Lil BOSS by JT Titmus '23

Lil BOSS

Words & Photos by JT Titmus '23

The Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument was created in 1996 by President Clinton to protect the southern Utah landmark from industrialization. At the time, coal mining projects were being planned in the area and this declaration was successful in halting these plans.

The monument is home to thousands of previous dwellings inhabited by indigenous people, as well as their rock art, tools and pottery. I had the privilege of living with this land for a month-long survival course at Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS), leaving behind my modern camping equipment and only living off what I could find or craft. After our first week of endless hiking without food, we reached the pictured cave and found that someone had left a bunch of bananas for us to eat. I had never tasted something so blissful in my entire life. In this cave we began to regain our gratitude for the land, learning how to make fire with a bow drill so we could eat and about the rich history of those who had lived there long before us.

The day after we arrived at this cave we made a scramble up the cliffs above the cave to visit the site of an indigenous dwelling. Carefully stepping around the crypto-biota growing on the desert floor, we came across the remnants of a stone wall.

The site had almost been destroyed by cowboys and travelers, but we still witnessed fragments of pottery that had been molded, fired and used thousands of years ago by ancestors of the Hopi and Diné tribes.

I was lucky enough to have a conversation with a member of the Diné tribe named Adesbah Foguth who is an archaeologist and park ranger who shares her work through her instagram @native_power_rangers. One thing we talked about that struck me was her view on the decolonization of language surrounding these historical sites: “Abandoned and ruin : empty, lifeless place that someone has left and doesn’t care about. It’s a way to excuse what they are going to do to those people. Nobody asked.”

Other striking features of this dwelling were the cave paintings depicting animals that these people relied on for food. For water, there were multiple pools accessible by climbing up a slot canyon. These pools made indentations into the walls of the canyon that allowed for safer travel up to this water source.

Our guides had received permission to use this space as long as we left it better than we found it. This meant

not only following strict Leave No Trace principles, but also using our feces and ashes to create fertilizer for nearby plants and raking away all of our footprints with sticks. In the words of local tribe elder Kathy Sanchez:

“Their use without permission or exchange of recognition of what it means to maintain its original purposefulness… Power is given from outside means, the interpretation without consultation is toxic energy. Taking of the light of life, love of humanity, without impunity by their own standards of existence.”

This sacred land holds great importance to not only the cultural preservation of a people whose lands have been destroyed by “manifest destiny”, but it also has a constant impact on the health and wellbeing of those who are still alive today and interacting with this environment.

Arrowheads and other artifacts can still be found on the desert floor, largely thanks to its monument status that prohibits removal of such artifacts. Cultural artifacts are not the only items of value that must be preserved across this landscape. We tend to think of the value of the objects we find and how we should protect their intrinsic value. We forget that there is still a lasting impact on the communities that rely on this land. Tewa, Dr. Gregory Cajete asserts:

“Indigenous people are an indicator species for the health of their environment. If people have been forcefully removed… environment around those communities is going to suffer because there isn’t ecological balance and exchange happening anymore.”

While observing the flow of energy within this ecosystem, we can see easily where the treatment of resources turns from reliance for survival to the unregulated capitalist mindset of today’s society. Our sole source of energy for creating fire to cook food was from bow drills that we had carved from dead wood. Meanwhile, when white settlers first came across this land, their first thought was regarding how they would extract the vast mineral and petroleum resources from within it. Later on, they began to use these deserts as a site for nuclear testing, using standards based on adult white males to determine what level of radiation was acceptable to expose native families living the area to. Beata Tsosie-Peña from Tewa Women United explains the consequences of this grave existential threat:

“Any harm that happens to our landscapes is happening to us… Extraction industries increase rates of violence in native communities. It’s a matter of life or death that we are giving care to these places in a way that only we know how.”

In order to fully understand how we interact with land,we must learn not only how the practices of indigenous people are used, but why they are used. For example, wildfires in the west are burning more than

ever before, largely due to the prohibition of forest management used by indigenous people that had prevented wildfires for thousands of years.

We must realize that it is not cultural appropriation to take these techniques and other environmental practices into our own lives. It is wholly necessary that we legitimize these ideas in order to prevent further environmental destruction. Dr. Kelsey Dale John, Diné and professor at University of Arizona, shares her thoughts on the treatment of the beliefs and ways of life of indigenous people from an academic perspective:

“Indigenous folks are being pushed aside, their ideas are not recognized or they’re not framed as valid, maybe as scientific, or as something that is relevant for land management.” It is not too late to apply these principles to our treatment and understanding of the environments that we know and love. Our first steps should be to listen to indigenous perspectives, support them financially, amplify their messages and follow through with the application of their goals. Land must be given back, management must be done by those who have cared for this land, and our way of life must be changed permanently in order to prevent the evils of settler civilization from ever destroying the balance of nature and humanity again.

The Grand Staircase - Escalante is only one of the uncountable sites where issues of indigenous interaction with land management are on the table. The neighboring Bears Ears Monument was only created

in 2016 and is already under attack. Diné/ Hopi filmmaker Angelo Baca cautions:

"It is a dire situation… but it is also a real hopeful one because we are at the intersection now. What we do now is going to determine the direction for the future.”

Both the Grand Staircase - Escalante and Bears Ears Monuments have been drastically reduced in size over the time that the Trump Administration has been in office. The President portrayed the bill as endorsed by indigenous leaders, but the reality of this legislation has proven to create the opposite response. The lands outside of the new monuments boundaries are now open to private oil drilling and extraction, leaving millions of acres of sacred indigenous lands vulnerable to irreversible environmental destruction.

After the 2020 election, there is hope that these monuments will be restored to their previous acreage, but this will not come easy. It is up to us to get this initiative onto the policy agenda in enough time to prevent further degradation. There are also countless other areas in the US threatened by similar legislative acts and we must use this example to prove that it is imperative that we not only preserve our land, but allow indigenous people to manage and restore it fully.

“How does a human life live without light from the cosmos, celestial radiant light of love, or life for all?”

–Elder Kathy Sanchez

How can you help?

Watch Angelo Baca’s documentary: Shash Jaa’: “Bears Ears”

Watch the teach-in series Native Perspectives on Public Lands and Tribal Preservation on YouTube

Donate: Grand Staircase Escalante Partners, Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, Utah Diné Bikéyah

Follow @native_power_rangers on Instagram as well as other indigenous pages

Share indigenous perspectives on social media #LandBack

Call and email your congresspeople especially once legislation starts getting passed in 2021

Last but not least, when you are interacting with indigenous lands, according to Beata Tsosie-Peña: “Come singing, bring no bad energy, bring gifts, ask for permission to enter (don’t expect it).”

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the indigenous leaders who made this possible!

Adesbah Foguth Elder Kathy Sanchez

Beata Tsosie-Pena

Dr. Kelsey Dayle John Dr. Gregory Cajete

Angelo Baca

Thank you to Dr. Carolyn Finney for inspiring me to create this. Thank you to Matt Furches and Ryan Ross for leading us on our journey. Thank you to Jordan Newton @jnewtown.parathru for help with photography. Thank YOU for reading this and helping us to protect indigenous lands!