friends and family trips. Smart idea!) They enjoy Rhonda Robles | Jackson, WY across the region. And there our coverage and find it refresh- Edward Romero | Santa Fe, NM have been plenty of exciting ing to see “real journalism still Pete Ruhl | Castle Rock, CO work trips, too. It seems like in effect.” Joe & Barbara Rumburg | Rio Rico, AZ every time we welcome some- Jamie Sudler and Frani Joan Ryshavy | Manhattan, MT one back, someone else jets off! Halperin, executive producers Nolan Salix | Dillon, MT Meanwhile, the office crew is of H2O Radio, stopped by while Richard F. Sanders | West Haven, UT looking forward to a publishing reporting on youth and agri- John Santangini | Denver, CO break. We’ll be back Oct. 30. culture on Colorado’s Western Eric Schabtach | Eugene, OR Zoe Newmarco from Roches- Slope. Denver-based H2O is Michael Schnarr | Littleton, CO ter, Vermont, stopped in while journalism all about water, a Ray Schoch | Minneapolis, MN visiting friends in Paonia. She topic we love. Keep up the great Linda & Paul Schutt | Breckenridge, CO interned at a newspaper back work, guys! Duane & Ilene Scott | Whitehall, MT home and enjoyed watching In our ongoing efforts Molly Shepherd | Missoula, MT how we put the magazine to- to improve reporting across gether. She’s not yet a subscrib- Indian Country, HCN sent “The Longest Walk,” a cross-country walk to draw attention to anti-Indian legislation, 1978. S eth Roffman John A. Shower | Greenville, CA Jeannie Siegler | Huson, MT er, but we have hopes: Zoe left three staffers — Brian Calvert, with a couple of fresh issues. editor-in-chief; Kate Schimel, Daniel Silver | Los Angeles, CA John Huhs | Sacramento, CA Mary Kwart of Ashland, deputy editor-digital; and Paige Larry Simon | Pleasant Hill, CA Jaci Hull | Boulder, CO Oregon, came through as a Blankenbuehler, assistant editor Benjamin & Kathleen Smith | Aiken, SC Lesley Hunt | Walnut Creek, CA self-described “climate refugee” — to the annual conference of Jerry Smith | San Jose, CA Justin Johnson | Sacramento, CA — after being smoked out of the Native American Journal- Patricia Smith | Berkeley, CA Kay Juricek | Denver, CO a planned hike on Montana’s ists Association in Anaheim, Mark & Maurine Solomonson | Fort Bragg, CA Bruce L. Kallestad | Placitas, NM Sacred Door Trail, she was on California. We learned a lot and Morgan N. Sparks | Boise, ID John & Julie Kane | Issaquah, WA her way to a Buddhist retreat in were proud to work with HCN Douglas H. Sphar | Cocoa, FL Hope Kapsner | Gypsum, CO Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We’re contributing editor and then- David Ross Spildie | Missoula, MT Kirk Kennedy | Bickleton, WA sorry your hiking plans got NAJA Vice President Tristan Caitlin Stahl | Sammamish, WA Ken & Sue Kerchenfaut | Fort Collins, CO derailed, Mary, but we’re glad Ahtone on a new journalism Bruce Stedman | Somerville, MA Carol Korich | Tucson, AZ you came by. tool: a bingo board that helps Mark S. Summers | Ogden, UT Nan Kreher & John Sesney | Carson City, NV Longtime readers Pam writers avoid stereotypes and John Sveen | Bozeman, MT J.C. Kuxhausen | Tulelake, CA McBride and Pete Fitch visited clichés. Taylor Talmage | Portland, OR while on a multi-month West- Lastly, we recently said a Mark Langner & Lynn Inouye | Coleville, CA Lawrence Taylor | Omaha, NE ern road trip. Now retired, Pete bittersweet “see you later” to Angela LeFevre | Sedona, AZ William Taylor | Sacramento, CA worked in fire management for Associate Editor Maya Kapoor, Margaret H. Lewis | Albuquerque, NM Jason Tennessen | Bloomington, IN the Forest Service, and Pam who has returned to her home John Ligas | Arlee, MT John Thiemeyer | Portland, OR writes grants for hospitals. in Tucson, Arizona, to work re- Susan Localio | Port Townsend, WA Frank Toler | Yuma, AZ Though they lived in the West motely after spending nine fun Frank Locker | Berthoud, CO Jon Tripp | Paonia, CO for many years, they now live and educational months here Paula & Tom Long | Leawood, KS Dave Van Manen | Beulah, CO in Hawaii — our “far-West at HCN headquarters. Richard Long | Denver, CO Norma Van Nostrand | Granby, CO bureau,” Paul In a parting note, Linda & Michael Lott | Burley, ID William VanHorn | Columbia Falls, MT Maya thanked us for Thomas Magarian | Cut Bank, MT Tom Viola | Berkeley, CA taking in “a wayward Ryan Magee | Ridgway, CO Frank Vladich | Tucson, AZ biology nerd” and James Manley & Julie Kley | Flagstaff, AZ John Walenta | Seattle, WA teaching her the James R. Mayerl | Colorado Springs, CO Edward Wallhagen | Albuquerque, NM ways of HCN. It was Sean & Lori McConnor | New Meadows, ID Glen Ward | Heppner, OR our pleasure, Maya, Susan McKelvy | Buffalo Creek, CO and we miss your Craig Weir | Salt Lake City, UT Steve McLaughlin | Corvallis, OR witty wordplay and William J. Weiss | Quincy, WA Kathryn & Steve Mikol | Fraser, CO healthy snacks Rick & Liz Wheelock | Ignacio, CO Irma Miller | Commerce City, CO already. Come Larry R. Williams | Phoenix, AZ Mel Mooers | Victor, MT back as soon as Roy Williams | Bass Lake, CA John & Barbara Morrison | Evanston, IL you can. Caroline Wilson | Tucson, AZ Joseph Murgel | Denver, CO —Rebecca Worby, George R. Wilson | Coeur d’Alene, ID W. Robert Murphy | Scottsdale, AZ for the staff Carol Withrow | Salt Lake City, UT Doug Neale | Ogden, UT Jan Wright & Chris James | Sandia Park, NM Alberta P. Nelson | Aurora, CO Emily & Mike Wunder | Centennial, CO John F. Neville | Sedona, AZ Larry Yuva & Carol Smith | West Yellowstone, MT Nick & Ann Novich | Sheridan, MT Theodore F. Zipf | Boise, ID Tribal coverage Bob & Barbara Oakleaf | Lander, WY Paul Zitzer | Gallatin Gateway, MT bingo board. Kent Opal | Longmont, CO NAJA and HCN Sharon Zoars | Watersmeet, MI Matt Overeem | Glenview, IL Don & Amy Owen | Round Hill, VA

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Following Ancient Footsteps In the Southwest, Pueblo people are helping archaeologists untangle the science of human migrations

Long ago in the north the weight of gravity, so measured that Sometimes the dancers move like sham- Lies the road of emergence! after hours of drumming and singing bling buffalo; other times they imitate Co- Yonder our ancestors live, in 100-degree heat, he barely breaks a manche warriors from the east, hollering Yonder we take our being. sweat. After more than two decades of and whooping in feathered headdresses Yet now we come southwards this, he still gets lost in the rhythm. and bone breastplates. Always there is For cloud flowers blossom here On this, the feast day of St. John the the drumming, accompanied by songs as Here the lightning flashes, Baptist, northern New Mexico’s Ohkay staccato as the drumbeats themselves. I Rain water here is falling! Owingeh Pueblo is filled with people watch with other guests on Arthur Cruz’s —Tewa song — extended family, friends, Anglo and shaded front porch, absorbed in the music Hispanic visitors. The pueblo is one of but understanding nothing of the lyrics. six in the Tewa Basin, a bowl in the high It’s only later that Cruz explains their he drumming is inescapable. It’s a sound desert intersected by the Rio Grande, and significance. We’re sitting in his living you feel in your gut, like thunder from a although the day’s festivities ostensibly room under a fan, the curtains drawn, the summer storm. Its rumble fills the pueblo, honor a Roman Catholic saint, they are air cool. As he talks, Cruz removes the resonating off adobe walls, shimmering in just as much a celebration of the summer accessories he donned for the feast — the the white-hot sun, guiding the moccasined solstice. All weekend, people gather in leather wrist cuff, the dangling shell ear- feet of the dancers. It asks the clouds homes to share bowls of posole, enchila- rings, the yellow moccasins — until he’s looming over distant mountains to come das, red chile, yams with marshmallows, once again a regular guy in an easy chair, closer. It calls to them for rain. chocolate chip cookies, potato salad. weaving his way through a thousand The drum bodies are made of cot- There’s a footrace one afternoon, and a years of history as casually as if he were tonwood, sanded to a smooth blond and carnival hums just outside the pueblo, relaying last week’s baseball game. T stretched over with cowhide. A line of the Ferris wheel drawing neon circles Many Tewa songs ask for rain, Cruz men beat them with drumsticks — tumbe above 500-year-old adobe buildings. tells me, but one song in particular al- feh in the Tewa language. Some of the But the defining event of the weekend ludes to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. It was younger men wield their tumbe feh with is the dancing. Again and again, Tewa then — following a century in which in- a fervor that makes the muscles in their drummers, singers and dancers make vading Spaniards enslaved and tortured arms stand out, but Arthur Cruz’s style is their way around the kiva, a ceremonial Pueblo people, burned their religious different. He lets his right arm fall with building at the center of the pueblo. objects and tried to suppress their culture

14 High Country News October 2, 2017 Following Ancient Footsteps

The Deer Dance, FEATURE By Krista Langlois meant to ensure In the Southwest, Pueblo people are helping archaeologists untangle the science of human migrations prosperity in the coming year, is performed at Ohkay Owingeh — that a leader from Ohkay Owingeh of their great migration from the north for shells from the Pacific Coast. They Pueblo, 2013. united Pueblo tribes to drive the Span- and the formation of Tewa clans. raised turkeys for feathers that were Robert Villegas ish out of the northern Rio Grande. The Growing up in Ohkay Owingeh, used in blankets and ceremonies, and atrocities that precipitated the revolt are Arthur Cruz heard these stories. He mastered the art of growing corn, beans still felt so deeply that in 1998, a group learned the songs. They helped shape and squash in a landscape that receives of Pueblo artists removed the foot from a his identity. And now, they’re helping around a foot of rain a year. bronze statue of Juan de Oñate, a Span- reshape scientists’ understanding of the And then they left. By the 1280s, ish governor who cut off the right feet of pulse of human life across the Southwest. there’s no evidence that anyone remained 24 Acoma Pueblo men. Combined with new data analyses and a in the region. In some places, homes were The Pueblo Revolt remains relevant multidisciplinary approach that incor- abandoned as if their occupants had to Cruz and other Tewa people because it porates linguistics, genetics and other walked out the door one morning to tend illustrates how deftly they’ve withstood fields, archaeologists working closely with the fields and never returned — pots left hundreds of years of colonization. The Pueblo people like Cruz have begun to on earthen floors, intricately patterned Tewa are one of five linguistic groups that fill in the gaps of migration patterns that mugs hanging from pegs on the wall. fall under the umbrella of Pueblo Native have long puzzled Western scientists. The Elsewhere, smashed skulls and hints of Americans, and like other Pueblo groups, story that’s emerging is a testament to cannibalism suggest that some people they speak a distinct language and have the resilience of culture — and the scien- met a violent end. In a place called Castle a unique culture. And because they were tific value of Indigenous knowledge. Rock Pueblo, some 41 men, women and never forced off their land or corralled children appear to have been massacred, onto reservations, their place-based In the mid-1200s, an estimated 25,000 their bodies left unburied, their kivas religious, agricultural and oral traditions people lived in an 1,800-square-mile area burned. In still other places, kivas may have continued unbroken. Generations of surrounding what’s now southwest Colo- have been burned ceremonially, a ritual- Tewa storytellers have kept the history rado’s Mesa Verde National Park. Over istic farewell as people walked away from of the Pueblo Revolt alive, whispered and the 700 years they lived in this area — a place where they had roots stretching sung in a language that invading Europe- known as the central Mesa Verde region for generations. ans couldn’t understand. They repeated — the people built huge villages of stone The first non-Natives to find and study stories of the revolt the same way they and adobe. They traded for turquoise and these ruins speculated about where the repeated even older stories, ones that told obsidian from across the Southwest and original inhabitants had gone. Nearby

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Driving west from Crow Canyon Ar- chaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado, it’s difficult to believe you’re in the middle of one of the world’s densest concentrations of archaeological sites. A nearby dam has turned the sagebrush desert into a quilt of irrigated green fields, stitched together by gravel back roads and dotted with tidy houses. Here and there cows graze alongside newborn calves. Crow Canyon Vice President Mark Varien has a knack for peeling back the veneer of modern agriculture to see things most people don’t notice. Once, at a seemingly random spot on the road, he stops and points to a cluster of trees indistinguishable from dozens of others we’ve passed. “You see that little stand of junipers?” he asks. “A Chacoan road ran right through there. Ran right through Leslie Black’s old place. And see that sagebrush? That’s a collapsed archaeological site. The farmers can’t plow it because of the rocks, so they just plow around it. Those clumps of sage are the remains of a pueblo. The big one’s probably the kiva.” Although this region seems to stretch to the Utah border in a plain, it’s cre- vassed with wild canyons. Together, the canyons and uplands harbor a staggering 18,000 sites where Ancestral Puebloans lived, worked, hunted, worshipped and fought. Some, like the kiva Varien points out in the middle of a red-dirt field, are on private land. Others are protected Arthur Cruz at Utes claimed no ancestral connection to In the Tewa Basin in particular, scien- by national parks, monuments or other his home in New the people who once called this place home, tists continue to search for architecture federal land. And each of the thousands Mexico’s Ohkay while Navajos said the civilization had or pottery definitively linking the region of archaeological sites here has been cap- Owingeh Pueblo. belonged to the Anasazi, a term that trans- to Mesa Verde, and they continue to come tured through pages upon pages of data, Cruz regularly lates as “ancient foreigners.” Early settlers up empty-handed, fueling a debate that’s meticulously recorded by generations of makes pilgrimages figured the Anasazi had either died off or divided archaeologists for over a century: archaeologists. to the Mesa Verde region, which is vanished without a trace — a romantic Did large numbers of Mesa Verde’s final Until recently, the sheer quantity of referenced in his notion that persists to this day. inhabitants migrate south and set up data flowing from this country made it tribe’s oral histories. Hundreds of miles away, though, Tewa a new society in the Tewa Basin? Some difficult for scientists to assess landscape- Krista Langlois and other Puebloans knew they were de- prominent scholars, such as New Mexico wide patterns. It was easy enough to con- scended from the people who built Mesa Office of Archaeological Studies Director clude, for instance, that up to 800 people Verde’s cliff dwellings. Their oral histories Eric Blinman, maintain that they did not. lived in Yellow Jacket Pueblo, in modern- told them so. Archaeology exists “because our day Montezuma County, over a 200-year Tewa origin stories, however, aren’t stories are intended to be criticized,” Blin- period. But fitting that lone puzzle backed by the kind of hard evidence man says. He doesn’t deny some connec- piece into the bigger picture of how the that archaeologists traditionally rely on. tion between Mesa Verde and the Tewa population waxed and waned across time Often when people move, they take their Basin, but he and others in New Mexico’s and space was nearly impossible, which “material culture” with them — styles of state office believe that a few families meant correlating peoples’ movements architecture, tools or pottery that can be trickling out of Mesa Verde integrated with changing environmental conditions tracked across a landscape, like a trail with Tewa who had already been living in was also riddled with uncertainty. of breadcrumbs leading from one site to the Northern Rio Grande for two thou- Now, data-crunching software and the next. But the trail out of the Four sand years. computer modeling are helping scientists Corners quickly peters out. Although the This might seem like an academic mine Mesa Verde’s trove of archaeologi- area around the Tewa Basin saw a rise quibble, but it has real repercussions for cal data like never before, revealing new in population around the same time that people like Arthur Cruz, who serves as a details about the conditions that precipi- Mesa Verde’s population waned, scant consultant for archaeological surveys and tated southwest Colorado’s mysterious traces of Mesa Verde-style architecture regularly makes personal pilgrimages to depopulation. and pottery have been found in New the Mesa Verde region. Not only does it In 2001, Varien and a team of ar- Mexico or Arizona’s Pueblo villages — undermine Tewa oral history, but without chaeologists, geologists, hydrologists, certainly not enough to account for a consensus from archaeologists — typi- geographers, computer scientists and large migration of people. Today, while cally considered the experts in legal cases economists formed something called it’s widely accepted that Pueblo people involving land rights or historic preserva- the Village Ecodynamics Project. From are in some way descended from Mesa tion — the Tewa people’s power to weigh 2001 to 2014, the researchers analyzed Verde’s cliff dwellers, there’s no scien- in on what happens to ancestral sites in all known habitation sites in the Mesa tific consensus on exactly how the two southwest Colorado remains tenuous. Verde region, as well as 7,000 more in the are related, or what paths Mesa Verde’s As new technology unravels the mys- Northern Rio Grande. They used site- inhabitants took as they spread across teries of the past, though, that’s starting specific information to piece together the the Southwest. to change. population history of the two regions, then

16 High Country News October 2, 2017 p Ancient structures at the head of the McElmo Canyon, below Sleeping Ute Mountain in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado, photographed by William Henry Jackson in 1874. Department of the Interior. General Land Office. U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories. (1874 - 06/30/1879)

t A simulation of Yucca House, below Sleeping Ute Mountain in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. Reconstruction by Dennis R. Holloway, architect; aerial photo by Adriel Heisey. Used with permission by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 combined the demography with granular instance, that people moved out of certain Ortman, a tall man with sandy hair and climatic and soil data to reconstruct past canyons and into more agriculturally a measured, thoughtful manner, became environments, including year-by-year, productive uplands around the same time an archaeologist for the same reason as place-by-place estimates of agricultural that wild deer populations would have many of his colleagues: because he was yields and natural resource availability. declined from hunting. As deer declined, fascinated by the past. But early on, as- The researchers then compared computer- the number of turkey bones in midden pects of the field troubled him. On tours generated yields with those from studies heaps increased, suggesting that people led by Anglo archaeologists in the 1990s, in which Hopi farmers grew corn using had started to butcher and eat the birds he noticed they presented themselves as traditional methods, and found them to be instead of using them only for feathers. the experts, even when Native Ameri- believable. This had sweeping repercussions: Corn can elders were present. Once, Ortman Next, they plugged the human and already accounted for up to 80 percent of watched a Southern Ute man address environmental history of the 4,500-square- the people’s caloric intake, but as corn-fed a room of archaeologists at a workshop. mile study area into a computer simula- domestic turkeys surpassed deer as the “We’ve been trying to explain to you why tion — a sort of Sim City for the ancient main source of protein, the entire system we find excavating archaeological sites Southwest. They ran the simulation became dependent on a single crop. offensive,” the man said. “We tried to ask, more than 500 times, each time tweaking Putting all their kernels into one basket ‘Why do you think archaeology is worth parameters such as how far hunters were meant that if there wasn’t enough rain to doing, given that we feel this way?’ Doing willing to walk to find game. grow corn, people were in trouble. it because it’s interesting isn’t enough.” As they studied the results, patterns This seemed to fit with the dominant That observation shaped Ortman’s began to emerge. Scientists noticed, for explanation that a drought in the 1200s career. So when the Village Ecodynamics drove people away from the Mesa Verde Project showed that the number of people region. But the Village Ecodynamics who “disappeared” from Mesa Verde Project also cast doubt on this theory. during the 1200s was roughly the same Hydrologists found that groundwater as the number of people who moved into seeps and springs were more common in the Tewa Basin shortly thereafter, Ort- the region than previously suspected, and man began searching for other evidence that such water sources probably didn’t linking the two regions. But rather than dry up during even the most arid years. studying potsherds and midden heaps, Nor did people deplete piñon-juniper he turned to the Tewa people themselves. woodlands so badly that a lack of wood He studied modern Tewa language and would have forced them off the land. And culture, and invited elders to join him the soil’s ability to hold moisture meant at ancestral sites to compare traditional that the land was still more than capable knowledge with archaeological evidence. of producing enough food to support the Instead of viewing Tewa stories merely population. as metaphor or myth, he began combing In other words, after centuries of suc- through them for clues harking back to cessfully adapting to and surviving the Mesa Verde. mercurial weather of southwest Colo- “His work deals with taking Pueblo rado, it’s unlikely that drought alone was perspectives seriously,” says Patrick Cruz, responsible for driving people away from one of Ortman’s graduate students and a place to which they had deep spiritual a cousin of Arthur Cruz. “It’s not just and emotional ties. After all, they’d dismissive of oral history. That’s hugely withstood earlier droughts that were important to me.” even harsher. And even more striking, the Ortman is part of a growing cadre of Village Ecodynamics models show that scientists who are beginning to use oral many of Mesa Verde’s inhabitants were histories to help answer some of their already gone by 1276, when the infamous fields’ most puzzling questions. In coastal drought really took hold. British Columbia, for instance, geologists There are still numerous plausible unearthed evidence of an earthquake explanations for why people left, includ- that First Nations people had long told ing that it was simply time to go: In many stories about, revealing a seismic history Pueblo cosmologies, the Pueblo people’s that may help predict future earth- true home was in the south, and they quakes. In the Canadian Arctic, a 2014 were always meant to end up there. But analysis of ancient DNA corroborated the evidence of social strife in the years Inuit accounts of a vanished tribe that leading up to the exodus is hard to ignore. lived in the region for thousands of years That’s led Scott Ortman, a University before the Inuit’s own ancestors arrived. of Colorado Boulder archaeologist and “Native people have been telling us Village Ecodynamics researcher, to devel- what they knew all along,” Ortman ex- op a theory based not just on the scarcity plains, “and it’s proving to be closer to the of resources, but on the social fabric that reality than many of the stories archae- dictated how people shared them. Be- ologists have developed.” tween 900 and 1200 A.D., the population Unlike the Inuit, though, Puebloans of the Mesa Verde region tripled. Still, in the American Southwest haven’t each family seems to have farmed its own consented to a DNA analysis. So to plot of land, its members centering their investigate the roots of Tewa oral history, Mark Varien, top, vice president of Crow Canyon Archaeological lives around a family-sized kiva. This Ortman compiled measurements of hu- Center in Cortez, Colorado, was part of the Village Ecodynamics may have worked when there was enough man skulls taken from 858 people who Project, which analyzed 18,000 sites in the Mesa Verde region, plus space for each family to stake out a pro- lived across the Southwest between 1000 another 7,000 near the Rio Grande. Above, a map based on research ductive plot, but as more families were and 1600 A.D. (The remains of many of from the project shows that the number of people who “disappeared” forced to support themselves on marginal these people have been repatriated, but from Mesa Verde during the 1200s was roughly the same as the number of people who moved into the Tewa Basin shortly thereafter. land, it created a system of haves and measurements recorded in the 19th and Illustration by Joyce Heuman Kramer, images courtesy of the Crow Canyon have-nots. That, Ortman believes, “is 20th centuries are still available.) The Archaeological Center where the whole thing blew up.” results “suggest that the ancestral Tewa

18 High Country News October 2, 2017 t q In a lab on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, professor Scott Ortman looks through artifacts excavated from a New Mexico archaeological site. Ortman, one of the researchers in the Village Ecodynamics Project, uses nontraditional methods to study theories about what happened to the people of Mesa Verde. Kira Vos population was, biologically, essentially people may have spoken the same lan- identical to the people of the Mesa Verde guage that Art Cruz speaks today. region,” Ortman says. He also studied Ortman is careful to emphasize that turkey bones from both regions and found the people who left the Mesa Verde region strong evidence that a genetically distinct spread far and wide across the South- population of turkeys appeared in the west, so all 21 modern Pueblo tribes are Tewa Basin in the 1200s. The turkeys’ in some way descended from them. But DNA differed from that of earlier Tewa the six Tewa-speaking tribes, he now Basin turkeys, but it perfectly matched believes, are the “most direct cultural the DNA of turkeys that had lived at descendants,” with up to half of Mesa Mesa Verde. Verde’s famous cliff-dwellers migrating The most intriguing findings, though, to the Tewa Basin over the course of the came from less tangible sources like the 13th century. Tewa language. The word t’uuphadi, for The final link between the two regions example, which refers to the roof of a came from accounts recorded by anthro- church, literally translates as “a bas- pologists nearly a century ago. In one ket made of timber.” While the roofs of book, Tewa people cited names for places modern Pueblo churches look nothing in southwest Colorado that they them- like baskets, the timber-framed roofs of selves had never been to. Another story ceremonial kivas from Mesa Verde bear described a place that perfectly matched a strong resemblance. And although an archaeological site called Yucca House. several Tewa words describing pottery “All of these things center on this one derive from older words for woven objects, area in southwest Colorado that centers Tewa pottery doesn’t incorporate aspects on Yucca House,” Ortman says. And Yucca of weaving. Mesa Verde pottery, however, House, it turns out, is one of the most with its designs “woven” onto clay, does. unique sites in the Mesa Verde region. As Ortman followed this line of linguistic inquiry into deeper etymologi- Yucca House National Monument is cal analyses, he began to hypothesize six miles as the raven flies from Mesa that Tewa didn’t emerge as a distinct Verde National Park, but it feels a world language in the Northern Rio Grande, as away. Instead of paying a visitor fee, join- was commonly believed, but further back ing a line of cars snaking up a big green in time — likely in southwest Colorado. mesa, and signing up for ranger-led tours “There’s a pattern of the contemporary of exquisitely preserved cliff dwellings, p Jake Viarrial, left, of Pojoaque Pueblo and CU student Frank vocabulary of the Tewa language that you drive uncertainly down a unmarked Delaney work at an archaeological site in Cuyamungue, New Mexico. seems to explicitly express the symbolic gravel road littered with old irrigation Archaeologist Scott Ortman turns to the Tewa people as part of his material culture of Mesa Verde,” Ortman equipment. The official directions guide research, visiting archaeological sites with them and studying language says. Or, in layman’s terms: Mesa Verde you past a “No Trespassing” sign and to- and oral histories. Scott Ortman/University of Colorado

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 ward a white farmhouse with a red roof. Parking appears to be in the farmhouse’s driveway, and you wonder again if this can possibly be the entrance to a national monument. It is. Sitting just beyond the house’s green lawn is a creaky metal gate leading to what was once a bustling village. Unlike Mesa Verde, Yucca House has never been excavated, which is how many Pueblo people prefer to keep their ancestral sites. Today, it looks like a thorny patch of desert surrounded by plowed fields, interrupted by a few mounds and a glimpse of crumbling stone masonry. The paths peter into saltbush and cacti, and as I pick my way through it, an ominous rattle causes me to leap back in terror. Once, there were 600 rooms and kivas here, corn and squash growing all “ Native around, children playing and shouting, juniper smoke from cooking fires linger- peoples don’t ing in the air. Now it’s silent except for necessarily need the clicking of grasshoppers and the tsk- tsk-tsk of sprinklers watering the nearby archaeology to lawn. A thumbprint of moon hangs in the afternoon sky. construct the When Scott Ortman looks at Yucca House, though, he sees something ex- past for us. We tremely rare in the Mesa Verde region: a already have communal plaza, similar to the plaza in Ohkay Owingeh that hosts Tewa dancers our own equally on the village’s feast days. Recent pottery and tree-ring dating shows that Yucca valid ways of House was one of the last places occupied understanding by Ancestral Puebloans before they left the region, and Ortman suggests that one it.” reason it may have lasted so long was that people there were already trying out —Porter Swentzell, history a new way of living, one less centered on professor at the Institute of the family and more on the entire com- fice of Archaeological Studies finds this temporary Tewa-speaking communities American Indian Arts munity. “It looks like a prototype of the difficult to swallow. For Ortman’s model with a legal tool to protect ancestral sites typical Tewa village,” he says. to be true, it would mean that when a in Colorado, says Naranjo’s nephew, Por- As Mesa Verde’s people realized their tide of some 15,000 Mesa Verde refu- ter Swentzell, a history professor at the society was unraveling into starvation, gees arrived to augment the 6,000 or so Institute of American Indian Arts. And it violence and death, Ortman believes original inhabitants of the Tewa Basin, could give more credence to oral histories they decided to leave for the Northern the refugee population smothered the from other tribes, even those that have Rio Grande, a place they already knew original population’s genes, language and not yet been “proven” by science. of from obsidian traders. Oral tradition oral history but not their styles of art, Swentzell says his own belief system says it took Tewa people “12 steps” to pottery and architecture. He maintains has enough space to incorporate both travel from their ancestral home to their that most surviving Mesa Verde emi- Ortman and Blinman’s models. Tewa current one, which Ortman interprets as grants went elsewhere, to Pueblo tribes people may have migrated en masse from the 12 days it may have taken to walk where the Keres language is spoken. Mesa Verde, he says, but they may also the 250 miles separating the two regions. Other scientists who favor conventional have lived in the Tewa Basin since time And once they arrived in New Mexico, archaeological evidence over religious or immemorial, as Blinman claims. “The the people may have been so traumatized linguistic connections agree, and recent Eurocentric philosophy is that there’s by Mesa Verde’s final years that they papers have begun to cast doubt on some some kind of true version of the past discarded the art and architecture associ- of Ortman’s conclusions. that can be found out — that there’s the ated with that period and replaced them Still, Ortman’s approach has earned actual thing that happened,” Swentzell with something more closely resembling him some of archaeology’s highest explains. In Tewa culture, though, “multi- the Yucca House model. awards, and today, most archaeologists in ple versions of the past can exist simulta- This rings true for Tessie Naranjo, the region indeed believe what the Tewa neously. People can go through the same a 76-year-old Tewa scholar from Santa have asserted for centuries. event and experience it in different ways. Clara Pueblo. “Those who came in the This reaffirmation of Tewa beliefs I think it’s important to throw out there late 1200s were, I think, ready to begin may not matter to every Tewa person, that Native peoples don’t necessarily again,” she says. “It was all about adapta- but Naranjo finds it validating. Although need archaeology to construct the past tion. The clay might be different here, she herself never questioned the truth of for us. We already have our own equally the vegetation is different, the medicinal the stories she’s heard since childhood, valid ways of understanding it.” plants are different. So naturally they it’s intellectually fascinating for her to had to learn new things. That’s what I see those stories interpreted by someone There are many ways to get from Mesa have to think about why their pottery outside the community. “It’s very impor- Verde to the Tewa Basin, but geographers and architecture were different once they tant for those of us who are curious about believe that ancient people would have came here.” such things,” she says. likely headed south, through territory Eric Blinman of the New Mexico Of- The support could also provide con- that’s now the Navajo Nation. It wouldn’t

20 High Country News October 2, 2017 Drummers, including Arthur Cruz (far left, face turned away), play for dancers at the 2014 feast day of St. John the Baptist, in northern New Mexico’s Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. Below, brothers at the celebration. Al amy Stock Photos

Pullout goes here quay sans medium 14/18 aligned toward spine —Tag

have been an easy journey — this part demise of Mesa Verde. Here, though, the ming and dancing go on until I lose count of the reservation seems to go on forever, challenges seemed to only strengthen of how many how many times the songs the horizon unchanging, the land muted local communities. Although villages are repeated, of how many people come and parched. As the Jemez Mountains grew far more populous than any in Mesa and go from Cruz’s house, bending over to appeared in the distance, the Ances- Verde had been, the region shows little greet his 93-year-old mother on the porch, tral Puebloans would have turned east evidence of violence. The societies and ducking into the dark home to eat bowls toward them, perhaps climbing through traditions that developed were so strong of food served by his daughters. The day groves of aspen and ponderosa pine or they persisted through waves of coloniza- becomes a blur, like the spinning lights of trudging over passes carrying jugs of tion and through industrial development the Ferris wheel. water and babies. Most had never been to and the large-scale mining of the earth. But one moment is fixed in time. By the place they were going. Like the people who lived at Yucca House, late afternoon, though thunderclouds “At that time, there were no boundar- Puebloans in the Northern Rio Grande have gathered in the distance, the sky ies or borders to inhibit them,” says Tes- structured their communities around a above the pueblo is achingly blue, the sie Naranjo. “It was about finding a better central plaza where work was shared, re- air still and hot. There’s a break in the place. Maybe in terms of water, maybe in ligious dances and rituals were held, and dancing, and people crowd onto Cruz’s terms of rainfall, maybe in terms of be- the harvest was equitably distributed. porch to seek shade and sip watermelon ginning again and creating communities Some of Arthur Cruz’s most vivid agua fresca from Styrofoam cups. Teenag- again. Maybe all of those reasons.” memories are from these plazas. When ers wearing headdresses and body paint Coming out of the mountains, the he was young, every family in Ohkay from the Comanche Dance mill around. people would have had their first view of Owingeh worked together to grow corn A group of artists clusters around Cruz’s the Rio Grande: the green ribbon of cot- and wheat, carrying the crops on horse- brother, a ceramics expert. tonwoods swaddling the river, the broad drawn wagons to the pueblo to be husked And then, from a lone cloud that’s valley, the storm clouds shadowing the and threshed by hand. Fewer families wandered across the infinite sky, I feel a mountain range now called the Sangre farm today, but on feast days, the plazas drop of water on my arm. I look around de Cristos. When I saw this view for the look much like they did when Cruz was — other people, too, are glancing at their first time, it reminded me of the date- a kid. Especially on the feast day of St. bare skin in disbelief. Within minutes it’s palm oases in Morocco where people have John the Baptist, it’s clear that the songs raining, actually raining, though there’s Correspondent Krista settled for thousands of years. These are and dances that keep the Tewa universe not a single shadow marring the sun. Langlois lives near the kinds of places humans are drawn to, spinning still live on. The essence of what People say in joking voices that the rain Durango, Colorado. no matter when or where we live. it means to be Tewa lives on. dance has worked. And in the middle  @cestmoiLanglois Yet droughts in the Southwest are All day, Cruz and the other drum- of the commotion, a young man silently This story was funded cyclical, and the Tewa Basin, too, was mers make their way around Ohkay steps off the porch and stands in awe, his with reader donations eventually crippled by the same bouts of Owingeh’s kiva, pausing to face each of face tilted to the water coming out of the to the High Country aridity that may have contributed to the the four cardinal directions. The drum- blue sky. News Research Fund.

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 MARKETPLACE

Notice to our advertisers: You can place Wyoming Public Lands and Energy classified ads with our online classified Associate — The Wilderness Society is system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. Oct. 13 leading efforts to protect our public lands is the deadline to place your print ad in and ensure balanced approach to energy the Oct. 30 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or development. Working with our Wyoming e-mail [email protected] for help or in- representative, other staff and diverse formation. For more information about our partners, the Wyoming Associate will current rates and display ad options, visit provide support and leadership in engaging hcn.org/advertising. in agency planning, federal policy efforts, and efforts to defend wildlands against inappropriate development and rollbacks of business opportunities conservation laws. Open until filled, located in southwest Wyoming (or Laramie), this Conservationist? Irrigable land? Stellar full-time position includes benefits. Full job seed-saving NGO is available to serious description and to apply: http://wilderness. partner. Package must include financial org/careers-and-internships. support. Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net.

Partnership: 52-acre certified organic Conservation Director for Grand farm in northeast Oregon — Need young farmer(s) who base their beliefs on peer- Canyon Trust – For a full job description reviewed science and progressive world view. and how to apply, please visit our website at [email protected]. www.grandcanyontrust.org/conservation- director. Advertising is a great way to support High Country News and get your word home and garden out — Consider a classified ad in HCN when you have a conservation or green technology Aquabot High Pressure Water Bottles job to fill, a conference or event coming up, Mist, shower and jet. Clean off, cool off, a house to sell, unique home and garden hydrate and have fun. www.lunatecgear.com. products, professional services to promote, travel opportunities or any other information Western Native Seed – Specializing in you would like to get out to like-minded native seeds and seed mixes for Western people. Visit http://classifieds.hcn.org or states. 719-942-3935. call 800-311-5852. Enduring Performance in wide-ranging employment applications with environmentally friendly, extended drain AMSOIL synthetic lubricants. Communications and Membership Wholesale accounts encouraged. 877-486- Coordinator — Colorado Trout Unlimited 7645. www.PerformanceOils.US/index/html. seeks self-starter to manage digital es communications and member program. Details at coloradotu.org. Email résumé by professional services Oct. 6 to [email protected]. 2017 Expert land steward — Available now for Director of Annual Fund — Yellowstone site conservator, property manager. View High Country News Forever is the official nonprofit partner résumé at: http://skills.ojaidigital.net. of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). The Director of Annual Fund will use best publications and books practices to build and lead a high-level, Back of Beyond Books buys rare and metrics-driven annual giving program collectible books, maps and manuscripts of that reaches and sustains ambitious the American West. Call Andy Nettell at Back revenue and donor participation goals. of Beyond Books 1-800-700-2859 or email: Bell Prize yellowstone.org/who-we-are/jobs/ [email protected].

for young writers real estate for rent Honoring the spirit of our founder, Tom Spacious live/work studio for lease in Bell, we want to hear from aspiring Silver City, N.M. — Front space ideal for art gallery or public function, large two-story essayists, ages 18 to 25, on conservation studio and living area in back, 2,500 square Executive Director in Durango, Colo. topics frequently covered by High Country feet. Historic brick building, heart of Silver San Juan Mountains Association (SJMA) City arts district, well maintained. Negotiable News. The winning essay will receive promotes responsible care of natural and rent. Tenant is expected to make a meaningful $1,000 and be awarded the Bell Prize. cultural resources. It is the cooperating contribution to Silver City community life. nonprofit association for the San Juan Essays should be no longer than 800 650-302-2593. National Forest (SJNF). Send: Résumé, three words. Consider the conservation topics references, example of a past appeal letter you’re familiar with and why they’re you created and a cover letter by e-mail at: Really nice three-bedroom, two-bath [email protected]. A full job description home in Bluff, Utah — Secluded solar important to you: water, energy & industry, wildlife, public lands, climate, adobe on two acres. Views, woodstove, pets communities, sustainability, justice, politics — you decide. will be sent upon receipt. Deadline is Oct. 12, 2017. OK. One-year lease. $1,200 per month. Avail. Oct. 1.970-769-6735.

SPONSORED BY Deadline Oct. 13 Event land wanted — Apogaea, an art Email essays to: [email protected] and cultural gathering, is looking for land from 200 to 2,000 acres within four hours’ Visit for more details and competition rules hcn.org/bellprize drive of Denver. Contact [email protected] Top Photo by Michael Remke Photo of Tom Bell by Mark Harvey if interested.

22 High Country News October 2, 2017 WANTING TO RENT long-term, small tours and travel cabin, quiet for writing. Off-grid OK. COPPER CANYON, MEXICO, TREKKING Retired Forest Service geologist. Northern Ten-day tour, from Los Mochis airport, two U.S. References. Call Jo: 207-890-2692 or nights El Fuerte, train, two nights canyon [email protected]. rim hotel, five nights trek-style camping. $2,000 pp/do www.coppercanyontrails.org. Charming fenced historic adobe — One 520-324-0209. block to Harwood Museum, two to Taos Plaza. two-bedroom, king and double beds, three R anch with huge organic/ fireplaces. $900/week, $350/weekend. 415- 519-3474. sustainability potential for sale! Spruce Point Tree Farm has 42,000 spruce trees and sequesters 2.1 million pounds real estate for sale of carbon each year. It has potential for a Idaho home for sale — Office, sewing, major organic manufacturing interest or dining room, large kitchen, great yard. 208- continued use as a tree farm (or both). The 242-9836. [email protected]. ranch includes its own airport (airnav.com/ airport/5CO1), high-end irrigation system, Sixteen acres, borders national forest major water rights, buildings (including a 45 minutes to Denver, three-bedroom/two- 1909 ranch house), ponds, equipment and staff. Current owner looking to retire. bath updated 2,800-square-foot house with Ruth Powell Hutchins Water Center sprucepointtreefarm.com. 2,200 feet of creek frontage. One-mile walk at Colorado Mesa University to Mount Evans Wilderness. Grosses $40,000 annually as nightly rental. $550,000. 303- presents the 7th annual 550-9845. [email protected]. Coming to Tucson? Popular vacation UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN www.vrbo.com/290592. house, everything furnished. Rent by day, WATER FORUM: week, month. Two-bedroom, one bath. Large 200 acres with clean water — Orange- enclosed yards. Dog-friendly. Contact Lee at burg, S.C. Artesian wells, springs; running [email protected] or 520-791-9246. STORIES FROM THE FIELD streams. Ten-acre pond; natural ecosystem. Protected from major storms year-round. AdventureBoundUSA – Five-day Colorado November 1-2, 2017 Grand Junction, Colorado Unlimited possibilities: solar power income River trips and more. Since 1963. potential, equestrian sports; specialty 970-245-5428. AdventureBoundUSA.com. farming; retreat; winery; fishing and hunting. Utilities available. Close to major cities, horse Bisbee, Ariz. / Copper City Inn / and golf events. Seven miles to nearest “Deeelightful!” – Three rooms, balcony, airport. Contact Janet Loder, 425-922-5959. five years #1 on TripAdvisor. 520-432-1418. coloradomesa.edu/water-center/forum [email protected]. coppercityinn.com.

Off the grid and under the radar! Total Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat solar, contemporary steel, artist live/work Center – The landscape of Ghost Ranch home, great well, 70 acres, peace, privacy. in northern New Mexico encompasses [email protected]. 21,000 acres of towering rock walls, vivid colors and vast skies. Join us for Georgia Beautiful custom home in southwest O’Keeffe landscape tours and trail rides, Colorado mountains — Built on 35 acres. archaeology and paleontology museums and Magnificent views, lush meadow, seasonal tours, hiking trails, lodging and camping. stream, adjacent to BLM forest with trails. 505-685-1000. www.GhostRanch.org. Radiant heat, wood fireplace, slate flooring. 970-375-7029. thad@wellsgroupdurango. com. MLS#726152. universities and schools The HCNU Classroom Program gives Organic farmer’s dream — Custom free magazines and/or digital access three-bedroom, two and one-half baths to instructors and students – Note: home on 42 acres. Orchards, gardens and Total copies for the year are limited. If we ponds. Fruit trees, cider mill, veggie gardens, exceed our quota, we will either limit the greenhouses, beehives, cider house, guest apt, number of print copies or serve digital-only double garage and more! 209/293-7979. subscriptions. Digital-only subscriptions [email protected]. are always available through this program. Sam Snead Real Estate BRE#00924186. Participants of this program receive: Colorado organic farm — $679,000, – A copy of the magazine for each student 3/2 house, 8.9 acres. Patti Kaech, in the class, and for the instructor, delivered Broker-Needlerock Realty 970.261.6267. in bulk to the instructor, for the duration of PattiKaech.com. the class. You can also choose to receive a digital-only option. – An email to the instructor the week of the SOCIAL INVESTING issue, including a link to a PDF copy of the Donate car to college student in need magazine, for planning purposes. Junior going to college needs help. Do you – Access to our librarian for curated HCN have a good car to donate? 208-940-0827. stories on specific fields of study and topics. – Full access to our website, accessible via your computer or mobile device, including our rich archive of 45-plus years of High Country News issues. Sign up at hcnu.org/edu.

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 MARKETPLACE PHOTO BY MARK HARVEY BY PHOTO PHOTO BY MARK HARVEY BY PHOTO

“High Country News continues my work and my vision of providing the best information possible about this place we all care so much about. I would like to see it carry on that vision long after I am gone.” —Tom Bell, founder High Country News

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR PLANNED GIVING PROGRAM, CONTACT: Laurie Milford e-mail: [email protected] SUSTAIN INDEPENDENT MEDIA for future generations of people who call: 800-905-1155. Or visit our website, care about the West with your legacy gift to High Country News. hcn.org/support/planned-giving

PHOTO BY MARK GOCKE

24 High Country News October 2, 2017 WRITERS ON THE RANGE

Members of the 7th Cavalry Drum and Bugle Corps perform in a parade in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. The 7th Cavalry, despite its history of conflicts with tribal nations, is still celebrated in the town and surrounding area. Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller/U.S. Air Force In the spirit of understanding racism During my 13 years in Rapid City, South ers who killed anywhere from 75 to 125 Rapid City in 2009 and 2010, after at Dakota, I’ve learned that racism and babies, children and women at Wounded least two Native families with children ignorance almost always go hand-in- Knee in 1890. were egged while racial slurs were hand. The West was “won,” many people I buy a Happy Meal for my daughter, hurled at them. “Go back to where you learn in school, but what did westward only to find a 7th Cavalry Custer doll came from!” is a laughable favorite. One expansion mean for the Native people inside. She gets upset when I try to ex- Native woman, who was disabled, was who were already living on the land? plain why I think it belongs in the trash. run off the road while driving her car. The lure of gold brought explorers, In a jewelry shop along Mount Rush- Urine-filled bottles were thrown on other miners and then homesteaders to South more Road, I look at the gold for which Natives. Some Natives were shot with Dakota during the 19th and early 20th my grandparents’ territory was invaded pellet guns. OPINION centuries. I imagine that most of those and spot a wine-bottle holder depicting At the same time — and I am glad BY EVElyn “invaders” — from my point of view — a Native chief chugging a bottle of wine. to report this — many of the attackers Red Lodge didn’t think twice about booting the Old stereotypes die hard. According were held accountable after much public local people out of the way. But that was to a recent study in the journal Drug outcry: then. The question today is why racism and Alcohol Drug Dependence, alcohol The jewelry store owner removed the persists when America prides itself on consumption by Natives is shown to be wine holder featuring a drunken Native tolerance and respecting diversity. generally less than that of Caucasians in from her window after local media asked Here are some examples from my life the United States. why she’d given it prominence. that reveal the kind of blatant racism Just walking downtown in Rapid The newspaper removed its victim- I’ve experienced, as well as some of the City, the so-called City of Presidents, I blaming story from its internet site. unconscious racism that is sometimes spot the stores along the way that used Two 21-year-old women were arrest- almost comical. to sport signs saying “No Indians or Dogs ed in the incident involving the disabled I go to a Rapid City council meeting Allowed.” I go to He Sapa — the Black woman, becoming the first in the state to where a white local suggests placing Mountains — where I look upon the be charged with its new hate-crime law, statues of Native Americans in Founders faces of past U.S. presidents who helped “malicious intimidation or harassment.” Park, rather than in the proposed First wipe out so many Indigenous peoples. As for failures in the quest for justice, Nations Sculpture Gallery in Halley I remember that Natives were only de- the drunk hockey fan was eventually Park. As Native author Elizabeth Cook- clared to be citizens by the United States acquitted of his one and only charge of Lynn put it, the suggestion was made Congress less than 100 years ago. disorderly conduct. And I am unaware “without a hint of irony.” After all, who In 2015, I feared to go to any sport- of any charges brought against anyone were the original founders if not Native ing event after a drunk beer salesman for the attacks involving egg and urine people? poured beer on Native students at a throwing and pellet guns. I go to the veterans’ parade where hockey game and shouted, “Go back to Racism persists, I am sorry to report. the 7th United States Cavalry, formed in the reservation!” Within days, dumping I still feel it every day. 1866 to protect homesteaders and raid beer on Natives had become a common Native villages, is still honored. These occurrence at other venues. Evelyn Red Lodge is a writer in Rapid days, of course, more Natives serve in I picked up the local newspaper four City, South Dakota. She is a correspon- the military per capita than any other days after the drunk hockey fan did his dent for Native Sun News Today and ethnic group, according to the director of business, and the question was raised on member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. the National Museum of the American the front page: Had the Native students WEB EXTRA Indian. But few Natives march with the who were attacked stood for the national veterans in the parade. anthem? (Not that it should make any Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of To see all the current High Country News, providing three opinion col- Writers on the Range I find a Black Hills trail guide listing difference, but it was reported that the umns each week to more than 200 media outlets columns, and archives, the 7th Cavalry Trail — as if it’s fun for students did stand.) around the West. For more information, contact visit hcn.org people to follow the trail of mass murder- I feared to walk on the north side of Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898. www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS Light from ‘one scrap of earth’ Alaska’s writer laureate crosses boundaries, rediscovers home

“Raven Steals the Light,” an Indigenous of her own past. Entering her 50s, Hayes town dock with classmates, to try out a tale beloved across the Pacific North- went on to complete a graduate degree new fishing pole. She hoped that “along west, describes what may be the legend- from University of Alaska, producing the with their friendship might come com- ary trickster’s finest hour. As author manuscript that became Blonde Indian: fort, might come knowledge, might come Ernestine Hayes, a member of the Tlingit An Alaska Native Memoir. A winner of understanding.” But instead, they ran Tribe, tells it, the story begins “in an the 2007 American Book Award, this into an Indian — Hayes’ own grandfa- unbrightened world, (where) light does fiercely honest memoir confronted the ther — who was drunk and swaggering not reveal itself. It must be stolen.” The alcoholism, poverty and injustice that with pride over a fresh-caught halibut darkness hindered life for ordinary hu- plagued Hayes’ early years. Building strung from his fist. “The other children,” man beings, and only Raven was bold on the search for belonging, family and she writes, “their derision ill-concealed enough to seek the light’s source and set home that led her back to Juneau, Hayes’ by poor attempts to cover their snorts of it free. Reborn as a feisty, cunning child, new sequel, The Tao of Raven, goes a step laughter, took hesitant steps backward The Tao of Raven: he won over his reclusive grandfather, further, asking how she might bring heal- as my grandfather neared. Finally we An Alaska Native who grudgingly allowed him to open the ing and light to her world of wounds. all stood too close to one another. … The Memoir precious bentwood boxes holding the As with Blonde Indian, Hayes blurs white children I dared to imagine as my Ernestine Hayes moon, stars and sun. Raven’s ensuing the boundaries of genre in The Tao of Ra- friends staging their retreat behind me, theft illuminated the earth. The tale is ven, which braids sharp grandmotherly ready to dash for the safety of another 176 pages, hardcover: especially vital to the Tlingit people of meditations and gripping personal his- world, my grandfather in front of me, $26.95. Southeast Alaska, but Hayes, a professor tory into the fictional storyline of another offering a whiskered smile, saluting me University of and writer who was recently named state troubled, typical family. Alternating the with the heavy flatfish he proudly held Washington Press, writer laureate for 2016-2018, readily reality of her own struggles with those up for my regard and admiration, I at the 2016. admits, “I never really understood the of her fictional characters, Hayes takes a torn seam of two worlds.” story … until I became a grandmother radically compassionate approach, enter- For Hayes, storytelling becomes a tool myself. Then I understood why Raven’s ing the lives of others to see how “the to overcome the gaps that keep us from grandfather gave him the Box of Daylight trickster is always at work.” what we love. Given an education that when he fussed for it.” Hayes finds the trickster at work denied her own Native history, Hayes Hayes became intrigued by the story wherever we allow deep feeling, includ- had to become as curious and creative when she worked as a summer naturalist ing the “ordinary rebellion, commonplace as Raven to find her way — her tao — for the Alaska State Ferry, one of the first trauma, and mundane heartbreak that back into Tlingit culture. Re-imagination jobs she took after 25 years away from have continued to mark (her) genera- becomes her path to re-inhabitation. her home in Juneau. Caught between tions.” In one particularly vivid memory, “We may never truly know,” she writes, an eroding Tlingit culture and her own the young Hayes went to the Juneau “until perhaps the knowledge is given to teenage recklessness, the 16-year-old an artist, to a totem carver, to a weaver, Hayes and her mother had tried to build to a dagger maker, to a painter, to a a new life in the Lower 48. Later on, storyteller, and we read from that crafts- after she returned to the North, person’s vision.” Hayes began to see Raven’s Hayes never denies her jour- transformations as a way ney’s present complexities, hard to brighten the dark spots as it is to face the shame and fear that kept her away from her homeland for so long. But with all their transformations, the patience and grace of her nuanced truths — both fact and fiction — transcend enduring prejudice. In The Tao of Raven, her prose is as insistent as it is lyrical, as she urges readers to “take Raven,” and find hope in some “scrap of earth.” That is all we ever have, really: our pasts to hold our stories, and our places to guide our dreams.

By Rob RICh

Tlingit art depicting Raven stealing the sun. Israel Shotridge

26 High Country News October 2, 2017 Essay

A bow, a hunt, and a bond with public land

By Sarah Jane Keller

he evening before bow season opened in southwest Mon- fir sapling, I could only see fragments of their ears and antlers. The author looks tana, I loaded up a bike-trailer with camping gear and They seemed to be watching my tree, which didn’t so much hide across the canopy T pedaled into a heavily timbered valley near Bozeman. me as break up my shape. of the national Arriving at a hillside of very old Douglas firs well past dark, I reminded myself that animals look for movement. Simply forest where she I hastily made camp as irrational fears of bears and people breathing deeply felt precarious. After a short while, the deer harvested a deer by bike. COURTESY SARAH started to creep over me. bedded down, unaware of the predator standing 10 steps away. I JANE KELLER Later that night, something stomped on the branches out- no longer felt like an interloper, but just another animal capable side my tent. I grabbed my bear spray and tried to stay calm. of melting into the forest. Had the stalk failed at this point, Then I heard a bull elk let loose a chilling bugle. Seconds later, I’d still have found something I came for, a heightened way of more eerie whistles erupted from far up the valley. experiencing these woods. As I settled back to sleep, fear turned to satisfaction. I was It’s these moments during hunts, and subtler ones, too, finally living out my bow-hunting fantasy: a solitary camp, that make me ferociously loyal to the idea of public land. When eavesdropping on animals and anticipating sneaking into the you’re a hunter, a national forest becomes much more than woods before first light to search for deer or elk. Given a choice, a recreation destination. It becomes a place to transcend the I’d have been hunting deeper in the wilderness. But what I separation between modern humans and nature, if just for a really needed last fall was a place that could accommodate a morning. bum knee and a frenzied work schedule. So I found a familiar, In this way, public land is the essence of freedom, an open hard-working valley in the Custer Gallatin National Forest, and invitation to exercise a primal form of self-sufficiency, and, in hoped other archers would overlook its game trails, buck rubs the process, connect with an ecosystem. The gut-level connec- and hidden meadows. tion to public land that many hunters have gives me hope that Despite the noisy bulls the night before, the first day passed the ongoing movement to transfer or privatize it will ultimately quietly without the appearance of any elk or deer. On the misty fail. Hunting’s conservation legacy stems from the late 1800s, second morning, I walked a gravelly ridge and enjoyed how deep when sportsmen faced down robber barons and their political the clouds had sunk into the glacier-carved valley. allies. That struggle continues today, as hunters confront politi- I almost missed the two buck deer grazing the edge of a cians who seem hell-bent on privatizing what belongs to every meadow. Crouching behind a ponderosa pine, I took off my boots American. As a natural resources journalist, I report on the and pack, for maximum stealth, waited for the deer to turn land-transfer movement, and do so fairly. But as a hunter, I can’t away, and started stalking them. stand the idea of losing my public lands, should states sell them Several hours later, those deer were still weaving through off. the forest, searching for the last of the summer’s green forage. Eventually, the deer stood, breaking my trance, and contin- I’d been within shooting range of them many times, but either ued grazing. Soon after that, I lost them as they hurried across a brush obscured them, or else one would turn my way, making it trail. I feared they were long gone, but caught up with them in a impossible to draw my bow. small meadow flanked by willows. This time, I knew I had a shot. My task seemed impossible. Ungulates practice their skills Muscle memory took over as I drew the bow, aimed, and released every day — as prey animals, they have to be alert — but this the arrow. It hit behind the buck’s shoulder, and I watched anx- was my first as attempt at being a close-range predator. Small, iously for a few long seconds as he bounded into the conifers, then seemingly insignificant details suddenly demanded all my at- fell. As I anticipated his last breath, I felt the weight of ending Sarah Jane Keller is tention. Shifts in the breeze, the rustle of my jacket, a sniffle, a life, then a rush of gratitude toward him, his habitat, and the a Montana-based or the snap of a twig could trigger the deer’s fine-tuned flight land around me. This anonymous corner of national forest would freelance journalist instincts. The hunt hinged on restraining my reflexes, and let- feed my husband and me through the winter, making it just as who tries to spend ting everything line up perfectly. spectacular and invaluable to me as any famous wilderness or every spare minute on Finally, both deer stopped moving. Yet from behind a skinny national park. And just as worthy of protection. public land.

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

NORTHERN ROCKIES earth.” Yet we worry, he says, because many If any place is a Western icon, it’s Yellowstone of us see the world threatened as never National Park, which happens to sit atop before, making the Yellowstone supervolcano a massive caldera that could turn into a “the zombie apocalypse wrapped in mostly super-volcano at any time, or so geologists legitimate science.” In the summer of 2014, say. Despite that, 4.2 million people visit the for example, a series of videos went viral and park every year. Yellowstone has long been a may have alarmed over a million viewers. magical place of boiling springs and surpris- They reportedly showed animals fleeing ing geysers, but in 1877, when early visitors Yellowstone in advance of an alleged volcano Frank D. Carpenter and his companions first eruption. Clayton says there was just one arrived, they did other things besides ooh problem: “The animals were actually run- and ahh at Old Faithful. After an arduous ning toward the park.” trip on horseback, they had dirty laundry, so “the group put their soiled clothes in a COLORADO pillowcase and threw it into the geyser’s Gathering for conversation at a “Death Café” cone. When it erupted, the clothes were sent in the town of Hotchkiss in western Colo- flying over 100 feet in the air,” reports Atlas rado recently, about two dozen people talked Obscura writer Eric Grundhauser. Once MONTANA Beary picking. Jan Metzmaker freely about getting prepared and trying rounded up, the clothes appeared to be boiled to make things easy on the heirs, as well WEB EXTRA This was among the entries in the HCN clean. as their hopes for a “good death” without photo contest. See the winners on page 10, and a gallery The park doesn’t keep an inventory of all too much pain or fuss, and the possibility of the best entries at hcne.ws/photos-17. of the foreign objects that have been ejected of suicide, if necessary. One 90-something from its many geysers and pools, but anec- man, though, took the cake for frankness, dotes abound. Certainly, Carpenter and his of Yellowstone, another geyser called Morning reports the North Fork Merchant Herald. pals didn’t stop at turning geysers into super- Glory was artificially induced to erupt in 1950 in “I’d be OK if I died tomorrow,” said Bob Heid of powered washaterias, as Carpenter revealed an effort to clean out its debris — a kind of geo- Crawford. “I’m not afraid of death.” In fact, Heid in his book, The Wonders of Geyser Land. For thermal enema. What emerged included “bottles, is so comfortable with the inevitable that he its next trick, he and his group piled “at least a cans, underwear, 76 handkerchiefs and $86.27 in said he’d already had a gravestone installed at thousand pounds of stones, trees and stumps” pennies.” Toss in a penny today, said Veress, and the Crawford Garden of Memories. He’s also had into Old Faithful, which dutifully “expelled” it the fine can be up to $5,000 and six months in the stone engraved with the date of his expected all into the air. Carpenter found this an “enter- jail. Yet an unknown number of tourists con- death — his 100th birthday. tainment of unusual magnitude and duration,” tinue to treat the park’s geothermal wonders as and unfortunately, geyser-dumping became a trashcans or wishing wells. Recently, a new kind CALIFORNIA trend. Yellowstone spokeswoman Linda Veress of debris fell into the Prismatic Spring, thanks Speaking of death, a powerful rainstorm swept said that in the 1880s, visitors — finding the to a visitor from the Netherlands who was pilot- through Death Valley National Park recently, bubbles delightful — threw so much soap into ing a drone. The drone “was recovered but not bringing winds of up to 100 miles an hour and the geysers that gift shops couldn’t keep bars returned,” said Veress. fast and furious lightning bolts, said Park of soap in stock. One man even tried to open a So what are the chances of Yellowstone, Superintendent Mike Reynolds. It only lasted laundromat, but that failed when the geyser the earth’s largest known potential supervol- 10 minutes, but the microburst blew the roof off blew up his business, along with his tent. cano, blowing up and killing everyone within a historic building as well as the windows from Creation of the National Park Service in hundreds of square miles? In his new book, several cars. What was most striking, Reynolds 1916 helped discourage these destructive ex- Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone and the Evolu- said, was watching dumpsters blowing down the periments, but increasing numbers of tourists tion of an American Cultural Icon, John Clayton road — an extreme form of trash pickup. continued to surreptitiously throw coins, trash is reassuring. Although the last eruption was WEB EXTRA F or more from Heard around the West, see and rocks into geysers. As a result, the Hand- 640,000 years ago, meaning that another is just hcn.org. kerchief Geyser, once as famous as Old Faithful, about due, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and stopped functioning in the 1920s or ’30s, Veress the probability as about 1 in 700,000 — “about said. According to T. Scott Bryan’s The Geysers often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag the same as that of an asteroid hitting the photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High While publicizing the deaths of wolves is good for Country headlines and fundraising, the resulting polarization News “ For people who care about the West. leaves wolves even more vulnerable to rural High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a anger, poaching and legislative repercussions. magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, Mitch Friedman, in his essay, “Rural communities can coexist with wolves. Here’s how,” hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write from Writers on the Range, hcn.org/wotr” High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News October 2, 2017