Behind the Scenery

[Flute Music]

ALICIA: That was Ed Kabotie playing the flute here on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. My name is Alicia and I’m a ranger here at Grand Canyon National Park. In early September 2024, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ed and talk about his work as an artist, musician, and educator. We sat on a picnic table outside of the cabin where he stayed, surrounded by late-season wildflowers and towering ponderosa pines. In this episode, you'll hear some occasional noise from the wind. If you listen closely, you might also hear birds chirping and the sound of pinecones dropping from the ponderosas around us. Thanks for joining us today.

ALICIA: Really grateful that you came out to the park today, so thank you so much for being here.

ED: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so grateful. Yeah. Love this place. Super beautiful today. Love to hear the pinecones dropping all over the place.

ALICIA: Yeah. So, Ed you're a multifaceted creative, right, a multi-talented artist. You're a musician, an educator, and I know you have a family history in art, too. So can you tell us a little bit about your background as an artist and how it connects with your work today.

ED: Wow, that's a big question. When I, when I hear the reference to family, I think back to my grandfather, you know? So my great grandfather, Lolomayaoma was arrested in 1906 for refusing to send my grandfather to school. He was six years old at the time. This was a, you know, boarding school in Pennsylvania. So I mean, 1000 miles away, kill the Indian, save the man. Of course he resisted, you know, and he was put in prison for his resistance. My grandfather actually ran away from school till he was 15 and then he was sent to Santa Fe Indian School, which is the same boarding school I graduated from, as well. But Santa Fe Indian School has an interesting history of its own type of renegade resistance. You know, Dorothy Dunn-style studio art, well known in Indian art that comes later. My grandfather was there during the DeHuff administration and Principal, or Superintendent, rather, DeHuff was demoted from the Indian Service because he and his wife were encouraging, you know, the children in their culture rather than, you know, trying to extinguish it. My grandfather was singled out along with two other artists, Otis from Shongopovi and then Velino Shije from Zia Pueblo and those three as vocational training were actually given exposure to techniques in art, and so my grandfather began a journey there. He's kind of a world-renowned kind of guy. You know, he's known at the Grand Canyon for the Watchtower murals, which were done in 1932. That's not typically his style, you know, he went, he reverted to kind of an ancient style of art with the watchtower murals. His art journey is just incredible. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, and he also was instrumental in the development of the overlay techniques in Hopi. He spearheaded the development of the Guild, which trained silversmiths, 60s, 70s, 80s in Hopi. He was very involved with the establishment of the Hopi Cultural Center as well, so. He was a U.S. ambassador to India, you know, Goodwill Ambassador, Agricultural Summit. He was commissioned by Mrs. Roosevelt to do a piece of work when she visited him at the Peabody Museum at Harvard during one of their openings. It's a really remarkable journey that he had. I, I never knew him as an artist. I knew him as a hard-ass Hopi farmer, you know? But my father was, of course, very engaged in art, as well. And so I'm a third-generation artist. My father, I would say, is probably my biggest inspiration, kind of in an abstract way. I mean, I think my dad did not want to follow in his father's footsteps. I don't want to follow in my dad's footsteps. I think we all try to be very distinct in our journeys. But there's that process of osmosis that takes place when you're in an artist's home and you know the work is being done. You know, I can hear my dad's saw blade going, you know, as he would make jewelry, singing songs, listening to songs, humming kachina songs, you know, just as he would work. You know? So it was a it was a very, very special atmosphere and I think that nurtured me in my work. There's a number of things that brought me to the place. In my own personal expression, music and art have played a big part of my journey, and music tends to be my forte not necessarily by choice. I love, I love the serenity of creating visual art. There's something about it that I have to be in a good place to do it and it's something that I long for to be in places like this, honestly, this is this is where I generate artwork.

ALICIA: Yeah. I wanted to ask where you where you draw inspiration for your songwriting, which I guess is you said places like this. Where else do you do you draw inspiration for your your art and your music?

ED: I draw inspiration from indigenous history. I draw inspiration from my culture. I draw inspiration from a lot of the negative that I see around me in the history of my people, in our relationship with the United States government, you know both past and present. So I think sometimes people refer to me as an activist, which I, I tend to resist that concept because I feel like an activist is active, you know? I mean, my vibe is like, yo, we all just need to slow down. You know, we, we need to come to a place where we can be in spaces like this to listen to the rhythm of nature, how it connects with the rhythm of our spirit. And find a way to think consciously again. You know, if I feel like that's, the biggest problems that we have in this world are, they need a spiritual solution. And I hope that somehow through my art and music, I'm able to elevate my thinking and hopefully maybe other people's thinking at the same time about conscious thought regarding environmental social justice issues on the Colorado Plateau, Grand Canyon Region, and also in the world in general.

ALICIA: When you look back at your time that you've been creating music or creating art, do you think your, your style has changed? Maybe the content of your music or the style of your music, or?

ED: Absolutely. I mean, in regards to music I feel like my journey as a musician started in my home communities. I feel like everybody's a musician where I come from; from the time you're a child, you know, everybody's introduced to song, everybody's introduced to dance as a form of prayer, and as a form of interacting with the universe. And that also crosses over to visual art, as well. I was exposed to rock music via a Native American band called XIT, X-I-T, who was on Motown Records like between 1970 and 1972, and they put out a couple of amazing albums, one called Plight of the Redman, one called Silent Warrior, and they were very aggressive in their message. I, I mean think back what was happening in Native America in 1970, 1972 that's the takeover of Alcatraz, that's the takeover of Wounded Knee. That's the American Indian Movement, you know, taking over BIA offices in Washington, I mean, all of that was kind of expressed in the spirit of their music. When I got into boarding school, I you know, metal was kind of communicating to me and a lot of us because I think, as third generation boarding school students, we were all pretty pissed off, you know? And it made a lot of sense. When I, when I heard reggae, I recognized that reggae was like very angry music, you know? And I'm talking about Jamaican reggae, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, you know, those old school guys. And their message was very aggressive as well, a cry for justice for 400 years of oppression. And sometimes when I would listen to the music of Bob Marley, it would just feel like he was singing about me, you know? I got homesick after living off the reservation some years down the road after high school. I was a drummer in music originally, that's kind of my passion, but I always kind of continued carrying a guitar. I left music just because it was difficult for me separate some of the dysfunctional things that follow rock'n'roll, you know? And I started a family very young, so, you know, I, I felt like it was wise for me to put away, you know, the drum kit. But of course, you know, it's you can't, you can't keep music out of your brain, you know, or out of your heart when it's there. And, you know, I'm always tapping on everything and, you know, fiddling with guitar. And out of homesickness, I began to sing more traditional style melodies in Hopi and Tewa and translate it into guitar. That's the way my original music started. You know, the original recordings of original music and it was very history-focused. I thought a lot about my kids. I thought a lot about youth growing up on the reservations. You know, I wanted them to hear their music. I wanted to them hear, for them to hear stories about their heroes, you know? And that's kind of the way it took off. I got arrested in Coconino County for marijuana possession. You know, at a at a time that that the state of Arizona was like, very aggressively against it, right? And so like, for less than a gram of marijuana. I was. I was charged with felony possession, felony paraphernalia, blah blah la la la. When I got arrested, you know, I, you know, I heard I've heard about my people talking about being careful about border towns all my life. I never had a problem personally until then. You know, and now I'm in jail, facing prison time, and I'm looking at everybody else who's in jail and we're looking like 80% Native American. And today in Flagstaff, and this is not my statistics, this is statistics coming from the Flagstaff Police Department, they consistently over the last decade every year annually arrest about 50% of their arrests are of Native American people. Native Americans make up 8% of the population of Flagstaff. You know, so something's haywire, right? And my music changed. You know, I adapted more of a reggae style and began to cry out against not only what I was experiencing, you know, on the opposite side of the law, but also the environmental issues. 45 billion gallons of water sucked up from underneath Hopi in the Kayenta mine, during the slurry operation of the Kayenta mine, where we were initially paid 3.3% for the market value of coal and $1.67 cents for every 326,000 gallons of water. A 300-year water supply just gone in 35 years, and so what we're left with today is arsenic-contaminated water systems in Hopi. You know, if you have running water in Hopi you can't drink what comes out of a faucet. And that's if you have running water. Sitting in the jail cell, you know, you kind of start recognizing disparity. Playing and living on the street, you kind of, you kind of look at the lifestyle of the people around you and compare it to, you know, what your experience is. And I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I wouldn't trade my upbringing or the place that I choose to live for anything. Right? But you recognize what's happening? You know, 500 to 1000 open pit uranium mines on Navajo Nation, leftover from the Cold War. We kicked out the Havasupai nation in 1918 from the Grand Canyon region so that we could establish the National Park. And now that we've stuck them into a side canyon and restricted them to that place, now we've built a uranium mine on top of the Muav Aquifer that gives and provides water for them, you know, and we're transporting this radioactive ore from the Grand Canyon through the already-impacted communities of Navajo Nation on up to yet another reservation, or the only operating uranium mill in the United States which neighbors the Ute Mountain Ute or the Ute Nation in Utah, you know so. It's crazy, you know, we hear about Flint, MI, why don't we hear about Hopi, you know? We heard we hear about, you know, the tragic uranium tragedies overseas or in New York, you know, but we don't hear, we don't hear about the largest spill, you know, uranium accident in North America, which is on Navajo Nation, you know? It's, this became the cry of my music and the band Tha’ Yoties was formed, you know, short for coyotes, because we're howling for the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau.

ALICIA: What do you want to convey? How do you decide what messages you want to share through your music?

ED: I mean, that's not a decision I make, you know? I mean, I feel like, I feel like my business plan is often feeling the current of the river or feeling the movement of the wind, so to speak metaphorically, you know, I mean it's, it's like where and how the great Spirit is leading, you know? And yeah, I mean we are currently doing what we can to bring awareness to the situation of the Havasupai, we've been working on that pretty heavily this year. Rumble on the Mountain is an annual show that we do in Flagstaff, which is about, you know, a 4 to 6 hour show where we bring in Native speakers to talk about our issues, you know, not to have somebody else tell our stories, which is kind of typical. But you know, now we're going to tell you our stories our way, right? And we bring in traditional dance groups, traditional musicians, scholars, activists, contemporary bands, and we, through edutainment, a phrase I stole from Walt Disney, part education and part entertainment, right, we try to convey a message to the community. And to, again, howl for the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau. We were invited by the Supai down to the village earlier this year, where we performed for the community, which was a real blessing to us. We shared a song there called "War”, and it's a song that was composed a few years ago about the Supai, because to me they're this tiny little tribe, but they've been teaching all of the rest of us in Northern Arizona how to fight. And they've been very strategic and shrewd. I mean, so much so that now we have the President of the United States last year coming out to designate the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, Greater Grand Canyon Monument, you know, I mean, that's, that's an amazing thing and last year as well in the fall, we took a delegation of Hopi and Supai out to Washington, DC, where we did some lobbying out there. But we performed the show at the Smithsonian, Native voices of the Grand Canyon again, in an effort to raise awareness of what's taking place. We did a big show in Tuba City this year that we called uprising that was on Pueblo Revolt Day, the 344th anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt in Tuba City, again that's right along the haul route. And so that's kind of our focus. The song “War” is meant to recognize that we're still in a war, you know? I mean, it hasn't stopped for us in Northern Arizona. You know, we, national spotlight was given to the disparity that we live in compared to the communities around us during the pandemic, you know? We had a lot of national focus talking about how far people needed to drive to get simple medical attention or to get adequate nourishment AKA a grocery store or a hospital, you know? And to me, we have those moments of awakening in this country. You know, we had the civil rights movement, you know. But we tend to lapse again and can kind of forget about those things. I feel like the murder of George Floyd kind of shook the country up, the pandemic kind of shook the country up, where again we said, “aha,” you know, and somehow connected with our national conscience. But it's also so easy for us to forget. And we don't want people to forget. So this song says “Havasupai Nation leading in the fight. Conscious hearts and minds unite, Havasuw `Baaja, your story we heed. Beware of corporate corruption and greed. It's a warning. It's a distant early warning because we're in a global crisis. We're living heartless, mindless. Mankind’s left up to his selfish devices. It's a war.” And it's not a war against institutions. I mean, I guess in a way it is because it's, it's a war against philosophies, isms and schisms. Again, the pandemic I feel like introduced us to the term systemic racism, which is what we've been talking about for years, but never really had a term that the country could sink its teeth into. You know, I feel I feel like now we do. And honestly, I personally feel like Grand Canyon National Park with the millions of visitors that come to the park every year, this is where people need to hear about it, you know? This is where it's all happening. At the same time, it's where things tend to be out of sight, out of mind for us.

ALICIA: When people come to the Grand Canyon, what do you want them to come away with? You know, you talk about this being the spot for them to be getting that information. So is there something that you hope that people leave the Grand Canyon with when they when they come to visit?

ED: Absolutely. I, I do feel like the Grand Canyon is a place where people come and their hearts are impacted, you know, I mean it's, it’s, yeah there's the National Lampoon's Vacation, where you come and you just kind of glance at it and blaze off. You know what I mean? I suppose that happens. But I also feel like, you know, people are deeply impacted, you know, when they take the time to appreciate. I think the park and the Harvey Company, before, you know, I feel like have been very selective in the stories that they tell about Native America, you know? And I feel like it's, there's been an atmosphere in the park since the pandemic, you know, that Native voices need to come to the forefront. I'm in full support of that, you know, and what I would hope that when visitors come that they would see us flesh and blood. That they would be educated about the Kayenta Mine, that they would be educated about the most endangered river in North America, the Colorado River, the water situation in Hopi, the water situation in Supai, the water situation in Navajo, you know? Get an understanding of what's taking place here because, I mean, the preservation of resources in the Grand Canyon is more than the natural resources that are here. It's more than the water, it's more than the animals, it's more than the wildlife. It's also the people. And somehow we've communicated everything else, but we haven't talked about the people, you know? Right now here at Grand Canyon National Park, Desert View is being designated as a as a cultural spot. And I'm like, yo, just don't make that a reservation. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, let that become the heartbeat, then let it permeate throughout the park, throughout the park system, throughout, throughout the National Park system, right? Metaphorically, Desert View has the watchtower, right? And what is the purpose of a watchtower? You know, I mean it's it's to create a beacon, you know, a guiding point, for us, an overlook. And to me that's, that's what the potential is, you know, for the voices, the native voices of the Grand Canyon. If we could utilize the platform here, to share our burdens with the world, I think, you know, that would be tremendous. I mean that's, that's the big step in change is just communication of stories.

ALICIA: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

ED: Through podcasts in this day and age.

ALICIA: Through podcasts, yeah! You talked about your work being really, I mean, just so deeply connected to like the landscape here and the people in Northern Arizona. And can you tell me a little bit about your connection to the land, or to the land in the Grand Canyon, you know, how you feel when you're here?

ED: Yeah, that's a really great question, as well. Difficult to answer in a way. In a Judeo-Christian paradigm, human life begins at the Garden of Eden, somewhere in Mesopotamia. In the scientific version of how the human race begins, you know, currently it sounds like it's Africa. That's where those perspectives lead us, right? But in a Hopi perspective, human life begins at the Grand Canyon. You know, this is the emergence place, this is the womb of Mother Earth. This is, this is the place that the human race begins and spreads out into the Earth. That paradigm comes from a very close, intimate relationship with the Grand Canyon to Hopi people. We refer to the Grand Canyon as Öngtupqa, which means “salt canyon”. Often hear the term paatuwaqatsi, “water is life”, and, you know, we relate to that term. In an ancient society you need to recognize also: salt is life. You know, salt is vital: to our health, as a trade commodity, you know? And there's two pristine sources of salt in the Pueblo area southwest and that’s one is Zuni Salt Lake and the other is the Grand Canyon. So the Grand Canyon becomes a very important place in intertribal relationship. And it also becomes much more than that. A place of beginnings, and also a place where the soul returns to make its journey home. So the Grand Canyon is not really looked upon as a recreational place in our culture. You know, it's looked upon as a place of very high sacred significance, but attached to that is a very strong element of fear, as well. You know, the, the spirits that occupy the Canyon, that live in the Canyon, they're important and significant in the way we interact. And how we show our respects to the great spirit is probably more expressed in our relationship to the Canyon than many other elements, you know in, in our perspective. Yeah, hard to explain, hard to explain, but I'm taking a stab. When I come to the Grand Canyon personally, this is the way I feel. You know, it's, it's a place of wonder. It's a place of fear. It's a place of reverence. You know, when I visit the Canyon, you know, first thing I want to do is speak to the river, speak to the Canyon, let everything know I'm here and that I'm coming with the good heart, you know, and of course, that does involve, you know, some introspection here. So I feel like this place rejuvenates me, though, for those reasons.

ALICIA: Thank you for, for sharing. I know you, you have done a lot of songwriting, and I know you've performed solo quite a bit and also with your band, Tha ‘Yoties, which you, you talked about. I'm curious if you have a favorite piece that you perform either solo or with Tha ‘Yoties.

ED: Yeah, I, you know, sometimes people would come up to buy a CD and they're like, so which one do you recommend? I'm like, yo, they're all my kids. So, you know, I don't choose one above another. And I feel it feel kind of, I feel that way. I mean, every every song is written with purpose and with feeling. And you know it, it may be appropriate for one stage of thought and not another. But I guess if I would have to like, pick out something, It's funny, but you know the the “Don’t Worry, [Be] Hopi” interpretation, which is, which is an interpretation of “Don't Worry, Be Happy”, right? I mean, Bobby McFerrin came out with that song back in 1988 and it was like instantly there was a T-shirt in Hopi at Tsakurshovi, the trading post, that said, “Don't Worry, Be Hopi", you know? And we've carried that motto, you know. It's actually a very Hopi concept. “Don't worry, be Hopi.” Hopi, my father used to say, is a compound word, hòtü, which is an arrow representing masculinity and piihu, which is a woman's breast representing femininity. And you bring those two together, you have the yin-yang, that's what it means to be Hopi. To be interconnected, to be in balance, you know? To recognize the wisdom of the feminine, to recognize the wisdom of the masculine, to live in harmony horizontally, you know, with your fellow man, with creation. And to live in harmony vertically, you know, with the history of our past in the underworlds and and above, as well, and with the great spirit, you know. So that's really what it means to be Hopi. So to say “don't worry, be Hopi”, I mean, that makes a whole lot of sense, right? I was just, I was just meditating on the song “Don't Worry, Be Hopi” and I'm like, “You know, we've had the T-shirt for a few decades now. We should probably just have a revised version of the song.” So I put together the song “Don't Worry, be Hopi”, which starts up pretty whimsical, you know. “Here's a little song you know, I changed the words to give it a cultural flow. Don't worry, be Hopi. At the beginning of time, we came into this land to leave our strife behind. Follow Maasaw’s plan. Don't worry, be Hopi.” Now that's a very deep saying right there, a deep expression to people who are Hopi. Because that's saying we're in a covenant relationship with the great spirit and, you know, we'll recognize that. The second verse says “The Castellum come in 1539”, Castellum referring to the Castilian culture of early Spain. They came in 1539. We're first contact people here. You know, the first European settlements in the United States were Florida 1565, Saint Augustine and San Gabriel, New Mexico. Those two are both 15thcentury European settlement, as opposed to Jamestown and Plymouth, you know which are 1600s, 17th century, right. But, so, the next verse introduces that history. “The Castellum they come in 1539. They tried to change our ways, but we were doing fine. We said don't worry, we'll just be Hopi.” 1680, the Pueblo Revolt, 100 years before the American Revolution, in 1680, we kicked the Catholicos out. And “Awatovi sorrow”, which is referring to the destruction of the village in Hopi of Awatovi, which was a converted village which was obliterated. And it, it's not a proud moment, you know, for us it's a sorrowful moment. But it did end significant European contact with us for the next 200 years. “1680 we kicked the Catholicos out and Awatovi sorrow proved, there was no doubt. Don't worry, be Hopi.” Finally, the last verse brings everything full circle and it says, you know. “Still today we have our trouble. The United States, they try to bust our bubble. They say, don't worry, you know, be Hopi. Peabody Coal has been full of lies. They say they don't know why our springs run dry. They say just stay in your corner of Northern Arizona and just be Hopi. You know, there's so there's the, there's the Snowbowl. There's the Grand Canyon mine. The desecration of our sites and shrines. And still they keep telling us: hey, don't worry, just be Hopi. There's so many things in this world we see, and so we cry out [Hopi], which in Hopi means “have mercy upon us”. [Hopi], which means we've all become so out of balance. We've all become so unHopi. Don't worry, be Hopi. And then the song just ends with don't worry about a thing. Bob Marley's words, because every little thing is gonna be alright and I feel like that's also true. Yeah I mean, if our focus and the trouble is on the eternal things: the rising and setting of the sun, the movement of the of the stars, the movement and cycles of the moon, the cycles of the rain. If our focus is on those things, you know, we we stay harmonious, you know? I think we need to stay alert to everything that's going crazy around us, but you know, it's very important that we stay centered and visit the Grand Canyon.

ALICIA: So if people are looking to, like if listeners are looking, to hear that song or hear more of your music or learn about, you know, projects you have going on, where should they go to get more information about you or from you?

ED: Yeah. So I operate with flip phone technology half the time and the other half you know, if I have Wi-Fi, then I can get on Facebook page or Instagram page and that's “Ed Kabotie” Facebook and Instagram. And there's also “Tha ‘Yoties”, Instagram and Facebook. We don't know how to spell, so Tha ‘Yoties page is like T-H-A, Tha ‘Yoties Y-O-T-I-E-S. But - Tha ‘Yoties, short for coyotes. My YouTube channel actually carries a lot of cool content, I feel like, you know?

ALICIA: I agree. Yeah.

ED: Long, longer presentations, you know, visuals about performances, videos, what have you. So yeah, I kind of would push people towards that. One of these days I'll try to get a web page going. Then also there is some music on Spotify from Tha ‘Yoties in particular. Yeah, we'll get some Ed Kabotie on there eventually and get some new ‘Yoties recordings on there, as well.

ALICIA: Awesome, yeah, that's great, yeah. Thank you for that, that resource. That’s great. I really appreciate you sitting down and taking the time.

ED: Heck yeah.

ALICIA: Amazing to - to get to talk to you and hear you speak. And is there anything that we didn't touch on that you would like people to who are listening to to know about you or your work or?

ED: When I give talks at the Grand Canyon, I just remind people that in Hopi culture, people are watching the cycles of the sun, are watching the cycles of the moon, and are routinely expressing prayers for the world, expressing prayers for the Grand Canyon, expressing prayers for the harmony of all life. When people come to the Grand Canyon, I hope that maybe they'll catch something from that. And that when they go home, that they'll also do the same. We're sending prayers from our home to them. And I would just ask them: do the same for us, you know? Acknowledging, you know, things that have happened in our history and things that are taking place now, you know. We're always seeking lomakatsi the good life, you know, seeking that balance. And we hope that everybody else is too.

ALICIA: Thank you so much to Ed for coming out and speaking with us. We gratefully acknowledge the Native people on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their homes here today.

[Flute Music]

Kamryn: Hi! My name is Kamryn and today we're super excited and lucky to be able to speak with Lisa Handforth.

Kamryn: Yeah, thanks so much for being here and kind of taking this time to chat and give a talk tomorrow night. Everyone's super excited to be able to hear that. Lisa: Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Kamryn: If you wouldn't mind just letting us know who you are, and we'll get started.

Lisa: Yeah, I'm Lisa Markovchick, married named Handforth, Fire Ecologist at Grand Canyon National Park.

Kamryn: Awesome. Yeah, can you tell us what that means to be the park’s ecologist? What that looks like here at the Grand Canyon?

Lisa: Yeah so I oversee a fire--we call them the Fire Effects crew. We've got 2 permanent staff and three seasonals who are on the ground collecting both short-term project data and long-term ecological monitoring data, particularly as it pertains to our Fire Program. And then they also collaborate with the inventory and monitoring program. That's the long-term ecological monitoring program for our region, for the National Park Service. And then I spend a lot of time also looking at the interaction between fire and all the different parts of the ecosystem. So, working with our Wildlife and Veg program, for example, thinking about invasives, thinking about our endangered species like Mexican spotted owls, sentry milk vetch that we have, and sort of navigating the intricacies of how fire is interacting with all of the different parts of the ecosystem.

Kamryn: Cool, super cool. And from what I understand, this is a newer role for you, newer in the Park Service, so can you talk about your journey here and why you decided to get into the Park Service?

Lisa: Yeah, I started out in ecology actually up in Seattle, working with volunteers on former Superfund sites to monitor vegetation recovery after restoration projects. And then did a masters in fire ecology in San Diego, looking at some of the endemic plant species and how their life histories interact with fire and are actually dependent on fire. And then worked for the Navy for about a decade, really looking at sort of how the military mission interacts with a lot of our ecology and how to navigate that and make the most of that synergy. And so, we would also look at things like very specific data on microclimate, for example, and how we could leverage that to really help our endangered species and our species at risk. And just, you know, strange things like you think where moving an invasive is a good idea, but there was actually an interaction going on where removing it without providing some of the things that that invasive was now providing to the ecosystem had negative effects on some of our endangered plants and sensitive plants. And so, we're really kind of leveraging that data on the ground to make better decisions and then working with people to help them understand why it was important to protect this plant or this animal, when we also had another mission. And then I really wanted to learn more about our microbiome and how that was playing into things like our wildfire risk and recovery, drought resilience, managing invasives, because we had a lot of wildfire risk reduction activity that we also did on the military lands and a lot of the different pieces of the ecosystem we are trying to address really seemed to interact with the microbiome and we weren't really doing a lot on the ground in response to that new science. And so, I came to Flagstaff to do my PhD in the Gehring Lab at Northern Arizona University and looked at how we can kind of leverage that microbiome along with things like assisted migration in response to climate change and really get a lot more for our efforts out of the management by thinking more about the whole ecosystem. Of things like how it affects plant physiology and their ability to cope with drought or recover after a fire and how that interacts with things like mycorrhizal fungi. And I don't know if I answered all of your questions or not. That was my journey here. But yeah. And then coming to the Park Service honestly has been and is one of the, you know, biggest pleasures and privileges of my life to be called upon to help protect and sort of safeguard and steward these, you know, beautiful places, particularly the, you know, some of the last remaining wild places on the planet. And how amazing they are and to be entrusted to help care for them and work with, you know, other people who are really trying their best to care for them, particularly in, you know, the age that we're in with climate change starting to affect a lot of things.

Kamryn: Yeah, yeah. That's great. Thanks. What have you enjoyed most about your work so far and where do you hope to see the park’s Fire Program going in the next years or phases?

Lisa: Yeah. I mean, so far, I, you know, I just started with the Park Service in February, so I've just been enjoying getting to know this amazing place, in addition to learning more from our fire managers and seeing things, being able to see things more through their eyes. That's been just a great privilege and will help us down the line as we start to look at our data, as well as just getting to know the rest of the team. And so both the folks that I am privileged to mentor and oversee, as well as the larger Grand Canyon team and National Park Service team and all the different things that people are doing. Working hard, you know, with, sort of without, largely without recognition or, you know, agenda, just trying to make sure that we're doing the right things for our park. Yeah. And just seeing everyone's enthusiasm for, for really doing the right thing with regard to managing our lands. As well as getting to know the amazing long term ecological like data set that we have so learning more about what are all the different projects we've done in the past and the innovations that the Fire Program has done in the past and then starting to get into being able to extract like the 30 years of data that we have from the database and get it into some software where we can have a little more flexibility with analyzing it. So that's sort of been an adventure so far, yeah.

Kamryn: Yeah. And you started mentioning this with Grand Canyon, these places that are seeing very real threats these days. So what do you think are the biggest challenges facing Grand Canyon's forests, the ecosystems that you're working with?

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, really the biggest challenge of our time, right, is probably climate change and how do we come together and help all of our species adapt in the time frame that they will need to. So, you know, if you look at the climate future summary for our park for example, it's very clear that our climate is already warming and that the pace of warming is increasing, that we've already had a 17% increase in the precipitation that's falling during the 1% heaviest events. So more, already being very heavily skewed towards more extreme events and that's you know, we often think of warming and fire and drought, but it's also heavy precipitation or precipitation that's not necessarily falling when the species of plants, animals need it. So that snowpack and the window for how long it lasts is changing. Water is running off faster. So, we're seeing, you know, for example, less moisture sinking into the ground and being there for a longer time and these more extreme events and so that's probably our biggest challenge because and it's all intertwined, right like that is also shifting and diminishing our windows where we can do controlled burns for example. And so biggest challenge for us is thinking about how all those things are connected and how can we really leverage everything we've got in defense of protecting our ecosystems, particularly, you know, these very high elevation, mixed conifer, large snowpack areas in a very arid, you know, within the matrix of a very arid region. Right? And all that that brings to us, including our drinking water.

Kamryn: Yeah, yeah. How is the team here working in the face of climate change? How is the team working to kind of maintain these robust ecosystems?

Lisa: Yeah. So, we're actually working, the Fire Program and our Science and Resources folks--so that's our Veg and Wildlife Programs for example--we have a joint effort currently to really start digging into our climate change planning. So, we're spearheading, sort of taking those climate future summaries, that sort of layout--what the meteorological expectations are, right, and climate expectations are and then sort of moving forward from there of how do we maybe need to refine our goals and our strategies? What does the best available science say about the different strategies and their relative risks and advantages? And then also we're taking another look at how--what can our data that we already have tell us about how we've already been affected. You know, are we seeing places that used to be dominated by ponderosa pine now having maybe more pinyon juniper, for example? So that's something I'll be looking at, for example, over the winter as we start to delve into really analyzing that data that we have to try and figure out if what changes we're already seeing from a species perspective and if that, you know, what are the implications for our management. For example, if we’re looking at prescribed fire and how to manage, what is that optimal interval? Maybe if it used to be ponderosa pine and it's moving more towards pinyon juniper, that interval may be different or some of the other metrics that we're looking at achieving may be different. And so, really starting to dig into that while also maintaining our long-term ecological monitoring efforts so that we can continue to draw on that as a resource for adaptive management, whether that's, you know, the long-term plots and or the sort of more rapid plots that we sometimes do for specific projects. So, trying to take a whole ecosystem approach to that as well, thinking about how can we work with the Vegetation Program and the Wildlife Program? What are the tools that maybe we haven't thought about in the past or what are the factors that we maybe haven't considered as heavily such as erosion, that if we have these more extreme precipitation events, you know, following a fire for example, might be of more concern than they used to be?

Kamryn: I guess what is something that you wish the more general public understood about fire management and kind of the role of fire in these types of ecosystems?

Lisa: Yeah, I think, I think the main thing that I would love for everyone to understand a little more is the role of good fire, right? I've seen, and understandably so, you know, when there is smoke in the park or that kind of thing, it's not really valued and it's sort of a scary thing for folks. And I think, you know, that of course and is understandable. We spend a lot of time in the news, for example, covering fires that are really quite tragic and scary and awful. But I think maybe we don't focus as much in our news and storytelling and understanding, generally, about communicating about the good things that fire does. I mean there are some plant species that are wholly dependent upon it because they have cones that won't open unless there's a fire and that's how they reproduce, right. As well as just, you know, helping to maintain the biodiversity in some of our ecosystems and things like that, that are very important. And I think we could spend, and I look forward to spending more time, just sort of talking with folks about, you know, when we do have prescribed burns and stuff, not only how much fun fire can be, because it's actually pretty fun, right? That's why we all like campfires and barbecues and all those kinds of things, fireplaces in our homes during the winter, sitting next to the wood stove. But also, you know, the great things that it is doing in the ecosystem and that not every time we see a smoke plume is it a bad thing, right. It actually, we've had some burns that were managed for good on the South Rim this year, and there was a lot of, I noticed, a lot of fear among park visitors that, you know, they weren't going to be able to get out or that it was something really scary. And I think we could spend a lot more time really helping folks understand the amazing phenomenon that it is and the privilege it is to actually see it on the ground in a wild place. And that how much that’s just as much a part of the ecosystem as you know, getting to see, I don't know, a bear, or a deer, or an elk. So, I think we can do better there, and I think we will, but just sort of helping to tell that story of the subtleties.

Kamryn: Yeah, yeah. Are there other particular challenges that come with fire ecology or fire management in Grand Canyon National Park? This is a very busy, populated, I'm guessing there's a lot of rules here for all kinds of different things. Are there particular challenges that come with that?

Lisa: I think we're a little, you know, I used to work in Southern California, for example. It was incredibly difficult to get permission to do a prescribed burn there because of the smoke impacts, but also because you have so much wildland urban interface where you have houses immediately adjacent to these wildlands areas. In Grand Canyon, you know, we're a little bit lucky in that it's we still have a lot of rules. There's still a lot of, you know, particularly with climate change, like I said, those envelopes in the weather where we can actually do a prescribed burn are shifting and narrowing, for example. So, there are a lot of challenges. Folks also maybe don't value the fact that there’s smoke around and what that means or how picturesque that can be in the Canyon. I have some amazing photographs from some of our fire managers of just how the smoke settles and what that, what picture that creates with the sunset. And so, I think there there's a little bit of tension there with, you know, we want we want to see the Grand Canyon the way we've seen it portrayed without that going on. But I think we also have some good opportunities because we do have a lot of wildland areas where there is not, you know, quite so much congestion with homes and traffic. So, we have a little bit more freedom to actually put fire on the ground in that respect than some places do. You know, it's certainly it's a little bit easier to do it, for example, potentially in the southeast where you have maybe more time throughout the year where you can put fire on the ground. We have more limited time periods when we think about things like the smoke impacts and the drought and the relative humidities and different variables of the weather that we really rely on to help us make sure that we're going to have a productive fire as well as a safe fire. So, there are definitely challenges, but we also have some unique opportunities here.

Kamryn: Yeah, cool. And that kind of brings up this other question. Are there particular mistakes or lessons that you've learned from past fire management, and this could be in any decade?

Lisa: I think past mistakes, I would actually say Grand Canyon has been on the cutting edge of really looking at and using data to assess how to best manage. Particularly in our fire ecology program, which is what I can speak to you know, we had some amazing innovations with how to use prescribed burns. And even the fact that we were using them and allowing fire in our park before potentially other, you know, land management agencies were as comfortable with that. So, I would actually say, you know, our history is pretty amazing here at Grand Canyon, particularly from a fire management standpoint. We've had innovations where we've targeted, you know, sort of used more targeted approaches of managed fire or prescribed fire on certain slopes, for example, where trees maybe were historically less dense and try and restore that variation across the landscape. And so that was largely backed by science and the data that we had at the time, and the fact that Grand Canyon was willing to sort of entertain these, you know, sort of more novel approaches to prescribed fire where we didn't necessarily try to burn the whole area, but we sort of worked with the system to try and reincorporate some of that variation across the landscape back into the landscape. So, I think there's been a lot of really amazing achievements actually. The mistakes that we've all made in the past, right, really were largely due to maybe the data we didn't have. So, for example, maybe we didn't take as much of an ecosystem approach because we didn't know as much about the microbiome and what role it played in drought and fire resilience or post-fire recovery. So, I think those are some of the areas where we can continue to improve. But actually, we have a really amazing foundation of both data and a willingness to follow the data and work with the system and ecosystem, which is quite amazing, and I hope we can continue.

Kamryn: Yeah that’s great. Are there ways that Traditional Ecological Knowledge inform your work and understanding of this area?

Lisa: So to date, at the Grand Canyon, my understanding is we have been an innovator and amazing leader in a lot of ways, but I don't think we're yet doing all that we could do to involve the Tribes, for example, in our Fire Program. I'm hoping to present info on our program this fall at some of the meetings with the Tribes and really find out more, you know, listen, do some deep listening and see how we can involve them and support them to really be more involved themselves in things like our Fire Program. And so I'm looking forward to that. I know other areas of the country have been, for example, supporting cultural burning and I think, to date here, we don't yet have that, but that would certainly be a place where we could perhaps, you know, try to figure out a new path forward, and that would be great.

[canyon wren birdsong]

Kamryn: To provide a little more background on what Lisa is talking about here with cultural burning, is that for many millennia, fire has been integral to many Indigenous peoples’ way of life. People use fire to clear areas for crops and travel, to manage the land for specific species of both plants and animals, to hunt game, and for many other important uses. According to Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the Forest Service, and a wildland firefighter of Karuk descent, cultural burning links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine. When you prescribe it, you’re getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture. In many areas, cultural burning took a hiatus during the era of fire suppression in the 20th century due to land management agencies’ enforcement of differing practices and the removal of Tribal people from their lands and not being allowed to practice their own culture. However, this has been changing over the past few decades and cultural burning is again showing up in the landscape in some federally managed lands, as it has been done, and continued to be done even on other lands as well. With that info, we’ll go back to our conversation with Lisa now.

[canyon wren birdsong]

Kamryn: Are there any other kind of key principles or values that you bring into fire management here at the park?

Lisa: Yeah, it's funny. I, in thinking about this question, I feel like the principles that I bring to the Fire Ecology Program are like principles that are kind of generally true too, just in life, right? Leveraging everything we can, particularly in the face of climate change, when time is of the essence, resources are of the essence. Viewing complexity as our friend, not our foe. Understanding that the more factors you look at, the more the results you get can change. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, that just means we have to, we're really being called to refine our understanding of the systems and ecosystems that we live in and how to better work with them, right? And as a result, sort of, you know, taking that whole ecosystem approach where we can leverage every part of the ecosystem for the benefit of all. Looking and listening and asking good questions, right, because of all that complexity. And just sort of viewing, yeah, I view climate change as a call to sort of listen. Listen harder, look deeper, and think about all the ways that we can work together to leverage, you know, whether that's different parts of a team or different parts of the ecosystem. I think we're really being called to understand ourselves and our ecosystems better so that we can do that, which you know can be quite daunting, but also in another way, it's sort of an adventure for an inquisitive mind and is really good work for the soul, I think.

Kamryn: Yeah, we can shift over to that larger ecosystem view of the whole forest, these ecosystems that we find at the Grand Canyon. Can you talk more about the microbiome that you were speaking about earlier? The mycorrhizal fungi and how that symbiosis kind of plays an important role in the ecosystem or the landscape?

Lisa: Yeah, I think so traditionally, you know, a lot of our program focused quite a lot on what we call fuel loadings. So, for example, tree density, the size of the trees, were they at such a point in their lifespan as to be able to withstand fire, or were they really tall, or sorry, really narrowly, narrow diameter, small diameter trees, but very dense as they grow up, you know, not having been thinned out by fire, for example. So, in the past, a lot of our data analysis was really focused on that even though we were also collecting other aspects like plant community. But what we've learned in the past decades and is really how interlinked all the different parts of the ecosystem are. So, for example, what you were talking about, mycorrhizal fungi, are fungi that are symbiotic with plant roots and what we've learned is that they actually provide a whole bunch of different services in the ecosystem that we all value. So, things like helping the plants get nutrition, right, and we all know that when we get better nutrition, we're more resilient to whatever comes along. Whether that's, you know, a disease or a drought or some kind of sickness. And it's the same for plants. But they are also helping plants moderate their water use efficiency. So, when there is a drought, for example, those plants are more able to withstand it because they have more control, more ability to kind of modulate how well they're using their water. They also provide, you know, a lot of sort of aggregating the soil and changing aspects of the soil that we might be interested in. So, for example, if we're looking at more extreme precipitation events and more erosion and more runoff and less water being absorbed actually into the system to provide that moisture during those hot months, mycorrhizae actually help with that as well. Because they're sort of emitting substances that kind of glue the soil together in bigger chunks and then they provide this sort of what's been called like a sticky string bag or a sticky net of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil connecting those particles as well. So, they're kind of increasing the pore spaces, the spaces between the soil particles in the soil allowing more of that water infiltration, holding onto the soil so it doesn't erode, those kinds of things. And we haven't necessarily been thinking about that, right, because we have, you know, a lot in the past, people have been more focused on sort of, you know, measuring the plant composition and the diversity and maybe not so much on the things that we couldn't see like the microbiome. So, as we have become more familiar with what bacteria and fungi and all these things are doing in our ecosystems, we really have a great opportunity to harness that as well, and work with that in addition to, you know, different types of, for example, the genetics of our plants and how well are they adapted to what they're seeing and how can we support that. And additionally, the microbiome sort of has shorter times to reproduction and genetic remixing, they share DNA in different ways that say plants and animals might not. And so, they actually do also offer, you know, potentially shorter time frames to adaptation and climate change, we're particularly concerned with that, right? Like it's not just the fact that things are changing, but it's how much they're going to change within a very short period of time, which makes it hard for things like genetics to really play out and adapt to that. And so having pieces of that system that can help plants adapt on shorter time frames could be really beneficial.

Kamryn: Yeah. Yeah. How do you hope and plan for this knowledge of this, more symbiosis of different species and things encouraging each other's growth, how does that work here at the Grand Canyon? How will that be coming into action in the next few years?

Lisa: So, we're, you know, really just getting started on incorporating some of that. But one of the things I've been trying to work on is we know that lots of different kinds of disturbances impact our, the microbiome and our ecosystem, so, for example, mycorrhizal fungi, and that could be anything you know from really severe fire to things like using pesticides and herbicides to try and get rid of invasives. It doesn't mean those things don't have a place in our park, right? It just means that if we're aware that we might also be disrupting the microbiome, then we can actually take some action around that to support the ecosystem. So, one of the things we've been trying to do is look at areas, for example, on the North Rim, where we have an obligation to provide, say Mexican spotted owl habitat, for example, that require certain types of vegetation to be there. After two relatively severe fires that have happened in the same place within, say, 20 years, we can see that those trajectories of the ecosystem are changed and that some intervention and support is required if we want to have the same ecosystem. So, one of the things we can do is actually not just restore the plants that have fallen out of the plant community because, say they have more reliance on a seed bank and now that seed bank is gone, but we can actually plant the plants with their mycorrhizal fungi and microbiome and in that way help them survive because since they're not there and their fungi are reliant on them, basically, they won't have their partners if we plant them, right. So that puts them at a distinct disadvantage if we're not also restoring their microbiome along with them. So being able to pinpoint some spots, and this sort of goes hand in hand with our climate change planning that we're trying to do, pinpoint some spots where we know that the topography is such that those plant communities are going to have a better shot in the long run and then go ahead and restore them in those areas along with their microbiome to give them, you know, that added drought resilience and fire resilience into the future is sort of where we're starting.

Kamryn: Yeah, super cool. Are there particular lessons that you think people or human communities can kind of learn from this? Is there a type of maybe biomimicry that people can understand from these relationships?

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, this is a really interesting and I feel like sometimes like potentially controversial question strangely, but so the whole notion that we have of survival of the fittest and how that was interpreted, wasn't actually the quote. The quote was the survival of the fit and that meaning that we were adapted to the ecosystem. Animals and plants were adapted to where they were living, right? Rather than it being more of a competition thing, and I think you know, what the microbiome is often teaching us is to really have an understanding of a little more subtlety and nuance and that not everything is a neat little box and not everything is competition right. It's not to say that sometimes we're not, there's not competition, but there's also partnerships and working together and how things are interconnected. And so, I think that's a good lesson for us as we face climate change, for example. That we're really, yeah, kind of being called to understand those subtleties and nuances and also to work together. Right? Like there's certainly managing this park, for starters, is not an individual endeavor. It really requires us to put all of our heads together. And requires good teamwork and so learning how to kind of biomimic, if you will, partnerships and good teamwork I think is a great lesson for all of us, sure.

Kamryn: Yeah, yeah. Is there anything else that you want to add or talk about or go back to?

Lisa: I think, I think there's probably two things. Maybe one just that as we embark on kind of taking this look back at our, you know, 30 years of long-term ecological monitoring data and reevaluating, like, are we collecting the right things? Are there some things that maybe we could be more efficient on or are there areas that we're not, we haven't in the past collected data, but might be good to look at? As well as you know things that we might have not considered doing proactively before, before a fire or after a fire. Or even the kinds of treatments that we're putting on the ground. It would be great to hear from researchers who are looking at some of those same questions and try to work together with them. I was just down at, in Tucson, at the Society for Ecological Restoration Southwest meeting sort of just trying to provide some background on our program and what data we have and places that we might like to explore additional methods, for example, and asking that same question. I would put that out there for folks. You know, we have a wealth of knowledge in the Southwest of all different kinds of disciplines and I'd really like to work with folks who are interested in some of those things where fire and drought and water and snowpack and different treatments all come together. So that would be one thing. The other thing that I find having worked a lot with them, volunteers, and for example working with high school groups is that, you know, climate change is daunting for us adults, and older folks. I shouldn't say adults, older folks. It's even more daunting if you're coming into it and inheriting it all, right? And trying to figure out what on Earth can you do to contribute and make things better in the future. And so I just would also invite, you know, folks coming at it from that perspective. If you yeah want to get involved, you know we're here. We'd love to hear from you. Not, I'm sure, not just me and the Fire Ecology Program, but also, you know, the Vegetation Program, the Wildlife Program. We have amazing volunteers at the park and I don't, I don't think people know how much volunteers actually do. And can do. And so just put that out there along with, you know, sort of what I was saying earlier, that as daunting as it is, I think it's also, you know, an amazing adventure for an inquisitive mind to really be called to learn our systems better or ecosystems or species. Where we are in the place that we are and how things work together. And that's great for the mind and it's also great as we learn to work better together as teams. It's just good soul work and I think provides a more hopeful path forward than you know maybe being overwhelmed by it all, which is easy to do, right? It's easy to be overwhelmed by the challenge.

Kamryn: Yeah, that's great. Thanks.

Lisa: Yeah. Thanks for having me!

Kamryn: Yeah, this is a great conversation, so we're excited for other people to be able to listen in on it as well.

Lisa: Yeah, me too. And I'm excited to, yeah, hear from folks as well.

Kamryn: Yeah, that should be cool.

[canyon wren birdsong]

Kamryn: Thank you so much everyone for listening and thank you to Lisa for taking the time to have this conversation and share so much about Grand Canyon’s Fire Program, climate change and the challenges that we’re facing in this area, mycorrhizal fungi, and really the importance of collaboration and symbiosis in relationships. As Lisa was saying, if you’re interested in collaborating or volunteering, please reach out and let’s see what we can all accomplish together. Thanks everyone!

Wallis: Hi this is Wallis, and today we are featuring an interview with Melissa Sevigny, award winning author in her spare time and science reporter for KNAU in Flagstaff. In this episode Melissa will tell us about her career path and how she went from wanting to be a geologist to working as a science reporter and writing an award winning book.

Wallis: Ok, well we are here today with Melissa Sevigny, author, science reporter and let’s get started. Hey Melissa, Melissa: So great to be here.

Wallis: So great to have you here. A lot of interview questions are the kinds of things that you might expect. A sort of letting our listeners get to know you so let’s do a few of those questions. I see from your bio that you started out with a degree in Environmental Science and Policy but now you are an award-winning writer and journalist. Was writing something you always wanted to do?

Melissa: You know, not really, actually which is funny um I have always written things ever since I was a little girl but I always wanted to be a geologist. That, that was my dream. Um and so I stuck with that all the way up until I enrolled in the university of Arizona and I enrolled in an Environmental Science degree which I figured would be geology with some trees added on top you know but somewhere along the way I just I can’t even describe it I got pulled away by writing I just kept taking more and more writing classes and taking jobs that helped me learn how to communicate science to the public and it kind of just stole me away it was not intentional. I never imagined I would be a writer but somehow here I am.

Wallis: But there you are. So I have a follow-on question to that is tell us a little bit how you went from environmental science to the MFA program at Iowa State University and from there to being a science reporter for KNAU?

Melissa: You know it’s not a very exciting story. When I was applying for grad schools I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had ended up with a double major in environmental science and creative writing and I was sort of stuck between those 2 loves and so I applied for a bunch of programs some in sciences and some in writing and some in science writing and I really didn’t know what I was doing and uh the program that had full funding was this environmental creative writing program at Iowa State University and so that is where I ended up. Um I think it is good to share that story with young people who feel like maybe they need to know what their path is gonna be like. I had no idea what I was doing. I went and got that creative writing degree, I graduated, I was unemployed. I didn’t know what to do with that degree. it was such a weird mix of skills I had kind of cultivated and then this job came up for a science reporter for the NPR station in Flagstaff and I wanted to come back home to Arizona, this is where I grew up so I applied a little bit on a whim. I didn’t know if I was qualified or if I could get the job um but I did and I’ve been there 10 years and it has really taught me a lot about uh talking about science to the public.

Wallis: That’s very interesting and so like many people you didn’t have a direct career path but you just kind of followed your heart.

Melissa: Exactly yeah.

Wallis: Well what makes communicating science exciting and challenging right now? So as both an author and a science reporter for KNAU what differences do you see in the various mediums of science communication? And what methods do you think are most effective?

Melissa: That is such an interesting question because there are so many more methods now than even when I was little you know um there is social media and there’s video and there are podcasts like this one. There is just so many wonderful ways to reach out to people and I think the most effective way is the way that works for the audience you want to reach. I mean I think they all, they all can work for different people um and so I am glad there is people out there doing all of those kinds of things. You know the kind of person who would pick up a book like you know what I have written um isn’t the same kind of person who is going to listen to a podcast or listen to a video on YouTube so it it is an exciting time. There is a lot of different ways to communicate science and for me maybe the most exciting thing is just that science is exciting and my goal is to make it as accessible as possible. I want people to feel like they can do science, they can be scientists. It doesn’t matter what your background is or your age is. You don’t have to be this image of uh a wild haired genius locked away in an ivory tower someplace. That is not what a scientist is. You know, really it boils down to if you are curious and observing the world around you and all of us do that naturally as kids you know and it is something we sort of grow out of and so my goal with communication is to show people how exciting it is to tap into that curiosity.

Wallis: Great! Let’s move on. Now your book Brave the Wild River was published last year and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it this spring. This wonderful book, in case you don’t know, was the 2024 Southwest book of the year top pick, a 2024 Reading the West Award for memoir/biography, and the 2023 National outdoor book award for history/biography. Now as a woman scientist I am always interested in the women scientists who came before me. So, the questions I would like to ask you are how did you learn about or get interested in Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter? And sort of a follow on to that would be what spurred your interest in the women and why did you think this was an important or timely story you thought needed to be told?

Melissa: I really just stumbled across their story. I was looking for something else I don’t remember what it was and I was fishing around online at the special collections department at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and this um this hyperlink popped up and it said women botanists. And I was curious so I clicked on it and there was just one name in the file and the name was Lois Jotter and I read the description and I learned that she had gone down the Colorado river through Grand Canyon in 1938 with her mentor Elzada Clover and they were both botanists from Michigan and they made the first formal plant collection of over 600 miles of the Colorado river and I was so surprised that I had never heard of them before. You know I grew up in Arizona, I thought I knew a lot about Colorado river history and yet I had never encountered their names. And so I just started started poking around um Lois was a packrat she kept all kinds of material, her diaries, her letters from this trip and that was all at Northern Arizona University and so I started going over there on my lunch breaks and just kind of like looking around in the story and I got so drawn into it and eventually I started to write and pretty soon I realized that I had I had a book. I was writing a book um it took me a while to come to that realization but I was just really drawn to their story exactly for the reason you said. You know it’s amazing to hear about the women scientists that have come before us. There are so many of them out there but often their stories kind of get lost. They sort of fall through the cracks and so I wanted to to bring this story kind of back to the forefront so that when people are coming to places like the Grand Canyon or they are interested in doing science. You know I think I think it makes us feel a little less alone when we see people like ourselves throughout history who were doing that work.

Wallis: Oh I agree I uh used this book as a basis for several programs and at my last program I had a woman who was a graduate student in botany and she was with her family and her mother said do you know about these women and she said I had never heard of them. And that was really shocking to me, so I am glad that you found the link and are bringing them forward.

Melissa: Thank you.

Wallis: Now do you feel there are any special challenges in telling a story that is not well know like this story and we like to call them deferred stories rather than researching and retelling a more dominant narrative? Do you think it is a little harder?

Melissa: Yeah that is such a great question I um I hadn’t heard that phrase before, deferred story and I really like that. They are kind of stories that just haven’t quite been told yet for whatever the reason. Um there are challenges with it but I am drawn to that type of story because because I think, I don’t know I just I get really fascinated by stories that that haven’t really been told before at least not in the kind of extensive format, in a book format. Um and so that really draws me in I just I I want to be able to to kind of chart new ground when I am writing, and chart a new path and so that attracted me to this story. Some of the the challenge is just: is the archival material there? When you are doing stories out of history you have gotta have those primary sources, so you have got to have archives and I was really lucky that Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover both kept their diaries. They kept extensive notes and they both had the foresight to donate those to universities before they passed away. And if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t have been able to write the book because I wouldn’t have had their point of view. Um and so you know I think it is a challenge to, you know, some of these stories like we know they are out there like we might know a name or an idea but we just don’t have the material or it just didn’t survive. And so that is a real challenge in pulling those kind of memories out um and it speaks to the importance of historians and archivists who do this work and make sure those things don’t get lost. Wallis: Oh it certainly does and I found that bits and pieces of their journals that I’ve read have been fascinating and it kind of spurs me to want to journal more just in general.

Melissa: I shudder to think of what someone would make of my diary if they tried to read it.

Wallis: True. Now I understand you did a river trip while researching this book. So do you have a favorite spot in the Grand Canyon that you maybe discovered on that trip?

Melissa: Oh gosh (laughing) I’m not sure I can pick a favorite spot it was my first river trip, my first white water trip of any kind. I had never done that before, but I felt like I needed to to understand how to tell this story and so everything was new and everything was extraordinary and every corner you turned unveils these fantastic new views. I I don’t know if I have a favorite spot but I do have a favorite moment in time. I was hiking in one of the the side canyons the tributary channels um canyons and I I stopped dead because I smelled something. I ran into this like ribbon of smell that was coming off of some plant and I don’t know what plant it was I never found it but it stopped me in my tracks because it was this extraordinary fragrance and it made me think like this is what like bees or hummingbirds animals that are drawn to flowers must feel when they are out in the world and that was a moment that stands out in my mind. I felt like when I was down there, I was using all of my senses in a very different way like in a way I don’t normally pay attention to what I am smelling that way um but yeah it kind of, it wakes you up in a way that is very hard to describe.

Wallis: So you became a botanist while you were on this trip then a little bit.

Melissa: I did my best yeah and I was lucky that I was on a trip with botanists we were weeding Ravenna grass out of the Grand Canyon which is a non-native species so there were botanist with me and I peppered them questions so I learned a lot from them.

Wallis: Sure. I’ll bet you didn’t have to do all the cooking though!

Melissa: I I did almost none of the cooking and I feel a little bad. I told the story that is in the book about how Elzada and Lois had to do all the cooking on their expedition pretty early in the trip and I think they were afraid to ask me to cook after that. Um the lower half of the trip was just me and a group of men and I didn’t do any cooking at all.

Wallis: That’s great that’s great. So, your book has become a primary source of information for myself and our other rangers looking to tell more stories about women in the Grand Canyon. Well, where or how did you learn more about these stories. I guess you sort of touched on that but if you could elaborate just a little bit more about your sources.

Melissa: Yeah for Elzada and Lois um there are archives at the University of Michigan and at Northern Arizona University that the two women kept but there were a lot of gaps particularly in Elzada’s story. She was a very private person and so she was less open about keeping all of her materials and so I had to track down more things about her in kind of more creative ways. I had to find archives of people that she wrote to and go look at those archives to see if they kept copies of her letters and uh a really important source was tracking down um former students of both of these women because it was still, I got to know them through their letters and their diaries but I still, I still needed to know what they were like as people and as teachers and as mentors and so I was able to track down um former students to both of them and that really helped me understand who they were as as people and I am so grateful to those sources for for sharing their memories with me.

Wallis: And I think that your understanding of them as people really comes out in the book, so it is interesting the sources that you have found.

Melissa: That’s good, yeah.

Wallis: Well are there other stories about women that you are interested in learning about or that you think need telling her in the Grand Canyon?

Melissa: Oh there are so many and I had to stop myself from getting distracted and working on other projects while I was working on this book. I am now working on a short piece about an ornithologist named Florence Merriam Bailey. Um her her husband and her brother were both more famous than her and so people don’t always know her story. But she spent several months at the bottom of the Grand Canyon cataloguing the birds and she wrote a very beautiful book called Birds of the Grand Canyon which is just so elegantly written um and so I think that her story needs to be told more but there are so many others. I kept encountering them as I was working you know um John Wesley Powell had a sister named Ellen and she catalogued the plants north of the Grand Canyon right here on the Kaibab Plateau where we are sitting now and a lot of people don’t know about her. And there are many others and I think um I think we are going to see more to these stories being told as we go forward.

Wallis: Ok, that’s great. So are you going to expand that little project into a book or do you have another book project going?

Melissa: Well I don’t know yet I am kind of in a hiatus um I I wrote the book on the weekends. This is my side job I guess you could call it um and so I need a little rest and I am looking around for new ideas but I do have some ideas about stories like this, stories that have kind of fallen through the cracks. I really like doing the archival work um and so I’ve got some some ideas but I haven’t quite firmed them up yet and decided what my next project is.

Wallis: Ok. Well after reading your book and doing additional research for my programs I really started to feel a sort of kinship with both of them, as if we would have been friends in another time and place and I would be interested to know your personal perspective on both Elzada and Lois.

Melissa: They were both very different and I identified with them in different ways at different times. You know Elzada was the older of the two she was 41 um in her era she would have been considered a spinster. You know she was unmarried, as far as I could tell she had no interest in getting married. Um, that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was obsessed with plants um her students described her as just going off into the woods and they would be trailing behind her and falling in the holes and getting into poison ivy and she just was like focused on getting the plants and nobody wanted to disappoint her. Um and and so she was just a very like larger than life, rea;;y passionate person when it came to botany. Lois was the younger of the two she was 24. Um, she was much more open in her diary about things that she wanted to complain about for example, so it was really easy to get to know her because she was very very open in her diary and letters. Um and uh and she was on a different career path than Elzada. She was doing more laboratory based work and less field work um but I think they had I think they had a bond that was interesting to me. They were friends, they were teacher and student and they didn’t always get along and sometimes they got into little spats while they were on the river um but I think they were so human and so complicated and I definitely couldn’t pick a favorite um at different times and different ways I felt a lot of kinship with both of them.

Wallis: So, in what ways do you feel similar to or different from each of them? Or can you explain that?

Melissa: I think yeah I think um for most part Lois is very likeable she was very charismatic um most of the people with a few notable exceptions would would kind of instantly feel a friendship with Lois.

Wallis: She had a smile and in some of those photos didn’t she?

Melissa interjects: Yes, yeah she had a very bright smile she was just she was described as a sort of like a magnetic person, a magnetic personality. I think I am not like that I think I am more like Elzada in that it is maybe a little bit harder to get to know a little bit more reserved um you know she wasn’t as easy for me to get to know through her letters and diaries so I probably identify more with her on that part of her personality but it depends on the day I suppose.

Wallis: I suppose it does. Did did your opinion of them or ideas of them change at all as you researched the book and how did that work out?

Melissa: It did yeah I found one of the strongest examples was that very early in the research I found uh um a source that said Elzada was a motherly person and that kind of caught me up. I was like, it didn’t it didn’t seem quite right but I it was early in the project and so I wasn’t sure, yet she certainly took a lot of care of the people around her on the trip. But motherly sounded like maybe something somebody was putting her in that box so somebody was thinking 40 year old woman in the 1930s she must be motherly and so I had to do some digging and it was really when I found um one of her students to talk to and they described to me how she would be on expeditions and how obsessed she was with plants and she didn’t sound motherly at all so that was something that I had to kind of uncover about her personality as I as I did the research.

Wallis: Ok. Do they remind you of anyone from modern times?

Melissa: Oh what a great question! Um I don’t know although. I’ve I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of students in the past year when I have been going on these book talks and I just came back from the University of Michigan Biological Station

Wallis: Interesting!

Melissa: where both these women worked and there were so many students there you know. I kind of got to spend some time with them and go out you know go out on the boat with them and you know pull up weeds out of the lake and look at them and their their passion and their curiosity about the world around them and the questions they asked. Uh it was so inspirational and uplifting um and I I felt I felt like they were kind of channeling the spirit of these of these two woman like they were the legacy of these two women left behind. Wallis: It’s interesting because I was going to use that exact same word, channeling the spirit of those two women.

Melissa: Right

Wallis: Great. Well I see, and to me this is very interesting, I see that you worked with NASA’s Phoenix-Mars Scout Mission back in 2008. Can you tell us a little bit about the mission and what you did because that sounds fascinating?

Melissa: Sure yeah. It was actually my first ever science communication job was on the Phoenix-Mars Scout mission. Um and it was a lander that landed on Mars in 2008. A lot of people don’t pay attention to the landers because the rovers get all the attention. They get to drive around but it was a really cool mission. We landed on the pole on the polar regions and drilled down and we were the first mission to what we call ground truth the the fact that there is water ice there. We had observed that from satellites but nobody had actually touched it before and we were the first mission to do that. And I actually started on that mission as a as a volunteer working on the robotic arm camera team. So that was a camera that was attached to the arm that was doing the digging to take pictures of the water ice. And at one point when the when the mission was about to land and um they were opening up jobs for people to work during the ground operations there was an opportunity for me to either take a job on that team or take a job on the education and public outreach team. And looking back I know that was a real crossroads in my life even though I was just, I think, 19 years old or something like that um you know it was a decision and I I don’t know, you know, sometimes I still wonder if I had taken the other path and stayed kind of in the engineering and the hard sciences what my life would have been. But I decided to go on the education and public outreach team and I have to say I loved it it was the best job I’ve ever had Wallis: That’s great. Thank you. Kind of to wrap up. Story telling is what we do as interpretation rangers. We select a topic that we hope will be of interest to our visitors, something that pertains to the park, and then we work on telling a good story. In ‘Brave the Wild River’ you weave together many stories and you make these two women and Norm Nevills and all the characters involved in the trip really come to life. Do you have any suggestions for us on how to tell a good story?

Melissa + Wallis: How to tell a good story?

Melissa: I mean I have been trying to figure that out my whole entire career and I I imagine I am going to keep working on it. Um at least at this moment in time how I feel is that a good story kind of boils down to people who want something and there are obstacles in their way you know what I mean? Like at the heart of this story is two women who had this desire to go and make their mark on the world of Botany and they were willing to go risk their lives to do it. I mean a river trip in 1938 was no small feat you know they they really dove into something where they didn’t know what they were getting into and they didn’t have the kind of equipment and maps and information that we have today but they were so passionate about about this idea that they could make a difference in the field of Botany that they were going to go no matter what. And so it is a story about about that kind of inner drive that inner desire and I think a lot of stories are about that when you kind of peel back the layers and see the heart of the story. Do you have a character who wants something and what are they prepared to do to get what they want? Um I imagine there is other ways to think about story telling but that is just kind of the way I am thinking about it right now.

Wallis: Well thank you that’s helpful for us. And finally do you think there are, we touched on this a little bit, but do you think there are other Grand Canyon stories that really need to be told? And what might they be?

Melissa: I think there are so many, and I am glad we are doing this on the North Rim you know I have been walking around looking at those views and just thinking about how vast and incredibly iconic this landscape is. I mean there are no words to describe the Canyon and I think it is full of stories many of which have not yet been told. I mean everyone who comes and encounters this canyon has a new story to tell and throughout history there are stories that need to be told. I think one thing I am really glad the park service is doing now is telling more stories about the Indigenous peoples who live in this region and making space for them to tell their own stories and talk about their presence in the park. Um I think that is a really important step forward I think there are definitely more stories about women to tell throughout history who have encountered this place and been changed by it and and again I do think every visitor who comes here comes away with their own story.

Wallis: Thanks. I I like the way you said that the Canyon changes people because I really feel that since I have been here too.

Melissa: It does. It does and it is hard to put into words but you do come away from it feeling different about the world and about yourself and about life and what it means to be alive on this beautiful planet. It’s it’s an incredibly important place for for experiencing that kind of change.

Wallis: Oh I think so I couldn’t agree more and I think that I think that Elzada and Lois probably felt exactly that way when they came out of the Canyon.

Melissa: I think they did and I think they were changed for the rest of their lives by what they had experienced.

Wallis: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much. We have been talking to Melissa Sevigny author of ‘Brave the Wild River’ and science reporter for KNAU. Thanks again.

Melissa: Thanks Wallis

Wallis: We would like to thank Melissa for taking the time to talk to us today and we look forward to her next writing project. And before we leave, I’d like to gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.

Houston: You want to go out and see one? You're probably going to need to hike some miles. Maybe go for some drives, and you're just actually going to have to get lucky.

Juli: Hey there. I'm Ranger Juli, and I sat down with one of our wildlife biologists to learn more about just one of the many things that make the North Rim of Grand Canyon a special place, Kaibab squirrels.

Houston: Yeah. Hello. My name is Houston Thompson. I'm a wildlife biologist here at the Grand Canyon. Working on the North Rim in summers focusing on our Kaibab squirrels, our bison, Mexican spotted owls, and California condors, in addition to a number of other critters. Been here a couple of years and we've been making great strides, especially on some Kaibab squirrel population modeling. And that's what we're here to talk about today, I believe.

Juli: Awesome. So what are Kaibab squirrels and why is it important for you guys to be studying them here at Grand Canyon?

Houston: So yeah, good question. Kaibab squirrels are one of six subspecies of tassel eared squirrels. Tassel eared squirrels are found from here in Arizona into New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and even down into Mexico. I believe two of the subspecies are in Mexico. The largest range subspecies is the Abert squirrel. And they're what you'd be familiar with on the South Rim. They extend from the South Rim there into New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. There's another subspecies, lives the Rocky Mountain front, the Kaibab squirrel, our special squirrel here on the North Rim, endemic to the North Rim, have one and the smallest ranges of all the subspecies. So, they're very cute, cute squirrel, large white fluffy tail. And they're a fairly large squirrel as well compared to most other rodents you see around.

Juli: Can you explain what an endemic species is?

Houston: So yeah. An endemic species is a species that's just found in one geographic location, generally an isolated area. And more likely than not, they might have special traits that have allowed them to persist, and kind of evolve in place. So, it's really important for us to study these endemic species, because they can lend some of those special traits that we want to understand that helps them survive in the location they find themselves in.

Juli: For Kaibab squirrels, what are some of those traits that make them different from other Abert squirrels? And do you guys know how those traits benefit them here?

Houston: So, we know part of that answer at least. So, I mentioned there are six subspecies of this tassel eared squirrel. And they're all a little different. So mostly it's based on their pelage, which is kind of their fur coloration and patterns. So, Kaibab squirrels will have a fully white tail. That's one of the bigger differences. Whereas an Abert squirrel will have kind of a white and black, kind of black underneath. And it's a little more speckled I guess, overall. So, our Kaibab squirrels in the right light just looks like a bunch of snow or something. Their very white tail, very easy to spot on the landscape, that sort of thing. They also have, more often than not, black bellies compared to Abert squirrels that have more white bellies. Although there are actual, there have been some sightings, where that's actually reversed, but it's fairly uncommon. They believe that that change has occurred just because of one gene mutation. So Abert squirrels and Kaibab squirrels and arguably all the other subspecies used to be a little more connected through Ponderosa, and other pine forests that used to be a little more connected. And after long periods of time, some of those pine forest pockets became a little more isolated. And that's how our Kaibab squirrels have found themselves more or less stuck here on an island on the Kaibab Plateau.

Juli: So, you said that they're really easy to see because of their white, fluffy tail. But a lot of times visitors are asking, how can they see one? Where can they see one? How rare are they? How many? Do you have any answers to those questions? Any tips for how visitors might have the best chance of seeing a Kaibab squirrel, and what should they do if they see one?

Houston: Sure. So, I could go into some history of population, because it's tough. They're, they're kind of a cryptic species arguably, just because they're very quiet. They escape predators by climbing a tree and just going silent. And they're not active throughout the day. I mean, they will be, they'll bounce around, but you just kind of have to catch them at the right time. And you have to be in the right area. So, you need to be one, in pine forests, although even in our mixed conifer, you can run across them here on the North Rim. But they are pine obligates. So normally they're around, on the North Rim here, mainly ponderosa pine. Other areas they'll eat on other pine trees like pinyon, etcetera. So, part of the difficulty in seeing one now is there's just not that many, it seems. But population has always been difficult to determine. There's been biologists working on this for almost a hundred years, and population estimates vary wildly. So back in, like the 1920s, they thought maybe 5 to 10,000 of them were in existence by the 40s, maybe 3000. By around the 70s, maybe one biologist thought 1000, another thought 5 to 10,000. And even more recently, like in the late 80s, something like 22,000 squirrels was the estimate.

Juli: Wow, is that all Kaibab squirrels?

Houston: Just Kaibab squirrels. So, we've been doing some surveys that have been done historically to try to figure out how many we have. They call it a feed index. So basically, we would set up a grid, a fairly large grid, and you'd go 5 or 10 meters and count how much feed sign you found, and that'd be feed that's dropped from the tree as their feeding. It could be where they're digging up mushrooms, a number of other things as well. So, you'd count how many of those little meters had feed sign and you'd continue doing that throughout the grid. It takes a couple hours to do this, this survey. And then you'd kind of do some math to say, well, how many of those plots out of about 270 had feed, which then you could say over time is feed increasing or decreasing? And they would kind of try to extrapolate that on a landscape level to try to figure out how many squirrels we have. So not simple and I would argue pretty unreliable. So, the last decade or more, we've been doing those feed index grids, and we would just start getting zero feed sign. And we know the squirrels are around, but it's hard to extrapolate how many squirrels you have when all your grids say zero. So, we do know they've been in decline for over a decade. Maybe a fairly stark decline, having worked with the feed index grids. And we have a new kind of novel protocol here for searching for squirrels on the Grand Canyon, I might only speculate several hundred, maybe a thousand squirrels currently on the Kaibab Plateau. Again, it's kind of difficult to put a good number to it, but that's why we're working on it. So, to find the squirrel, if you want to go out and see one, you're probably going to need to hike some miles, maybe go for some drives and you're just actually going to have to get lucky. You could also go where previous people have spotted squirrels. That can be a little more reliable. Last year, for example, we had a pair in the North Rim Campground, so they were just really visible. But even then, you kind of had to get lucky. So, if you find a Kaibab squirrel, we would like to know about it. Because they're so rare currently, we take all sightings from the public and staff. We do our new survey protocol to look for feed sign. And we're building a map of where these squirrels may be. And we're then looking into why are they in the places they are? We're trying to get trends. Are they increasing? Decreasing still? Luckily, I do feel like in the last two years or so, they have been, in fact, increasing just slowly. This fall actually, some anecdotal evidence from the forest suggests maybe they’re rebounding pretty quick, which is definitely possible. They can have 2 or 3 litters a year, and each litter can have 3 to 5 squirrels in it. So, they can proliferate pretty quickly. That said, they're also pretty low on the food chain and they make a tasty snack for a wide number of predators. Historically, goshawks were considered one of their primary predators. With boom and busts of populations we don't seem to have many goshawks around right now either which allows, perhaps, for a quicker rebound. I was mentioning a feed index grid. That's been the historic method for surveying for these squirrels. Our kind of new, more novel method is really just go find the squirrels. So, we just go on hikes looking for a winter feed sign, where we document that. And then we'll actually if we find some feed trees, we will then circle around to try to map out their winter territory, which could be almost 20 acres in size. Having kind of worked through this process, we've also learned that those feed index grids are somewhat biased. You could have a historic grid just that happens to be on, say, a historic winter territory, and so maybe you're just catching sign from one territory year after year and you're not actually getting the bigger picture. And the fluctuation in sign quantity could be more of a factor of how much feed is on the landscape that year. So, maybe I should back up one more moment. These Kaibab squirrels and just tasseled squirrels in general, are the only squirrel species that's really active year-round. So, most squirrels kind of cache food and kind of hibernate some in the winter. These squirrels do not. They don't cache food, and they therefore also have to stay active all winter. They do not hibernate. So when they start getting really hungry, late in winter, really all they're eating is the inner bark of trees. So at the end of a twig, they'll lop off the little pine needle palm, that'll fall to the ground, and then they'll kind of take off the end of that twig and corncob it. So they're like stripping the bark and eating the phloem, the living sugary part of the tree. And then they'll drop that to the ground. So, we're looking for those little pencilized twigs. It's a telltale sign of a tassel eared squirrel or Kaibab squirrel. So we're looking for that type of sign to figure out where they were in the winter. And then based on that, you have actually a better chance of seeing them in those areas as well. They'll generally only be within about a square mile of their winter territory during summer. Their summer territory is quite a bit longer. And of course, they do other things too. They can disperse over long distances, although we don't have a good bearing on how far that might be. But based on the winter territories we have observed, some of those can have miles between them. And I guess in nature sex is a good driver for dispersal, so they're often most likely just trying to go find a mate when they're out dispersing. So that's our current approach is more or less just let's go find the squirrels and figure out what's going on. But we are looking into some other, novel approaches, some of which have been pulled from mesocarnivore models. So, we're trying to collect DNA, using attractant stations, offer up some bait, and hopefully they come and leave some hair behind. We're trying acoustics, a noninvasive methodology that's becoming fairly popular for a number of species. Even though they're pretty quiet, we're hopeful some of that will still be fruitful. So, yeah, we'll put up a recorder kind of in a center of a winter territory where we have a higher expectance to see if squirrels will be there. We have a couple months worth of audio that hopefully will pick up a squirrel sound. They're pretty quiet, though, and they don't talk a lot. And their audio doesn't really project that far either. So, we'll see how it goes. We're also trying some track pans. So, we make this little, square or triangle kind of a rain proof tunnel, that they can walk through. And the bottom of that has a metal pan with kind of like chalk or ink toner, something that really can leave nice footprints behind. And then we can collect those footprints to see presence or absence of squirrels. A lot of these methods don't tell you how many squirrels we have, but it might move us in the right direction. So this is all been experimental in 2024, and we have yet to get some data on it. Additionally, we're trying to collect some actual, genetic samples just from tissue of squirrels that are recovered from being hit by cars. We put a word out with Arizona game and fish to collect samples from hunters because they are actually a hunted species, believe it or not, despite their low numbers. The goal is to get genetic markers, so that we can do eDNA. So, Edna is environmental DNA. Historically, it's mainly been done in water bodies. So to back up half a moment, we're all shedding skin cells. So are the squirrels or the birds. Just everything is. And so, you can filter water in a pond, you can collect those skin cells that have come from everywhere. And then you can actually determine what is there, based on kind of a genetic library that we pull from. Science keeps progressing. Not long ago, someone demonstrated for the first time that you can actually sample spider webs for the same purpose. So, these spider webs are sticky. The skin cells stick to that, and we can see what's around. So that was one of the first terrestrial uses of Edna. But going forward, we think we'll be able to perhaps filter air to determine presence absence of these squirrels and other species really. It doesn't tell you an abundance, just a presence or an absence. So that's kind of an exciting way to go as well.

Juli: Yeah. That's cool. It's kind of gross to think about, but kind of cool to think about, too.

Houston: And it's great because it's also noninvasive. A lot of studies of wildlife requires getting your hands on or playing a call so that they call back and it's kind of invasive. It can alter their behavior, change what they're doing. It can even add stress depending on what you're doing. So yeah, the noninvasive methods are preferred. Hopefully they work.

Juli: Hopefully. So, you've said that the Kaibab squirrels are pretty quiet. But other than that, is there any ways that you could think to describe the personality of the squirrels, the ways they act, or your interactions with them? Anything memorable?

Houston: Yeah. Well, so squirrels are squirrels. They are cute, of course. Especially when they're, like, chasing each other, which more likely than not, it's when they're rutting and they're not actually playing. I don't know how much play they have, and they might play more when they're tiny tiny. And that's pretty darn cute, too. I mean, two cute squirrels chasing each other. It's hard to beat that. When they have their new litter, those are especially cute to watch too. Younger species in general, including our cute Kaibab squirrels, of course they're cuter because they're young, but they're also more fumbly. They'll like, try to jump to a branch and kind of fumble around and, and they're a little awkward. And that just adds to the fun. A month or two ago as well, I was out on, on the rim and I actually flushed a peregrine falcon from the cliffs that started calling some. I listened back and actually could hear a Kaibab squirrel make three short little calls. And so, since we've been into the acoustic realm of late, it gave me hope that maybe this, this type of survey and acoustic survey could work. I'm still a little skeptical, though, because it's just not that loud. It does take a trained ear to pick out a Kaibab squirrel from the forest. But their call is very much unique compared to other species. Probably the squirrel that most people are familiar with is the southwestern red squirrel. They're really territorial. They'll yell at you; they’ll chat at you. They make sure you know they're there. They're kind of like the alarm calls of the forest. Where comparatively, these Kaibab squirrels are really quiet. You could walk right by one, and they might not say anything. On occasion when you approach, they might let you know they're there. But generally, they're just a silent species. They're pretty nonchalant. They don't seem to be that worried about predators. They'll just kind of go about their business looking around and just being squirrels. That also means they get snatched up I think, pretty easy. And their white tail probably doesn't help with that too much. The white tail could have a number of purposes as well. It could be this big white flag saying, grab me, grab me where the rest of the squirrel is dark. So if a hawk comes and tries to snatch it, it might try to grab the white fluffy tail. And it's so darn fluffy they're just going to miss. And then the squirrel gets away. It's also nice and fluffy to help with cold winter temperatures. In the winter, they do sleep even though they're active year-round. They'll actually kind of ball up with their tail on their face, kind of in a nice little round circle to help stay warm. So that really fluffy tail really helps kind of hold some of that air stable to add that warmth that they will absolutely need when it's really cold out. So because they are so nonchalant, not too worried about predators around, they're not very good with cars. They'll, they'll just kind of wander out in front of the road.

Juli: I’ve noticed that.

Houston: Yeah, we have a pretty high squirrel vehicle mortality wherever, wherever you find them. So it can be a good chance to see one. But at the same rate, speeding, even going at regular speed, sometimes it's hard to avoid them. So even though I'm describing them as kind of nonchalant, carefree, they are actually fairly observant. So if you see a squirrel in the woods, they might see you looking at them. And part of it is humans have this predator look. We're on our hind legs, our claws, our front claws are free. Our eyes are in front of our head. These are all, like, telltale predator signs. And they'll, they'll notice that. So often if you see one and they see you, they're going to be like, huh. And they're going to start probably walking away from you. And if you follow them a little, they'll be like, oh, this, this doesn't seem right. And they'll pretty quickly climb a tree. And at which point they try to go to almost the very top where they just then go silent and then they wait for the predator to leave.

Juli: Is there a reason, I feel like usually when I've seen them, they're running across the ground instead of climbing up a tree, until eventually, like you said. Is that just when I see them? Are they normally running across the ground? Is there a reason that they like, hang out more there than up in the trees?

Houston: So, they probably hang out more in the trees than you think.

Juli: Oh, I'm just not looking up, probably.

Houston: Yeah. And they're hard to see, like, there's a lot of branches in a tree. They're just hard to see up there. Especially because they just go completely still. They're not, like, flailing their tail back and forth. They're just up there quiet. And really being on the ground is when they're the most vulnerable to predators. The trees offer a lot of protection. So they nest in trees. They make the most of their living in trees. But a lot of their living has to be done on the ground, too. So certain times a year, they're certainly eating that inner bark, so in winter, primarily. In spring, they're eating baby pinecones. And throughout the summer season, a lot of pine cones as they mature. And then a big portion of their diet is actually fungus on the ground. So mushrooms, primarily. It's where they get a significant source of their protein, and it's just a huge part of their diet. So that's, they're on the ground to go find and dig for truffles essentially. So that's probably when you're seeing them. Sometimes they're getting from tree to tree that way as well. But if the trees are in a close enough proximity, they can actually, like little squirrel ninjas, jump from tree to tree to tree and never really need to come to the ground.

Juli: So can you elaborate at all on how they have a symbiotic relationship with the forest, or to what degree they have a symbiotic relationship with the forest?

Houston: Absolutely. And they absolutely do. They are pine tree obligates, and you could argue the other way around, almost. So it's a symbiotic between, a symbiotic relationship between squirrels, the trees and the fungus. There's been a number of studies over the last decade or more that have shown how interconnected the forest is through mycorrhizae networks. So the connection of all the different fungus in the ground helps give nutrients to the trees, and the trees will actually give nutrients to other trees. And they kind of even can communicate through the ground. So it's this very interconnected network. So the squirrels will actually eat some of that fungus and spread the spores of that fungus, which helps the health of the soil and the trees. And then the trees are also feeding the squirrels with their, the inner bark and their pinecones. So very much a connected circle there with those three. They're also kind of on the lower level of the food chain. So, they're also then supporting other critters in the forest by providing themselves as prey, especially to say, goshawks and other predators and scavengers.

Juli: Do you think the way they have this relationship with the forest, that changes that you guys see in the squirrel population or where they are, can tell you things about changes in the forest or vice versa? Or is there anything else that you think would be beneficial from studying this population?

Houston: Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of those questions are still arguably a ways off from being figured out. There have been a number of studies on the lives of these squirrels and how they make a living. But there's so many unknowns as well. The more we learn about any species, the more questions we have. So our number one goal currently at Grand Canyon is just to figure out how many squirrels do we have and where are they. Then we can start asking the questions of trends, habitat assessments. So we're also looking at why the population fluctuates, and we do not have a good bearing on that in the hundred years that we've been studying them. There's a number of hypotheses out there. And I could go through several of them here. One of which is a predator prey model I kind of alluded to earlier. So when you have lots of squirrels, you're probably going to have lots of critters eating them. So if we're looking at goshawks, which might be one of their primary predators, when you have high population of squirrels, you have a lot of goshawks, but then maybe there's getting to be too many goshawks and they're all hungry. And so they're starting to eat the squirrels faster than they can reproduce. And you could have a pretty big crash in the population because of that. So that's one leading theory. Drought and climate change also could very much have an impact on these squirrels. With long periods of drought, you might have trees that are more stressed and they're not producing as much of that inner bark that the squirrels are eating and maybe fewer pinecones as well. So that could certainly create a food scarcity for these squirrels. I've been hypothesizing, there's been some literature that shows that some plants are creating more tannins, kind of related to stress, but that has been tied directly to increases of CO2. Yeah, climate change is really interesting because it is impacting the landscape in so many different ways, in so many different areas. And this is especially important to research, because I understand the southwest may be hit exceptionally hard by some of projected climate change impacts, mostly related to heat and drought. So, with increases of CO2, they have shown in a variety of plants that these plants will actually produce more tannins. Some of that could be stress related. And you might get a similar result from drought. But with more tannins, the food becomes less nutritious and less appealing or less available overall. So, this has only been shown in a number of plant species. We have never in the scientific community, to my knowledge, looked at an increase of tannin production in Ponderosa itself. It has been shown in a number of other woody plant types. So we're wanting to pursue that avenue eventually. We just have so many questions to answer. But especially with climate being one of the big key issues of the day, it could be an avenue we go down. Drought could very much be a similar cause in an increase of tannin production, and therefore the food becomes less nutritious. With fewer nutrients and sugars in that food source, the squirrels just might not be reaching their calorie balance. For a lot of wildlife species, it's calories in, calories out equals survival as a way to boil it down. The literature has largely ruled out disease as one of the reasons for these big population crashes. But having been talking with our veterinarians recently, we believe there is reason to revisit some disease models, especially plague. It’s a cryptic disease that's hard to detect. And because these squirrels are at the bottom of the food chain, it's hard for us to get reliable samples really quickly, they just get snatched up by ravens and goshawks and other scavengers. So just because we haven't detected it yet doesn't mean that it's not there. And we do know Grand Canyon has plague. We have plague on both rims. Science has progressed and we do have more tests to determine if plague has been on the landscape previously because the survivors of plague will actually have essentially antibodies that help them survive that last epidemic. So we're going to hopefully be moving in that direction in the coming years to see if we can detect that as well. So kind of related to their population estimates. It's been a controversial subject whether or not this squirrel should be a hunted species. So of course, there is no hunting allowed within Grand Canyon National Park boundaries, but they are currently a hunted species on the forest. Over time, that's gotten a lot of pushback as well. So even back in the late 1800s, President Harrison and Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve. That protection continued through, around the late 1930s with the Forest Service. By 1965, actually, the Kaibab Squirrel National Natural Landmark was established. Usually, National Natural Landmarks are designated for educational purposes or, sometimes cultural purposes. So it's not all that common for a species to be afforded a National Natural Landmark. But because they are so iconic with their bright white tails, I think that's part of the reason why they got that designation, which helps continue protection for them. So I was mentioning earlier, I was throwing out some numbers for how many squirrels we think exist. So as early as the 20s there's like 5 or 10,000 squirrels. But at the same time, a lot of people were concerned that there weren't that many squirrels around. So they got some biologists on the job, and they thought, well, you know, they're actually probably doing okay. By the 1960s, some newspapers and magazines really started to look at these squirrels, especially because the state was starting to talk about rescinding protection from hunting. So there was actually large public outcry in around 1964 to say, no, why would you hunt this squirrel? There's not even that many around. Like, what are we doing? So the state said, okay, we won't do it this year. And it actually potentially corresponded with a year of low turkey numbers. So they said, well, we'll just call off the turkey hunt and also call off the squirrel hunt. By 1965, though, pretty much the same year they created that Kaibab Squirrel National Natural Landmark, hunting became legal for these squirrels. And because it wasn't being publicized as much that following year, there wasn't as much public pushback and the squirrels became huntable. And that's remained the case ever since. That said, there has been occasional outcry, found some literature that showed in the early 70s and actually arguably currently now, there has been some pushback from the public, in part because those corresponded with years of pretty low squirrel numbers. So it starts to feel weird when you're still hunting a species, when you can't find any. But since we don't quite know their population dynamics, the causes for their booms and busts, that has been reason for us to have that concern. But it is also shown that maybe these squirrels are actually a little more resilient than we think. But again, we want to get a good handle on it before we let things go too far in either direction. So also in the early 70s, biologists were concerned about their population numbers. So they actually did a translocation of some Kaibab squirrels. So there actually is now an additional population of these squirrels. They're out kind of near Mount Logan or the Trumbull Wilderness. So that would be kind of, Western Grand Canyon still on the north side of the river, but kind of on the northwest corner of the park.

Juli: Is that a common thing to take an endemic species and put them somewhere else?

Houston: Fish and Wildlife Service has translocated or transplanted a number of species, especially when populations are low, to kind of hedge our bets. So if one population fails, hopefully that other population may persist. And they do that for a lot of terrestrial species, number of fish species can be moved to avoid predation or hybridization. Just depends on the species. But it is a semi common approach to, it's really to hedge our bets. So that's what they did then. And you can still find Kaibab squirrels out in that country as well. So these squirrels can live, it's estimated 3 to 4 years in the wild. In a zoo, the longest recorded has been about nine years. They're having, I think I mentioned, like, three litters a year. Just depends on the year. And some year they may only have one litter just depending on the food resources available. But they have to reproduce quickly because they're gobbled up so quickly too. They are pretty low on the food chain. Some estimates show like a 50% mortality rate. So they have to breed fairly quickly to keep up with that. And that's also why your population could have these big swings. You can crash pretty quick if everyone's getting eaten, but luckily, they can reproduce fairly quickly to make up for it when times are good.

Juli: I was curious of when they have a litter like what that survival rate is, and if it's mostly because of predation, the ones that don't make it? And also, are there any in zoos right now?

Houston: I'm unaware of zoos that are advertising their Kaibab squirrels, but it's not to say they're not there. I'm sure there are tassel eared squirrel subspecies in zoos, and they're all pretty related so they'll have similar lifespans and similar habits in a lot of ways. So, yeah, survivability of young is probably more related to predation than not. And it's really about 50%. So about as high as an adult. So they do time their litters with the season. So usually, their first will be in spring, and May or June more often than not. Then they can have a mid-summer litter. And then I think we just had perhaps our last litter recently. There's been a lot of squirrel sightings this fall. So I'm hopeful they've actually had three litters this year. And some anecdotal evidence is showing we might have had that. So it might have been a pretty good year for a Kaibab squirrel.

Juli: Cool. Thanks, Houston.

Houston: Yeah, no thank you. Keep up the good work. We appreciate you educating the public and getting the word out. We all are in love with the squirrels here and we want to just make sure they're doing well.

Juli: The Behind the Scenery Podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park. Special thanks to Houston Thompson for this episode. We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.

Soft guitar and singing:

Momma’s don’t let your babies grow up to be rangers Don’t let them hike trails and camp where there’s dangers Let ‘em be friendly and be kind to strangers

Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be Rangers ‘Cause they’ll never stay home, and they’ll always roam Somewhere its pretty and nice

Doug: what are the common myths and images that people have in their mind when you mention that you work for the National Park Service as a ranger? They definitely think I live in a log cabin in the woods.

Jesse: We DO live in a log cabin in the woods.

Ceili: That’s true! Chuckles ...

Ranger Doug: Are there really bears down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Do you need a forestry degree to become a park ranger? And, do Grand Canyon rangers really live, rent-free, in historic cabins in the woods? Hello folks. I am ranger Doug, from the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. During the height of the COVID pandemic, North Rim rangers started producing podcasts. And this was a safe way of connecting with park visitors without having face-to-face contact. In the fall of 2020, I sat down with a couple co-workers. We recorded a conversation about what it means to be a park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park looking at the ranger lifestyles, job hiring, stereotypes and more. Recently I dug out that old recording and decided to polish it into a finished podcast. You may hear muffled voices as some of us were wearing protective facemasks. Today’s podcast title is: Momma Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Rangers This title is obviously a tongue-in-cheek spoof, kinda a take-off, of that old country Western song, sung by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. We all love being Grand Canyon park rangers. In the podcast, we will, however, take a close look at some common myths and mystiques and misconceptions about rangering at Grand Canyon National Park. I also invited my ranger friends Shiri, Dave, and Hannah to join me in singing a fun, parody, ending song, of the same title. So, sit back and please enjoy the podcast.

Jeffery: How would you describe your line of work? A stay at home parent? A business executive? A park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park? Whatever your profession, it’s likely there’s a few misconceptions about it. Hi, I’m Jeffrey a park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park and you’re listening to Behind the Scenery podcast. Have you ever dreamed of leaving your city job and urban life to move somewhere pretty? What’s it really like to live and work at a National Park like the Grand Canyon? Recently, three of my park ranger co-workers sat down to discuss this subject and more. One ranger even called in from the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, from the Phantom Ranch Ranger Station, to join the conversation. I will let them introduce themselves.

Doug: My name is ranger Doug.

Jesse: I’m Jesse.

Ceili: I’m Ceili.

Doug: And we’re here today to look at Park Ranger Mystiques, Myths and Misconceptions. The first question I have for you guys: When you go to a backyard BBQ and you happen to mention you’re a park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park, what are the common myths and images that people have in their mind when you mention that you work for the National Park Service as a ranger? For me, you know, I think people have the image that I sit in a fire lookout all day long, and I get to write the great American novel and watch sunsets for free. I think they think that I drive around in a pickup truck all day long and I get to count elk off in the woods. And they definitely think that I live in a log cabin in the woods. What are some of the reactions you get from folks?

Jesse: We DO live in a log cabin in the woods so that’s accurate.

Ceili: That’s true! Um, I well if people have some kind of image about what it is I do, it’s usually like they’re usually unsure about it and they usually ask “so do you just hike around?” I think a lot of people assume that you’re, I’m hiking around inspecting, or like enforcing rules. I would say though, most people look at me kind of blankly and don’t even ask questions. Like they’re not even they have no idea and don’t even try to figure it out. Those are the kind of, there are different kinds of backyard BBQs the ones I am picturing people have no concept of what’s happening at the Grand Canyon at all. And I will say they always, they always talk about the uniform is what they talk about even if they have no idea what I do and don’t even ask questions or pretend to know what I do. They do know what they think I should be wearing.

Jesse: People really are into the flat hat, which is my least favorite uniform item, but lots of folks seem to love it.

Ceili: I have to explain that I actually don’t wear that very much.

(Chuckle)

Jesse: Try to avoid it as much as possible.

Doug: And I’m just the opposite. I love wearing my ranger hat and wear it to work every day even if I have no public contacts. But another thing I see very commonly, if I’m chatting with somebody in the grocery line at the grocery store, and I mention I’m a park ranger. Then they instantly they start telling me their bear encounters. “Oh I …”

Ceili: I have experienced that, actually.

Doug: Yes, and its either they’re telling you their bear stories, their deer stories, or camping stories.

Jesse: That’s nice. I like hearing those kinds of stories.

Ceili: Yea, I had a couple times that people just dive into their bear encounters. And then at the end they ask “are there bears at the Grand Canyon?” I’m like “No, not really.”

(chuckles)

Doug: Well, so, what are some of the stereotypical profiles of a park ranger that you think the general public has in their minds? What comes to mind?

Jesse: I mean, I, I, think like a bearded male.

Ceili: Like you, Jesse!

Jesse: Yea, I am the stereotype.

Doug: But it has to be a “John Muir” beard. It has to be a long beard and you have to live in the woods and you have to be a rugged individualist, and you have to work by yourself. I think those are some of the stereotypes the public often has.

Ceili: Yea, I think your list Doug, that you put out recently, was pretty spot on as far as stereotypical image.

Doug: Yea, no office work, we’re outside working by ourselves, all day long, we’re also all knowing. We know every single plant and animal. The Latin names.

Jesse: That part is true.

(laughs!)

Doug: That’s an expectation. But you and you have to have a scientific mind, of course, to be able to memorize all those Latin names of all those flowers.

Ceili: Yea, and actually that reminds me of like going back to what people think when you tell them what you do they often assume you have a biology or an environmental science degree.

Jesse: Yea.

Ceili: Which is not usually true, actually. Or not always true.

Doug: Doesn’t our boss have a music degree?

Jesse: She has a Masters degree in percussion performance. I have a friend who is an interpretive ranger who has an architecture degree. I have a history degree. Like,

Ceili: And then I’m always bummed because I actually have an environmental science degree (laughs) so I am not able to break the stereotype for them.

(More laughs)

Doug: I know but I think the image is that you have to be a botanist, or a biologist, or have a park management degree or something in the natural or cultural resources

Ceili: Yea, they always ask if you have a forestry degree.

Doug: So that brings up a very important stereotype that I think we can do some myth busting right now. What’s the difference between a forest ranger and a park ranger?

Ceili: Well isn’t isn’t the difference like if there’s a national forest, the United States Forest Service, and the National Park Service are different things. So if you work for the Forest Service maybe you’re a forest ranger? If you work for the Park Service you’re a park ranger?

Doug: The US Forest Service manages all the Forests in America. And they are under the Department of Agriculture. And whenever you drive into a National Forest you always see the sign that says: “Land of Many Uses.”

Jesse: Which means, basically like all the cool stuff want to do in a national park but it’s against the rules, you can do in a National Forest.

Doug: So, for example, there are commercial consumptive uses of the resources. You can have timber contracts, you can have mining, you can have grazing, you can hunt in National Forests.

Jesse: You can have fires if there are no fire restrictions, you can dispersed camp.

Doug: Many uses.

Jesse: You can fly your drone.

Doug: But national parks, on the other hand, they’re in a separate department of government, under Department of Interior. The reason I think the US Forest Service is Department Agriculture because the trees are thought to be a consumptive renewable resource. But most of the other land managing agencies in the federal government fall under the Department of Interior, which the National Park Service does. So forest rangers work for the US Forest Service. Park rangers work for the National Park Service under Department of Interior.

Jesse: Yea, I mean it’s all fairly confusing if you’re not like immersed in this world because there’re Forest Service which is Agriculture which is strange. There’s Bureau of Land Management which is similar to Forest Service but also under the Department of Interior. Then there’s Park Service.

Doug: And there’s Fish and Wildlife Service

Jesse: Yea.

Doug: It gets confusing for the poor public. I feel their pain if they get confused about it. But going back to park employees, there are different types of park employees that work in national parks that aren’t necessarily park rangers. So who are some of them?

Ceili: Like the trail crew?

Doug: Well I was thinking of park concessionaires.

Ceili: Oh.

Doug: The people that make the beds, and pump the gas and work in the restaurants, and the lodges and what not. Those are park employees, they wear uniforms, but they are not employees of the National Park Service. They’re not park rangers as such.

Ceili: Yea. But then there are also employees of the National Park Service that wear Park Service uniforms that are not actually park rangers. Like it’s not their titles. Like the trail crew, I was talking to the trail crew the other day and they’re like “people always stop us and think that we’re park rangers.” But that’s not part of their position description at all. Like their job. They’re trail crew. They’re Park Service trail crew and they’re not rangers and they wouldn’t wear a flat hat ever.

Doug: There’s a big diversity of national park employees that work at Grand Canyon and other national parks that aren’t the typical rangers that wear the ranger hat. You mentioned the trail crew. They fall probably under the maintenance division.

Jesse: Yea.

Doug: So you have buildings and utilities folks. Somebody has to maintain the water and sewer systems at Grand Canyon. Somebody has to plow the roads, manage the road contracts and all those things. So the maintenance division is a big part of any park operations and they are not typically seen as park rangers.

Ceili: And all the scientists too. All the people that do behind the scenes doing research. They’re not rangers.

Doug: That’s right. So you have the natural and cultural resources folks. For example, we have a bison herd here on the North Rim. We have folks that work full time trying to manage that and other aspects of the natural and cultural resources in this huge national park.

Jesse: Yea, I mean basically, like anything that needs to get done in any town also needs to get done at a National Park. So yea, we have like you said, Doug, we have people that who maintain the roads and buildings. And uh, we have water utilities. I think we probably have the most exciting water utilities job in the country. Our water utility folks who get flown in to the canyon to work on the water pipeline. And they are often on rappel and on rope to do their repairs.

Ceili: And I think some of them are the highest paid employees in the Park Service.

Jesse: (Laughs) They probably should be!

Doug: Yea, it’s pretty important to have water in any national park, especially at the Grand Canyon.

Jesse: Yea, and we have like IT specialists, administrative officers, and law enforcement officers, and, yea, everything that needs to get done in a town needs to get done here too. So we have all those jobs.

Doug: So let’s talk a little bit about the difference between law enforcement and emergency service rangers and the folks that we are. We work in interpretation, the people that do the walks and talks. We use the term interpretation differently. It doesn’t mean language interpretation. It means trying to help folks connect with the natural resources and tell the park stories. But there are national park rangers that drive patrol vehicles. That operate the emergency equipment and respond to emergencies. And those are vital national park rangers in any national park.

Ceili: Yea, and law enforcement rangers can do interpretation, but interpretation rangers can’t do law enforcement.

Jesse: That’s an important distinction. (Laughs)

Doug: So not every park employee that wears a badge has law enforcement authority. And actually the national park rangers here at the Grand Canyon and elsewhere that do have formal law enforcement training and authority wear a slightly different badge than the rest of us wear.

Ceili: It’s bigger.

Jesse: Bigger and fancier.

Ceili: Yea.

Jesse: I think that’s one of the more confusing things for people. That, like everyone who wears a badge doesn’t necessarily do the same thing. I get mistaken for a law enforcement ranger quite often. Um, however, there is an odd venn diagram where, like you said, Ceili, law enforcement rangers can do interpretation, but interpreters can’t do law enforcement. However, for both types of rangers can do emergency services: search and rescue, and EMS response. So, uh,

Doug: And that has happened fairly regularly here at the North Rim. I’m a first-year ranger working here and I see the interpretive rangers cooperating regularly with, if there’s a missing person or distressed hiker or an actual ambulance call out from our park dispatch to attend an heart issue down at the lodge or elsewhere. Ah, whoever’s available law enforcement or inperp rangers often jump in and help out on those medicals on a regular basis.

Ceili: Yea, and I’m down at Phantom Ranch right now its, ah, the North Rim and Phantom Ranch are similar in that way because its, there’s not that much staff down here or on the North Rim. So that’s one of the best parts of the job here I think is that anything that law enforcement or emergency services needs help with down here which is just one other person here at the ranger station, um, if they need help it’s the interpreter that’s gonna help. If there’s an emergency and you have a ranger program about scorpions happening in five minutes, it’s the emergency that’s gonna take precedents over the scorpions, unfortunately.

Doug: And I thinks more typical in the smaller park operations across America. Not all of our 400+ national park units are the size and sophistication of Grand Canyon National Park. There may be a small historic home, or a small battlefield or other site that is managed by the National Park Service, they might have the staff of five or six people. So it doesn’t matter what your job is, you’re out shoveling the walks in them morning before the visitor center opens. You might be helping out with park maintenance even though that’s not your primary job. So the smaller park areas I think have greater diversity and more overlap of job duties.

Ceili: Yea. And that part if it is so fun, to me.

Doug: So let’s go back to the stereotype profile and lets do some myth-busting on the typical image that people might have of a male, bearded, rugged individualist ranger. What the reality here at the North Rim for example.

Ceili: Oh, I have a great story about that. But its at Phantom, not at the North Rim but it’s still good. Last tour, there was a guy, a hiker that had some sort of like possibly kidney issue or back problem, a couple different issues going on. And so we were going to medivac him out. And the helicopter landed and I was sitting with him on the porch here and the law enforcement ranger that was down here at the time went over to brief the flight medic about what was going on. Then he and the flight medic were walking back to the porch and even, even I expected the flight medic to look a very certain way. A little bit different than stereotypical park ranger, but still a bearded man and with a certain kind of outfit on. But no, it was Meghan. She’s one of my favorite people that works in the park. And she looked so epic (laughs) so it boggled my mind. I was not expecting a woman to walk up as the flight medic. And it was her. And she’s also someone I know so I felt comfortable with. So it was a funny moment for me because I thought I was not, I thought that I was kind of immune to those stereotypes, but I’m totally not. And I was so impressed with how she worked. Um, which, that doesn’t surprise me, but it just felt really cool to have my own stereotypes to be challenged.

Doug: So you don’t have to be a, to have a John Muir beard to be a park ranger at the Grand Canyon. So, I did the math. We have 11 summertime rangers working here at the North Rim in our division which includes North Rim rangers and Canyon rangers like you. And six of the 11 are women. So we have a pretty even gender mixture here. Our boss here, our overall boss is a woman. We have two summertime lead rangers. One’s a man, one’s a woman. So I think we have fairly integrated gender balance in our immediate work group. Uh, three, we are currently on our third National Park Service woman Director this century for the whole National Park Service. Two of the last three superintendents of Grand Canyon National Park have been women as well. And, you know, there’s still a ways to go with diversity in the National Park Service.

Ceili: Yea, I was thinking about my extrication training that I did last week, which was so fun and I loved it. But it was probably, um there were probably 15 or 20 people in that training and just two of us were women. And I have been in other emergency services trainings, and search and rescue training where it’s very much even and even the instructors are women. And I agree that a lot of our leadership directly are women. But that, you know, when you’re getting into ripping doors off of cars, still very much male dominated.

Doug: So part of that stereotype I think is still true. That is still probably a male-dominated profession. But there is some gender uh equality sneaking into the male profession. How about education? What are the education requirements to be a national park ranger?

Jesse: It depends on what kind of ranger you want to be. But anywhere from high school diploma to a Master’s Degree.

Doug: Typically, the uniformed national park interpretive rangers have a four year degree. And as we know, it can be in music, it can be in economics it can be in anything.

Ceili: And then while the science and resource management aren’t rangers, they are Park Service employees that probably some of them have PhD’s on what they’re studying, I would imagine.

Doug: Yea, I have worked with plenty of seasonals who have Master’s and doctorate degrees. So that’s kind of something that I’ve seen as a trend in the National Park Service. My co-workers as usually highly educated. I feel like a village idiot with just a bachelor’s degree often. (laughter). I’m just really impressed by the caliber of the summertime rangers and even supervisors that I’ve worked with over the years. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about how you get a national park ranger job. Because you just open up an email one day and suddenly you are sent to another park. Isn’t that how it works?

Jesse: (laughter) No.

Ceili: Fortunately, not.

Jesse: Fortunately, yea. No. You have to this process through the USAJOBS.GOV web site. There might be 300 other qualified applicants for a single job so usually you apply for many jobs. I remember one spring I applied to 65 jobs and I heard back from I think three of those. So, it’s a pretty competitive process. But you do apply for a specific location. Specific parks and specific jobs within those parks.

Doug: And it’s not easy to figure out the hiring system. If you dream of being a national park ranger some day you basically need to have a park ranger put their arm around you and walk you through the system. For example, we know ahead of time that there are three days, three successive days in November where they’re going to post all the summer for all of the national parks. You basically have two days, one to two days, to go onto USAJOBS. GOV, figure out the system, and apply, rate yourself, and have a fighting chance of getting a summer job. If you don’t meet those deadlines, you are done for the 2021 hiring season.

Ceili: And even if you do meet those deadlines, and your resume is not the exact correct format, like down to the punctuation and the spacing, with like your dates and hours that you’ve worked certain jobs, then you still won’t be qualified. So you’ve got to find yourself a personal park ranger to help you through that. I’m always willing to do that because I could not have done it without help. And I don’t think anyone could probably figure it out without help so I’m always willing to help people figure it out.

Doug: Very complicated.

Jesse: Yea, I think that’s why most people in the park service start through internships cause those are much easier to get and also it also gives you the opportunity to learn that hiring process.

Doug: Yea, that’s an excellent point, Jesse. You basically need some type of foot-in-the-door to get paid, to eventually get a paid summer job. And of course, once you work multiple summers as a paid ranger, often times people want to make a career out of it and that’s a whole another level of competition and hoops you have to jump through to possibly become a career ranger.

Ceili: Yea, Jesse just spent almost a decade trying to do that.

Jesse: (laughs) Yea, and I still haven’t achieved that!

Doug: Still working on it! And you’re a second-generation park employee too.

Jesse: Yea. That’s right.

Doug: So it’s not an easy profession to break in to, but it’s very desirable. Now how about housing? We get free housing, right?

Ceili/Jesse: No.

Doug: We don’t?

(laughter)

Doug; That’s a common misconception. That oh man, not only do you get to work in these beautiful national park areas, but you get to live in a cabin off in the woods and it’s all rent free. No it’s not.

Jesse: Depending where you are though, it is pretty cheap.

Doug: It can be cheap, but it’s based on, we have to drive 85 miles to get to the closest library, medical services, and groceries. So often times if you are in a remoter area like we are, they cut the rents down. But it’s never free. You always pay rent to stay in park housing.

Ceili: It comes right out of your paycheck.

Jesse: It’s based on your local rents in the local area. So if you work at the Grand Canyon, rent is pretty cheap, but if you work at Sequoia/Kings Canyon it’s based on Fresno so it’s a lot more expensive. If you work at Hawaii Volcanoes, it’s based on Hilo which is REALLY expensive. Um, so it can be quite expensive depending on where you are.

Doug: So let’s talk about pay a little bit. Most summertime rangers are GS-5, 16 bucks an hour or so. And that’s, you’re lucky to get a GS-5, so-called entry level job, as a GS-5 requiring a four-year degree as a minimum, and 16 bucks an hour plus change.

Ceili: Doesn’t sound good when you put it that way.

(laughter)

Doug: But you know, many of the folks that I have been associated with over the years, they don’t go into the park profession uh with the thought in mind that they’re going to be rich financially.

Jesse: Yea, because that would be a bad plan!

Ceili: Yea, that’s for sure true.

(Chuckles)

Doug; Yea, you are going to be very disappointed. Especially if you start as an intern, as a volunteer and work your way up, obviously it has nothing to do with going home with a big paycheck. So, I think that’s a common myth that we make a livable wage. We don’t make high pay but that’s not a motivation for most of us to get into the park profession. So any other misconceptions, myths, mystiques before we wrap things up here?

Jesse: Probably the question people ask me most frequently at the park when they find out I work only in the summer is, “Oh, what are you doing this winter? Do they just assign you to another park?” And that’s not the case. You just have to figure it out. They just let us go then. A lot of folks are like ski instructors, some people are teachers. Some people just travel. Some people just piece odd jobs together. Some people don’t work.

Ceili: Some people just watch Netflix.

Jesse: Yea. (laughs)

Doug: Some people like me are lucky and retired. So I have Social Security to help me out in the winter. But money is important, obviously. You have to make a living, but it’s usually not a motivator to get into this park profession. So here’s how I would like to end. I wanna hear what you guys, how you would answer this question. What’s the best part of being a park ranger, or the best part of being a Grand Canyon ranger for you? Jesse?

Jesse: I think for me it’s, it’s a couple things. It’s being so close to the Grand Canyon or whatever national park you’re working in, and the natural beauty and the opportunities for recreation that are here um right out your doorstep. Um it’s also not having to deal with anything that comes with living in a city. That’s a big motivation for me being out here. Like if I am in traffic for more than a few minutes I get really frustrated really quickly. And also the community that forms around national parks I find to be really supportive and fun and thoughtful and, and engaging. So I really like the people that are here.

Doug: Ceili?

Ceili: I think for me the best part of this job, I think that in this particular place, in our work group we are really encouraged to be really creative in our work and take risks in our ranger programs and our interpretation and in how we interact with people and um in our collaboration too. We kind of, we are encouraged to be creative and do thing differently. And that’s so fun for me. And then, also, I’m not sure if this is unique to Grand Canyon or to this job, but what I do every day has such a wide variety. You could have, you know, a good solid plan for your day, and then you could be, you could be dealing with something totally different all day, unexpectedly. Like a medical call or something. The then the opportunity to gain skills is so, there are so many opportunities here. Like I was in extrication training last week learning how to rip doors off of cars. You know we did high-angle rescue training recently too. So I don’t know what other job I could do that would give me all those opportunities to gain so many cool skills. Yea, so it’s kind of a combination of all those things that I like the best.

Doug: Okay, for me I would say would be number one is living and working in the park. Kind of echoing what Jesse said, I’ve got trails right out my doors that I can enjoy on my weekends and off hours. I sat in my lawn chair out in front of my cabin, and yes, I have the same, meeting that stereotype, I live in a cabin. It’s not a log cabin, but it’s a cabin and I live in the woods. So I’m livin’ that dream. And I get to look at the Aspens turning color this time of year. So just living and working in a park setting is number one for me. And number two is the co-workers. I am surrounded by really talented and creative folks which kind of feeds my creative juices as well. I have inspirational bosses that I look up to as role models that support and encourage me in my work and my career. And one thing I have learned, especially during the COVID-19 summer of 2020 is how much I miss meeting and greeting and interacting with the visitors. That’s a big part of what motivates me to come back and work in the parks is you meet folks that are like-minded, that enjoy the out-of-doors and want to learn the history or hear the stories of whatever national park you’re in. And that are kind of blank slates. Often these folks are very receptive to whatever the story is in the park. And I gain a lot of inspiration from the visitors and learn a lot from them hearing their stories and what brings them out to the parks. Just engaging with the visitors, I very much miss that this year, even though sometimes I complain about a long shift in the visitor center talking to visitors all day long. I wish for that. I long for that. And I know that is an important part of the ranger job. So, anything else here before we wrap up?

Ceili: Uh, yea, I’ll agree with that. The other day, two days ago was like the busiest day on the trail I’ve ever seen. I’ve probably talked to more people than in all of 2020. And I thought it would be draining, but it was so energizing. I think I went faster than I usually, I hiked faster than I usually do because I was so excited talking to all the people.

(laughs)

Doug: So, if there are kids out there, and you dream some day of breathing, breathing fresh, national park air, enjoying beautiful national park views, and having low pay, then you’ve found the right profession.

(laughs)

Go into park ranger work. It’s great. It’s not for everybody. But for us that are lucky enough to call ourselves national park rangers it’s a great profession.

Doug: My name is ranger Doug

Jesse: I’m Jesse.

Ceili: I’m Ceili.

Doug: And thank you for listening to us today. Have a safe and pleasant future.

Ceili: Yay!

Jeffery: I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Ceili, Jesse, and Doug, and I hope you gained a bit of insight into our park ranger work and our lives. What is the best part of your day job? What brings you the most work satisfaction? Before we leave, I’d like to gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.

Doug: I thought you folks might like a quick update since the podcast was first recorded in 2020. First off, pay for entry level National Park Service interpretive rangers has soared all the way up to 19 dollars per hour. Yoohooooo! A total of seven different North Rim rangers contributed to this podcast. I thought it might be fun to do a quick: where-are-they-now update on their lives. Ranger Ceili, who phoned in from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, returned to school in her winter off-seasons. She recently earned her teacher’s certificate and master’s degree. After logging 5,200 Grand Canyon hiking miles, as an inner-canyon ranger, she has left the Park Service and is now a sixth grade school teacher. She received a surprise THANK YOU letter from the park’s superintendent at her going away party, thanking her for her seven seasons of outstanding public service to the park. Ranger Shiri was an intern ranger when she sang on our ending parody song. She is now a paid summertime ranger at nearby Zion National Park in Utah. Ranger Hannah, who also sang on our song, took a promotion, and now works in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. Ranger Hannah and I collaborated in recording several Behind the Scenery podcasts. You might hear her singing a few fun songs. Ranger Dave joined us in singing the ending song too. He promoted into his current North Rim job and has become an expert podcast editor. He too has contributed to the long list of the many Grand Canyon Behind the Scenery podcasts. Ranger Jesse, in his 10-year effort, has finally landed a full-time, career, National Park Service job. He is a park supervisor on the North Rim. So, good for him. Well deserved, my friend! Ranger Jesse and I collaborated on recording my favorite Grand Canyon podcast. The title is “Dude, it’s just a rock.” Give it a listen. You’ll love the really corny parody song we recorded for that one! Summertime ranger Jeffery was hired into the permanent ranks as a maintenance and facility worker. He learned how to operate all of the park’s heavy equipment: backhoes, loaders, road graders, trucks. He became the North Rim’s primary wintertime snow remover two years ago. He continued rising through the ranks, and now he is in charge of the entire North Rim maintenance and facilities operations on the North Rim. Way to go, Jeffery! As for me, I spent winter off-seasons volunteering at Pinnacles and Channel Islands National Parks in California. I have returned for 5 straight summers, to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I’m loving life, baby. Enjoying cabin living. Still in the woods! Hiking the trails. And still taking home low pay. All with a huge smile on my face. Every single day.

Now, where’s my guitar, I know it’s around here, oh, here it is.

Soft guitar and singing:

Rangers ain’t easy to love and we’re harder to hold We’d rather camp in the woods and out in the cold

Hats with a flat brim and boots that are smelly Whenever we go on patrol We hike in the canyon, and don’t need no companion Just want a trail for a goal

Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be Rangers Don’t let them hike trails, and camp where there’s dangers Let ‘em be friendly and be kind to strangers

Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be Rangers ‘Cause they’ll never stay home, and they’ll always roam Somewhere its pretty and nice

Rangers like smoky old cabins and clear mountain mornings Cute little chipmunks, squirrels, and the stars at night

Rangers go down in the canyon and hike to the river We check on the trail, weather, and water And try to make it all right

Momma’s don’t let your babies grow up to be rangers Don’t let them hike trails and camp where there’s dangers Let ‘em be friendly and be kind to strangers

Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be Rangers ‘Cause they’ll never stay home, and they’ll always roam Somewhere its pretty and nice

Alli: Hello, this is Alli. For this episode of the Behind the Scenery Podcast, I had the opportunity to speak with Deidre Peaches, a Diné filmmaker. If you'd like to just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Deidra: Yeah. (Introduction in Diné) And that's me introducing myself as a Diné asdzáá from Flagstaff, Arizona. And a little bit about myself, I am a full-time filmmaker. I own my own production company called DLP Productions that's owned and operated in Flagstaff, AZ. And a little bit about my filmmaking history is that I've been doing this line of work for a long time now. I started in high school creating short films with colleagues and friends, and that propelled and curiosity of creating films propelled to, like, different opportunities, creating narrative films, creating documentaries and, at the time, it was more or less, filmmaking was an outlet for me to keep myself occupied. Prior to that, I was really into sports. I was into basketball and everything, and I had dislocated my patella and so filmmaking was a way to like, not uh have too much stress on my body, but to do something that was creatively, just something I wanted to venture into. So that's something that I've been doing for well over 18 years now and I certainly enjoy doing that.

Alli: OK, great. So, you kind of answered my second question. But how exactly did you get into filmmaking? And was it something that you always were interested in, always wanted to do?

Deidra: Yeah, it's been something I've always in one aspect or another, it's something that I have found myself very curious about. I remember being younger and creating kind of like stop motion animation with like different sort of stick figures and creating a storyboard so inherently it was something that I found interesting. And it just grew into more things and then to this day, I'm still learning and I'm still wanting to to create more narratives and documentary film work.

Alli: Now, you’ve obviously done a lot of different films. In 2022, you directed the film Voices of the Grand Canyon. What is your personal connection to the Grand Canyon and how has working on documentaries about the Grand Canyon shaped that connection? Deidra: Yeah. So, I'll, I'll start from my first memory of like really going to the Grand Canyon was a school field trip from Flagstaff. And going with a bunch of kids on the bus and going to the South Rim of the Canyon to the visitor center and just walking around like out there and just being immersed in just the vastness of the Canyon and the colors of the landscape. And it was something you don't really see every day. So being from a very ponderosa filled environment and then going to a Canyon, that was definitely something that stuck with me visually. And the other aspect of my connection to the Grand Canyon is that my third clan is Áshįįhi, which is salt people and in Diné culture we have stories that talk about the salt mines that are in the Canyon, that there's trails there that lead us, that a lot of our people have gone to and so directly like having that lineage is something that I've grown to learn more about through having these conversations and creating films and listening to other elders. And so, I'm, I'm really fortunate to have that opportunity to have those conversations and to learn about myself through documentary filmmaking.

Alli: Yeah. If you just want to talk a little bit about, more about your film, Voices of the Grand Canyon, what it was like creating that film.

Deidra: Yeah. So, um in 2022, voices of the Grand Canyon came out. And on that film, I had the opportunity to venture to different places along the Colorado Plateau, home to different Indigenous tribes on the plateau. And so one of the particular tribes that I remember going to was out in Zuni and so going to Zuni and hearing stories from elders out there. Talking about their connection to the Canyon and the stories that they have connected to the Canyon. And I guess in a lot of ways too this journey of the film really started too in 2015 when I had the opportunity to travel down the Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry all the way down to, down to Phantom Ranch. And that was about like a week plus um river trip and so being there on a river rafting trip and being surrounded too by other elders who have voiced like their own connection to the Canyon was very powerful for me and in a lot of ways, I carried on that experience to the eventual creation of Voices of the Grand Canyon. Because, you know, for a lot of people that are fortunate enough to go down the river trip, there's springs that are down there. There's different wildlife, there's vegetation, there's rock formation. And just being in that space where you're able to see time in the sense of sediment was very powerful. And seeing like the most oldest rock layer being, like, a very black sort of like layer in the sheath of, of rock and everything and even too in our Diné creation stories we talk about world that's black and so kind of seeing like those correlations. Seeing that connection on a scale of that sort was definitely eye-opening for me. And so, from that experience of 2015 and then being fortunate enough to go and visit elders in their native homeland and conduct interviews was really great. So, in Zuni, interviewed Jim Enote and then um for Carletta yeah Carletta it was out in Hualapai. It was in a place called Diamond Creek right off the road from where Peach Springs is, and so being in those areas that meant so much to each individual was very enlightening, and I appreciated that experience with them. And so, yeah, being in that area, seeing the, hearing the roaring of the Canyon, or the water of the Colorado. And then also too just traveling down through the Canyon was really great. And so yeah, so being there too and another person was Coleen Kaska. She wanted to be interviewed at the top of the Canyon on the South Rim area. And so talking with her there and her sharing what it what the Canyon means and translates in her language and how it simply means the Grand Canyon simply means “where the train stops” and so kind of just having that direct source of having people who from all different backgrounds talk about the Canyon is very powerful, cause a lot of times people think of Native Americans as like a pan sort of perspective. Like there's only just one type or just lumping us all together. And so, in a lot of ways, it's not like that. Us down here we don't have a connection to maybe say, like Long House culture to, to totem poles that they do in other regions of the Pacific Northwest. And so, I think by celebrating and talking with elders who are still around and who have this very direct connection and lineage is really important. And so with Voices of the Grand Canyon, knowing that there's eons of connection and culture that's tied into the rocks, the fish and everything that's in the Canyon is important.

Alli: Now you've had your films and documentaries shown at film festivals around the world, including a short film at the Sundance Film Festival. What have been some significant moments in your filmmaking career?

Deidra: Yeah. With the career that’s spanned, I guess since 2007. So, well over 14/15 plus years, I've been fortunate to visit a lot of places and to meet a lot of people. And at the time with the Sundance Film Festival I was around 21 or 22 years old, and I was fortunate to be there with my colleagues Jake Hoyungowa, and Donovan Seschillie. In that particular role, Donovan was the director, I'm the producer, and Jake was the cinematographer, so having a network of creatives being so young and going to these spaces and um seeing what it is that this landscape encompasses as far as like marketing, publicity, and stuff. It was, it was very eye opening to see that filmmaking, uh Film Festival kind of circuit. And so now being older going to a couple of different film festivals, one that was memorable was in France, it was in Paris, it was the Indigenous Peoples Film Festival. That's the American translation. But that was a really cool experience uh with this filmmaker out there named Sophia, and so that was a really cool experience to go out there and to be immersed in a different culture. And so yeah, I feel very fortunate to be a part of those travels and to visit and to, to be surrounded by people and culture.

Alli: OK. What are some messages that you want to convey through your filmmaking?

Deidra: One of the messages I want to convey through my art and message of filmmaking is that we as Diné people, as people who are Native and find our home all around this region, that our voices are still strong and prevalent. And by exercising our integrity, our ethics, our culture, um we're having our ancestors live through us in that way. And so, by respecting them too, and that's congruent to the land, the water, the air and so forth.

Alli: So, a lot of your focus recently has been more on documentary filmmaking. What drew you towards creating documentaries and what are some of the projects that you've worked on?

Deidra: So, documentary filmmaking has been a way for me to connect and learn more about my culture. When I started out making films, I was really interested in learning more about the socio-economic disparities felt among Navajo people, Diné people. And so, it turned into asking questions and wanting to learn more about the water, wanting to learn more about the coal fire power plants, the uranium. So, it turned into me wanting to learn more about my environment and having a camera was a tool to connect all of those ideas and questions that I had. And so, in the beginning years of my filmmaking, it started too with the cultural question of, like my own identity and who I am as Diné woman and a lot of that stems from not having a direct connection to my masaní, my maternal grandmother because of the language barrier. Like although we're sharing the same space, we're in the same room and everything there definitely does seem as a disconnect and so at my, in my younger years I created a film called Shimasaní: Grandma Documentary. And it was just me asking my grandma about what it is to be Diné and what it is, her perspective on life and and her connection to her history. And so the film itself is relatively short, but in the span of 3 or 4 minutes you’re, you're introduced to a woman who's gone through so much and has so much of her identity lying in the landscape. And at the time of this particular film and filming it to respect her boundaries, we didn't capture her on film and so the cinematographer I was working with, Jake Hoyungowa uh we made sure not to capture her image on film, but to have elements of her house be significant in her identity. And also, too outside her house with the corn stalks and the sheep and everything, and so documentary film has been a way for me to connect more culturally and to learn more about my culture and who I am. And in recent years I've been able to translate that skill to different sort of stories. One in particular is during the pandemic and having to document different things that were happening and not knowing the true kind of like vastness or not, knowing how much is, how much of the virus can be transmitted like is it transmitted like, not knowing, I guess like the details with something of of a fear in the beginning of like trying to document the pandemic. And so, in those early days I had a full-on Tyvek suit. I had like my N95s. I had like I made sure I made sure I was like protected in that way. Because I didn't know like, what the threshold of that virus could potentially be. And so being in those spaces and trying to protect myself too in that sort of PPE way. But then another thing that I've learned too, as a filmmaker, is like protecting myself in the spiritual way and that requires giving offerings. That requires smudging yourself and having that direct connection to the creator or whatever spiritual entity you communicate with. But in a lot of ways, I've learned that among the years, I've learned um to be aware of things and to, to listen. And so, I think those are all like vital characteristics and vital things that make a really good and effective documentarian is like having those skills and everything. And being Diné and a documentarian, and I feel like there's definitely a lot of ethics that go into consideration in that in that task that you're doing and not to be empty handed to like, make sure people have water. You're taking care of elders. You're you're coming at a story in a good way and not like feeling like you're extracting. So, I think recognizing that is really important and that's kind of what sets me apart and my ethics apart from like maybe other film makers that don't have that cultural upbringing.

Alli: OK. And on your website, you talk about “intending to combat toxic stereotypes and misconceptions while reflecting and celebrating the vastness of Native culture.” Are there any films or media that you feel do a good job at representing Native culture? And are there any that you feel missed mark?

Deidra: Yeah. Uh, so, to reflect on your question about the vastness of or in respects to a quote that I have mentioned “combat toxic stereotypes and misconceptions while reflecting and celebrating the vastness of native cultures.” This is important to me as an Indigenous woman to not perpetuate a lot of stereotypes that kind of either demonize Indigenous people or that creates content that doesn't really elevate our people and our voices and kind of stigmatizes a lot of things that, that are unfortunately disproportionately happening to Indigenous people on the whole spectrum of the United States and everything. And so, I guess one sort of uh example I would bring up is the access to healthy, affordable food on the reservation. Currently the Navajo Nation, the size of West Virginia only has access to about 13 grocery stores, and so a lot of the area, the region is seen as a food desert and so a lot of people rely on convenience store food and um access to food that's not good for public consumption, especially if they're not getting the nutrition that they're needomg for themselves to live a healthy, sustainable life. And so, in this sort of paradigm, it's unfortunate that we do have this uh not in our favor as far as access to clean and affordable food, but there could be something of ways and stories that talk about maybe um, ways of combating, like farming, different ventures, of people who are trying to create access to clean food. And, and I think in some ways in film and media now we're seeing a huge resurgence of Native film, which is great. Seeing films that are out there, um episodes, sitcoms, television series like having that out there is wonderful because it's propelling us to be in a place that for so long, us as Native people, we haven't had our voices shown. And one thing that I have seen in my line of work is just the dichotomy of, the difference between media here in the States, in America, as opposed to like public media that's available in Canada, where there's a plethora of different shows that are accommodating and that celebrate Indigenous voices. And that's something that I think that in the ways the media like we're so far behind. And I think that creating more opportunity for other Indigenous film makers, for other youth too that have, that their stories, that having a venue or a place to, to elevate themselves is important. And not to make content that's very in a sense, sensitized and um in some respects in a sort of white gaze um sort of perspective, where us as Indigenous people, we should be able to like freely talk about things that we want to and not be subjugated to, to some limits in some respects. And so, I think there's a lot of room for growth in Native cinema right now and I'm excited to see where, where that goes in the next couple years.

Alli: OK, great. Are there any uh Native cinema, Native films, or sitcoms that you particularly like?

Deidra: At the moment, like I like, there's a couple episodes of Reservation Dogs that I like. There's a couple of them that I do have my criticisms about, and so I think there's a lot of room for that series to grow. Um, in Dark Winds right now, there's um, it's interesting because some of it like the, the accent was kind of off and so in some places I think there can be growth in like having maybe a cultural like person on board. Um, I think in some of the sitcoms they overuse “skoden”. And like, that's something that kind of just like gets thrown out there um in a, in a lot of ways that that kind of doesn't seem like it fits in that particular like scene of sorts, but those are just like my own kind of small criticisms. But I think there's like room to grow. Another thing that's kind of been like uh something to process is like when films use the kind of like the narrative arc of, like, suicide. And using that to propel like their story and stuff and kind of not really being sensitive to people that have experienced that. So, I think in those aspects, there's room for growth and even too there's like one particular Reservation Dog episode where two girls were gonna be kidnapped by someone in a car and so um that was kind of just seemed as like something to like propel the story. But like it didn't really give a resolution. So, I think being more aware of that’s important.

Alli: So, in recent years, Grand Canyon National Park has been trying to boost Native voices. So, there's the Intertribal Working Group, so they try to have initiatives with import and support from the Intertribal Working Group. So, they have the cultural demonstration program in the park. The creation of a new park welcome film from Indigenous perspectives. How do you view efforts like these in helping support Native voices?

Deidra: I think these are all great opportunities to elevate Native voices and to have that displayed to a huge population of visitors that come through the Canyom. And just seeing how much people come through, uh the traffic and, and everything like that's opportunity for there to be more education on our Tribes and our stories as Native people. But in, in a lot of sense too, um you know, like the park was created over 100 plus years ago and with the Centennial just a couple years past, I think it's important to continue to have spaces for Native people. But, also, too it’s been too long of a wait in most cases for um there to be a lot of support. And so, I think continuing to elevate, continuing to include people, Indigenous peoples, always important and unfortunately there has been like some time that has passed. And so, I think like the more that we can like all work together to like, celebrate these voices and to give acknowledgement to Indigenous peoples really important.

Alli: So, what is next for you? Are there any dream projects that you would like to be working on?

Deidra: Yeah, um dream project is making a narrative film right now, so I'm currently in the process of making a short film called Holding Hands, which is co-directed by me and Cecil Patrick Tso. It's going to be a 22-minute-long film that we're hoping to get completed by summer of next year. And so um, we're going to be in the process of putting a crowdfunding site together and then also doing a casting, sorry, a casting call for the film. And so, um that's one of the big projects that I'm working on right now. And then just continuing to teach filmmaking at the Kinlani boarding town dormitory.

Alli: And you said you one day would like to work on a more narrative film.

Deidra: Yeah, like a feature film like, sorry, yeah. Eventually creating feature films, creating um series would be something too that would be a dream project of mine and so um yeah, just working towards that goal. That goal is something that I'm very passionate about and I'm wishing to continue on that road.

Alli: OK. So you mentioned you've also been doing some work teaching filmmaking. So what are some lessons that you want to impart on Native students through your work?

Deidra: Yes. So just for context, I am a film educator at Flagstaff Kinlani um dormitory school or boarding school. So essentially what it is, it's a dormitory located in Flagstaff where students who live on the reservation they stay in the dorm and they attend high school, at Flag High, um in Flagstaff. And so, a lot of students stay there overnight. They stay there throughout the week, and they get checked out um and go back on weekends to visit family. And so, um, my program that I'm a part of is the film portion of that program that they have for the students. It's an after-school program and so I along with my colleague Oakley Anderson Moore, we teach filmmaking once a week for a couple of hours from like 3:00 to 5:00 and right now we have a great group of kids. They're learning the basics of filmmaking and also too just to backtrack, sorry, to backtrack a part of this program is not only just a film component, but there's also a cultivate component that deals with growing food and then a cooking component that they grow, or they cook the food that's grown at the community garden um close to the region called Colton Garden. And so, from that small garden, um students are able to participate in different programs. And so continuing with the filmmaking program, it's very uh, I, I would say it's a very hands-on filmmaking program that both Oakley and I work on, and so a lot of it deals with students who may not feel comfortable with, with being in front of the camera or maybe even too, communicating. Some students are shy. Some students um don't really want to talk as much, or rather, just stick to being to themselves and so in a lot of ways um one thing that I want my students to have as far as like a skill that they can take home with them is learning to communicate with, communicate and cooperate with their colleagues. I think in a lot of sense it's in, in filmmaking you're working as a team to get something done and a lot of the components to having a successful filmmaking production is your team. And so how all the students communicate to one another, how they're able to um initiate kind of just like respect for one another and also initiate a respect for the role that they're assuming in whatever line of production. So, in one particular exercise we had students have a different production role and so one student would be working in the camera as a cinematographer. One would be first AC, so first assistant camera. Another student was the second AC and also too, we had someone who is on sound mixer, someone who is operating a boom, the camera and then directing, so everyone worked together. They were able to communicate and then after they were done with the interview, they all switched up roles and um started interviewing each other and everything. And so, in that process they were able to learn firsthand that they were able to also to communicate to their peers, uh introduced themselves too and so having them more comfortable, I guess in those public settings and that can be a very interdisciplinary um… Just an element that you can always use in different aspects, like public speaking of sorts and so it's really good for students to exercise this and to work together as a team and to communicate and now I'm just like, so happy to have the opportunity to, to have them develop that skill and take that to, to whatever it is they want to pursue in life.

Alli: OK, So what advice would you want to give to young film makers just starting out?

Deidra: Yeah, I would. The advice that I would give to young filmmakers is to just keep filming, to use whatever you have access to in, in terms of a camera. I think that a lot of filmmakers today, especially up and coming filmmakers. They have access to their phone that can record and has unlimited amount of data that can be transferred, airdropped to your computer and so. Um, that workflow is definitely more expedient than it was in yesteryear. When I started out with film making. Back then, it was more of using DV cameras and shooting on tape and then capturing that using a FireWire cable and having that on a hard drive and then re like naming all the files and so today it's more expedient. It's faster. Students um who are just wanting to learn more, I would just suggest learning how to operate your camera on your phone. Learning what exposure is, what ISO is, what shutter speed is, and what frames per second, what that means, and even too the quality 4K HD 2K and utilizing different techniques like maybe time lapse and um different slomo options, faster frame rates and utilizing that language because film in itself is a language. And I think once you learn the different elements and techniques you can manipulate it with ease and create what you want to and so having that accessibility to a camera, to a phone, that's something that I would urge all up-and-coming film makers to utilize, utilize and also too um a tripod. Learning how to use a tripod and to create a steadier shots, or to have it at different heights to create different perspective. I think all of those tools are really important to learn and to have a grasp on when you're beginning with filmmaking, and I think another tool to utilize is maybe buying an old film camera and learning how to take film photos using different film stock, different, um yeah, color film, black and white film, slide film and just learning how to utilize those tools. I would definitely suggest that to younger film makers.

Alli: OK, great. Thanks so much, Deidre.

Deidra: Yeah, no problem. Hágoónee'.

Alli: So where can people learn more about you and your work? Deidra: Yeah, so people could learn more about me on my website, deidrepeaches.com or through Instagram. I have some content on there. And then also YouTube. But yeah, feel free to check all those outlets out and um and shoot me an e-mail if you want to. My contact information is on my website.

Alli: Thanks again to Deidre for sharing about her work and her perspectives. The behind The Scenery Podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park. We gratefully acknowledge the Native people on whose ancestral homelands we gather. As well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.

Kelkiyana Something my colleague likes to say is that “we're not a resource to be managed.” And seeing the Grand Canyon, that's a part of us as Native people. It's not like a different thing than us. I always hear that when I work with Tribal members and even in my own culture is that this place is a living landscape and we're interconnected with it. We have a reciprocal relationship with it.

Doug Hello folks, and welcome. My name is Ranger Doug from the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. We have a very special guest today, who will join us for an interesting look at Grand Canyon, sharing her insights and thoughts, from the perspective of an Indigenous National Park employee. This conversation is part of our First Voices series of Behind the Scenery Grand Canyon National Park podcasts.

In the modern history of the whole National Park Service, there’s but a handful of fourth-generation National Park employees. And today you are going to meet one of these rare individuals.

What was it like growing up on the Navajo Nation in Arizona? How did this park ranger become the fourth generation in her family to wear a National Park Service ranger uniform? What does it mean to work today, as the Tribal Program Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park? And how do you calm a mortally-wounded, panicky and stressed-out bison on the North Rim?

We’ll answer these and many more questions. Join us for a fascinating and insightful conversation with special Grand Canyon ranger, Kelkiyana Yazzie. I will let her introduce herself to you.

Kelkiyana Hi. Hello. Ya'at'eeh. Good morning. My name is Kelkiyana Yazzie. I am the Tribal Program Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park. That means that I work with the parks 11 Associated Tribes to have them feel represented and included in park management and projects here at Grand Canyon. And to introduce myself in Navajo language, I'm a Navajo Tribal member, Bit’ahnii nishli, Lok'aa’ Dine’e bashishchiin, Bilagaana dashicheii, Tabaaha’ dashinali. That's how we usually introduce ourselves to other Navajo people to establish a sense of kinship with them. Those were our clans. So my first clan is Bit’ahnii, which means folded arm people. I always hope that means a good thing. And then my second clan is Lok'aa’ Dine’e, which means reed people and that actually has Hopi origins. So somewhere down the line I have Hopi, Hopi ancestors. Even though I identify as Navajo today. But yeah, clans are still strong and in existence in the Navajo culture. You can ask the little 5-year-old Navajo kid and they'll be able to introduce themselves in Navajo just like the way I did. So that just shows how important that is to our culture and heritage today. Doug Now the Navajo reservation, the Navajo Nation, shares a boundary with Grand Canyon National Park. Our eastern boundary, and your western boundary is shared. So can you share with the listeners a little bit about the Navajo Nation? Kelkiyana Yeah. So the Navajo Nation is considered the largest Native American reservation in the United States. I believe it's let at least 265,000 square miles and it has a population of about 165,000 people who live on the reservation today. If you ever get a chance to drive through the rez, you'll see how spaced apart our communities are and you'll see, like random houses here and there along the highway. So it may seem like it's a desolate place, but in reality it's just full of families full of culture and heritage that's still strong today. Growing up on the Navajo Nation, there's a lot of difficulties and challenges, such as not having running water and electricity, and that's a common thing for the Navajo Nation, is that a lot of households still don't have running water. And with my own family, we didn’t even have running water until I was about fourth grade. Before that, we would use an outhouse and then like a camp shower, like a solar shower, my dad built like pallets and put up curtains, and then we just leave the shower bag out in the sun all day, and that's what we would use. So yeah, wasn't till I was in 4th grade and a lot of families out there still don't have running water. But the Navajo Nation is a special place. We call it Diné Bikéyah. And it's considered to be within the four sacred mountains, one being San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, AZ. Another being Mount Blanca, Mount Taylor in New Mexico and Hesperus up in Colorado. So those, within those four mountains is considered our ancestral and modern-day homeland. Doug So you grew up in the Shonto area. Tell us a little bit about that, growing up on the rez. Kelkiyana Yeah. I grew up in a really small community called Shonto. We had a population about 500 people, so everyone knew each other and what's very common on the rez is that we live next to our families. So I have my house that I grew up in with my parents and my siblings, and then just like maybe 500 yards away with my nááli, my grandma on my dad's side, she lived there and I just maybe like one or two miles away was my great grandma and she would always walk over to our house at all hours of the day or night. Even in the middle of the night, she would like, have no flashlight and she's just walking through the trees and she'll end up at our house. But I grew up in a traditional household. We had sheep. We still have sheep and horses. Livestock. Cattle. And so we would do things like butchering for special occasions or just for family gatherings where we would butcher the sheep. Uh, we still do that today in our family. It's a great way to get together and we use all parts of the sheep, whether to eat or you use the wool for weaving. I always remember going to my great grandma's hogan growing up, my dad would drop us off there on the weekends. I know back then I used to really hate it, but thinking back on it, I'm really glad I got to experience that, but she would be using like a like a spindle and she would have a loom and she would like really care-take for her own wool. She would make it all from getting it from the sheep to where it ends up in a rug. She was a weaver. So that was really cool to see that process and I even got to weave a small rug with my great grandma that I still have today coming from the wool from her, her own sheep herd, from her own sheep corral. But yeah, I'm just really fortunate to have grown up in a traditional small community. Our closest neighbors, again, are our family, and then I would have, the school is kind of faraway where we would wake up at 5:30 in the morning to get on the bus and we wouldn't come back until 5:30 in the evening. That just shows how harsh and long the commute to school was growing up in that community. Doug And then where did you go to high school? Kelkiyana I went to high school in a small town called Kayenta, Arizona. It's near Monument Valley Tribal Park. Some people may have heard of that. It's where those famous buttes are that are showcased in old Western films, such as the John Wayne movies. And yeah, it's called Monument Valley High School. And again, it would take like 2 hours to commute from Shonto to Kayenta on the bus because a lot of us lived on rural dirt roads. So the bus would have to travel through and pick us up and then take us to Kayenta. But yeah, it was a really good high school experience. A common thing that was taught to us is Navajo language, so that's something that's really strong on the reservation, not just at the high school I went to, but all the schools across the Navajo Nation, even in all the way from preschool age to college level, the Navajo language and crafts such as basket making and rug weaving are taught in our schools on the rez. Doug And what was your post high school path like? Kelkiyana Yeah. So after high school, I ended up going to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, that was primarily because they offered free tuition to Native American students, and it was still close enough to home. It was about a four-hour commute one way. I'm really close with my family growing up, so I knew I was going to get homesick if I went elsewhere. But I was really glad with my choice because Fort Lewis and Durango is just like a really small mountain town with this strong sense of community. Everyone was so nice and welcoming. It also had a large Native American population. I believe 20% of the students were from Tribes from all over the country, from Alaska to Hawaii, to South Dakota and even the East Coast. So I got involved with the Native American Center, the Environmental Center, and an organization called Engineers Without Borders, where I was able to spend summers in Central America, in Nicaragua, building latrines and water systems for rural remote villages there. So yeah, I got a lot of that experience. I built up my leadership skills while I was in college. I was always a shy, introverted person growing up and I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. So my college experience at Fort Lewis really shaped me to be where I'm at today. I give a lot of credit to that institution for making me the person I am today and for helping me in the current position that I'm serving in the Park Service. Doug And there's a small National Monument established in 1909 near your hometown of Shonto area called Navajo National Monument. Talk about your family’s connection to this small National Monument. Kelkiyana Yeah. So I grew up about 5 minutes down the road from the small NPS unit called Navajo National Monument. It's right off of highway 160. Not many people know about. Every time, visitors would show up, they'd be like, “oh, we just saw the sign on the road and came up with this way.” But it's a small park. It's fee free, has free camping, and in it the most important thing is that it protects ancestral sites such as 3 cliff dwellings, Betatakin, Keet Seel and Inscription House. Betatakin and Keet Seel are Navajo words for the sites, when in reality these ancestral sites have connections to more of the Pueblo groups, such as the Hopi and Zuni, as well as the San Juan Southern Paiute. We had four associated Tribes with that park, including the Navajo, but yeah. So I am a 4th Generation Park Ranger at that park. My great grandpa Hubert Laughter was one of the first Navajo Park Rangers there in the 1950s, which says a lot because the park was established in 1909. Yet they didn't have local Indigenous community members as employees until the 1950s, even though this small monument is located right in the middle of the Navajo Nation. So yeah, it was my great grandpa. Then it was my grandpa Albert. He used to give Ranger programs that were surrounded around traditional food, so he would do like fry bread, making classes with visitors. And he was even featured in National Geographic one year. And I found out that. Uh, my dad, as of I think he said he was five years old, is actually in that issue of the magazine too. There's a picture of him with my great grandma and that same issue. So I haven't had a chance to see it myself, but hopefully I get to find it, I think believe it was in the 70s or 80s when this was published. And then after that was my aunts Shannon and Althea. They were working there and I remember when my Aunt Shannon was working there, she would always come home in her Ranger uniform and I was just like, Oh my gosh, that's like, the coolest thing I've ever seen. Like, that's so neat. Where I would even wear it as a Halloween costume. I know we’re not supposed to wear the uniform like that, but I was just like mind blown and really inspired just even just seeing the uniform growing up. And just learning about what she did as well, I got to interview her supervisor for a school project and he talked about all these things on how they protect the ancestral sites and how they educate visitors on the heritage, the management of the park and so on. And I was just so inspired and knew that was something that I kind of wanted to look into back then. That was when I was back in middle school. Yeah, then now me. So four generations of Park Rangers Doug Which is really really rare. My boss is a second-generation park employee. I know the name of a couple of three generations, but I can't think of a single person in the whole National Park Service who has that lineage as a 4th generation national park employee. So very well done. So when you started working there I'm, I've visited a couple of times, Keet Seel is about an 8 mile trail into the back country and it's the largest cliff dwelling in the state of Arizona. There's a small National Park Ranger quarters, a hogan there. Talk. Talk about living out there in that remote area as a park ranger and leading tours to Keet Seel. Kelkiyana Yeah. So I worked at Navajo National Monument for about 5 years as a seasonal interpretive park ranger. I did this right after I graduated from college at Fort Lewis. And I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into because I always thought, like, “why are people coming to this park? Like there's just a bunch of old houses in the Canyon. What are they learning? What are they seeing?” So when I got my first experience going down to do cliff dwelling tours to Betatakin and Keet Seel I totally understood and I was able to reconnect to my own heritage and my own culture in so many different ways that I never would have if I didn't have this job, and if I wasn't educating and visiting these sites. But yeah, Keet Seel is a remote location. We consider it a backpacking route. Visitors would have to get permits through us, and we give them an orientation and they would have the option to hike out there on their own and meet a Ranger out there at the Ranger hogan that's been out there for a really long time, and even my family, who's worked for the Park Service were the ones who built it, or that helped build it. So it was really special connecting to them in that way, staying out in the Ranger hogan. Of course, we added stuff like a Tempur-Pedic mattress, a ceiling fan, a TV. We hiked all these things out there just to give that sense of comfort, because it is a very, very remote location. There's no cell service we would sort of kind of get the local Navajo Nation radio station KTNN, but it wasn't very good signal still. So that just kind of tells how remote this area was. Yeah, I would give tours to people from all over the world. And Keet Seel was a special place because people really wanted to be there. It was a 17-mile round trip hike for people to get out there. You would have to commit at least two days to do something like this. Even if you were just day hiking it. And yeah, I got to meet so many different people, and my tours ranged from an hour up to four hours. I remember spending it with the group who were actually on a tour I did with them at Betatakin. So they did the Betatakin and Keet Seel tour with me. They're a really nice family from Utah. And yeah, once you see Keet Seel, it's 170 room cliff dwelling. A majority of it is what's original. It dates back to the 1300s. A lot of what's inside you can actually see like handprints and fingerprints in the mortar. And then you can also see lots of pictographs and petroglyphs inside the alcove. Inside the alcove as well, where the Cliff dwelling, where the rooms are. the area was black above it, and it shows that's where people would build fires to keep warm. But yeah, it's just a lot of history, and once you really learn more about the site, you just realize these people were just like us. They were living day-to-day. They had social groups, they had families. And they were interacting with others out there. They were doing a lot of trading out at Keet Seel. It said that they found macaw feathers there. Seashells. So it shows that people were moving and migrating and trading with various people from different regions. But yeah, it was a really special place. I really miss that. I feel like that's the favorite, most favorite part of my job working there is because you just get this whole level of peace and serenity being at a space like that. And we like to refer to this place as a living, spiritual place. Because it's not ruins or abandoned, it's still spiritually occupied by the ancestors who physically lived in Keet Seel hundreds of years ago, and it still has a living connection to the Hopi and many other Tribes who still do pilgrimages out to the site to leave prayers and offerings to honor where we come from. Doug So after a few backpackers hiked out there and you spent some time giving them a tour, campers went back to the campground. You went back to the hogan, what would you think about at night? Kelkiyana Yeah, actually I was really scared of the dark. Honestly, that's my honest answer. But in reality there were days out there where no hikers would come out, so I would have like the whole day to myself and those were days that I really thought about the history of the Canyon. I was just there alone and I would look out, I would see Turkey Cave in the distance. I would see these other alcoves where other villages were as well. It's not just Keet Seel in that area and I would just imagine what life was like back then. And there's this flat area where they would farm corn, beans, squash and other agricultural items. And I was just seeing all this erosion happening. All this arroyo cutting and how thinking about things like climate change and how that's impacted these areas that people have been sustaining and managing for hundreds of years. Yet within just a short time span you can see these dramatic changes, such as the arroyo cutting and the erosion happening in the Canyon. So yeah, those were just things I would think about. And of course, my own family history and my own cultural connections to these sites. I also got to see a lot of eagles and hawks in that area. Those are seen as really good omens and that just made me feel like I was in the right place at the right time. I was where I was meant to be. Doug I know some Navajo folks purposely shy away from visiting the ancestral Pueblo home sites and villages. So what's your feeling about that? Kelkiyana Yeah. So traditionally, I was always told growing up to not go near these sites from my great grandma and my dad. And even as far as pottery sherds, there's a lot of these around these sites, especially out at Keet Seel. The Navajo word for Keet Seel translates to broken pottery scattered around, so that was everywhere out there. So that was something I would never do is pick up pottery or mess with it because they say if you do you're disturbing the spirit of the person who made that, and you're also disturbing the intent and purpose of why someone left it there. And there's actually stories in Hopi where people would intentionally smash their pottery at areas they were leaving as a way to leave their footprints there and their connection to that space. And then there is always that intent to return to these locations as well. But anyway, as far as the visiting ancestral sites, my dad just kind of told me “as long as you're visiting these with positive intent that you're praying for yourself, you're praying for the site, you're praying for the visitors that you're bringing in with you like you should be OK.” And I would always have my tádídíín, my corn pollen, so I would always do my own offerings at these sites. And actually when I was reading some literature, I came across like this little interview, I guess, that my great grandpa did back in the day, for a book that was written about the park. And in there, he said that exact same thing, “as long as you're visiting this place with positive intent, a positive mindset, an open mindset, and you when you leave, you don't bring any of that negative energy with you, then it should be OK on visiting these ancestral sites.” So that really meant a lot to me to see my great grandfather's advice written there and then just hearing what my dad told me, and I intend to pass that on to anybody else who would want to listen and learn about the Navajo connection to ancestral sites like this. Doug Do you recall your first visit to the Grand Canyon? Tell us about that. Kelkiyana Yeah. So my first, I grew up about two hours from the Grand Canyon and so we would come here either as a family on a couple of occasions as well as for field trips. And the earliest memory I can think of is my 4th grade field trip coming to the South rim and we went to the historic village. We went to Desert View, got to walk the trails, and even got to talk with the park ranger. And I just remember, as young as I was in elementary school, thinking, like, where are we at? Like, we were the only Native people in this space at the Grand Canyon. I would go inside the museum area, like the Bright Angel lodge. And there was nothing but stories about Euro-American pioneers and explorers. And I remember seeing this mannequin of a Harvey girl dressed up in a velveteen blouse and a squash blossom and a Concho belt which is considered our traditional regalia and Navajo. And I'm like, why is she wearing that, like, what's going on? And that mannequins are actually still up at the bright Angel Lodge today. But that's just something I really remember. Visiting as a young Navajo child to the Grand Canyon is like where is where is us at? Where is our story to this space? Doug So what was your motivation for coming and working at the Grand Canyon? Kelkiyana Yeah, so working on my old park Navajo National Monument, that place is my heart and soul. I still consider it to be. It's my home and I have very rich history and tie to it as not just a Navajo person, but in my own family as well. So I did end up leaving the park because I kind of reached my developmental opportunities there. I was kind of stuck as a seasonal park ranger in that park, and I knew I really wanted to get into management. My career goal is actually to be Superintendent at Navajo National Monument. And I was just like, oh, that's hard as it's going to be, I have to go somewhere else to get this leadership and get these management skills so I can come back and help this park that I love so much. So I ended up going back to school for my Master’s degree. I got a Parks and Recreation management master's degree from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. And at the same time, I was enrolled in the National Park Service Pathways program, which means once you have a degree, you can transition into a permanent career with the Park Service instead of me just staying as a seasonal park ranger, I could actually be a permanent ranger. So Grand Canyon was the one that offered the opportunity to me. And they also told me that they're really trying to improve their Indigenous representation and education here at the park, and they thought I was the perfect fit to join the team in the village. So that's how I was able to get hired on at the park and finish up my degree. I was going to school full time and working full time and yeah, just a little over two years ago, I became a permanent park ranger. Doug And what was your job at the Grand Canyon? Kelkiyana I was also an interpretive park ranger on the South Rim in the Village area, so I would give park programs to visitors who are coming from all over the world. And I remember it was just such a big change from where I was coming from at Navajo National Monument, like over there, we were getting 5 visitors during the day in the wintertime. And then coming here, we would get hundreds of people. And what I really missed was those intimate conversations that I would have with visitors. Like I would be on 4 hour tours back where I was coming from. Here, which is kind of a hi-and-bye like, where's Mather Point? Where's the bathroom? So I kind of learned that, oh, maybe interpretation, I mean, it is my passion, but there's something deeper that I'm really connected to and why I like doing what I do. And I found out that what I like doing is educating people on Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous history, as well as not just talking about it, but also being a part of that work in the park. So that's how I transitioned out of the interpretive role. Doug And when you sit on the bench and you look at the Grand Canyon, do you see the Grand Canyon primarily as a natural resources National Park, or, as a cultural resources National Park and why? Kelkiyana Yeah, that's a really great question. I really struggle with the whole resource management stuff, end of things, because historically and even today, Tribal Affairs and anything that has to do with Tribes is usually sectioned underneath the cultural resource management division of national parks. A lot of parks today don't have a Tribal Liaison, and it usually falls on the archaeologists or anthropologists as a collateral duty for them to be the ones who interact with Tribes, if they even do at all. So, something my colleagues likes to say is that “we're not a resource to be managed.” And seeing the Grand Canyon, that's a part of us as Native people. It's not like a different thing than us. I always hear that when I work with Tribal members and even in my own culture is that this place is a living landscape and we're interconnected with it. We have a reciprocal relationship with it. So yeah, I do see it as natural and cultural, but I really struggle with the whole resource word just because of the history and even current way that some parks out there include Indigenous knowledge and voices. It's always under the cultural resource umbrella. Doug What are some of your favorite people stories about the Grand Canyon? Kelkiyana Yeah, so that was, would be my favorite thing being an interpretive ranger at Grand Canyon National Park is all the people you get to meet and interact with. But always my favorite would be running into other Native people who are just visiting the park. Because it was just so rare to see, and I would, my heart would just always feel happy. And yeah, I would just really love meeting all these different Native families from different Tribes. One that really stands out to me is a Comanche family who visited the park and actually sat down on the bench, they said. And then all of a sudden I appeared and started giving a program. So they stayed to listened to me and and watched and afterward they came up to me. It was a mom, dad, their young son and their young daughter. And they're just like, “wow, we are so blown away by like, we've been to these different national parks, even coming from Oklahoma, we don't really hear our stories told in spaces like this. And that's really great that you're doing that for the Tribes here.” And I just got to talk with them and get to know them and they told me they were actually going to the Navajo Nation for a dance, the gourd dance, because their son is a Gourd dancer. And participates in many powwows and they said, “yeah, when we went through the gate. Ah, we told them, like, hey, we're just visiting. We're on our way to Window Rock for a social dance on the Navajo Nation.” And the fee person responded to us. “Oh, you're going to go party with the Navajos? OK, come on in.” So I really thought that was cool. I love that story and just meeting that family who I'm still in contact with today. Uh, I also got to meet an Elder from the Ojibway Tribe up in Canada in the Okanogan Tribe, and he was telling me his own stories about what he thinks the Grand Canyon is. Even though he's from a Tribe way up north, they even have like a tie to the Grand Canyon. So I would say those are some of my favorite people stories interacting with the Tribal people who were visiting the park. Doug Modern archaeology is the science dedicated to learning about past human peoples and their behavior and their cultures. But to science, a modern. But to do science, modern archaeological resource research often requires excavation and disturbance of the archaeological remains. Now, how do you think we should balance the desire to gain scientific information versus some people's thoughts that we should just leave the artifacts alone and undisturbed? Kelkiyana Yeah, that's also a really great question. So when I first started with the Park Service a way to learn information about the ancestral sites that I was interpreting I was given archaeological manuals and research about the sites. So that was the way I was introduced to the park and the way to learn about these Native American sites from non-Indigenous archaeologists, anthropologists, etc. So that was all the scientific evidence, which is really fascinating to hear, like how old sites are, to learn about, like just different ways that they are able to piece the story together without even talking to Native people. I know some archaeologists do, but a lot of that information gets, I don't know a better term for this, but whitewashed essentially. And um. So yeah, that was the way a lot of people get introduced to the Park Service, especially when you're working in a park that protects cultural resources. You get that knowledge from archaeological research, which there's nothing wrong with that. But there is another story to it. And that comes from the Tribes themselves. So that's something I really learned working here at Grand Canyon is just talking to the Tribes. They even have their own published booklets and research that comes from their own cultural preservation offices about these sites. And some of it will correlate with what archaeologists are seeing and some of it won't. And I think that's really important to listen to what Tribes’ connections are because we're the ones who understand these landscapes and ways that Euro-American and non-Native people do not understand this landscape because they weren't here couple 100 years ago. But our ancestors were, and our knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation on how we need to treat and talk about and visit these sites. Just to give a quick example, we have this trail on the South Rim called the Trail of Time and we got to walk that with some Tribal members a couple of months ago back in April. And they were like, “where did these rocks come from?” And the geologists, were like “Oh, they came from the Canyon.” And they're like, “oh, why did you move these rocks from the Canyon? Like they're not supposed to be disturbed by humans. Like, these rocks have spirits. They have meaning.” And it just brought up this really interesting discussion about science and Tribal beliefs because, yeah, we're we believe that things need to move naturally. They're not disturbed by us without some type of purpose or intent. So yeah, that that was just a really interesting thing I saw on how science and Tribal views conflicted. Doug Now here at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, we have a free-roaming, unfenced wild herd of bison, and I understand you were out here recently helping us on our live capture operation. We're trying to keep the herd at about 200 and it was maybe 300 to 400 the summer of 2024. So talk about your involvement with the live capture and donation project here at the North Rim regarding our bison herd. Kelkiyana Yes. So if listeners didn't know the North Rim does have a bison herd, the South Rim does not. So it's only on the North Rim over here. And I got to participate in the bison live capture and transfer last week. This was my first-time taking part in it, and I really, really feel privileged and honored to have done so. Because this is a program that's been going on for a couple of years now. We work with the InterTribal Buffalo Council to process and then transfer bison to Tribal lands in the Midwest area. So I got to spend the whole last week and I've never seen bison up close that that way before. So that was really special. And then just being able to be there as a Native person considering our long, long history with bison, and it's a complicated history. As far as when Euro American settlers were coming to this country, the bison were almost hunted to extinction and it was a way as quote-un-quote, to get rid of the Indian problem. If you get rid of the bison, you get rid of the Indigenous people. And that's a really harsh truth that existed back then. And it was just really sad to know about that long history of our people. And but I really. Like last week, I was just really thinking about, and honoring that relationship. We as Native people have had with bison for generations, and we're very lucky and fortunate to still have that living connection with them today. And I got to be a part of that process to get these bison to Tribal lands, to continue that long legacy and that relationship that people have had for decades, for centuries since time immemorial with the bison. Doug I understand you had a personal encounter with the wounded bison. Can you talk about that? Kelkiyana Yes. So on the first day, there was a bison that was wounded. And I was able to give it an offering. And I remember going up to the corral with one of the wildlife team members. And we got up to the corral and it was running back and forth. It was so stressed out. And I had this big gashing wound on the back, like by its hindquarters. And it was just really stressed out and I had my tádídíín, my corn pollen. I was going to give it an offering. And to help with its with its healing. And yeah, it was just running back and forth. And once we got up there, I just started to pray to myself and I said some words in the Navajo language. And all of a sudden it calmed down and then it walked right up to me and the person I was with, and I was able to sprinkle the corn pollen directly on its head. And we got to stare at each other for a very, very long time, and it was just a really powerful spiritual, even healing moment for myself to experience something like that. And the person I was with was just so blown away that that happened because, yeah, it was just a really special moment to have had. I was also able to give some blessings to the bison once we loaded them up onto the, it was like cattle trailers. These big trailers. We loaded up 100 bison into two. And so I did another offering and blessing for the bison before they did their 18-hour journey to South Dakota to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Doug And shortly after we saw pictures of them off roaming in their new home. So thank you for sending them off in, in a good way. For you, the three best things about being a Grand Canyon National Park ranger are: Kelkiyana Yeah. So something I distinctly remember is talking to one of the past Navajo National Monument superintendents. That's when I was really getting into the Park Service - before I started working for the Park Service. It's like, “hey, I want to do this. I was like, what's? Your advice for me?” And he started talking to me about his job. And one of the things I distinctly remember is that “it's something new every day.” And that's so true. And that's one of my favorite things about being a national park ranger is that it's something new every single day. So that's something I really enjoy. And then now that I'm in my new role as the Tribal Program Coordinator, I would say it's being able to connect and strengthen to my own heritage and my own culture. And then even though that Tribes are different than to each other, we still have these similarities. And these strong ties to honoring our ancestors, honoring our heritage. So I really like to connect to the Tribal communities in that way. I feel so comfortable in that home. We go out and we visit these different reservations out to Hopi, out to Peach Springs and Hualapai. Down to Yavapai Apache and Camp Verde. And every time when once I'm surrounded by Tribal members, I always just feel at home. And I always see these similarities compared to growing up on the Navajo Nation. And it just really gives me the sense of pride and happiness that I am in the right place and I'm doing what I'm meant to do. So those would be some of my favorite things being a park ranger. And I also get to live at the Grand Canyon, so you cannot beat that! Doug Same question, but what are some of the challenges and struggles that you face as a Grand Canyon ranger? Kelkiyana Yeah. So I would say just being an Indigenous person. There is a really harsh history with the National Park Service and Native people. Just about every National Park out there was created by forcibly removing Native people from their ancestral homelands, and that story has also happened here, unfortunately at Grand Canyon National Park, when the Havasupai people were forcibly removed in the 1920s from a place called, what is now called Havasupai Gardens. So that's something really tough to be working for the federal government that also has done numerous things that are even considered unforgivable to our Indigenous populations across the country. So it's been really conflicting to work for a federal agency as well as for a National Park Service with that history like that. But and, so that's brought forward challenges and barriers that have overcome over the years. I've been working for the NPS for the past eight years. And it's come with a lot of struggle. It's come with a lot of tears. My family knows this like, I would just come home sobbing and being upset that I just felt powerless on different things that were affecting our Native people or just having no like mention of us at all in in places that are so sacred to us. And I just felt like as a little seasonal park ranger, as an interpretive park ranger, I'm like, yeah, I can talk about it, but how can I help? What can I do about it? So that was really a struggle coming up and that's why I really pushed myself to get a Parks and Recreation Management degree from NAU. And yeah, I'm working my way up to hopefully becoming that management role to help make this path easier for not just myself, but for my people as well as the incoming rangers who are coming in. That's something I've seen in my job is that there's a lot of Indigenous youth out there who want to work in the park after seeing all of these great things we've been doing at Grand Canyon to include Native voices. So those are some challenges and barriers I really want to get across. I know a big thing is working for a federal agency, we always say we're Indigenous first before we're a National Park Service ranger. So we're staying true to who we are as Native people. It doesn't just end at 5:00 for us, this job is not just a job to us, it's our livelihood. And it's a way for us to strengthen and keep our culture and heritage alive. Doug So where do you see yourself in five years? You know, what are some of your dreams and ambitions? Kelkiyana Yeah. So I do have a very deep tie to Grand Canyon and I really don't see myself leaving here anytime soon as well as leaving my role as the Tribal Program Coordinator. I plan to stick it out for a while, especially since one of our former team members, Mike Lyndon, he's been working with Tribes in this area for over 20 years and something I really admired and respected about him is his relationship with the people we interacted with and he has that relationship because he's been here for so long and that's something is that relationships take time. So I really want to build and strengthen these connections to these various Tribal communities who interact and work with the park. So that's something I do plan. I do think I'll be here in five years still. We do get opportunities to have details, which means you get to go to a different park or a different position to kind of get experience, and something like that. So I do see maybe one or two of those in my near future. I want to try out like working in a park in Alaska or Hawaii and working with their Native communities there or even just anywhere else like Glacier. Glacier is my dream park. I just think that place is so gorgeous, it’s such a rich history and cultural connection to the Tribes up there, so maybe I get to do like a summer up there? Or maybe I don't know, maybe they'll steal me. So we'll see. Doug OK, I'm going to wave my magic wand and you are park superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park for the day. What are three changes that you're going to make? Kelkiyana Wow. That's a really, really good question and I have a lot of respect for our current park superintendent Ed Keable because he has made Indigenous Affairs his number one priority as superintendent. So that's something I definitely wouldn't change because I believe Indigenous voices and perspectives need to be a part of every conversation. A part of every division out there, whether that's law enforcement, science and resource management, interpretation and education, even maintenance and compliance, and all of that. So I think that's something I would, I don't know if enforce the right word, but just kind of make known, that hey, this is the priority and this is what we're going to do to include Native voices in these spaces. And, I feel like going out to Tribal communities would be one of my primary things as superintendent. And I feel like a big change is shifting the narrative from, like John Wesley Powell, Mary Colter and all these other Euro-American pioneers and explorers, and have, like every single park ranger program talking about Native voices, I think that's if I got to be superintendent for a day like it's just all focused on Indigenous heritage and connections to the Canyon, every little thing in the park that we do. So I know that that can't happen one day. But like we said, it's a magic wand, yeah. Doug OK. And now you kind of answered this, but what are some things that you definitely would not ever want to change at the Grand Canyon? Kelkiyana Yeah, that's also a great question. I think the people who are here, especially on the North Rim and I'm not just saying that because I'm on the North Rim podcast, but every single person I’ve met, they're just so passionate and they're just so dedicated and committed to what they're doing, especially being in a remote location, both on the North and South Rim. Yes, the South Rim is remote. We're about a little over an hour drive from the nearest city, which is Flagstaff. And yeah, we choose to be here and we choose to push forward on the representation on the authenticity of what this place means, not just to Native people, but also to people all over the world. Like we're here to educate. We're here to upkeep this special and sacred place. Not just for ourselves, but for the wildlife, for the land itself. So that's something I would definitely not change, is the community, the sense of community that exists here in the park, not just above the rim but also below the rim as well. I have a lot of respect for our search and rescue teams and the people who are down in the Canyon all the time because they're out there looking out, not just for their own safety, but others’ safety as well. Unfortunately, the Grand Canyon is a harsh environment where we do lose people each year due to heat related illnesses and things like that. And we just have like the best team out there who are just ready to, like prevent things from like this from happening and then if unfortunately, an accident does happen, they're there to do it in a safe manner to where they're not adding to the situation. So yeah, it's a really capable team here and that's something I wouldn't change is again the people who live and work here at the Canyon. Doug OK well said, same question. I'm waving my magic wand and you are a National Park director for the day. What three things would you change? What, three things would you never change? Kelkiyana Oh wow, yeah. Uh, yeah. Not to sound like egotistical or anything, but I have been told a couple of times by several of my colleagues, they're like “I could see you becoming director someday.” And so I was just like, “wow, that's a lot of belief and respect for someone to have for me to say something like that.” It really helps me thinking that, you know, that is an achievable goal someday. And I think about it a lot where I'm just, not just like being like director, but just being in a management position on what I would change is staff support. Like I just mentioned how the people are incredible, amazing. Especially people who volunteer in national parks like, WOW, they're they're just incredible. But anyway, just support for our staff because I've kind of seen it working in the Park Service, how this can be mentally tolling and emotionally tolling on people, this type of work. Whatever they decide to do in the park, there's some type of effect that comes with us that that latches on to us. So I really think, mental health or anything like that would be a good thing to focus on with our employees. As well as increasing diversity and inclusion. It's been really awesome to see all these different people from different backgrounds doing amazing things in their park. I have a former colleague, Connie, who is doing these great things out at Yosemite now, where she's bringing forward Chinese American history to light at Yosemite because they have a rich history in that area too. And then my friend Linda, she brought forward Juneteenth programs and so on. Like we're we all bring our own personal perspectives and things to the parks. And I just really want to see these different park rangers with different stories supported. To never feel like they're being attacked. To never feel like they're pushing against the boundaries rocking the boat, and so on. I just really would like to see the support for that increase. And as director someday, that's something I would really heavily focus on, is that support for all park rangers to feel like they're appreciated. They're valued for all of the hard and incredible work that they do. And then of course similar to my other answer is bringing forward Indigenous perspectives and narratives to all national parks. And really emphasizing, like creating Tribal liaison positions for all national parks. And making that a requirement rather than it just being a collateral duty for an archaeologist or anthropologist. But yeah, I really respect our current director. He's been out to Grand Canyon. I got to meet him. And I really appreciate what he does for not just Tribal communities, but for the park service as a whole. And I actually got to ask him a question. I'm like, “what do you recommend for someone who's coming up the leadership ladder?” And he said the most important thing to him to get him where he is today was mentorship. And he said that's what he strongly advises is to have someone like a confidant, a mentor, to really support you through these things because, yeah, it's hard. It's really difficult to work in a space like this and you won't really know how to navigate it without talking to someone who's been through it all. Who wants the best for you and I feel like I do have that. So. Yeah, that's something else too. Doug OK. Any final thoughts or special messages you want to leave folks as we wind down? Kelkiyana Yeah. So thank you for listening to the podcast if you listened all the way through. It just really means a lot to have a platform to be able to share out our voices because for the last 100 years or so since the National Park Service was created, since Grand Canyon National Park became in existence, Native voices have been excluded from these spaces, even though we've had a connection to this place since time immemorial. And, yes, it's really unfortunate to talk about the past and what's happened then. And people are like, “oh, it was the past.” Like we like, “let's move on.” But in reality, even though myself and other living Tribal members, we didn't go through something traumatic like forced removal or anything like that, it still exists in us as living Tribal members through generational trauma. And that something people really need to realize is that us as living Indigenous people in this country, we still feel those effects of what's happened in the past. It's still our day-to-day, whether that's through the loss of our language, the loss of our culture, the loss of our heritage, the loss of land, poverty, long term health issues. You know the list goes on. And that's just something I really want to put to the forefront here at Grand Canyon National Park so that we can acknowledge it and then we can move forward in our healing process. And that's happening here at Grand Canyon in different ways. A really big one is the renaming of Indian Garden to Havasupai Gardens. Because that was done to acknowledge that harsh history and that living connection that the descendants of the people who were forcibly removed from that space still have to that area that is now serves as a campground for backpackers and people who hike into the Canyon. So that, even though it's just like changing the name just like that, it made a huge impact on our Tribal communities. And it really honors that space and that history and that connection that our Tribal communities have to these spaces. So yeah, that's just the message I kind of wanted to end on is that it's possible, despite what's happened in the past, it's possible to move forward. It's possible to welcome ourselves back to our home. And we experienced that in many different ways. But ahéhee', thank you. And I hope to see you at the Grand Canyon and just always think about when you visit these landscapes, like the history that's tied to it. Even where you're from. I'm pretty sure when you think about it, there's Indigenous people from that area who may or may not still have living connections to where you're at. So just really thinking about that and treating these spaces like your home or the home of a loved one because it's our home. Ahéhee', Thank you. Doug Very well said and I have a couple of presents for you, because I was very moved by your story of how you were able to calm this panicking and mortally wounded bison. So I would like to present you for your refrigerator at home, this official certificate. Can you read what it says? Kelkiyana Yeah. So it's to: Kelkiyana Yazzie, special designations as an official Grand Canyon National Park, Bison Whisperer. Doug You are an official bison whisperer now in my mind. So thank you for helping out with our bison folks and you can call yourself an official bison whisperer. Kelkiyana Oh my gosh, I love it so much. Yeah. Doug Also, I made you a couple of these little guys, here. You want to explain what these are? Kelkiyana Oh, thank you. Yeah. So Doug just gave me a couple of split twig figurines. So historically these are made from willow found down by the Colorado River and it's in the shape of like a either a deer or some type of large mammal and yeah, a lot of these are found down in the Canyon and these date back thousands of years and they're still made today by people to wear as jewelry and for other ceremonial and spiritual purposes. But yeah, and back then they would use these in hunting rituals as offerings to have a successful hunt. And yeah, it's just a really, really special thing to have. So thank you, Doug. Doug OK. You're welcome. This podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. Thanks to ranger Alicia for expert podcast editing. We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today. It’s their home too.

Dave: Hey, this is Dave. Elle: And this is Elle. Dave: We sat down with Kevin Schindler, the Public Information Officer and historian at Lowell Observatory, to chat about his time as an astronomer residence and to learn more about the night sky. Elle: While Dave had the chance to sit down with him in person. I phoned in from the North Rim. Please forgive our audio quality. We tried. Dave: In this episode, we'll be taking Kevin’s advice and looking up at the night sky. To learn more about it. Kevin: My name is Kevin Schindler, and I'm the historian and Public Information Officer at Lowell Observatory, and I've been at Lowell for 28 years. Early on in my career, I was in the public program at Lowell, so I started as a tour guide, then ended up managing the program for a dozen years or something like that. And now I I'm the historian, and so I try to document the history, which is not just back then, but now, it's kind of for me it's not history and current, it's the heritage that we've been doing for a long time. So, the heritage of research. So, I do with that I write articles and some books, and give talks, and kind of help with planning exhibits and that sort of thing. And then for the Public Information Officer, PIO, that's the other half of what I do and that's promoting the observatory. So that's largely the media relations, and so if we have a science story or we're doing something special for our public program, or there's an unusual or interesting astronomical event, like we have eclipses coming up so and so I'll do press releases and media alerts, set up interviews with our staff, host tours with media personnel so that people from around the world coming like to check out Northern Arizona, they'll go to the Grand Canyon, to here in Flagstaff, and so we'll facilitate tours up here at the observatory promoting everything so they'll write about it and let people know. We were talking earlier and mentioned crisis management. We don't have that much here. We do have some things you would call, I don't know, emergencies in a different way or things that you know when we closed for COVID for instance we had to gather and get some information together quickly. I mean there's certainly some of that. My title is Public Information Officer, but it really focuses on the media relations and everyday activities going on that are interesting and people want to know about. Dave: For most of our visitors that come to Grand Canyon when we're giving night sky programs, I find that most people have never looked at, looked up. What's your approach for starting to teach people just the beginning steps about the night sky? Kevin: I think the first thing is just to go outside and look up. It’s as simple as that it. You know, it's so cool to look through telescopes, and you know it's a whole universe revealed when you do that, but most of us don't have access to telescopes. Or maybe you can go and visit an observatory or an astronomy club, but just looking up to me is stunning because there's so much you can see with the unaided eye or with a pair of binoculars you can see more, but there's so much you can see if you just look. I'm reminded of a Yogi Berra. “You can observe a lot by just looking,” and it's really true. And I think part of that is, that you can really notice a lot of things like the moon rising and look at that really bright dot. Go back in a couple of nights to see where it is, how it's changed position. But I think another thing for me that I'd like to tell people just starting to stargaze is, you know, go out and look up, but also, you know, think a little bit about the sky and how important it has been to human culture. Because it's so ingrained with our everyday life. And we think about time, like AM and PM are based on astronomy. The length of the day, the length of the month, the length of the year, that's based on astronomy. Finding your cardinal direction if you're lost, use astronomy, you know whether it's the sun during the day or the North Star or other stars. It is so inspiring to look up and to see a shooting star, or to see a meteor shower, or an eclipse, but also just in our everyday life. How you know from the beginning, people looked up and its astronomy, they called the oldest science, originally called astrology, before it was really a science. Just looking up at the sky and it how much it impacts our everyday life. So just going out and looking up to me is the big first step. Dave: You talked about your background earlier, so I know you studied paleontology and history. How did you get started in astronomy? That's kind of a different career move. Kevin: Yeah. So, I grew up in Ohio and I'm not sure if we ever have clear skies there. It's always cloudy, it seemed like, but I was always interested in fossils. So, I looked down. I was always looking down during the daytime. I never did anything with astronomy. I went to college for geology and paleontology, and then I when I started working at Lowell Observatory in 1995, I applied here and when I was applying, you know the guy interviewing me, who's a friend of mine, now we've known each other for years, he said, “What do you know about the night sky and how many constellations can you identify?” I said “none, but I I'll sure be glad to learn.” And so, I think that's something that I found is sort of beneficial for me at least, when I'm talking to people about the night sky is that it hasn't been a passion all my life. I found it later on, and I really love it. I haven't studied all my life and used all the lingo. I kind of talk about astronomy in the same language that everyday people do. And so, I never have to worry much about talking as it were, over somebody's head, or using lingo that doesn't make sense because I'm conscious of that. And so, I try to explain it. I just started kind of by accident. You know, there's an opening at this place called Lowell Observatory, they do science, they have history, they do outreach. I love all that. So, I mean, it could have been an arboretum, or it could have been a number of things, but it was an observatory. And I've, you know, been doing it for a while now. And so, like now I just you know, I just love it. It's funny if you, if you, I always think of it, life is kind of like one of those mazes you do. You know, you start out, you know you're trying to go from one point to the end, and you go have all these different possible ways of going. And if you start at the start, you might have a couple you're not quite sure where the path is taking you, but if you start at the end and go backwards, it's pretty obvious how to do it, and I think that's probably all of us to some degree. I mean, some people certainly have their life planned out, but so many of us, one turn takes you in a different direction and for me looking back, I can see how I got here, but I sure as heck would never have been able to predict that when I was young. Elle: Can you tell us about the first time that you ever got to view like a deep sky object or a planet or something like that? Kevin: When I started here at Lowell Observatory in 1995, and I actually don't remember the first thing I looked at because we had a couple of things that, it was either Jupiter or Saturn, I think it was both. They were both up in the sky. But it was it was neat because we when I started here, we didn't have all these smaller portable telescopes. We had a big 24-inch diameter, 32-foot-long telescopes, the historic one that still people can look at today, and so just being inside of that room with the red glow of lights, looking through this 32-foot-long behemoth and looking at Jupiter and Saturn, I think it was both. But anyways, it was it was just, just stunning and you know, what stood out to me was again that I was I able to look and see these things up close but it was also almost as stunning that they were so small. Because I didn't have the background in astronomy, most of my connection with astronomy was seeing the cover of National Geographic or things like that that had these spectacular images that were taken by spacecraft that have flown out there. And so that's what I expected to see. And so when I looked through telescopes like, that's really cool, but it sure is small. But again, that's something that has stuck with me to explain to visitors, you know it's not going to be like the cover of a magazine with a processed image that's been blown up and from a spacecraft out there. But imagine what you're doing is you're looking at lights that, you know, if it's the moon, it's light, that start traveling to us half a second ago, and look at the details you can see. And again, I think because of my different background has served me well because I wasn't a hardcore astronomy nerd in the beginning. And so, I just feel like somebody that picked it up as a hobby, except I get paid for it, which is really nice. Elle: What do you think would be the biggest hurdle to accessing the night sky as a layperson, or as somebody who doesn't have a telescope and things like that? And how would you suggest overcoming that hurdle? Kevin: I think the biggest hurdle is finding clear sky or dark sky. 80% of the world can't see the Milky Way Galaxy. They live in a place where you can't see the Milky Way. 80%. So. I mean, that means, you know, 80% of the world lives in populated areas where there's artificial light pollution. I think that's probably the biggest hurdle. I mean, again, it's, it's great to look through telescopes and binoculars and a lot of people just can't afford those. Or are we going to spend money on that when we're trying to put food on the table? And can we afford that? You know, in that case you can find astronomy clubs or go to a place like Lowell Observatory, or the Grand Canyon during the Grand Canyon Star Party, or weekends when or whenever when Grand Canyon does programs. There's different options of even going and especially looking through telescopes, but in general, just finding dark sky and looking up, that's the biggest hurdle. Dave: Actually, talking about this, I was talking about this with fellow rangers, and I was like you, know when I grew up, I grew up right outside New York City. I could see about four stars. Kevin: Yeah, on a good night. Yeah. Dave: And we had one Ranger who we realized has lived in a dark Sky area her entire life growing up. And I was like, you might be the only person in your office that can see the Milky Way the whole time you've grown up. Kevin: Yeah, it's just not that you know percentage wise not that many people are able to see it. And I think that's to me one of the most fascinating, satisfying things is visitors at Lowell Observatory, at the Grand Canyon that are looking up to the sky. And I love this this comment that I've heard over and over, “I thought it was supposed to be clear tonight. Why is that cloud going through there?” That's the center of the Milky Way, and people are just stunned. I mean, I've seen people cry because they've never seen it and. And there's something about seeing that and having that kind of dark sky, that makes you really connected to the to the night sky and the universe around you. We're so in tune with, I mean, we live in this world where we stare at our phones so much and the computer screens and all the technology, which technology is great, but to be able to get away and reconnect with nature in universe, whether it's hiking down a trail at the Grand Canyon or looking up at the night sky, it really it's, it's part of what makes us human: that desire to explore and be inspired around us. And sometimes with all the noise and the lights, and distraction, we lose sight of that. But to be able to, you know, go camping and lay back in your chair and look up - it's just an exhilarating experience. Dave: I'm really curious, like, especially as someone who's still starting to look up at the sky myself, what's your favorite thing or favorite object to look at in the night sky? Kevin: This might sound a little boring, but my favorite thing is the moon because of the history around it, the human and cultural history, because it it's our closest celestial neighbor. And so, from the time humans started talking and communicating ideas, they were telling stories about the moon and part of the creation process for them. Or, you know, the moon is, is such an important part of our lives, from time keeping to the cycles and so on. And then the fact that it's the only world where humans have walked and I'm a big Apollo Astronomy fan and so for me, that's my favorite thing because to be able to zoom in and say I love doing this with visitors, I mean, you can't through the best telescopes on Earth, you can't see the flags or the footprints or that sort of thing. But you can point out the general area and to say that's, you know, that's where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot in 1969, and for people that were around then, that's one of those Kodak moments that they, you know, it's frozen in their memory exactly where they were when that happened. You know, in more modern times, more often than not, it seems to be like tragic things, like 9/11 or the Challenger disaster or whatever. But you know, human species walking on another world was such an achievement, and the fact that we had TV up there and people could watch it was spectacular. So, the moon for me, I mean there are certainly so many spectacular objects, but the moon is my favorite because it's fun to look at the analogs, things like we have on Earth, you know, like ridges, and where lava tubes are. We have lava tubes up in Northern Arizona, they're on the moon. And looking at craters and comparing those to like Meteor Crater or canyons, you know, like the Grand Canyon. It has it all, plus it has that human history. So that's my favorite thing. Dave: I never thought about canyons on the moon. I know there's one in Mars. Kevin: Yeah, the Mars one. I mean, it makes our Grand Canyon seem puny, cause that the one on Mars, essentially the distance is across the entire United States. But on the moon, it has it not to that scale or anything, but it's got ridges and mountains and canyons and stuff that are, you can see a lot of comparison. Elle: Can you tell us about your favorite night sky experience that you've had? Kevin: Oh gosh, I mean, there's so many. Sharing views through the telescope, or even with laser pointing at stars and constellations, is spectacular to me. When I used to work in a public program here, that was my favorite thing because you know, you sometimes there would be like grandparents and the grandkids. And they're both looking through telescope for the first time together and connecting the generations and the oohs and ahs, that's my favorite general thing, I think, to just, you know, exposing the night sky and to see stuff they never saw before. In terms of a specific one, gosh, I don't know that there's just been so many, like viewing through telescopes with the First Lady of the United States, and with a couple of astronauts, and with other with people like that, that was just neat to share what we do at Lowell Observatory, there are some singular moments like that. But overall, just getting outside and pointing out stuff is what I find most fun. Dave: And I'm curious about this, too. I mentioned a little bit about like me as a kid looking up, but as a young kid, did you ever imagine a dream you'd be doing this job or having these experiences or looking up at the sky all the time? Kevin: Absolutely not. I mean, I was interested in in rocks and fossils, and I had a teacher in high school, my favorite teacher, he was very inspirational. I applied to the school where he went, it's the only school I applied to because I wanted to go where he went, and he had studied geology. And so, you know, somewhere along the way as I got to high school. Well, I don't know if I go back a little bit, like I fell in love with fossils when I was in that golden age of seven or eight. I think that's when so many people find their passion. And I was out collecting blackberries, and the woods behind my farmland in Ohio, and found this rock that have all these little shell things in it. And then I looked down and found another piece, and they fit together, they had split apart. I took it home, my dad shellacked it, and then I did some studying, this is before the Internet, but I found the book and found these things are called brachiopods, you know, evidence of things that lived in the ocean. And I found the rock was a couple hundred million years old. And so, I just found that was fascinating, so I fell in love with it. And as I got to high school, I thought maybe I would do something with geology and paleontology. And I did that and worked in the Museum of Natural History in Florida. And there's a good chance I'd still be there because I really loved that. But I ended up moving out West and yeah, the path has just been unexpected, but I like it because the geology background really gives me a different - it makes it more integrated, like looking at astronomy. Because, you know, as we as we look at, you know, years ago, the moon and the planets, they were all being studied by astronomers. But now those are being studied by geologists because we can examine them and bring rocks back and such. So, to me that background, it makes it more interesting because it connects the two. Dave: Do you think that that's typical of someone in your, in this position, like as a historian and PIO like or do you think that it's helpful to have a different background to get into this? Kevin: I think it's helpful to have a different background. I think you know, you know, it's probably not unusual that people have different backgrounds. Like if you go into, if you want to be an astronomer, a lot of people get an undergraduate degree in physics or mathematics, especially physics, because that's such a key part of astronomy today. And so, I think a multidisciplinary background probably isn't unusual. But for me it wasn't an intended path, it just played out that way. It's like, hey, this sounds cool, I want to do that, and then it's grown. Elle: What advice would you give to someone who is astronomy curious, but is afraid to get into it, or maybe doesn't think that they have the background, you know, kind of like you're saying now? Kevin: I think a big thing is to talk to somebody in the field, like to go to an observatory like Lowell or to, a real easy thing is to go to an astronomy club, amateur astronomers that set up telescopes and stuff. But I think it's to talk to somebody in the field because I really believe that if you're passionate about something, you can make a career out of it. You might not make as much money studying astronomy as if you were on Wall Street, but if you really love it enough - why not do that? You can make it work. And you know there's different ways of being in astronomy. You can be a research astronomer in which typically you'll go to college and get your PhD and such, but you could do astronomy education where you have a passion for it, maybe you don't have a PhD, but you still have an amazing knowledge of the night sky. You could be a science writer, that you have this interest in science, but you also like to write. That could turn you into a historian also you like, you know the history of scientific exploration. So, there's different ways of going into whether it's astronomy or geology. Like if you love geology, you could be a ranger at the Grand Canyon National Park. You have one of the most spectacular geology laboratories in your backyard and you get paid to talk about it every day, that's not a bad gig. Do what you love and get paid for it. And so, I think it, you know, talking to people in the field, and I think what you said, you know, astronomy is one of those things that can sound intimidating. I don't know how many times I've heard people say I would have, I was going to go into that, but the math killed me. But there are other things you can do. I mean, my degree is in geology, I work in an observatory, I've been here 28 years, I haven’t got a pink slip yet. And I do history, I do public information, I did the education program for years, if you like it, you can find a way. Elle: Yeah, I get what you're saying. I know, for me personally, I majored in Writing in College and now I'm a park Ranger, and a lot of people are really surprised by that, that I didn't major in Forestry or, you know, Conservation Ecology or anything like that. Kevin: Right, But that's okay. I mean sometimes, it you know it's a very definite path, but there are so many other things you can do in a field. And you still write probably in some capacity or another, right? Elle: Yeah, I do. Kevin: And the skills you learned, I mean, writing is one of those skills that even if it's not writing a novel, it's skills you get that is going to benefit you in whatever you do. Elle: Absolutely. And as a writer myself, I'm curious to know if there's a story that you've ever heard that's changed your life, whether or not it's related to astronomy. Kevin: Well, to some degree, yes. I mean like, working here at Lowell Observatory and studying like our founder Percival Lowell really changed my thinking on things because he was looking for life in the universe. That's why he started the observatory. So, to me, it kind of connects my interest in paleontology with astronomy. I think Clyde Tombaugh was another one that I learned about, and I think to me is a very inspiring character because he was self-taught. Just what I was talking about, he didn't have the money to go to school, and so he did astronomy on his own sense and drawings off to see what the professionals thought. And it led to him getting a job. So, he was really passionate about it. And oh, by the way, a year later, he discovered a planet. You never know where your path is going to take you. But I think his story is really, you know, learning that story is really inspiring because it's a great case of, you know, the little boy who did, the little train that could. You know, he didn't have the resources, but he made it happen. He didn't have the money, but he had the passion. I think his story to me is really inspiring. And I mean something else that, you know, when I learned more about the astronauts, and going to the moon. I mean, you know, I certainly was familiar with the astronauts going to the moon, but being out here, you know, the Grand Canyon where they trained and the Lowell Observatory where some trained. Northern Arizona was just such a hotbed for the training. And again, combining the geology with the astronomy. When I really got into that, it really changed things because I, you know, had done the book about that, and really enjoyed talking about that. And that's one of the things that really got me connected to the Grand Canyon and doing the residency because that interest in the human exploration of the moon. And then the fact that we're going back, and astronauts are going to some of the same places in Northern Arizona for their training. Again, for me, I like history for the sake of what happened, but also seeing it as the foundation of what's happening today. And so, whether it's the Grand Canyon, or Lowell Observatory, or astronomy in general, or geology, it's, you know, it's the stuff that's been going on for a long time. And Pluto was discovered in 1930, but that was kind of the beginning phase of our studying another planet and it's still so much up for debate. Is Pluto planet or not? Of course, is a big debate question. But it inspires us to explore more and learn more. Dave: I think the story that I like is that he's just not a classically trained astronomer that discovers a planet, and I found that story just so interesting because that that's all people I'm surrounded with are not trained astronomers. Kevin: Right. And it's another example of somebody who got into the field that he liked, and maybe not on a traditional route. And after he discovered Pluto, he got a free ride to go to college, you know, discovered a planet, you know, you get pretty well known. But, but that's a certainly a non-traditional route, but again an example like I was saying before of if you're passionate about something, you're going to find a way to get into that field and make a living. And I really think that's the case. If you're passionate enough about something, you make it happen. Another thing with Pluto is there are so many angles to it that are so unlikely. Like, that you know, Clyde Tombaugh himself, the self-trained guy who he had the attention to detail and the work ethic to follow this this plan and find a planet. The idea that Percival Lowell’s research predicted the existence of this planet, and Clyde Tombaugh found a planet very close to where Percival thought it should be. But now we know today that Clyde Tombaugh didn't find the planet that Lowell thought was there, he just happened to find something. Because Lowell thought there was a much larger planet whose gravity was pulling on the Earth and Neptune. Pluto is a lot smaller. It doesn't cause those regular motions like they thought were happening. They just happened to find Pluto right there. It, it's just there's so many unlikely things with it. It's a great story and then it continues in 2014 or 2015 when New Horizons went by, and his big heart-shaped region on Pluto. I know there's a lot of personality being Pluto because especially when it got reclassified, there's a lot of people upset because, you know, that's our planet that was discovered in America and, you know, a small-town guy did that. And so, there's a lot of passion and love for Pluto, and then it's got this heart-shaped feature. And it was discovered four days after Valentine's Day. So, I don't know, there's just so many weird, fun coincidences with it. Dave: We always talk about Pluto, especially here because that has a real connection to Lowell. Kevin: Right. Dave: And you know, I think too talking about the connection with, you know Grand Canyon as a dark sky place, and Flagstaff is a Dark Sky City. Do you find that there's a relationship that this is just a naturally dark area, or is there something larger at work here to try and keep it that way? Kevin: Well, both. I mean, when Percival Lowell came out here, the reason he came to Arizona is because he got interested in astronomy and one of his, I mean he was he was trained at Harvard in mathematics. And so, but he wasn't, and he had this interest in astronomy all his life. But he had gone overseas, he worked for the family business, went overseas, and it wasn't until he's 39 that he started the observatory. But he sent an assistant out here to find a good spot because, you know Lowell lived in Boston, but realized that wasn't a good place to put an observatory, because there's a lot of artificial light, and this was before artificial light and light pollution was really a thing for astronomy, but he recognized this. That you know, he was in Boston and electric lights were becoming commonplace and they were shining. This is great, we have light we can see at night, we can extend our day as it. But there’s always something on the other side, it always balances out. We can see more at night, but it also is artificially polluting the night you know with artificial light. Lowell recognized that back east it wasn't good, because there's artificial light, and there’s also pollution from smoke from factories that that were some of his family’s factories. But he decided to go out West. He was one of the first people to really think about where to locate an Observatory, and he sent an assistant out to Arizona territory, this is 18 years before Arizona State in 1894. And he went, his name was Andrew Douglas, and he went to Tombstone, Tucson, Tempe, Prescott, and ended up in Flagstaff and the skies were just brilliant. In fact, at that time Flagstaff was nicknamed the Skylight City because the brilliance of the stars against the night sky. Just coincidence, well, kind of coincidence. It was a dark place, and so they set up shop here. And then in the late 50s, the observatory acquired a new big telescope, and they were trying to figure out where exactly to put it and realized that they wouldn't put it right on site to traditional Lowell Observatory because Flagstaff had grown and there were now lights, you know, shining up here, they decided to put it outside of town about a dozen miles. But there are some searchlights that occasionally shined up, and so one of our retired astronomers, who, by the way, had been mayor of Flagstaff at one time, he still had connections with the with the city leadership and he said, “Can you guys write some sort of ordinance that limits the use of that artificial light, just so the astronomers at certain times, they can go out and see the night sky and they won't have these search lights?” And so, they created this ordinance in 1958, and that was the world's first artificial light ordinance anywhere, right here in Northern Arizona. And since then, the community and Coconino County have updated and created other ordinances to protect the night skies. And in fact, Northern Arizona is a model for places around the world to do this. And of course, Grand Canyon National Park since 2019 is a dark sky park. And so, I think part of it was originally this, you know, this was a dark, dark, pristine sky. Not just dark, but, but you know higher elevation so there's less cloud cover, there's less atmosphere. Looking through you feel closer to the stars in some way, so there's that natural feel. But then it’s a community that is really scientifically tuned in to the universe around us, whether it's the rocks or the skies. And so, there's a real interest by people who live in this area to protect those resources, whether it's the rocks of the Grand Canyon or the dark skies. Dave: I'm curious, too, so we have tons of people that are like first time in Grand Canyon, first time in the area and they look up and like, oh, it's really dark here. Like, what advice would you give to someone who lives in a really bright place to take that home with them, to do something different there? Kevin: I think, I mean you know the one thing with artificial light and light pollution, you know in general it's not an attempt, you know, trying to keep the skies dark. It's not an attempt to get rid of artificial light, it's just to use it more appropriately. I mean you don't need to shine lights up in the sky for trying to, you know, illuminate a sidewalk. And different types of lights, I mean, you can have like types of light that doesn't interfere with our dark sky viewing as much. But also, the whole dark sky movement started with astronomy, but now scientists have shown that it negatively impacts life. It throws light, you know, night life off its cycles, animals think it's daytime in some cases. And so, there's obviously some negative impact to it. But I think, you know, for those people who live in a bright area, come here, view our dark and go home. One is to, you know, go out and try to find those dark places and view it, but also, you know, we can all do our part. You can use properly shielded lights in your backyard. Instead of, you know, they're different types of lighting you can use, so we can all do that our own ourselves and improve it a little bit. Plus, in the long run, quite often you can, you know, illuminate cheaper. You don't need as much lighting, for instance, in a lot of cases. And so, in some cases, you know, people will go back and start a movement, a grassroots movement to try to keep the skies dark. Or like in Grand Canyon National Park where Raider Lane worked with a lot of people, I know to change the lighting out. To have the park designated as the Dark Skies Park required adjusting the lighting what was used, how it was used and such. But that really made a huge difference. You go to the Grand Canyon and it’s even more stunning at night. There just isn't as much light pollution and it's, I don't think there's any evidence that it's not as safe or anything, it's just you're able to see the night sky more and it's more of a dramatic experience if that's possible. It is. It's more dramatic than it was before. Dave: We had, we went out to Tuweep, and we were like out in this really remote place, and the lone park ranger out there was like, look, you see that one light? That was the only light we had to change here. And he changed his spotlight that goes on the American flag from a white one to a red one. And was like, “that's really all we had to do.” But that was like, you know, the entire park did it all across both rims and it's a huge effort. Kevin: It was, yeah. Dave: Yeah, I know they did the final last final few structures up on North Rim as well. Our electrician went and retrofitted all those. Kevin: Yeah. And it and it hasn't changed or negatively impacted the visitor experience. It's improved it because, you know Tyler Nordgren, who was the first astronomer in residence, and he coined the phrase, “half the park is after dark.” And that's so apparent. Especially, you know, after the lighting was changed out. You know, you go, and you see the rocks during daytime and instead of just nighttime, you go and have dinner and go to bed, go outside and look at the sky. Oh my gosh, it's stunning. So, you have both the daytime and nighttime experience there. Elle: My final thought or question is what do you wish that everybody knew about the night sky? Kevin: I think what everybody should know about the night sky, I think that it's, that we can all do something to make it more accessible to everybody and we can all do our part. To you know, maybe leave those lights off or use a different kind of lighting, but so that's an important thing. But I think, I don't know, I think I still go back to the fact that it's accessible to anybody who could look up. If you can lookout or look up, it’s accessible to anybody. It's nice to look through telescopes, but you don't need that. You can be wowed by the night sky just by looking up, especially in a darker area. So, I think that that's probably the biggest thing that it's a resource for everybody. Nobody owns it. It's something available to anybody who can look up. And, you know, if you like, like my background is in fossils. You know, if you're, you know, depending on where you are, you might not have fossils around you, you have to go somewhere. Everybody has a night sky like, you know, if you can look up it's just some places that brighter than others. So what can we do about that? Dave: We gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their homes here today. Thanks for joining us for another behind the Scenery Podcast episode. We'd like to thank Kevin and the whole team at Lowell Observatory located in Flagstaff, AZ, for hosting us and taking the time to chat with us. We hope to have more programming with Kevin and the rest of the crew in the future.

Hannah: It was one of my chaotic questions too. Amy: Oh yeah right, So wait what was the question so I can think about it for one second? Hannah: Yeah. Hannah: Welcome back to another fun conversation with Amy Martin. I'm Ranger Hannah, and if you haven't listened to the episode where Amy and I discuss her personal connection to the Canyon, I highly suggest you give that a listen, then listen to this. In this episode, Amy and I talked about her photography activism in the work she's done with Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument. And at the time of recording this episode, it was not yet a national monument and became one, just about a week after recording this. So let's jump into the episode and learn more about Amy Martin's photography activism. Hannah: So I’m sitting here with Amy Martin and so excited because I love her work and I first learned about her last year when she talked here at Grand Canyon. And her work is specifically in photography. And I'm curious what drew you to photography? Amy: A few things I think did. I always was a very visual person growing up, and I thought everyone was, you know, as we do. When we’re you we think everyone thinks the same way we do. And so I would just stare at scenes and, you know, take in detail, and look at the light, and stare at people. laughter But so I did a lot of different visual art growing up, but my mom was an amateur photographer, and so she documented our life growing up. And I kind of took, you know, after her, I inherited her a little camera. Hannah: Yes! Amy: And just with my kind of fast paced life drawing kind of went to drawing and painting, went to the side. And it was amazing that there was this device that we were able to capture a moment of time in, you know, a millisecond. So yeah, that's really what started what drew me to photography. Hannah: I love it. So, when you got drawn into photography from when you initially started and the different projects you've worked at, how has your photography style changed? Amy: I feel like, that is a very good question, I feel like for the different projects that I do, my photography style changes kind of to meet the story. To either, I work a lot with different organizations, both environmental and social organizations, and so I feel like this style of photography, I try to kind of match what story these organizations want or the mood. Yeah. Over time, it's definitely got, I've gotten a lot more into documentary style photography. Hannah: So when taking a photo, what is the goal? Are you trying to tell a story? Catch a glimpse of many moments, or is there something else? Amy: Yeah, I think with the goals really, it's kind of twofold. And one is to really be true to this story. I think there's a lot of ethics involved in, you know, in good photography. And so I really try to be true to the story that's being told. And the second is I'm really trying to make a really compelling photo and compelling photos I think can have so much power. You know, for the good or the worse, but hopefully for the good. So, with these photos, we can you know, now we can share on so many different types of platforms and it far reaches, you know, to the end of the world. But if we take Grand Canyon as an example, if we have a really compelling photo of Grand Canyon that can create a connection for somebody, somebody who maybe has never even been to Grand Canyon, you know, and they can experience that beauty. And for me, if they can experience that, they have that connection. And then, you know, because I do so much advocacy work, then they can potentially become advocates, even if they have never walked the edge of Grand Canyon or seen it, you know, in person. They can they can connect with it. Hannah: Yeah Amy: I think that really is my goal. Hannah: So with connections, would you say that's how your work initially started as you were trying to form connections? Or when do you think you finally made the realization that you were helping connect people? Amy: Yeah, I think when the photographs are used in advocacy work, and that's what I do a lot with both social organizations and with environmental organizations, is, you know, if they are used for, you know, advocacy work, fundraising and volunteer recruitment, all of these different things, when those are successful, like I know that those photographs have connected with other people with a greater audience then could connect with them without, you know, actually being there. laughter Hannah: Yeah, it's really cool. I love, I just love being able to connect people and I'm excited that you use photography as that route. And so, you talk about how you've been working on different projects. And I'm curious because one of the projects that you're going to talk about here at the park. How did you get involved with the proposed monument Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, the Grand Canyon National Monument? Amy: So I got involved with the monument proposal and, you know, documenting some of the different areas and activities on it through Grand Canyon Trust. I was asked. So, Grand Canyon Trust is acting as an umbrella organization for the proposal. Hannah: Okay Amy: And so they're working with the tribal coalition. Grand County Tribal Coalition, and dozens of other smaller organizations nationally and local, like to come together for this for this push. Hannah: Yeah. Amy: So, yeah, that's how. That's how I got involved in it. Hannah: Sweet. What experiences have you taken from working on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument? Amy: So the experiences, I think the most important experiences that I take away from my time up there are the connections that people have to his land, to this landscape. And I had been in all three sections. So there's three different sections of the proposed monument. One is in the South on the on the Kaibab National Forest to the south of Grand Canyon. One to the east, kind of on the marble platform that is adjacent to Grand Canyon in Marble Canyon. And the other one is mostly up on the Kanab Plateau, which is out to the west. And so, these are very extremely varied landscapes. Hannah: Yeah. Amy: Yeah. Tall ponderosa forests on the south, too. Sage lands in the east and grassland in the west, all sorts of landscapes. But what really stuck with me was that through this process of photographing and getting to know people who have connections to the landscape is that there are very, there are many very different, very strong, very powerful connections to each of these areas. In the South there is the Havasupai tribe have one of their very important sites, cultural sites, Red Butte. The West, there are a lot of ranchers and hunters that have close ties to that that are also in support of the monument, which is very interesting, you know, because when you think about monuments, a lot of times ranchers and hunters are excluded. But this monument proposal is inclusive of bringing of allowing those activities to still happen on the landscape. And then in the east, the recreationalist have so much so many ties as well. Of course, there, you know, which I think has been overlooked for so long, are the ties that people have had even before this even for Grand Canyon was a park. Hannah and Amy: Yeah. Amy: So I think being a tribally led monument proposal is so important, Right? Because there has been such a long history of exclusion from decision making and leadership roles that that is something that I that I really support. And getting to know those ties so much more through this experience has yeah has really secured that in my mind. Hannah: So when taking all those different photographs and going to the different, the three different environments and learning about other people's connections, how did that make you feel? Amy: So working on the proposal and photographing the different areas and making these connections to all of these, you know, people who come from different backgrounds, who have deep and powerful connections to place. In one hand you know, it kind of feels like family, that there are people that have, you know, like me, strong connections to a place. And it also has felt, you know, it gives me so much respect. And I know that I will never have as strong of a connection to these places as people do whose ancestors have been here even before this land was a park and who have been here since time memorial. And so there are 11 different, you know, federally recognized Associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon, many of those with ties to these three different areas that are proposed within the monument and their culture is the landscape. Their language has been created with the landscape. Yeah, it's inextricably linked. So, you know, seeing that and hearing those stories has been really powerful and really beautiful. Hannah: So I know you've been involved with many different projects with Grand Canyon. So I'm curious how has that affected your overall connection to the canyon? Amy: Yeah. So, I think every different trip into the canyon, you know, you learn more. Hannah: Yeah. Amy: You know, and it has like I, it has so many facets. It's got thousands of side canyons and hidden gems and jewels everywhere. And so, you know, when I started, I started doing PSAR, so I was working mostly with visitors and then made my, you know, made my way down into the canyon working at one of the backcountry stations. And so that was, you know, a very intimate experience. And you're seeing the seasons change I was there from April to October. So you see, you know, these little minute changes that are happening down there, you know, that I don't think I would have been able to see if I just, you know, came in with so many times. And from there, you know, I started understanding, you know, all of these connections, like the water connection being on the river and really made me want to do more in conservation. And so then I went into the fisheries biology. And so, like, it's just been like these step stones, like getting deeper and deeper, Hannah: Yes! Amy: Not to be, not to make that analogy, the deeper you go into the canyon. But yeah, it's just it makes me want to, like, work harder to protect it, you know, just seeing both how alternatively resilient and fragile it is. I think the more I am connected, the more I want to work towards helping preserve it. Hannah: Is there any word of advice as being a photography activist and helping with these different projects that you would give to someone that is entering the photography field? Amy: Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. You know, for me, I'm thinking what has really helped me has been thinking about these photographs not only in like two dimensional world, but, you know, doing your research and really understanding what you know, what it is you are photographing. So get, get really close to your subjects by understanding what it is, which story you do want to tell and getting close if it is the people spending time with them and really connecting with them. And if it's a landscape spending, you know, like as much time as you have out there experiencing it and seeing what kind of, you know, magic happens instead of just going out looking for that one photograph, It's more of a, it's more of this long process of like getting close to getting close to your subject. Understanding, you know, researching. Hannah: I love it because all of this comes back to different connections. And I appreciate that you use photography and I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk about the different topics we've talked about today. Thank you so much. Amy: Thank you so much, Hannah. I feel very lucky to be here. Thank you so much. Hannah: Yes! Hannah: I can't express enough how grateful I am for my time to chat with Amy Martin about her work and her being down to just go with the flow as I came up with new questions on the spot. Thank you, Amy, for matching my chaotic energy, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work. We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their home here today. Amy: Can you cut that out? Hannah: Yeah, I can cut it out. laughter

Dave: Hey, this is Dave. Elle: And this is Elle. Dave: We sat down with Kevin Schindler, the Public Information Officer and Historian at Lowell Observatory, to chat about his time as an Astronomer-In-Residence, and to learn more about the night sky. Elle: While Dave had the chance to sit down with him in person, I phoned in from the North Rim. Please forgive our audio quality, we tried. Oh, that was the most awkward little laugh. *laughing* Elle: In this episode, we'll be looking down on Kevin's experiences as an Astronomer-In-Residence within the Canyon. Kevin: My name is Kevin Schindler, and I'm the Historian and Public Information Officer at Lowell Observatory, and I've been at Lowell for 28 years. Early on in my career, I was in the public program at Lowell, so I started as a tour guide, then ended up managing the program for a dozen years or something like that. And now I'm the Historian, and so I try to document the history, which is not just back then, but now, it's kind of for me it's not history and current, it's the heritage that we've been doing for a long time. So, the heritage of research. So, I do with that I write articles and some books, and give talks, and kind of help with planning exhibits and that sort of thing. And then for the Public Information Officer, PIO, that's the other half of what I do and that's promoting the observatory. So that's largely the media relations, and so if we have a science story or we're doing something special for our public program, or there's an unusual or interesting astronomical event, like we have eclipses coming up so and so I'll do press releases and media alerts, set up interviews with our staff, host tours with media personnel so that people from around the world coming like to check out Northern Arizona, they'll go to the Grand Canyon, to here in Flagstaff, and so we'll facilitate tours up here at the observatory promoting everything so they'll write about it and let people know. Dave: You were a former Astronomer-In-Residence as well. Kevin: Right, I served as Astronomer-In-Residence in May of 2023, and that was just a spectacular experience. Dave: What drew you into the program and why did you apply for the program? Kevin: Well, I've worked with uh Raider Lane, the Dark Sky Ranger and other folks at Grand Canyon over the past - gosh, it's been years now - doing some research, retracing where the Apollo astronauts trained in 1960s, but also other things like, I mean like Bucky O'Neill has always been an interest of mine, Theodore Roosevelt’s role in Grand Canyon National Park, which is a really interesting, politically charged sometimes, topic. And so those were besides, just the dark skies, and I I've been to star parties for years, the Grand Canyon Star Party. So, it's kind of a combination of, you know, working with folks up there, and working on some projects here and there. But the reason I applied was the opportunity to be up there for a full month and really zoom in on this, you know, rephotographing where the astronauts trained because we have a lot of photographs from NASA and the US Geological Survey, they trained to pinpoint where those pictures were taken. It's a lot of fun and it can be frustrating, but it's fun and it means hiking into the Canyon and you know, at one point I was walking back and forth, I think about a half a mile, and just below O'Neil Butte, going back and forth about a half a mile, trying to line up this one rock that was split along the trail and I could see a little bit of the background that wasn't changing much. So, it's just a really fun project, but that's the reason I applied was to try to really spend more time with that. Dave: It sounds like a really interesting project, yeah. Kevin: And then also you know it was kind of a combination of that was the main project, it was rephotographing, but also giving daytime programs on some non-astronomy history and then doing you know star parties at night. I mean what a cool place. And so, when I was there, I did something like 30 programs for the month. Which were a combination of like from a walking tour of the cemetery, a history tour, to talking about Bucky O'Neill and Brighty the Burrow, which is a really fascinating story. And then, of course, the astronauts and the night sky, there's so many different things to do. I mean, you could spend the rest of your life working on so many projects there. Dave: Yeah, I think that's maybe a little bit different about your programming while you were there, was that you did do some daytime stuff. What was your favorite part of your experience? Kevin: I think the people. Because like you mentioned, this is a program with the Grand Canyon National Park supported by the Grand Canyon Conservancy, the financial arm of the National Park, as it were. And it was, it was so fun to be able to get to know a whole cadre of different people that are really passionate about the same thing. I work at Lowell. You guys work at the Grand Canyon, but we're all passionate about the universe around us and preserving it and exploring it and sharing it with others, and the inspiration that comes. So, I think that was the biggest thing, whether it was talking to visitors and showing them views through the telescope for the first time, which is always a thrill for me, or working with the Grand Canyon Conservancy staff. You know they; I was living at Verkamp's store and down below or upstairs and down below is the store and the visitor center. But the staff rotates every day among several different stores in the park. And so, I got to know just about everybody on the retail staff. And then the rest of the team like Clover Morrell and others that work in the office, it was just, it was just great, and you like through this, I got to know you and go to the North Rim and, you know, work with a lot of people I hadn't before. So, like I think that, I mean there's the obvious things of the Canyon. I mean I I've been to the Canyon a lot, but living there is a different experience, but really the biggest thing was the people and sharing the excitement. Elle: Kevin, what would you say was the most surprising part of that experience? Kevin: I think probably that even though I've been to the Grand Canyon a bunch of times and hiked down and done rim to river back when I was younger, and you know, not, you know, maybe not as smart or not, I was in better shape. Like I think, of all that, really still being there for a month, living there, just how connected you are to the universe. I mean, every time I go, my wife and I go, we want to as we're driving back home, we say “okay, let's plan our next trip.” But you know, we've been there for a few days, a week maybe, but being there for a month where during the daytime, you look down and you see these layers of rock, the time that's represented, and at nighttime you look up and you're looking back in time also it's just, you know, you're looking at starlight. I think, I'm not sure - I expected that, but not to that level where I really felt just really so connected to it. I think that was probably the biggest thing because I thought, okay, I'm going to be here for the month, this is going to be great. I'll just do, it'll be more of what I felt before, but it was a new experience. It was just, it was like I was in an alien place because I was there day and night. It wasn't just visiting there. Elle: How did you find those spots to recreate the photos? Kevin: So, we have, we have these photographs from NASA and the US Geological Survey, and there's probably, I don't know, a few dozen of them and some of them, from my experience hiking, they're pretty obvious. Like O'Neill Butte, you know, you see it standing in the background, it’s obvious. And some of the places I was kind of familiar with. Others, I talked to people a lot more familiar with the Grand Canyon than me, Dennis Foster is a local, he lives in Flagstaff, but he's very familiar with Grand Canyon, and Bill Farris and some others that we're able to pinpoint it. Carl Bowman, who’s another expert on the Canyon. So, they helped me kind of narrow down where some of these things were. And then in other cases, it was just you know, I knew, you know there are like a bunch of them are along the South Kaibab Trail, somewhere along there. There, there are a couple that I just bumbled upon, and when I saw them, I thought, my gosh, how did I miss this before? So, it's kind of a combination, of a you know, going on a sleuthing expedition. So, every time I found one, it's really kind of satisfying. Dave: What do you think your favorite one was? Is there a particular spot that you really liked trying to pinpoint? Kevin: Oh, gosh. I'm not sure if I have a favorite one like there's there are several pictures of Neil Armstrong and one of him at the Fossil Fern Exhibit, and I like that one because my background is paleontology. And so, it ties together paleontology and of course the rocks, the Grand Canyon, and Neil Armstrong, who, like me, was from Ohio. And so, I voice, you know, he's one of my favorite astronauts, partly because that besides, you know, obviously what he did and so that one has a lot of personal meaning. Another one down, it's Havasupai Gardens, where the astronauts had hiked up then got mules there, and there's a picture of one of the mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper on a mule. And so, this one wasn't too hard to find a spot just right by the mule paddock, as it were. But several years ago, I wanted to recreate that shot when I first started doing this and so there was a wrangler there, her name is Tex Parker, and she was riding, and I asked her if she'd pose for a picture. I showed it to her, and she said “sure,” and she did this spectacular pose and just this cute smile and everything, and then after we were done, you know, I showed that picture in different programs I've done. But when I did the Astronomer-In-Residence, I told her I wanted to rephotograph it because her head was cocked once to the left instead of the right. It was really almost like an inside joke because it wasn't that big a deal, but we arranged a time to meet down there and so she brought her wagon train down and she reposed, and she had been practicing. And so, she not only got the head tilted the right way but had the same look on her face. So that was fun because that's something that led to a long-lasting friendship now that we just kind of stumbled on. So that's, I'm getting into a long answer, but those are a couple of the ones that are kind of fun. My gosh, there's, again it involves the people, like down at Phantom Ranch trying to figure out where this one picture was taken, and Sjors I don't remember his last name, but he's a legend in in the Grand Canyon, he volunteered there for 30 years and I showed this to him and he said, oh, that's looks like cabin eight, or I think it was cabin eight. And we walked over there and sure enough, you know, the background rocks and everything have lined up perfectly. And another personal thing with that is that I was when, I had got this lined up that trip, I was giving a talk that night about the astronauts. And so earlier that day, I went back to rephotograph the spot right by the cabin and the people who were staying in the cabin, there's somebody there that were outside. So, I showed this picture and said, hey, you're staying in this cabin, look at this, these astronauts are there, and that's pretty neat. And hey, I’m doing the program tonight, come on over. So, I give the program that and I noticed this one guy looking at me like closer than everybody else. It was kind of odd, and afterwards he came up and said, “Kevin, do you remember me?” And it was a guy I went to college with, he was in my class, and we haven't seen each other in well, and I won’t divulge how long it's been since I was in college, but it was like 3 decades plus. And, Ed White, and of all the things he said every year, he and his friends rent a cabin at the bottom and hike down and stay a couple of nights, and that happened to be the weekend. And so, we reconnected after all these years because of rephotographing, you know the spot, so that that had a lot of personal connection, also. So yeah, I think it just you know, I think to me Grand Canyon is like Lowell Observatory in a lot of ways, that people go to either place and are stunned and they're great experiences, but it's the people working there that interpret and explain and inspire that that put it all in context, and that's what makes Lowell Observatory and the Grand Canyon so spectacular. It's one thing to see them, which is great, but having - whether it's Rangers at Grand Canyon or educators at Lowell - it's having it explained and put in context, that you know, that those are always the best comments we get from people of so and so really helped me see, it or really explained it well. And so that's something I think, one of many things the Canyon and Lowell have in common, you know something exciting for people to see, but also the staff to get people excited about it. Dave: During your experience, you know, we talked about staff and thing, what was the most impactful thing you learned from the Canyon itself? Kevin: I think, I'm not sure if you would say I learned it, but I think so, but it really impacted me by living there and seeing what I was saying before about time, and how we're looking down at the rocks are up in the sky, but the similarities with them. You know, the rocks, you look, they appear to be so stable layer after layer that have been there a long time. The same thing when you look up the sky at night. Every night the Big Dipper is rising, you know, with all, it looks the same. You know the sun rises every day very predictable. But if you look at either one of them closely, you see that beneath that stability is chaos. Like you go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the Vishnu basement rocks that are contorted and twisted around. Or if you look closely at the sun and it's, you know, 27,000,000 degrees and these thermonuclear reactions going on that, I just really saw so much similarity in, you know, we're looking back in time in different ways, but they both they both have a lot in common. I think that that really stood out to me more than anything. One thing that I want to do is you know, you look at different layers of the rocks and when they were laid down and then comparing that to something in space whose life started traveling to us at the same time, those rocks were laid down. So, you know, there's a couple million light years away, for instance. Now the rocks in the Canyon were laid down hundreds of millions and longer ago. And so, you look at things in space that are that age, you know, like a distant Galaxy or whatever and it's neat to think that the light that is touching my eye now started traveling when there was no Grand Canyon, these rocks were being laid down. It's magnificent to think of the time it takes for things to happen in the universe. And that's what I think you know, I mean you look at the Grand Canyon, you know you see these layers of rocks and you're looking back in time, but the being, standing on the edge like at sunset and seeing the depth of the Canyon and the hundreds of millions of years represented, and then at the same time, you see stars starting to come out and think. You're, again, you're looking back in time at that light. It was just really such a visceral experience. Elle: It seems like your geology and astronomy interests lined up pretty well on this residency, then. Can you tell us a little more about that? Kevin: Yeah, my background is in geology. I went to College in Ohio, Marietta College, and I focused on paleontology, and I worked at a museum in Florida, the Florida Museum of Natural History, for six years. And so that's always been a love of mine, soft rocks for fossils, and you know the Grand Canyon, that's mostly what it is. It's layer upon layer of fossiliferous rock of one sort or another. And again, it's looking back in time that's just fascinating. I mean, I'm a, I'm a historian and so, you know, at Lowell Observatory, I look back in time in some ways, decades or 100 years at the operations of the observatory are things that happened. But I'm also looking back in time at, you know, when the period of heavy bombardment on the moon, you know, billions of years ago. Or looking back at Jupiter, you know, millions of years ago, but then the Grand Canyon, looking back, hundreds of millions of years, it's all it's all looking back in time and it's just, it's such a neat connection for me. Dave: When you visited us, with us at North Rim, you talked about your upcoming book, and I was really curious about how the progress was going, and what that would look like, and maybe a little bit of an overview of what’s going to be in it. Kevin: Sure, sure! So, the book is called, it's a, it's a series called Past and Present, put out by History Press/Arcadia press, it’s the same thing, essentially. And so, it's a series where they do these past, it's a past and present series that focuses, usually on communities, so it's historic pictures and then the modern counterpart taking the same place; rephotography. And so, my publisher asked if I would do something for Flagstaff, which I might still want to do, but I thought, “how about Grand Canyon?” Because it would be neat to kind of document, you know, what it was like 50 years, 100 years ago to what it looks like today? You know the like, where visitors go to hotels, and trails, and visitor centers and stuff like that. So that's what this is, and it comes out January 1st and it's something like, I don't know 160 images. Again, then and now. So, the cover has a picture of Lookout Studio taken about 100 years ago and then what it looks like now. And so that again was, it was fun and during my time as the resident astronomer, I worked on that some specifically on the astronomy related stuff. So, we were rephotographing the astronauts, but also there are a couple of times like when I visited you at the North Rim, we photographed the Brighty statue. Dave: Right. Kevin: So, I actually had to go back and rephotograph again because the angle. But it turns out that the base, the statue has been moved and so you can't recreate it exactly, it's been moved several feet from the pictures that I have. But anyway, so there's some like that that we're that we're fun to get when I was up there. So yeah, that comes out January 1st and it's kind of fun for me because I've done seven or eight books and mostly about astronomy and astronomy history, but to do one specifically about the Grand Canyon is pretty neat. And so, I'm excited about that. Dave: It's interesting too, because when you think of all these buildings, I'm always like, well, it's historic preservation, they should be exactly the same. But I'm sure that that's just not true. Kevin: Oh yeah, that's right. And then you say exactly the same when because you like, building one at the Canyon that was originally the administration building, there's a picture we have that's in in the book and it has the building as it was originally, but they expanded it and now it has, you know, it's got the garage, it's got another wing. And I think that, you know, at the Grand Canyon, that was typical that buildings, if it went out of use for one thing, it was repurposed or something else. So, there's a lot of buildings that change because they were repurposed. And so that, you know, there is a on the North Rim, there's a, it was a mule paddock that's not being used anymore. But then there is there's a place that at the South rim, that was, I think it was at one time, it was a next stage administration building, now it's the law enforcement building. And so, there's a lot of things that, they get repurposed, so they're going to get modified a little bit. Elle: Kevin, where did you get the inspiration to start recreating all of these photos, you know, of people and buildings, just things that have changed and have stayed the same? Kevin: Well, I you know, when we talked with the publisher and talked about doing something with Flagstaff, I just happened to be going up to the Grand Canyon, and I started looking around, thinking, my gosh, there's a lot of classic buildings. There are so many historic landmark buildings up there, and I knew that there were, you know, the Grand Canyon Museum Collection is just a treasure trove. And so I went and checked that out and talked to the great people there, Kim and Colleen, and they shared with me that their the collections are just vast. And I realized that between mostly pictures there, are a couple from the National Archives and, The Library of Congress National Archives, those are all open-source places as well as Grand Canyon Museum collections. And so, I found that there was a great resource for historic pictures and it kind of grew from there. But it was fun doing it because, you know, like I went to the North Rim and Dave, like we talked there, and we did a bunch of pictures, and it's not really until you get back and can really look at them on the computer, get them full size. Then, I went back and redid several because you know the angle wasn't quite right or because the sun you know was really shadowed in one and you could play with the image a little bit, but it had to be redone. So, there is one, there's an overlook down below the lodge at the North Rim and there's a little bridge that goes to it and so it was really, it was really neat, but I had to redo that in a slightly different angle. And you can't recreate the exact angle because you would be on the edge of the rock that drops down several hundred feet. And that wasn't going to happen. Plus, you know, I want to, you know, the last thing I want to do is be a dummy, that you know went too far and then Grand Canyon has another statistic on their hand because this knucklehead was trying to get a picture. So yeah. Elle: If you had to describe your residency as a color, what color would it be and why? Kevin: Um probably, oh gosh, ask me tomorrow and it might be different. But I would right now, I'd probably say golden, if golden's a color. Elle: I think it’s a color Kevin: But because the most dramatic time of the day to me was sunset and the color; I mean you get these golden red colors, but just the rays of the sun. And to me it was, again, connecting the sky and the land you have the sun setting and just, you know, that afternoon light you get, and I think it would be that, that's what sticks with me the most. I mean obviously there are the color of the rocks that stand out and change depending on the lighting and cloud cover and such, but golden really sticks out to me I guess. And it kind of connects, I think one of the of the most fun nights, and one that sticks with me is, it was late afternoon and we set up a couple of telescopes on the top of the of the John Wesley Powell monument. And so, we had a solar telescope looking at the setting sun and then another telescope looking at the moon rising, it was around full moon. And to see them both at the same time, and it's always, I don't know, it was a day or two short of a full moon, but to see them both at the same time with the golden rays of the sun, and then by the way, there's the moon and standing on the monument to John Wesley Powell, who really kicked off the exploration of the Grand Canyon and has strong connections to the moon. And you know, it was just, it was just beautiful. So, I think the color maybe because of that singular moment of being on top of the monument with the telescopes was it was just so striking that that will stick with me for a long time. Elle: Thanks for joining us for another behind the Scenery Podcast episode. Care to learn more from Kevin Schindler? Head over to our second episode looking up to hear more from Kevin, Dave, and myself about some hot tips and techniques to access the night sky. We'd like to thank Kevin and the whole team at Lowell Observatory located in Flagstaff, AZ, for hosting us and taking the time to chat with us. We hope to have more programming with Kevin and the rest of his crew in the future. We gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their homes here today.

Ed: First thing I’ll say is being Gay is part of who I am, it’s not who I am... Julia: Hello there! I’m Ranger Julia, and for the last two years, I have been working as a seasonal interpretive ranger on the North Rim at Grand Canyon National Park. In that time, I’ve written a few social media posts in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride month, which takes place each June. This year, the post featured myself wrapped in a pride flag, with a short caption highlighting diversity and inclusion in the parks. While the post received widespread support from other parks, visitors, and our park partners, it was also met with vitriol, ignorance, and hate. People were confused about the post’s relevance to the Grand Canyon, and to the National Park Service in general. In response to these comments, I sat down with Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Ed Keable, to discuss his thoughts on diversity and inclusion in terms of the NPS mission. To explain Superintendent Keable, I need to explain the role of a Superintendent. The National Park Service is a part of the Department of the Interior, and is spearheaded by one director, currently Chuck Sams. Under the director there are deputy directors, each with their own staff and area of expertise. Next down the list are the regional directors, who oversee many parks. Each park in the region then has its own superintendent. For Grand Canyon, that Superintendent is Ed Keable. You can think of him as the person in charge of Grand Canyon; Superintendents are essentially the chief executive officers of individual parks and can be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior. By the time I sat down with Superintendent Keable, he had been hard at work at Grand Canyon for about three years.

Acoustic guitar music.

Julia: Welcome to the North rim. First, can you introduce yourself? Ed: Sure! I'm Ed Keable, I’m the Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park. Julia: Can you briefly tell me about your path to becoming Superintendent of Grand Canyon? Ed: Sure. So first, this is my first National Park Service job. So my path here is unusual. I spent the previous 23 years as a lawyer in the Department's office of the Solicitor, which is their legal office. And spent seventeen of those years in different executive level jobs, basically in various jobs, and managing the solicitor’s office, and had an area of practice that included administrative also, the nuts and bolts and how to manage federal organizations and then of course I manage the Solicitors Office. So I had that background. The superintendency at the Grand Canyon had been vacant for almost 2 years before I got here. The Department of Parks Service had advertised the job twice- weren't satisfied with the applicants they got, most of which were outside of the National Park Service. I think in either both -- one or both of them, nobody in the Park Service applied because it's a really hard job for lots of different reasons. So the secretary of the Interior has the authority to reassign executives in the department to any jobs they’re qualified to do, and the Secretary of the Interior is - what at the time was David Bernhardt and I've known him for almost 20 years. He was my boss when he was the solicitor of the Department of the Interior and I gave him legal advice when he was the Deputy Secretary and the Secretary. So he knew me really well, and as he thought about the challenges of the Grand Canyon, he thought, after failing to recruit anybody, who could he reassign into the job? And he told me that he kept thinking of my name as somebody who could do this job. So, 24 hours before he called me into his office, I got a call from my boss, my political boss in the solicitor’s office telling me "Hey, I think the Secretary is gonna ask you to be the superior of the Grand Canyon. And he's gonna ask you tomorrow.” So I had 24 hours to think about it and so the secretary did call me into his office on what turned out to be my birthday. And told me, “Hey, I really am having a hard time filling the Superintendency of the Grand Canyon, as I think about it, I think you'd be really good at it. So I'm going to ask you a question and you can say no” because the deal is with the senior executives in the federal government is, if the Secretary of the Interior asks you to take a job, to reassign you to a new job, you either have to say yes or you have to resign. Julia: Wow. Ed: That's part of the law that established the Senior Executive Service. So the secretary knew that I knew that because I'd given him advice in the past on how to reassign executives. So he prefaced his question with “you can say no,” but he asked me, would I take the job and I, having thought about it for 24 hours, I said yes. Julia: What was your first thought when you were told you would be asked that question? Ed: Wow! You know, I had been to the Grand Canyon twice as a tourist. The first time was in 1994. My husband, he wasn't my husband at the time, but my husband and I were traveling the southwest and we stopped at the north rim. And you know, I had one of those iconic Grand Canyon experiences where I walked up to the rim and was just awed by its grandeur and its beauty, and and had that sense of the divine that this is really a special place. And shortly after that I had a random thought: “This would be a really cool place to work and to live!” And 26 years later, the secretary of the Interior asked me if I would become the Superintendent of the Grand Canyon.

Acoustic guitar music.

Julia: Ed Keable's tenure as Superintendent started just after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he is no stranger to working through new and complicated challenges. What are you most proud of accomplishing during your time as Superintendent so far? Ed: There's a lot to choose from. We're doing just amazing work across multiple issues and fields. I think if I had to pick one - by the way, this question is a lot like, you know, who's your favorite child? - But if I had to pick one, it would be the work we're doing around the welcoming Indigenous people back into the Park. Grand Canyon National Park, like so many other federal land units, certainly National Park units, was established over 100 years ago against the will of the people who lived in this place from time immemorial. And the Park Service then, like other federal agencies, for 100 years kept them away from what they still today view as their home. And that's caused all sorts of challenges within Indigenous communities; dispossessing them from their home, keeping them away from their home for 100 years. I believe it's created social and economic challenges that tribal leaders are dealing with today. And so this park, before I got here, began working really hard at trying to welcome Indigenous people back. We have an initiative to create the first Inter-Tribal Cultural Heritage Site at Desert View at our east entrance gate on the South Rim, and in order to really accomplish that in a meaningful way, the park established an Inter-Tribal Working Group; representatives from the 11 Associated Tribes to the park have formed to work with the park to help give us guidance on how to really effectively welcome people back. And that process has taken time to mature because there was distrust between the tribes and the park, but the park has been really mindful to work that process well. So we work with our park partners, the Grand Canyon Conservancy, to fund a facilitator who themselves are indigenous, not from the 11 associated tribes from other from another tribe, but that's really important for our tribal partners to have a facilitator who understands their perspective generally. And so, the park is a part of that dialogue. We're not leading that dialogue, and in fact, in many ways, we're working with the tribal leaders to lead that process. We're taking our lead from them. So at the Desert View Inter-Tribal Cultural Heritage Site, the Tribal leaders of the Inter-Tribal Working Group have established a strategic plan, we’re following that strategic plan. They've established a theme, which is that “we are still here.” It's important to them that that not only our visitors, but the park, understands that this is their home, and they are still here and so that has informed how the Park Service is engaging with them. And when I got to the park, that work had been going on for a number of years and within a couple of weeks I went to Desert View, got the briefing on what's going on there, and my only question walking away from that briefing was “Why are we doing this only at Desert View? Why aren't we doing this throughout the whole park?” So we've made sufficient progress with Desert View and we're following that strategic plan. We're now engaging with the Inter-Tribal Working Group to expand what I call the Desert View Vision to the rest of the park and we're having really meaningful conversations with some of the associated tribes to identify co-management opportunities and we're beginning some long term plannings on how to implement co-management effectively including infrastructure issues. So if we want our Indigenous partners to come into the park and work with us, for example, they're going to need housing. So as we manage our housing program for the future, we're building into our future housing needs opportunities for our Indigenous partners to come to and live into the park. Julia: This might be similar to that last question, but what are you most looking forward to working on still? Ed: So I have three main priorities as I'm leading Grand Canyon, I've identified 3 priorities. You know there are lots of other work that we're doing and it's all important, but in order to be an effective chief executive officer, which is essentially my role as Superintendent, you have to have a clear sense of priorities, and so my number one priority is this Indigenous Program that I spoke to earlier. My second priority is climate change. The Grand Canyon National Park is part of the Colorado River Plateau. The Plateau has been going through drought for 23 years. It's called the Millennial Drought. It's had tremendous impacts across the basin, including in the Grand Canyon. And so I'm working with the scientists in the park and with other federal partners and other stakeholders in the region to help shape key policies around water allocations, particularly water distributions, through the Glen Canyon Dam that come through the Grand Canyon to get to Lake Mead. And so we're doing a lot of work in that space, I'm personally doing a lot of work in that space. And our third priority is deferred maintenance. Like so many other parks in the system, this park hasn't maintained its infrastructure for decades, and the infrastructure is falling apart. Just as one example, the Trans-Canyon Waterline, which draws water from the Canyon to the rims, breaks. The water lines break on a fairly regular basis. Last year, there were thirteen major breaks in the water line to the South Rim and there were three in August. And it takes the water utilities crew time to fix them and to reprime the pumps. And through August, we weren't for the most part of August, filling the tank farms in the South Rim and so as we used water in the South Rim during that period of time, the water levels in the tank farms dropped and they dropped sufficiently close to the level that we require for structure fire support in the park that that I was within, I would say, two or three hours of shutting down the South Rim in September. Julia: Wow Ed: And so fortunately, the water utilities crew, which does amazing work, fixed the last break and primed the pump in enough time that we started filling the tanks farms before I signed the order, so we averted disaster by the skin of our teeth. That's just one illustration. We've got 4 wastewater systems in the park, all of which have not been invested in and are failing. We've got an electrical grid that was designed and built in the 1970s for a park in the 1970s, and we're moving into an era where we're building infrastructure that requires electricity, more electricity than we currently have, and we're looking to support our visitors, who are increasingly bringing electrical vehicles to the park and we're redesigning the park's fleet to be more energy efficient and going electric with our fleet as well, including our bus fleet. So we need more and better and reliable electricity, so we're in the process of changing the entire electrical grid in the park, so -It's - we'll be spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the next four or five years, doing the work that should have been done regularly, consistently for the last 40 or 50 years. Julia: Right. What is your favorite Grand Canyon story; either a personal story, a story you've heard... what comes to mind? Ed: Yeah, you keep asking me to name my favorites... Julia: A favorite story? Ed: So I think that this might be a cop out, but my favorite story of the Grand Canyon is the way the staff and our partners pull together to really work to make this an amazing place, right? So our mission in the Park Service is to preserve the natural and cultural resources of the park and to make it available to our visitors now and into the future. And you know, that's a remarkable mission, especially at a place like the Grand Canyon, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and a World Cultural Heritage site, and one of the icon parks of the National Park system and the staff here is really incredibly talented and dedicated, and there are multiple disciplines that have to work together and this is not an easy place to live. I mean, while we dedicate ourselves to that mission, we’re remote, we have internet connectivity challenges. The developed areas in on the North Rim and the South Rim both have limited resources, right? There are no doctors here, no dentists here, there's no movie theater here, there's no cinema. For the South Rim where I live, I have to drive an hour and a half to see my doctor or my dentist, or go to a movie, or do any of those things that people in the United States oftentimes take for granted. You know, add the Internet connectivity challenge, especially for our younger employees who grew up with a special relationship to connectivity, it makes it a hard place to be. I mean, fortunately it’s also the Grand Canyon, you get to be out into the resource, you get to hike, you get to recreate and that is a great compensation, but it's still a hard place to live. But the staff here is, as I said, they're really talented, really dedicated and being a part of an organization where we work collaboratively across disciplines to accomplish that mission of preserving the natural and cultural resources and making it available to our visitors now into the future is in and of itself it's a remarkable story and I'm proud to be part of it. Julia: Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. This is also my first Park Service job and I get the feeling that I'm being a little bit spoiled by starting at the Grand Canyon. Ed: Well, you just, you just have to never leave the Grand Canyon! Julia: Well, exactly so it's it's almost like a double-edged sword because it's such a great experience, but nothing will ever compare to this, even with all the challenges. Definitely agree with that.

Acoustic guitar music.

Julia: Moving on to the questions of Pride and diversity and inclusion, I have noticed working on various Pride projects for here and Zion, that people often ask what does this have to do with national parks? Why are you posting about this? Why not just post pretty pictures of the Grand Canyon? So why do you think representation is important to national parks? Ed: The National Park Service excels at telling the story of America. And we tell the whole story. We haven't always told the whole story, but we are committing ourselves to doing that. And the United States is largely an immigrant country, so diversity is one of the great strengths of the United States, and so it's important for the National Park Service to tell that whole story in order for all of us to understand that underlying strength of the country. And it's it's easy for us to lose sight of why diversity is important and how that makes America strong. And so the park service’s efforts to tell the whole story of the country is an important service that we provide to the country and I know that there are some people who think that, you know, if you tell particular stories, like LGBT stories, that that is divisive, but I think given the nature of the culture of the United States and how we have come to be, that each of those strands of narrative are threads in the fabric that make this country strong. And so it's important for the Park Service to tell those stories. Julia: So the second question that I have is pretty similar to the first, but more specifically about Pride as opposed to general representation. Does Pride, LGBT Pride, have a place in the National Park system and what do you think that place is? Ed: Of course it has a place. Gay people are and always have been, an important thread in the fabric of the country and our story, I'm gay myself, our story is important to tell, and it's as important to tell as any other story. So I think it's great that the Park Service is telling that story. Julia: How do you think we can best create an environment where everyone is welcome and safe and free to tell those stories? Ed: It's a really good question, especially given the history of the National Park Service, which has not been always as welcoming to that narrative; that broad narrative. The National Park Service currently has an initiative underway, called RISE, which stands for respectful, inclusive, safe and engaged National Park Service, and RISE is an effort within the Park Service to help across the system to create that environment where every employee, regardless of their background, feels respected, included, safe and can engage. I think that's a really important initiative because not everybody has felt that welcoming environment and not everybody has felt included. Not everybody has felt as safe and so not everybody has engaged. And so we're working on a number of initiatives to create that environment for all employees and as I've told employees in the Grand Canyon, it both in -in my e-mail communications and when I talk to them individually and when I talk to them in work groups, from my perspective, the linchpin of the rise initiative is the R, respect. If every employee treats every employee with respect at all times, the inclusion, the safety and the engagement will follow. It's not always an easy thing to do because people are people, right? We all have personalities. We all have likes and dislikes, we have people we don't like. We have stress on our in our work lives that sometimes lead us to be not our best selves, and it's easy to lapse into behaviors that can be disrespectful and that can be corrosive to relationships and to cohesion in work units and ultimately to the success of the park. So I work at stressing for myself and encourage others to stress respecting each other at all times, and because that's not easy, it's not always easy, it's important to remember that respect isn't just a matter of me communicating respectfully or behaving respectfully towards you, but also me respecting you as you're engaging with me. You know, allowing sometimes for you, or you allowing sometimes for me to have bad days, or allowing you to have whatever dislikes that you have acquired over the course of your life or you allowing me to have whatever dislikes I have and trying to figure out how to navigate as we engage with each other how to how to work through those differences. If I like some things and you don't, or if I have a communications practice or pattern that doesn't resonate with you. I'm 62. It's going to be hard for me to change my communication strategy and however old you are, I'm not going to ask, it's not really appropriate for me to ask you to change yours necessarily. I mean, maybe around the edges we can work around our communications, but fundamentally we are who we are and we need to learn to respect who we are. That gets back to that strength of diversity. When all of the diversity that we bring to the table starts working in an environment where we can respect each other. We learn different things from each other. We learn different insights about the work that we're doing, and it makes us a stronger organization. So the key is trying to navigate that respect in a way that doesn't diminish the need for each of us to be valued. I used to have, well I worked in the Army before I took a job in the solicitor's office and I manage the park and along these ten lessons that I learned in the United States Army. #8 on my list is that all of us are valued and none of us are irreplaceable. And I think that's a really important concept and principle. Certainly for me, it’s proven to for me to remember as I work with people, I really do value everybody I work with and learn from them. So I need to respect them, but I also have that same need. I need to be valued, I need to be respected and and so I think we just need to keep working at that and the RISE initiative that the park service are promoting, I think creates the framework for that. Julia: You mentioned the fact that you are a gay man, you have a husband. I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk about if your identity has affected your experience in this position or in general through your positions in the government. Ed: I think it has. So I'll say, the first thing I'll say, being gay is part of who I am, it's not who I am. Julia: Yes. Ed: And I have had the great fortune of not being discriminated for being gay, whether it's in the Army, in my professional capacity, whether it's in the Army, in the in the Department Solicitors Office or in the National Park Service. I have been discriminated against in my personal life and that has given me an appreciation for people who have also felt discriminated against and so that context has given me an empathy that I think is important, as, you know, as particularly as we do things like implement the rise initiative to be open to listening to what people's experiences have been, so that we can try to identify solutions to creating a more respectful, inclusive, safe, and engaged workspace. So, I think that's been helpful for me to have had those experiences. I didn’t like them at the time, but you know every every positive and negative experience in a person's life helps shape who you are. And so, I think those experiences as, as I said, have given me empathy, and that's helped me to be, I think a better, more inclusive leader. Julia: I think that the fact that you mentioned that being gay is a part of who you are and not all of who you are is very important. I wrote the Pride post for Grand Canyon this year and it's a picture of me wrapped in a pride flag and a lot of people commented saying things along the lines of “imagine if your sexuality was your whole personality!” Which is silly because that's not true for anyone, I don't think, but I feel like there tends to be this idea from a lot of folks that if you mention being queer in any way, that that must be your whole shtick. And so I think it's important that we talk about folks who are not straight as just being people, people doing great work, like all the things that you've mentioned, that you've been working on at Grand Canyon, it's... has nothing to do with your sexuality, but then, like you were saying, the empathy that you get from that experience does have to do with your job, so I think that's a very important thing to bring up and I appreciate that a lot. What advice do you have for the next generation? Broadly or for young LGBTQ folks, what comes to mind? Ed: Be who you are, proudly. I served in the Army during the “don't ask, don't tell” era. And it was difficult hiding who I was to my friends, it felt dishonest. It was dishonest. And when I left the Army and told my friends that I was gay, none of them cared. And I committed at that point to live my life openly and honestly and I've never looked back. So you know, as a general rule my, my, my approach to life is to move forward and that's what I'm doing and I encourage everybody to live your life proudly and openly and honestly. Julia: And the last question is which side of the Grand Canyon is your favorite side of the Grand Canyon? Ed: All of the Grand Canyon is my favorite side of the Grand Canyon! You know, there are,. I just encourage our employees and our visitors both to explore all parts of the Grand Canyon. The North Rim is a special place, to be sure it's the it's the place I first saw the Grand Canyon, so it will always have a special place in my heart, and it's just a great place. But the South Rim has a lot to offer too, especially in the Desert View area. The Inner Canyon, hiking into the Canyon, especially some of our less traveled trails where you can be a little bit more remote, are great experiences. And of course, the river experiences are remarkable. I get on the river twice a year as Superintendent, have really come to value those experiences. As Superintendent, I try to I try to travel to as many parts of the park as I can because I believe I need to really be in as many parts of the park to really fully understand it. So I encourage that of all employees. So you need to get out in the park more! Julia: I know I got to go down to desert view for a week and help out them down there and I was thinking, wow, this is really cool! You know, it's so different! The views are so different. But then it was like 95 degrees and I was like, I'm going back to the North Rim, Ed: Yeah. Julia: It's too hot! Ed: One of my one of the lessons I learned in the river is you have to embrace adversity in order to enjoy the experience. Julia: Yeah, definitely. Is there anything else that you would like to add or talk about? Ed: No, I just want to thank you for inviting me to join you for this discussion. It's been fun and hopefully for your listeners, it'll be a little educational. Julia: Yeah, I hope so! Thank you for agreeing to come talk with. Ed: Sure, it's been a pleasure. Acoustic guitar music. Julia: Many thanks to Ed Keable for sharing his stories. Musical interludes in this episode were created by MrSnooze. The Behind the Scenery Podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park. We gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their homes here today.