 Please welcome to the stage Terry Tempest-Williams. Good morning. Thank you, Susan West, Montgomery, for this beautiful invitation. And I want to honor your president, Stephanie Meeks. I also want to acknowledge the home ground of the Coastal Miwok and the Olani and the ancestors who are still among us. As well as the living people. I want to acknowledge Kailene Siskes from the powerful landscape of Manchester and the Cloud River. And from my own region of this country, Teresa Pesquale from Acoma, a leader in cultural preservation. And also one of my neighbors, Kirk Huffaker from Preservation, Utah. And I just, did I leave a book there? Yes. You have to know how nervous I am. You are all my heroes. It will get better. I don't know about you, but I read police reports to find out where I am and what really goes on in the shadows. And recently, I read this out of Moab, Utah. An officer was dispatched on a strange lights in the sky call. The officer met with a reporting person who showed the lights to the officer. The officer noted that it looked somewhat like a planet, except it was changing colors, blue, green, red, yellow, et cetera. The officer noted that the light was way out of his jurisdiction and took no further action. So two questions come before us. What is within our jurisdiction and what is not? What do we choose to act on and what do we choose to ignore? What I love about you in this field of historic preservation and protection is that your jurisdiction is this beautiful broken country and that you do take action. Call it the open space of democracy. From Theater Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch, to the Mississippi Delta, to the Grand Canyon, to the Palace of Governors to Berzer's National Monument, this is your jurisdiction. The human heart you know is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be generous? Can we be equitable? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve within our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up ever, trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy? We know that the heart is the house of empathy, whose doors open when we receive the pain of others. This is where bravery lives, where we find the medal to give and receive, to love and be loved, and to stand in the center of uncertainty with strength, not fear, understanding this is all there is. The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power. Our power lives in our love of our homelands. You know this better than anyone. You're giving so much to so many in these difficult times. And if nothing else, I'm just so grateful to be here to say thank you. Thank you for each of you, what you're doing. And it's so easy to forget why we do what we do when there is so much to be done. And I would just say, please remember and take care of your hearts. We are eroding and evolving at once. We have to stay clear in the midst of all this smoke. Literally the world is on fire, California is on fire, and there is a real grief among us. I want to acknowledge this ongoing strike moment and honor and celebrate the resiliency of this community and the communities that we are near. How you protect, restore, and revitalize these places we call home. There is real grief among us and I think we also have to honor that and understand that grief is love and to hold it close. You, more than anyone I know, are creative individuals of collective action who understand at the intersection of landscape and culture, diversity and inclusion, patterns of cooperation emerge. We are eroding, we are evolving. This is what love looks like. When thinking how might we improve the quality of our listening? And there's a woman named Sue Bady, maybe some of you know her, who's the lead biologist in Yosemite National Park. I had the pleasure of meeting her a couple of years ago, and she told me this story that I think about so often. She said that as lead biologist, she makes a point of going out into the park, and one of her favorite places is the Mariposa Grove, the giant sequoias, two to three thousand years old. And there was a moment where she was running through and she literally heard something in her heart and she just kept running. But then she stopped and what she heard in her heart was this, we are suffering, we are dying. Can you hear us? She kept running but she kept hearing this among the big trees. We are suffering. We are dying. Can you hear us? We are suffering. We are dying. Can you hear us? She held that. And then at the next staff meeting, she got her team together and she said, I want a complete biological rendering of the health of the Mariposa Grove. And some of her staff members said, well, we know they're under stress because of drought. And she said, no, no, I think it's deeper than that. Let's check the soil. Let's see what the core trees tell us. And what they found through a year of research was that in fact the trees were suffering, that they were dying and they did hear them. What they found was after two centuries of millions of tourists, the feet, the weight of the people, us, had clamped down their roots to the point where there was no more xylem and phloem. What did they do? They created a proposal that they would remove the pavement, that they would take out the parking lot, that they would dispel with the trolleys and cars, that it would no longer be a focal point for entertainment but a place of reverence and restoration. They gave the proposal to the superintendent who gave it to the regional director and for the past five years this has been a place of breathing, a breathing space for these trees. It is now open and instead of a place of entertainment it is now a place of reverie. And when you walk onto that site with no pavement there is a sign that says can you hear the trees speaking? To me that is an example of restoration and recovery and the quality of our listening. We are eroding, we are evolving. Perhaps this is what the Red Rock Desert of Southern Utah continues to teach me. And I have to tell you that my own growth as a conservationist in Utah has been intrinsically tied to working with the tribes in Utah with Gavin Noyes, who many of you know and to me is one of the most beautiful leaders we have right now who understands what it means to lead from behind. He's a visionary. And we followed the leadership offered by the Dine, the Navajo, the Hopi, the Ute Nations and the Zuni. And we are following them. We've had to confront, I've had to confront my own structural racism not only in the state of Utah and I can tell you personally the biology of the Mormon church which I was raised in. I want to share with you a piece that I wrote when we found out that Donald Trump was going to gut Bears Ears National Monument by 85%. And I hope you will understand that this anger comes from a place of love. I have not shared this but I feel like it's what we do share. What is beauty if not stillness? What is stillness if not sight? What is sight if not an awakening? What is an awakening if not now? Like many, I have compartmentalized my state of mind in order to survive. Like most, I have also compartmentalized my state of Utah. It is a violence hidden that we all share. This is the fallout that has entered our bodies. Nuclear bombs tested in the desert. Boom. These are uranium tailings left on the edges of our towns where children play. Boom. Four games played and nerve gas stored in the west desert. Boom. These are the oil and gas lines, frack lines from vernal to bonanza in the Uinta Basin. Boom. This is Annath and Montezuma Creek. The oil patches on Indian lands. Boom. Gut Bears Ears. Boom. Gut. Staircase, Escalandian, half. Boom. And every other wild place that is easier for me to defend than my own people and species. Boom. The coal and copper mines I watched expand as a child. Boom. The oil refineries that foul the air and blacken our lungs in Salt Lake City. Boom. And the latest scar on the landscape. The tar sands mined in the bookcliffs closed, now hidden, simply by its remoteness. Boom. At the Cisco desert where trains stop to settle the radioactive waste they carry on to landing. Boom. Move the uranium tailings from Moab to Crescent Junction. Then bury it still hot in the alkaline desert. Out of sight, out of mind. Boom. See the traces of human indignities on the sands near Topaz Mountain left by the Japanese internment camp. Boom. President Donald J. Trump will try to eviscerate Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalandi monuments with his pen and poisonous policies. He just did. Boom. He will stand tall with other white men who for generations have exhumed, looted and profited from the graves of the ancient ones. They will tell you Bears Ears belongs to them. Boom. Consider Senator Orrin Hatch's words regarding the Bears Ears Inner Tribal Coalition's support of the Bears Ears National Monument. He said, quote, the Indians, they don't really understand that a lot of the things they currently take for granted on those lands won't be able to do if it's made clearly into a monument or wilderness, unquote. And when he was asked to give examples by a journalist, the senator said, quote, just take my word for it, unquote. Boom. This is a story, a patronizing story, a condescending story. I see politicians and my Mormon people discounting the tribes once again, calling them Lamanites, the rebellious ones against God, dark skinned and cursed. That is their story. Racism is a story. The Book of Mormon is a story. Boom. Environmental racism is the outcome of bad stories, a byproduct of poverty. In Utah, Yellow Cake has dusted the lips of Navajo Uraniums workers for decades who are now sick or dead. Boom. There is no running water in Westwater, Utah, a reservation town adjacent to Blanding, but we are not prejudiced. Boom. If you speak of these oversights, call them cruelties. We as Mormons are seen as having betrayed our roots and our people. These are my people. Boom. This is who I am. Boom. A white woman of privilege, born of the Covenant. I am not on the outside. I am on the inside. Boom. It is time to look in the mirror and reflect on the histories that are mine, that are ours. We are being told a treacherous story that says it is an individual's right, our hallowed state's rights, to destroy what is common to us all, the land beneath our feet, the water we drink, the air that we breathe. Our bodies and the body of the state of Utah are being violated. Boom. Our eyes are closed. Our mouths are sealed. Boom. We refuse to see or say what we know to be true. Utah is a beautiful violence. The climate is changing. We have a right and responsibility to protect each other. Awareness is our prayer. Beauty will prevail. It is time to heal these lands and each other by calling them what they are. Sacred. May wingbeats of ravens cross over us in ceremony. May we recognize our need of a collective blessing by earth. May we ask forgiveness for our wounding of land and spirit. And may our right relationship to life be restored as we work together toward a survival shared. A story is awakening. We are part of something so much larger than ourselves, an interconnected whole that stretches upward to the stars. These are my people. This is my home. Coyote in the desert is howling in the darkness, calling forth the pack, lifting up the moon. We the people have made mistakes. We have made mistakes in our relationship with those who came before us and those that hold their histories and the land that holds their histories. We have made mistakes in how we have managed and misunderstood the world. But I can tell you after a lifetime immersed in our national parks, monuments and public lands, I believe we are slowly learning what it means to offer our reverence and respect to the closest thing we as American citizens have to the holy. We are at a crossroads. We can continue on the path we have been on in this nation that privileges profit over people and land. Or we can unite as citizens with the common cause, the health and wealth of the earth that sustains us. If we cannot commit to this kind of fundamental shift in our relationship to people and place, culture and land, then democracy becomes another myth perpetuated by those in power who care only about themselves. May we not avert our gaze. We can choose not to look away. You are those who do not look away. We can bear witness to what is being destroyed and sanctify these sites in need of protection and restoration by our willingness to stand our ground in the places we call home. This is what community looks like in all its diversity. This is what love looks like in its full power. Thank you. To the trust. For joining Utah, we are at risk. We are learning. Utah is not alone. In the American west it is beyond time to join hands with our native brothers and sisters. Our black and brown brothers and sisters. We are stronger in our diversity. We are at risk. We are at risk. We are at risk. We are at risk. We are at risk. We are at risk. We are at risk. And we are at risk. But there is no wearer in our diversity. We are learning and embracing the fact that ecological issues are economic issues, our social issues and ultimately issues of justice, justice for all. Both human and wild. A few closing thoughts. a Utah the largest county in America. Alongside, alongside Ken Merryboy, first time in Utah's history that San Juan County now has a Navajo majority. I believe this is part of land and culture and power. When we knew that Bears Ears was going to be gutted, I remember asking Willie, what do you do with your anger? And he said, Terry, it can no longer be about anger. It has to be about healing. What does that mean? I would like us to think about that. And when I went to pay homage to Jonah Yellowman, who is a spiritual advisor for Bears Ears, I said, Jonah, what are you thinking? What are you feeling after this 85% reduction? He said, we're here for the long run. We're here for the long term. Bears Ears is our sacred place. We not only want to protect Bears Ears for our people, but all people. We have to go deeper. That's what he said. We have to go deeper. And I would ask us to think about what does that mean? Each of us in our own way with the gifts that are ours. What does it mean to go deeper? How shall we live? We need a common language that binds us together, not that just tears us apart. We need to have the hard conversations between neighbors and families and colleagues and truly improve the quality of our listening. Perhaps Jonah's call to go deeper. Perhaps Willie's call for healing is a call to acknowledge the power that resides in the earth itself, the organic intelligence inherent in deserts, forests, rivers, oceans, and all manner of species beyond our own. We are not the only species that lives and breathe and loves on this planet. We cannot create wild nature. We can only destroy it. And if we are lucky, try to restore what was once there. This is my plea. The eyes of the future are looking back at us, and they are praying that we might see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come, whether it is a historical site, a building, or a wilderness. Wild mercy is in our hands. Please welcome to the stage our Trust Live Responders Gavin Noyes, Tam Badman, and our moderator Barbara Paul. But we all really are excited about that election that just happened, and someone kind of will get to that in a minute. I think Teri, your remarks really express so well what a lot of us are feeling. We've been working on these issues for a long time, and I just earlier gave a short presentation on some of the threats and challenges to protecting public lands in this country, and I always feel like I don't have the good news to share. It's always about what we're up against. And yet, sitting on this panel, there is some good news to share, and I think there's some wonderful examples that are happening in other parts of the world that we could learn from and might try to practice here. So, Tim, in your work as the, as a director of Heritage with the International Union of Conservation for Nature and working with ECMOs, tell us about some of these culture nature journeys that you all have been developing, because I'm sure that we could learn from what you've been doing across the world. Okay, well, thanks for the question. I wanted to also be here to listen to the start, and I guess just to firstly say thanks for the chance to hear the words, and it reinforced in me a few points that underlie the work we've been doing to try to bring culture and nature back together in the World Heritage Convention. The first is the sense that we have the global level huge crises that we need to address. The second that it's above all an ethical framework that we need to think about when we try to bring our concern for place and people together. And that it's something that we have to be really rooted in time about. I'm a geologist by first degree, so from 4.6 billion years ago. And it's got to be something that's about connections and stories. We don't have the language in the words sometimes to talk about what we need as practice, and that's something which has been a big part of the journey. And I guess, lastly, we have to find a way to be optimistic and think we're here, but where are we trying to go. And I guess that's where the nature culture journey has been trying to get to a diagnosis of where we've been missing the opportunities and the chance to really be much more purposeful in getting results. And the start of that journey was in fact a parable, if you like, from the World Heritage Convention where we had a nomination from First Nations in Canada. And it came for the first time to the World Heritage Convention, and IUCN evaluated the trees and the bears as I would put it. And IKAMOS looked at the question of cultural practices, and we couldn't find the way to evaluate together the relationship of people to place and the deeply time rooted relationship of people to place. And that told us that it wasn't just an academic problem of separating nature and culture, it was something which really had negative damaging results. And the good news is after further work that World Heritage Area was listed, the Machua Nake, nearly three million hectares of boreal forest nominated for the first time in an Indigenous People's Lead nomination. So that space is trying to open up. And I think in the work that we're doing, what comes back most often is the connection is always there on the ground. We had a Japanese colleague that said in the course of the meeting, we've just been having with IKAMOS, things are split from the top, but not to the bottom. And I think the more we think about this need for people to connect to place, the more we can see that the relationship that's rooted in Indigenous People's experience of their places is actually a universal thing we have to understand and come to grips with for the future. So Gavin, you and I first met when you were with Round River at that time. And it occurred to me that your focus was mostly on natural resource protection. We kept talking a lot about cultural resource protection. But now with all the time that you spent in working with the Navajo and your leadership at Dina Bacaia, what have you come to learn about the connection between this amazing landscape that we've been so focused on at Barriseers? I've talked about it as a cultural landscape and watch people look at me like, well, this is a wilderness area. Like somehow there's no presence of man in that regard. What has been your experience in working with the Navajo? Stay fair here. Yeah. Thank you, Barbara and I. Good morning, everyone. And I also want to acknowledge Terry and just thank her for her words and invitation to look a little deeper. And I think that your question is a really good one. I am not Native American. I came to this work with a natural resources background and a real desire to see community driven efforts around wildlife land. And I've had the amazing opportunity to get to know my board of directors who's 10 all Native American, mostly spiritual leaders, some politicians, some bull. But grassroots people who are very connected to the elders and the teachings of their tribes, Navajo, Ute, and there's many tribes involved now. But the thing that I've learned is that as somebody who's spent a lot of years doing land conservation, working to protect the earth, looking at all the science that we know, I know almost nothing about these places where we're working. When I look at the wisdom of the people who have inhabited this very landscape, whose cultures are intact, who know all the stories, they know all of the intimate relationships between the non-human persons in the landscape. And those relationships, you know, Willie Grey eyes does embody that idea of healing. And at our very first board meeting in January of 2012, he wrote our mission statement on the spot. And I really had no idea what it meant. He said that we will be healing the land, healing people in the earth. And by that he meant that we're healing all the people who have experienced trauma by being forced off of their land. But that trauma that lives inside of native people, it's in all of us, because we all are related. And if we can't root out these sources of pain and hurt in our world, then we can never heal. And so I have learned to listen a lot better than I think I ever knew. And I similarly to Terry would invite everyone to, even if you have a lot of letters behind your name, look at the ways that Indigenous people relate to the land. And I'll give you just one example, which is when we started working with some botanists and archaeologists at the University of Utah, one of my co-workers, Cynthia Wilson, who's an amazing leader of her people, she also holds a Masters of Nutrition. And she shared some wisdom that when you're growing things in a greenhouse and the sound of water is trickling down the swamp cooler, that sound makes the plants happy and makes them grow healthier. And I remember the botanist said, well, that's probably true because it usually means there's water there. And there was a long awkward pause and Cynthia didn't correct them. But what she was thinking is, no, I just shared with you the sound of water is making these plants happy. And she couldn't prove it, but she's been taught that. And so there's pieces of wisdom like that that I think are going to be able to inform a lot of how we interact with landscapes and how we steward these places through human involvement and not view them as places that are separate from us. That is music to my ears, I have to say. There's a couple themes, Terry, that you mentioned in your remarks that I think are really the themes of this conference. It has to do with resiliency, which was the Trust Life Talk yesterday, Intangible Heritage, which would be the Trust Life topic tomorrow. And the other thing I've been hearing over and over again, even in a way that strikes me as something that I haven't thought of quite this way, which is saying something since I've been in this business for over 40 years, but equitable about what is equitable in terms of everybody's place on the land, everybody's connection to the land. And Gavin, I know you've done a lot and I know that the impression I have with the nature culture journeys is the idea of community driven. You said that some of your early work was around community driven conservation. So what then is the role when you have all these communities that have attachments to these lands that we're trying to protect? We talked in an earlier session about Moe Taylor, which has Native American connections, early Spanish land grants, and then even the uranium miners that live in the grants community. How is there a place for all of these people's points of view or connections to these lands, Terry? I think they should be on this stage, quite frankly. And I'm aware as a white person of my privilege, and I think that's one of the things that bears ears for all of us who've been working together. We have come to see how white this conservation movement has been. And I can't speak for the preservation community, but I think the only way that that equity is going to happen is if they have a place around the table. And we still have a lot of work to do. And yet Gavin, the decision was made to step back. And, Terry, that's exactly the point that you made. Step back and let the coalition of tribes take the lead on bears ears. And I think that was unique in some of the history of the conservation movement in this country. And yet it was long overdue. And I think that's a lot of what you've been learning as well. Well, I think at the global level, what we've seen with the traditional work on protected areas is the recognition that the first paradigm was a deeply unjust paradigm. And the whole concern about justice is what's engendered a complete change to recognize that what a good protected space delivers can't just be some kind of scientific notion of major conservation results. It's got to first be just results for the people associated with the place. So for us, good governance, equitable governance is one of the now basic requirements for a particular area to demonstrate that it's meeting a good enough standard of management without that delivery of something which is just and fair. We can't feel good about any result that comes from that, but actually we're working in a way which is just not rooted in the right way of working, it seems to me. So that's a principle in IUCN's approach for now a long time. And it's still hard to get that lived on the ground in many circumstances. One of the big changes we've made in the last 10 years has been to recognize that there are lots of different ways in which protection and conservation can be governed. The old world where it's governments that are in charge is no longer the business model, but sites that are managed in corporations, sites that are indigenous in community-led, sites that are privately managed and led are all equally valid ways to see conservation taking place on the ground. And what are some of those best practices or strategies for how to do that and balance the academic point of view that we've sort of left, led lead in the past with those traditional points of view, traditional learning, traditional knowledge. Gavin, you talked about what that's meant to you and the way you now view this place. Yeah, and I think one of the things that our organization tries very hard to do is, and one of the messages I think that Terri and Tim just are kind of alluding to is when we're talking about landscapes on this continent, there are no people that know them better than our indigenous people. Yet, we're here in a conference like this, the four of us are on stage and we don't have that voice. We're not asking the questions of the right people. And until we have the ability to do that, until we can invite that conversation and open up these different ways of knowing our landscapes, I don't think that we're going to have a full picture. And a lot of great work is being done in fields of conservation biology and archaeology. I think everyone is getting a little bit better at bringing ethnographic tools into their fields. But we're not shy about telling people that if you're a scientist out doing ecological research and there's native people in the vicinity, you absolutely need to be talking to them if you want to call yourself a good scientist. And that goes for every field. If we're planning, if we're, you know, and I think we saw last week in the election, we had the first Native American congresswoman ever elected to Congress. And I think looking around this room at each other, if we are not all getting behind the leaders that are going to help us address the problems at the scale we need them addressed, we're doing things the wrong way. And I would argue that those leaders are our Indigenous leaders. Yes, please. And Barbara, for the last two years I've had the opportunity to be at the Harvard Divinity School. And I cannot tell you how much it has changed me. And it's not the Divinity School per se, it's not the professors, although it's very stimulating, it's the students. And it's the students of color. It's African American, it's Native, it's across the world who are saying, your we has oppressed our we and humanity is an abstraction. And you know, how do we have these hard conversations without relationships? And you know, how do we then extend that with this moment that we're in with climate change? And so I think the challenge we're finding at the Divinity School being led by the students of color is can we acknowledge our differences? Can we listen more deeply? And can that then lead to a we that is real based on relationships so that we can forge not only a future but this moment when the world is burning, when the seas are rising as a human family with regard to other species. And then I think it's beyond a political issue. It's beyond even an ecological issue and it becomes a spiritual issue. And I think that's where I feel both the challenge and the grace is. And it's really difficult and it's very uncomfortable. And when you add on top of that, our grief that we each of us are feeling for what we know we are losing. And it goes beyond just having positive things to talk about, but to really stay with the trouble to stay with the grief so that we can move forward into that place of joy. And then out of that joy comes true resolve and true transformation. And that's really what I'm looking at. I think about the Japanese Cohen that it's a haiku really that says insects on a bow floating down river still singing. That's lovely. Is there anything we can learn from what's been going on in Europe and other parts of the world that we are not practicing here, Tim? Well, I guess what's running through my head is just around the ability to bring the conversation we're having here to ground, to ground level, and to really try to focus on what justly managed, effectively performing landscapes and seascapes look like. It's hard to find the right words increasingly to look at what what global practice could advise. And I guess part of what I think is some of the issue is we need to not see the global system as some place that's going to define standards that cascade down to the bottom, but rather we start locally and we bring good practice up. But I think one I guess sort of feeling from me is that we can bring this conversation to ground level by bringing practice to the landscape. And I think as practitioners and I guess we're a constituency of practitioners, I'm a lonely geologist and here to talk about the connections that the nature conservation sector should be making. But I think for all of us as practitioners it's about a vocation to see ourselves as being at the service of the places and the people that we believe in. I think in our climate change you can you can measure around the world the loss of culture and the loss of biodiversity and the loss of irreplaceable, irreplaceable natural monuments only ever happens at ground level and it can only ever be solved at ground level. So what we need is a way to convert quickly and at scale these type of ideas to something that's really going to make a difference, really that's going to transform and that's always going to be about coming back to the to the land. And I think as somebody that came to IUCN from just just working in the place I grew up putting forward a World Heritage Area it's about putting power justly back in ground level and connecting things in a way which people don't separate at ground level. You know the people we serve I think Stephanie said this in the in the panel we run two days ago the people we serve don't don't see the difference you know the people that we serve don't want to divide the fish from the water. So I think that's how we should try to work and we should all be interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and humbly at the service of places and people. And I think the listening is such an important skill that we we all could benefit from from learning how to do better. I know one of the most powerful visits I ever had to Bearers years was when the company of five members of New Mexico Pueblos and and then one of the archaeologists from Blanding and just the joy in his face listening to these people talk about these places because they knew them and they recognize and they recognize themselves and their stories and their migration stories in these places and it just it told the science and pushed it to the background and it just really became about people in place and it's you said in your remarks Willie's recommendation or understanding this is a this is a time for healing a place for healing and no better place for that to happen than on the ground on these landscapes. So what do you think's going to happen Gavin now that the politics has changed in San Juan County? Talk about practical. Well I think I think it's really exciting and I we we we have a saying at Utah that we're out to save the world 1.3 million acres at a time. They want two million. It starts you know I think it's possible through ideas and sharing and I really think that that we've got to take special places ecologically intact spiritually rich places where where people are fully connected to the land and they're out you know listening listening to the Mariposa groves telling them what they need and and helping these landscapes thrive so that we can thrive. That is the core essence of Bears Ears and we've seen it in a few places around the earth where indigenous people have fully reclaimed their culture and brought landscapes alive. We want to see that at Bears Ears and we want to see we want to see that kind of connection happen in each of our watersheds in all of our communities around the world because I think I think Tim is exactly right. The only true stewards of a place are local people and we can't just look at taking care of the environment or each other. We have to do this all together and so I think I think Bears Ears our new commissioners are going to be showing the world what it looks like to heal a community in a position that they've never held before and I don't know if that community will be willing to come to the table or when they'll be willing to come to the table but I think if if we don't we can't recognize the issues and we can't all heal together and so that that's what I'm most excited about is the the collaborative element and the realization that we're all out to take care of each other and I am confident that Willie and Kenneth will be a model for that. I think so too. So what would you recommend and I think it's probably true of a lot of people in our audience today you know half the population lives in cities I think you've said that Tim how and two of you were in Salt Lake how do we make the connection for people who live in cities to feel that connection to these places and engage them in the work that you were just talking about Kevin how do you make it meaningful and real to them I think that we need to stop viewing nature as other and we can't you know I don't even like the phrase get outside I think that we need to recognize when we turn on our tap water and we fill up our glass and we know that we're connected to the plants the trees the snowpack and we think about that as we as we take that gift I think the fresh breeze coming through our communities the food that we eat especially in the food is how we can really bring the outside world in and and pay attention to how we're treating our soils and our waters I think all of that contributes to our own personal health and the health of the landscapes that we depend on Tim I guess beyond that I mean I think the principles we've been talking about about listening and about empowering communities to act hold hold good in urban places just like they do in indigenous peoples territories and places where they hold their rights so I think part of the practice as well is about getting really engaged with the communities that we're serving and I think it's that needs to be a combination of the connections that Gavin's talking about and the quality of the quality of life that the cities that we have provide you know I I guess food is a good there's growing evidence that food talking about food is a good kind of anchor point for that it's one it's one way to join up you know many many different issues so that may be one but I think you know again I don't I don't presume to arrive here and provide the detail but I think it's you know the idea that we need to be concerned about the environments where more than half the people of the planet live and are going to be more and more living and the need for an urbanized population to understand that there's a whole planet out there that they're they're drawing on are going to hold more and more to be they hold more and more to be the case so we're talking about food gotta ask the question gotta tell us about that Pueblo potato yeah so one of the most I think beautiful stories and I I mentioned Cynthia Wilson but she's our traditional food program director and and it's this beautiful intersection of western scientists who discovered potato and native people who always have eaten this potato that's endemic to the Bears Ears landscape and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument landscape the interesting thing is that that indigenous people today go out and harvest it in the wild but but there's there's the Pueblo people have cultivated it for millennia and it was originally found by the archaeologists as potato starch on a grinding stone and that starch was 11 000 years old so this is this is a food product that's pretty much been lost from native farms and the potatoes it's only this big but but it it's the size of a blueberry but 400 of them grow on a single plant and it's incredibly complex to to grow and to cultivate in a garden from a flower but Pueblo people knew how to do it and have have kind of found that that sophisticated knowledge again and we've got these researchers at the University of Utah that have committed to doing this in the right way and making sure that that potato is welcomed back to the indigenous communities first and is allowed to bring that nutrition back home bring bring that these delicious amazing potatoes back to everyone's plates and so it's a it's kind of a beautiful story of what I think will be a growing growing narrative about how important wild and endemic foods of a place are the the federal agencies had no idea this existed you know a couple years ago and now it's it's it's coming back home and it's coming back to farms and native farmers are so excited there's none that have hit the fields yet but they're so excited to bring it back and ceremonially welcome it back into their communities and get the opportunity to serve it to their family members and beyond so it's coming soon to a table near you the Pueblo potato look forward to it but I do think that's such an a wonderful important example of how much there is to learn on these landscapes and that there is there is you look at you look at a picture of all that's a lovely scenic view without fully understanding what's within it what's below around and how people lived in even how that changed over the course of time and there's so much we don't know that we don't know and so if we lose these landscapes because of some poor decision-making around land juice certainly happening in this in this country we'll lose all those opportunities but terry you you kind of entered your remarks by saying we're out of crossroads and do not look away so what last kind of words of encouragement can you provide to us who are still struggling as you know um and uh in a government where there are so many competing uses for these lands to find a way to elevate the importance of their natural and their cultural values stories connections thank you so much for bringing us here and to be here with all of you who are really doing the work on the ground you know I think one of the great stories for me having spent the last five years looking at our national parks and public lands was really where you're rooted in one of your projects which is the Elkhorn Ranch in Theodore Roosevelt National Park and I kept thinking why do I feel so patriotic here you know but we went to Elkhorn Ranch and when you know the story rooted there that this was Theodore Roosevelt he had just lost his wife his mother on the same day we know that story he put an X in his journal he went west to the badlands in North Dakota got on a horse went to that ranch built a place to live and he stayed there really to reckon with his grief and in the reckoning of that grief by that river you know in those badlands was so much space even the wind the cottonwood trees blowing you know holding him in that that as in a in a place of grief and solace he said that's where he developed the character to become president of the United States who we know has such a powerful legacy in terms of protecting lands and historical sites it's under siege by the oil and gas industry and the trust is working on that if we lose that solitude we lose part of ourselves as the best that we are as Americans and so I feel like we can't underestimate the emotional register that these lands hold for us we can't underestimate the ecological import that they hold for us and that the full range from the wild to the cultural to the agricultural it is this mosaic and each of us holds a piece and and I think it's in that we we can not only find beauty in a broken world but create beauty in the world that we find together my goodness well I can't think of a better way to end this session than with those very powerful words so thank you all for being here and for those of you who are following this track there's more sessions this afternoon but I hope you will participate in and another wonderful trust live tomorrow around intangible heritage so thank you thank you so much and thank you