Fall 2021 (19th Issue)

MIDDLEBURY

GEOGRAPHIC

19TH EDITION • FALL 2021

MIDDLEBURY

GEOGRAPHIC 19TH EDITION • FALL 2021

FEATURES

3 | Editorial Board 4-5 | Contributors 6-7 | Editor's Note

Grand Themes

10-15 | Admitting Reality by Libby Scaperotta '23.5 16-21 | Beyond Illusions by Brett Gilman '24.5 22-33 | Grand Landscapes by Jiffy Lesica '25

Intimate Scenes

36-39 | The Ends of the Earth by Vaughan Supple '23.5 40-47 | Lil BOSS by JT Titmus '23 48-57 | Cultural Idenity by Jiffy Lesica '25

Photo by Henry Terry

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Editorial Board Editors-In-Chief Drew An-Pham '22.5 Haley Hutchinson '23.5 Lead Photo Editor Malick Thiam '24 Lead Designer Jake Gilbert '24 Lead Copy Editor Caitlin Baxter '24

Designers Alnaw Elnaw '24 Olivia Kilborn '24 Libby Scaperotta '23.5 Sarah Rifkin '24

On The Cover:

Simtokha Dzong Semtokha, Bhutan

By Jiffy Lesica '25 3

Copy Editors Maggie Bryan '25 Charles Crounse '24 Ethan DeMaio '24 Brett Gilman '24.5 Antonia Gomez '25 Helena Gu '25 SK Hurlock '24 Sylvie Lyu '24 Else Nye '25 Bea Parr '25

Photo Editors Siri Ahern '24 Andrew Grossman '24 Megan Paluska '25 Jiffy Lesica '25 Patricia Hughes '24 Isabel Perez Martin '25 Charlie Deichman-Caswell '24

On The Back:

The Dolomites Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy

By Jiffy Lesica '25

Br et t

Contributors a lm i G

n '24.5 Brett loves roaming backroads and meadows in search of native wildflowers and then designing native plant dreamscapes inspired by the wild. Rooted in a deep connection with the land, he's been an organic farmer for ten years and became an Accredited Organic Land Care Professional this past summer.

Vaughan

Lib b 4

y

'23.5 ple up

Vaughan Supple is a Junior Feb at Middlebury. His piece "Ends of the Earth" was written about his trek across Spain during his first semester. As an anthropology major, travel and writing are two ways Vaughan can put his studies into practice. Outside of the classroom, he enjoys writing, recording, and producing music. This often overlaps with his research in ethnomusicology, a study of music within culture, society, and geographical place.

S

aperotta '23. c S 5

CONTRIBUTORS

Libby is an Environmental Policy major from Fayston, Vermont. She enjoys the daily crossword, live music, and a good sunset.

She can often be found doing something outside with her dog or on long road trips with friends.

Jif f

y

L

ca '25 i s e Jiffy Lesica is a 20-year-old photographer from Wilton, Connecticut with an interest in scenes of civic engagement, cultural identity, and environmental sustainability/climate change. While taking two years off before college, he developed an interest in photography as a medium to tell 'global stories'. In photographing with this intention, he hopes to frame a connection between people and their environment, chronicling and sharing scenes of tomorrow’s history.

JT Ti

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23 s'

JT was born in Utah and raised in SoCal and Idaho, a state whose vast wilderness cultivated a love for being one with the land. They love spending time outside hiking, biking, skiing, and just breathing in the beauty of life. Music is a must-have, both making it as well as listening to it live or with friends. Majoring in Neuroscience and Conservation Psychology while also learning Chinese and planning on studying abroad, JT has big plans for exploring both of the worlds that we call home, the Earth and the Mind.

tm u

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EDITOR'S NOTE ­

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EDITORS' NOTE

I’m a city boy at heart. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, all I knew before coming to college were the echoes of cars wrestling on Interstate-10, overheard conversations in busy Chinatown restaurants, and the sounds of footsteps tapping across concrete pavement. Once I arrived at Middlebury, views of the Adirondacks from my dorm room and news of expeditions across the state filled my adventurous self with curiosities about this place. Fast forward to Spring 2020, the onset of the pandemic. Unsure of what was to come, the next year would be spent pent up in my Coffrin single on Zoom, grabbing to-go meals in Atwater alone, and missing the social scene of Midd students across campus.

During this year of discomfort and unrest, I found solace in the places around Middlebury, places I came to fully embrace as my comfort zones. From small scale adventures—runs on sections of the Trail Around Middlebury (TAM)—to big picture moments—taking selfies at the top of Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump—this past year for me has been centered around expedition.

Caught in the wave of academics, extracurriculars, and social lives, we so often turn a blind eye to the hidden gems that make the places we occupy special to us. Here at Middlebury Geographic, we want to pay homage to these discoveries students found over these past few years.

The 19th edition of Middlebury Geographic features stories inspired by the art of expedition. Amidst a turbulent year, our contributors and editors have used their critical perspectives, sense of place, and ethics of adventure to reflect on grand themes and bring life to the intimate scenes. Their words and photographs serve as a reminder to never stop exploring™ (please don’t sue us, The North Face) and challenge us to continue searching for the places that may soon be special to us.

While the future remains uncertain, our mission here at Middlebury Geographic has remained constant: to be a platform for global storytelling, art, and photography. In the pages to come, we share snapshots of our experiences, visions, and encounters that bring light to who we are as Middlebury students, but most importantly, citizens of the world grounded in a love for expedition.

We hope this issue invites you to feel and embrace this sentiment.

Words by Drew An-Pham ‘22.5 | Editor-in-Chief Photos by Charlie Deichman-Caswell ‘24 | Photo Editor

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Grand Themes

8Photo by Libby Scaperotta

Admitting Reality

By Libby Scaperotta '23.5 pg. 10

Beyond Illusions

By Brett Gilman '24.5 pg. 16

Grand Landscapes

By Jiffy Lesica '25 pg. 22

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ADMITTING REALITY by LIBBY SCAPEROTTA

Admitting Reality Words & Photos by Libby Scaperotta '23.5

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"So Lib, how is living in paradise?"

Asked my friends, my family, and even distant Facebook friends of my mom.

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ranted, the photos were pretty insane. But like most forms of social media travel stories, they showed merely a highlight reel.

Travel stories tend to display a seamless transition from home to foreign destination, with unwavering strength from the explorer as they capture the essence of their site. Yet, my expedition last semester was not one of ease or consistent Instagram moments, although it might have seemed like it.

At my departure gate in the Bozeman airport, I sat in the farthest corner I could find. It was completely white outside; a snowstorm that caused numerous near-accidents on my ride to the airport and a short power outage in line at security. I set up my rag-tag pile of winter jackets and bags away from everyone and peeled my two masks down to take quick bites of a stale bagel. The one hour to departure felt like an eternity.

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ADMITTING REALITY by LIBBY SCAPEROTTA

I was scared.

I was anxious about landing in a totally foreign place, about how I would get from the airport to my apartment, about how I would go grocery shopping without a car and about nearly every other step involved with setting up a new life.

It was a total what am I doing moment. I sat there, bagel in hand, and thought, “Who do I think I am?” I had never really spent any time in the ocean, let alone seen coral in real life. But here I was, hours away from starting work as a coral restoration intern in Hawai‘i.

There was reason to be overwhelmed. The timing of it all was very last minute. Upon leaving school after the fall Covid semester with the overwhelming desire to not do that again, I manically researched other options. I sent out resumés and cover letters to nearly every place with an email address. Dude ranches in Wyoming, coral gardens in French Polynesia, and farms in New Zealand; you name it and they received an email from me.

When I found an internship that specialized in coral restoration in Maunalua Bay on O‘ahu, I crossed my fingers that they might accept me.

And, I got the internship.

Afterwards, I spent the next few evenings pacing around my roommate’s living room in Boulder, scrambling to book flights, find housing, and wrap up all the loose ends involved with sending myself halfway across the world for the next four months.

I found an apartment one week before arriving on the island. I picked myself – a girl from a landlocked state – up and shipped myself off to a teeny island in the middle of the Pacific. My mom sent my “just-incase” bag to meet me there: a carry-on of bikinis and flip-flops I had thrown together a few weeks earlier for the off-chance that I would drop everything and move to Hawai‘i. I stuck my skis in a friend’s car headed back east, and stepped on a flight to Honolulu.

From an outside perspective, it probably did look like I was living in paradise. I mean, it was Hawai‘i. I was right next to the ocean, surfing every day, and hiking insane treks at every opportunity. If I wanted to, I could pretend that I was some sort of fearless, crazy adventurer and write this piece on my exploration of the beautiful island. However, those types of stories fail to acknowledge the reality of a lot of travel.

My time on island wasn’t always spent snorkelling above live reefs, encountering wildlife I’d only ever seen on Animal Planet, or posing in a bathing suit on some beach. Oftentimes, my “travel story” was far from that.

It was breaking down crying on the phone with my mom at five in the morning on the way to work when my moped broke down for the third day in a row. It was working thirty-five hour weeks to support myself, in addition to an internship, which led to its own fair share of breakdowns. It was sometimes the loneliness and adjustment of moving somewhere by yourself. And, it was wondering if I made the wrong decision to leave all my friends behind at school, disrupting my college experience even more than Covid already had.

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ADMITTING REALITY by LIBBY SCAPEROTTA

Travel isn’t always pretty pictures or moments of awe. Often, travel is uncomfortable and intimidating. But, the personal growth that comes out of these types of experiences, the ones where you’re scared shitless, is truly unmatched. I learned a bit about how I wish to spend the rest of my life: sharing joy with others and having a career that never really feels like “work.” Saying “yes” and finding beauty in everything around me. I learned that anxiety and fear do not have to hinder me. Difficulties push us to overcome what is holding us back; these obstacles prove to be fuel for the journey of growing up and learning to become who we are.

So yes, my last semester did include jaw dropping scenery and camping adventures that before I had only dreamt of. And yet, none of those highs would have been possible without the lows.

And, I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

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BEYOND ILLUSIONS REIMAGINING THE LAWN WORDS AND PHOTOS BY BRETT GILMAN '25

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BEYOND ILLUSIONS by BRETT GILMAN

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am constantly surprised and enthralled by nature’s unending ability to amaze, particularly in the realm of native plants and pollinators. I first learned of the Ecotype Project, a stewardship and research initiative dedicated to the safeguarding of local native wildflower seed, in my senior year of high school. Dedicated to pursuing my passion and curious about how I could make my own impact, I decided to apply for an internship. My task was to meet and interview many of the key stakeholders (farmers, nurserymen, botanists, non-profit organizations) involved in the initiative to learn how they do what they do. This allowed us to make protocols for each stakeholder archetype, and the replication of these models is the goal of the Ecotype Project as part of a budding native plant movement in the Northeast.

Each week, scientists from the Connecticut Agricultural Station visit the home-base farm of the Ecotype Project. At this farm, rows of wildflowers are grown to create living seed banks, and these scientists perform pollinator surveys on these plots each week as they bloom throughout the year. While shadowing this process, I observed luminescent pink blooms of Swamp Milkweed. As waves of bumblebees and butterflies buzzed about, I watched a minuscule one-millimeter hoverfly circle the bloom, bouncing from leaf to leaf, but never going for nectar. This was extraordinary.

A few days later, I was sitting on my front step watching the new blooms of Black-Eyed Susans in my front yard when a hoverfly appeared. It circled the bloom, bouncing between the leaves of abutting plants. I watched it, followed it, and photographed it. All of a sudden, a female hoverfly landed on the bloom. The two became entangled, and they zoomed off to a nearby shrub leaf. At that moment, I realized I had just observed the behavior that the scientist had explained to me back at the Swamp Milkweed. Male hoverflies emerge earlier than the females, and they employ a mating strategy called patrolling that involves circling new blooms and waiting for females. I was absolutely fascinated and thrilled that this extraordinary event had taken place right outside my door, all because I had planted the right plant in 18

BEYOND ILLUSIONS by BRETT GILMAN

the right place, and had opted not for ornamental and sterile traditional plants, but instead for native plants fit for these majestic wild pollinators.

It strikes me that strangely, the outdoor spaces that we so often inhabit do not emote this same sense of magic. The ecological wasteland commonly known as the lawn is devoid of all life that is not human.

A tyrannical monoculture of fescues reigns over a silent terrain of shallow nothingness: no fluttering, no buzzing, no wonder. It is a place of quick feet, where frenzied brains zoom about, their masters more closely connected to a screen than the Earth below. Yet, they are outside as they walk on blades of grass. But turf is deceptive like that. Although green in color, it is a false idol, an extension of the erected, an element of materiality more so than of carbon. Born of the Anthropocene, the lawn has no place in a truly green future.

Lawns are pervasive forces of degradation. They cling to the land like ticks, feeding drunkenly on liberally-applied synthetic inorganic pesticides and fertilizers. More than 40 million acres of U.S. land are clothed in some form of lawn, an area nearing in size to the entirety of New England.

This magnitude makes lawns the single most irrigated crop in America- one that is in so many ways entirely useless. Lawns serve to divorce what few habitat patches that remain from each other and in doing so, divorce humans from the natural systems that sustain us. By weaving native plants back into the matrix of suburbia, we can foster a landscape that facilitates the dispersal of wild bees and soften a mindset of resistance to the wild. All land, not just farms, preserves, and parks, is integral to the survival of wild native bees. Given the fact that low-resistance landscapes encourage greater dispersal of wild species between fragmented lands, ignoring the lawn as a site of regeneration is no longer an option. The idea of a lawn must cease to be a concept that is culturally upheld and reinforced, and instead must be culturally stigmatized. Our human-made landscapes must work to regenerate and promote the beautiful complexity of life’s systems of fertility. Land is meant to thrive.

However, getting rid of the lawn is no easy task. It’s one that requires carefully dismantling the intricacies of a widely-adored lawn culture. It is not enough to randomly scatter native wildflower seeds and hope that these divisions will reform. We must sow a worldview where land is viewed no longer as a commodity but is instead respected and protected as a shared space of community. In the grand scheme of the climate crisis, “[…] protecting and valuing the earth’s ingenious systems of reproducing life and fertility of all of its inhabitants, may lie at the center of the shift in worldview that must take place if we are to move beyond extractivism.” In order to safeguard the systems of the wild, we must restore a sense of community grounded in a connection to the land and work to renew a perspective that sees humanity as part of the interconnected web of all things, tasked with the duty of regeneration.

A hover fly on a black-eyed susan 19

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BEYOND ILLUSIONS by BRETT GILMAN

And yet I find myself asking, how do we transform the world that we have now with the world that is needed?

In the context of a crisis with a deadline, this question needs to be answered, and in one way or another, it will have an answer.

It is time for a new garden aesthetic, a new social contract with the land, one that values the ecological systems that sustain us and bring us in closer dialogue with the land and each other. By matching plant to place, we can foster a unique spirit of place that connects people to each other through the land and builds community around native plants. I envision landscapes featuring intentional and highly-designed patterns of native plants where engaging juxtapositions of these flowers’ structural forms are valued for their beauty in all seasons. The white bells of Foxglove Beardtongue billow like sails floating on an early July breeze, these columns paired so nicely with the vibrant orange umbels of butterfly weed. With the fall comes a new palette of rich golden oranges and browns, where structure takes the stage in a performance of light and movement: the seedpods of that butterfly weed now a warm brown with a tint of blue, decorated with a shower of the delicate wispy blades of wavy hair grass. Seeds will be cherished as public goods rather than exchanged in the extractive tradition of commodification, and the process of pollination will be beautiful in its own

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right. I seek the creation of landscapes that encourage a more intimate dialogue with the land, where curiosity and imagination are renewed in commonplace and electrifying explorations of the wild and it's magic. In this movement to reconnect our fragmented landscapes and to fortify our green corridors, we must make apparent the cultural values that invisibly wove a norm of ecological and social rift into the tapestry of life. Let’s reimagine the ecology of our landscapes and renew a sense of hope and possibility.

At night upon my pillow, I sense sleep on the horizon as a familiar friend reaching out his hand. Peacefully, I drift away into a world of adventure, of quiet serenity in a landscape of native plants. I enter a land anew, where plumes of fantastical blooms dance in the wind, hearty seed heads are illuminated and adorned with crowns of early evening gold, bumble bees and birds enjoy a well-endowed landscape, and where hoverflies flit from bloom to bloom. These secrets of a hidden world are known only to those who humble themselves before the most awesome magic of the Earth. I see a landscape of acceptance, connection, humble and virtuous ignorance, emancipated sensibilities, and expanded imagination.

I dream of rolling back the lawn and rewilding the landscape, but it is no fantasy.

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Rolling slopes of the north (Monacobreen, Spitsbergen, Svalbard 2019) 22

GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

GRAND LANDSCAPES A PHOTO SERIES BY JIFFY LESICA '25

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Lunchtime views from Cinque Torri (Dolomites, Italy 2021) 24

GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

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Numb extremities and wind-burned nose, this sunrise over the Ampezzo Dolomites made up for my regrettable decision to take a morning stroll in flip-flops (Dolomites, Italy 2021)

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GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

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Both a historical battlefield and natural monument, Cinque Torri stands as a stark contrast between the pervasive grace of nature and humans’ capacity for brutality. These hills have seen our darkest hours, but should we let that define them? (Dolomites, Italy 2021)

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GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

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The green hills of Passo Giau - as seen from Mount Averau - offer a soft interlude between the jagged peaks of the Ampezzo Dolomites (Dolomites, Italy 2021)

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GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

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The distant face of Monte Civetta fades into a purple sky (Dolomites, Italy 2021) 32

GRAND LANDSCAPES by JIFFY LESICA

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Intimate Scenes

The Ends of the Earth

By Vaughan Supple '23.5 pg. 36

Lil BOSS

By JT Titmus '23 pg. 40

Cultural Identity

By Jiffy Lesica '25 pg. 48

34Photo by Charlie Deichman-Caswell

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The Ends of the Earth Words & Photos by Vaughan Supple '23.5

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THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by VAUGHAN SUPPLE

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n old Welsh woman with fragile eyes told me you’ve gotta find a seashell on the first day of the trek. “Hide it deep inside your pocket,” she said, “somewhere it won’t fall out.” It represents all the weighty thoughts and feelings that, by the end of the trail, you hope will dissipate into invisible ash.

This was a custom of the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage through the north of Spain that we embarked on in autumn of 2019. My travel partner and I began one September morning in a modest Spanish villa, rising at dawn and hiking up steep green mountains adorned with hoards of sheep. The journey took us across the north country, through dozens of towns and cities on our path to the shore. With a few threadbare clothes, bags on our backs, and trusty boots on our feet, we walked five hundred miles along grassy meadows, lonely highways and scorched forest footpaths. We passed through castle ruins, hollow churches, lively courtyards and rainy brick bridges.

"A million particles of salt flew through the air" Hiking the Camino each day, you start to get into a rhythm: rise early and begin the route, stop for a quick lunch before resuming the walk, settle down in a nearby town around dusk and then chef up dinner before retiring for the night. This particular day, the last day of the expedition, was no exception to that rule, and yet there loomed an entirely foreign atmosphere by the evening. We wandered like sleepwalkers, silently contemplating the remaining steps on our footpath, which dwindled with each passing second. Our daily routine had become rhythmic, almost musical; we’d been dancing to the same tune for the past two months. In a feeble attempt to keep the music going, we shuffled more slowly than usual toward our final stop. Eventually, though, the end of the trail came into view. Up ahead, we saw a lighthouse perched upon the edge of rock cliffs, overlooking the vast Atlantic. I climbed out past the barrier and found a cranny in the rocks where I could sit alone.

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THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by VAUGHAN SUPPLE

"It represents all the weighty thoughts and feelings that, by the end of the trail, you hope will dissipate into invisible ash."

Caterwauling over sheer rugged rock, the wind was an incessant scream sent from Earth to deter tiny humans from scaling her shores. But in their decided ferocity, the howling gales became a meditative constant. I became drowned out in time, like the cyclical waves one hundred feet below. I clutched my palms against the stone and gazed out, my squinting eyes watering at the grandeur before me. Out past the cliffs lay an ocean of endless magnitude, restless and uniform all the same. At the horizon, the sea kissed the underbelly of the setting sun, so hot and piercing in its fury that the entire sky was ablaze with color. A million particles of salt flew through the air and a million more inhabited the teeming whitecaps below. In the core of my being, I began to feel the combination of awe and fear that the religious call God. I sat and watched the sun’s red light fade over the final day of the expedition. What I felt inside was at times contradictory: a bittersweet mélange of triumph, melancholy and nostalgia. All of this endured as I listened to the ocean crash against the rocks and all that remained was a sense of fulfillment. We had walked until there was nowhere left to walk and now we’d reached the ends of the Earth, a quaint coastal town called Finisterre: finis meaning “end” and terre meaning “Earth.”

The sun had dipped down below the horizon, and after an hour or so, the sky was dark and lonesome.

Time had no apparent speed and everything moved in

cycles: the waves, the wind and the rotating beam of dim luster cast out by the lighthouse above. Its light traced its way across the edges of the shore, illuminating the darkened cliffs, then shooting out over the sea into nothingness.

the seashell I had scouted on day one. Despite its size, it now held a great weight in my palm. I nestled it on the edge of the rock face and I left it there with everything else that had followed me to this place. I know the wind continued screaming into the night, but in my memory, everything is silent.

I recalled the old Welsh woman with fragile eyes and reaching into the depths of my backpack, I pulled out

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Lil BOSS Words & Photos by JT Titmus '23

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LIL BOSS by JT TITMUS

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he 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

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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.

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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.

“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.”

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:

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.

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LIL BOSS by JT TITMUS

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:

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.

“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.”

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:

This sacred land holds great importance to not only the cultural preservation of a people whose lands have been

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“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.”

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:

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

“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.”

LIL BOSS by JT TITMUS

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

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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

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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

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LIL BOSS by JT TITMUS

How can you help?

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

Acknowledgments Thank you to the indigenous leaders who made this possible!

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

Adesbah Foguth

Elder Kathy Sanchez

Beata Tsosie-Pena

Dr. Gregory Cajete

Dr. Kelsey Dayle John

Angelo Baca

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).”

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!

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Cultural Identity Words & Photos by Jiffy Lesica '25

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CULTURAL IDENTITY by JIFFY LESICA

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The Old Man and the Sea, Venice, 2021

Set up on Venice’s Grand Canal, the Rialto fish market is where restaurateurs, chefs, and nonnas duke it out for the best deals on the daily catch. The early morning rush to bargain with Pescheria vendors is where meals are made, or hearts are broken.

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CULTURAL IDENTITY by JIFFY LESICA

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The Spins Pt. 1

Trongsa, Bhutan 2020 This dizzying display of colors is not just an art, but an exercise in devotion. In dressing up as Bodhisattvas – enlightened beings who have delayed their entrance to paradise to assist others on the path to enlightenment – these Bhutanese monks believe they can return to the enlightenment within them, and approach awakening themselves.

Lake Dunmore

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CULTURAL IDENTITY by JIFFY LESICA

Mead Chapel

Dinner Time

Panauti, Nepal 2020 Whether through the warm aromas of toasted spice, the soothing sizzle of frying oil, or the rolling boil of Chiya, it was in the time spent in this kitchen that I felt most secure.

Alongside my homestay mother, I realized home is more than just the ground or walls or roof around you, but the shared experiences you work to create with those around you.

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Boudha Stupa

Kathmandu, Nepal 2020 Originally constructed sometime after 600 AD, the Boudha Stupa stands as one of the largest Buddhist shrines in the world at 118 ft in height. It is believed that whoever prostrates while at or circumambulates the stupa with a pure heart creates good karma, and in turn will fulfill all wishes they make before the shrine.

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CULTURAL IDENTITY by JIFFY LESICA

Starched

Ravenna, Italy 2021 In gazing at the masterful movements of these ‘macaroni maestros’, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my voracious appetite. For hours on end, the two sisters behind the counter cranked out every imaginable shape of starchy goodness for the public to enjoy. And yes, I know Italy’s identity is not exclusively gastronomical, but let’s just say you better go there with an empty stomach.

Snow Bowl

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CULTURAL IDENTITY by JIFFY LESICA

No Name, El Mojón, Nicaragua 2017

Sliding around the muddied bed of a 4x4, I smiled at the

giddy screams of my village-given nickname, Pollo Loco, coming from the schoolyard; I knew that my year-long separation from El Mojón would soon come to an end.

This is one of the faces of that community; one that I so long to return to, but know that I cannot.

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58Photo by Charlie Deichman-Caswell

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