S4E18: Resilience & Resistance in Navajo Country

Uncorrected Transcript

0:00:01 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555.

0:00:26 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands? Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Neil's the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:45 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to this episode of 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clark. Yesterday I watched as a convoy of heavy equipment from the 29 Palms Marine Base hit Highway 62 heading westward towards Los Angeles accompanied by vans full of active-duty Marines and fatigues in what is actually a really disgusting show of power by the toddler in chief security theatrics. And we're going to be looking at that pretty closely.

0:01:18 - (Chris Clarke): There is likely going to be a desert aspect of it that we will cover that no one else will. But more importantly, there are people I care about in Los Angeles who I know have been protesting peacefully. A lot of others I know that are likely to do the same now that the stakes have been raised. And I just want to say be careful folks. Stand up for what you believe in. But this is a really atrocious time, and I am just crossing my fingers that nobody on either side gets any stupid ideas.

0:01:48 - (Chris Clarke): At any rate, we have a fantastic episode for you. I was very lucky on my Utah trip in the last week or two to have a chance to talk to Davina Smith, who is a dine activist and Navajo activist and political figure. Smith also serves as co-chair of the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition which is working to develop a management plan for the monument and protect that monument from encroachments or reversals by the Trump junta.

0:02:13 - (Chris Clarke): And I think you're going to enjoy our conversation. First, I want to thank a few people for joining our wonderful pool of donors. First off, Ms. Anonymous, if that is your real name. This person asked me not to put their name out there and is absolutely fine with me. We're grateful whether we can thank you in public or not. Also, Reid Humphrey, thank you so much Reid. Great to have you on board and Kevin Garcia who sent along a first of a series of monthly donations and wrote in the little note provided, hey guys, love the work you do. The need for protection of the desert is increasing incredibly fast. You guys are a big motivation for me to honor the desert and protect it whenever possible.

0:02:56 - (Chris Clarke): Enjoy the donations. Thank you so much Kevin. We also had a couple of contributions from people that have been donors in the past and frequent ones at that, but who sent in especially generous donations? Carol Corbett, thank you so much for the donation and the kind words. And Chuck George, who we thanked in the last episode, but he sent an actual paper check which gave me a sort of nostalgic tinge, and he enclosed it in an envelope along with a letter that said, among other things, dear Chris, a letter of appreciation for the enlightening podcast you put together.

0:03:36 - (Chris Clarke): It's a breath of fresh air to hear you advocate for all things related to our deserts. Your audience listens to you because we know you have the highest of journalistic standards. Cue a little bit of red coming to my cheeks. My face cheeks. Thank you so much for that shout. 90milesfromneedles.com/donate if you want to sign up if you've noticed that this is a few hours late for me to be publishing an episode, you are correct had a very boring but nonetheless debilitating mystery ailment for a few days in the past week.

0:04:15 - (Chris Clarke): I was hoping to get a lot more work done. I actually spent a lot of time asleep, so it was good in that but at any rate, the Utah trip was a good week, even though I came home from it not feeling well. Met a number of folks in Salt Lake City who are interested in being interviewed for the podcast. In addition to the one interview you'll hear in this episode, we have another interview in the can that I'm putting together for the next episode on a really wonderful restoration initiative in West Valley, Utah, which is the second largest city in Utah.

0:04:47 - (Chris Clarke): I just found that out pretty recently. Very shortly after I found out that there was a city called West Valley, Utah. It's a relatively recent incorporation of a municipality, but there's a wonderful project that we visited there, bringing a little bit of nature and open space to what might seem a typical sprawl neighborhood. But anyway, I spent a few days in Salt Lake City, headed down to Moab for a couple of days, had a great hike in Canyonlands national park, and then on Monday last, I sat down with Davina Smith in a city park in Blanding, Utah, just north of Monument Valley, very close to Bears Ears and Canyonlands.

0:05:26 - (Chris Clarke): We had made plans to talk at noon in the city park in Blanding, Centennial Park, and as I got closer to Blanding, I had to flip on the windshield wipers because there was a little bit of rain coming down. It was actually quite picturesque, with a beautiful mist going through the mesas and the buttes and the junipers and pinions. And by the time I got to Centennial Park and blending the Rain was coming down really good. And as I was heading up to the side street that the park is on, I was hoping against hope that there would be a sheltered place to pull up and get the recording equipment out and not have it get completely wet and ruined and sitting comfortably with Ms. Smith. And it turned out there was, which was fortunate. And of course, that shelter consisted of a big metal canopy, which meant that the roar of the rain hitting that canopy is really noticeable.

0:06:17 - (Chris Clarke): Very forceful rain. And it only got stronger as I exited that interview and left Blending and drove through Monument Valley on my way down into Arizona. At any rate, that buzz you hear in the background is rain hitting the metal roof over our heads. And one last thing before we jump into the interview. If you're a Marine or another service member being deployed to Los Angeles, or for that matter, any other city to perform law enforcement actions against citizens expressing their First Amendment rights, if that bothers you and you'd like to apply for conscientious objector status, if it's just gotten to be too much of a conflict with your personal moral code, whatever that might be, you can call the GI Rights hotline to get some guidance on your options. And that is 1-877-447-4487. 877-447-4487.

0:07:20 - (Chris Clarke): All right, let's head to Blanding, Utah, and talk with Davina Smith.

0:07:41 - (Chris Clarke): We're talking with Davina Smith in Blanding, Utah. Ms. Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.

0:07:48 - (Davina Smith): Thank you. I'm so glad to meet you. But also, you brought moisture to our neck of the woods. Thank you. You.

0:07:56 - (Chris Clarke): I do what I can. I do what I can. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you come up and how did you get into the world of activism?

0:08:04 - (Davina Smith): I. So I'm originally from Monument Valley, Utah. I'm from the Navajo Nation. And I guess it's not really activism that I came up to. It's just something as indigenous person, when we see an area that needs support, we step in. And that was. I'd say I was born into this. I was born into this from both sides of my grandparents. My grandmother on my father's side, she was one of the resisters during the Navajo pe land dispute. The late Catherine Smith.

0:08:37 - (Davina Smith): She advocated and resisted forced relocation, but she also advocated against coal mining in Northern Arizona. And then my grandmother on my mother's side, I. She was the one that talked to me as in terms of an. What an herbalist looks like, what the importance of plants and Medicines and everything is important. But knowing that these plants would be gone. But also my grandfather, who was a uranium mine worker, seen what the impacts of that implemented and know and then realizing that I was affected by uranium water, contaminated water.

0:09:20 - (Davina Smith): When I was a little girl, I had unexplained headaches. My sister, she would have random nosebleeds. Even our animals when they were born, some of our lambs would have extra limbs. And we at that time thought we were always blessed, but no, finding out that the water we were tapping into the spring was contaminated with uranium. So these are things that are experiences that I share in the work that I do wherever I go, whatever involvement I can, because I think those are important narratives as indigenous people need to be heard.

0:09:58 - (Chris Clarke): Okay, just a quick side note here. Ms. Smith talks about the Navajo Hopi land dispute, which is what it's usually called, and it was a real thing. And the way that it's usually called the Navajo Hopi land dispute obscures more than it reveals. Now, I'm not going to go into huge detail here because otherwise this side note will become longer than the rest of the episode, but I will just say that of course there were some conflicts in land use between Navajo people who largely interacted with the land by herding and hunting, and Hopi people, who were farmers. And that's an oversimplification, but it's a good one.

0:10:33 - (Chris Clarke): They were, after all, neighbors, and they did have squabbles here and there. But there is also as much camaraderie and friendship and romantic love and intermarriage, et cetera, between the Navajo and the Hopi over the years and centuries and millennia as there was conflict. What really set the stage for the conflict, as it's usually defined were the minerals beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservations, specifically coal and groundwater, but also uranium.

0:11:04 - (Chris Clarke): So rather than call it the Navajo Hopi land conflict, we should maybe think about calling it the Navajo Hopi Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Peabody Coal, Groundwater, Southern California Edison, Louisiana Department of Water and Power, Interior Department land dispute. Now, I've written a couple of things that provide some of the detail over the years, and those articles will be in the show notes, as will a link to a description of Davina Smith's grandmother, Katherine Smith. I looked into her work a little bit and holy cow, there is a whole lot. This is a fascinating person.

0:11:38 - (Chris Clarke): Katherine Smith, who lived from 1918 to 2017, has a Wikipedia page that's fairly substantive. And here's just a bit of that Wikipedia page. Ms. Smith famously shot a rifle overhead as a warning to construction workers hired by the Bureau of Indian affairs to build a fence between the Hopi and Navajo land in order to mine for uranium and coal for the coal company Peabody. In the 1988 documentary Heart of Big Mountain, Smith said, I was born from Big Mountain.

0:12:10 - (Chris Clarke): That's my mother. So all of my life I will always be thinking of this place. My spirit will be here forever. It's definitely worth checking out that Wikipedia page and if I say so myself, the articles I wrote on the Navajo Hopi, et cetera, et al land conflict. Back to the interview.

0:12:31 - (Chris Clarke): So you are co-chair of the Bears Ears Coalition. How did you come to do that?

0:12:38 - (Davina Smith): I was appointed by our Navajo Nation President, Boo Nygren. Now there are two sets of representatives. There is the Bears Ears Commission that was designated by President Joe Biden and so those are elected officials. So I do have a Navajo Nation elected official that sits in the Bears Ears Commission. I am the coalition representative and I sit on and represent the coalition leaders.

0:13:05 - (Chris Clarke): The designation of Bears Ears was a huge victory. And then of course, during Trump's first term, he rolled that back significantly. Along with Grand Staircase Escalante restored by President Biden, I know that along with several other large national monuments, the Trump administration has signaled that they are thinking about rolling those back, either abolishing them or limiting the boundary significantly.

0:13:33 - (Chris Clarke): Do you have a sense of where that stands? Is that just bluster on his part or does he really mean it? How does it look from here on the ground?

0:13:42 - (Davina Smith): I have no doubt he will. I think as we can obviously see with a lot of initiatives that he's been putting or executive orders I should say, that he's been implementing, I know this is something that will again be rescinded and I also understand it's due to the significance of minerals in our region, which is unfortunate because there are communities in these areas that are going to be affected by it.

0:14:12 - (Davina Smith): In terms of jobs, I don't see these areas going to be being benefited from economic growth and development because it's going to be obviously in where there are more prominent non Native communities and in the communities that are mostly Native communities, we're still dealing with the effects of a number of environmental hazards that are impacting our community. We still have significant amount of no electricity or running water.

0:14:46 - (Davina Smith): So those are the issues and concerns that I have from this.

0:14:52 - (Chris Clarke): How are people in the general public in Blanding and nearby communities feeling these days about Bears Ears? Is there general support? Is it really mixed opposition? How does that look.

0:15:02 - (Davina Smith): I feel it is mixed, but the predominant will speak more in terms of advocating for the reduction because a lot of the voices that are feeling in support of it will be looked at or marked at. I'm sure I'm that person as well, But I speak from shared experience, but I also share concerns from individuals that have expressed concern. So it still continues to create division among communities. And again, that's really unfortunate to hear that.

0:15:44 - (Davina Smith): Yeah.

0:15:46 - (Chris Clarke): So how about the Dine people? Is there general support there or is it also mixed?

0:15:51 - (Davina Smith): Majority are in support of it. I know in my community, we're in support of it. I think the one thing and the reason why we're in support of it is I think, educating yourself, hearing from those that have worked in this work of protecting Bears Ears and designating it. I think doing. Taking those initiatives to understand, rather than continuing to go with the false narratives of someone that constantly brings that false narrative.

0:16:25 - (Davina Smith): And it's really harmful. It's really harmful when we continue. Continue to do that. I do understand our In our local communities, the worry of over tours. I understand that. But it was already happening in a sense, to say, for the most part, we saw. Even before it was designated, we saw a lot of looting. But also, we felt as native people, it was a sense of who does Bears Ears belong to? And because tribes are no longer in that area, it was run over by local ranchers. And I have nothing against ranchers. I know they need to make a living.

0:17:02 - (Davina Smith): But when you hear that there's comments stating we have been here several generations in. It felt like that was giving them the. The stance to say, we're here, but okay, how long have tribes been here, though? Let's not forget that. Are we forgetting that? And when I hear that, it then gives me the better understanding that no tribes are not taken into consideration, although we live in all on our reservation right nearby or we live in these communities, I think that's where the concern is as well.

0:17:42 - (Davina Smith): I know we hear, as I mentioned, back to tourism. Yes. But at the same time, I know that's something that could create economic growth as well. But educating people in these areas of Bears Ears or other nearby national parks and monuments, it's always about educating these areas, but educating yourself as an individual in the community you live in to have a better understanding.

0:18:10 - (Chris Clarke): We have a lot of listeners in the Joshua Tree area and several in Moab and even larger communities like Tucson. And so I think the visitation issue is certainly something that's going to be on people's minds. And it's hard. It's hard to ask people that have been making a living doing things like ranching or whatever to have them go to making beds in hotels and that kind of thing. It's a difficult transition to.

0:18:39 - (Chris Clarke): To expect of people. Very elementary. But I think, crucial question, what does Bears Ears mean to the Dine?

0:18:47 - (Davina Smith): For the Dine people, Shisha, it has a significant meaning. It's a place where. It's a place of protection. It's a place, as one of my wonderful mentors, Willie Gray Eyes, had beautifully stated. It's our grocery store, it's our church. What I mean by that is where we can harvest our foods, wild foods, sumac, berries, tea and other foods. But also it's also our plants, our medicines. We can harvest medicine from that area as well, and also for our homes.

0:19:23 - (Davina Smith): My late grandfather, Tilghman Attakai was a well-known Hogan builder. So a lot of his cedar wood he would harvest from Bears Ears. And so I'd go there a lot with my grandparents because growing up I did live with them while I was young. And I would hear from my grandmother and grandfather's stories of traveling from Monot Valley to Bears Ears. So many stories. One thing I mentioned was we sought refuge yesterday. We just from us. For the Navajo people we honored.

0:19:58 - (Davina Smith): It's been 157 years that the treaty was signed for us to return back home.

0:20:04 - (Chris Clarke): The treaty that Ms. Smith is mentioning was the treaty of Bosque Redondo between the US and many Dene leaders, which was agreed to on June 1, 1868. This ended the tragic chapter of Diné Navajo history that is generally referred to as the Long Walk.

0:20:23 - (Davina Smith): But prior to that, when my people were being rounded up in Mina Valley area, some majority of us fled to Bears Ears, where our Navajo chief Manuelita was also born in that area. So it holds significant meaning for the Navajo people. And so for me personally, that's what it instills for me when I'm in that area. I know it's sacred. I know it's spiritual. I know there's deep meaning for me. It's a great place. If you don't want cell service and want to just lose yourself, that's a great place to go when I'm there.

0:20:57 - (Davina Smith): Like I mentioned, it has a lot of sacred spiritual meaning for me. But it's certain parts of the season, it's always different. Like right now it's raining. And I know when I go up there in the next few days, there will be an abundance of wildflowers. That will just spread across the red mesas and also there will be springs. But then when you go up into Bears Ears, it changes a different region of more higher elevation.

0:21:30 - (Davina Smith): So you see more of the forest trees where it's lush and fresh and you can smell the. Just smell every different tree or also flowers and also wildlife. My gosh, wild turkey, mule deer, elk, so many. It's a constant living. It's a living being in a sense to say it's literally a living environment. And so for me, that's why I go there. Because it's still communicating with Mother Earth. It's still communicating with trees and plants and the wildlife.

0:22:08 - (Davina Smith): And so that's a very unique place because every time you are always in some different elevation and the elevation is another picture book of something different. That's what I love about that place.

0:22:24 - (Chris Clarke): What would you say are the main threats to Bears Ears?

0:22:28 - (Davina Smith): I think the continued push for extraction. There are still significant amount of mines, uranium mines in these areas. Some that have still been going through cleaning processes or have been abandoned. But now we're looking at revisiting these areas. There are. When impacting those areas, I've had the opportunity to meet with different scientists that either work with air quality or with water, soil.

0:23:03 - (Davina Smith): And I. And even we have our own indigenous that I've reached out to to ask what is the significance? Because I know we also need to provide the data to verify where we're coming from as tribes. We already knew. Like I said, my grandmother who was an herbalist told me when I was a young age, just know some of these plants will not be here. She already knew. And yeah, that's. She was right. Some of them are not here anymore or have become so rare.

0:23:34 - (Davina Smith): So that's my worry. That's my worry is that we have politicians that will be pushing forward without understanding that there are communities in these areas that are still being impacted. The governor announced, I believe last month he declared a national emergency of several rural counties in terms of water. My county is one of them, San Juan County. And now we still want to do a fast track. We still want to go moving forward with extraction in this area knowing that our water resources sources is becoming less and less our aquifers. I am very worried about our aquifers in terms of we have the mill, White Mesa Mill here. And now they're wanting to open another mill not far. We're on the other side by Lake Powell. We're going to tap into those waters.

0:24:35 - (Davina Smith): There's no concern because they don't live in these areas, I worry for my rural community members, not only my native communities, but also my neighbors that live in these areas. These rural parts. We live in these areas and we're going to tap into water because, oh, we think it's going to. It's going to. It's going to grow economic growth and development. Like I said, it's not really going to do that for us.

0:25:00 - (Joe Geoffrey): Don't go away. We'll be right back.

0:25:03 - (Chris Clarke): Regular listeners will remember that we have recently been featuring the work of Fred Bell, who is a nature sound recordist based in Las Vegas. Every week, Fred offers up a different piece of the desert for us to listen to without human voices intruding. This week we offer the thematically appropriate Thunderstorm in Beaver Dam State Park in Nevada, which is not too far from the triple state line junction of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

0:25:31 - (Chris Clarke): Enjoy.

0:27:01 - (Joe Geoffrey): You're listening to 90 miles from Needles, the desert protection podcast. Don't step on the cryptobiotic soil crusts.

0:27:10 - (Chris Clarke): Speaking of fast tracking of extraction, we spoke before I turned on the recording device about the Velvet Wood proposed mine in Lisbon Valley a little bit north of here. And you said that you had been paying attention to that. What are your thoughts on that?

0:27:30 - (Davina Smith): My thoughts on it again are about how these will impact all of the lands that we all share. It will impact the water that we definitely need and our wildlife in these areas. I think these are not all taken well, definitely not taken into consideration. So those are my worries about reopening these areas that that has been implemented in the fast track, but also that tribes there is a government-to-government consultation.

0:28:01 - (Davina Smith): There are significant areas that are connected to tribes not only for the Navajo people, but so many others like Pueblo, Hopi, Ute, Mountain View, Paiute that have not had the opportunity. It was fast track, and I think, and I can't say this speak for all the other tribes, but we were only given just a few days to respond. And so with that, my tribe is the largest. How are we going to get all the people that we need to speak about how it's going to negatively impact our area?

0:28:39 - (Davina Smith): We were not given that opportunity to speak on that. So I. I wait to see what else will happen. I know by us to make a comment what had passed. So I guess now it's gonna. I know we're gonna have to see what's gonna happen next. This fast track was stated but to think about, wait, what's this? And all of a sudden, a comment period happened. We didn't have enough time. It's been really difficult and frustrating with all the uncertainty that's happened.

0:29:11 - (Davina Smith): And I think that's been unprofessional because these are communities in these areas that should have been able to give to be informed, but also to offer comment as well. But again, that's what happens when our rural communities are not heard over and over, even from our own state government.

0:29:37 - (Chris Clarke): So what can people listening do to help Bears Ears and help you in your work and the coalition's work on Bears Ears?

0:29:46 - (Davina Smith): I think an important thing, again I had mentioned about educating yourself to be well informed. I know many times as the coalition commissioner we have offered to be engaged with the community, especially during the management plan public comment hearing. We felt in order to hear from our perspective about our work in speaking a part of whether it was the indigenous ecological knowledge or the indigenous knowledge intertwined into the management plan, we felt it would be really helpful for us to engage with communities during that public comment hearing time.

0:30:29 - (Davina Smith): And so I know as tribes we're always open to that. We're always open. And I think that's the one thing that's important. If you truly do want to understand the importance of how bears is being protected, I encourage you to look at the management plan. For one, it's not stating removing all access. That's a false perspective. It's false narrative. It is implementing the importance of areas that are being protected based on each of the tribes connections to those areas and also protection of our plants, harvesting plants, plant medicines, firewood. And I think the one thing that we have done successfully is to collaborate with agencies. So that's Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service.

0:31:27 - (Davina Smith): That was another portion of healing we had to go through because of history under the Department of Interior. But we've gotten to know our local BLM and Forest Service employees and that has been a great opportunity to get to know each other across the table. Going back to the management plan, it's really important to review that and understand that because each tribe took its team to think carefully the importance of how we want our wording to be implemented in the management plan.

0:32:01 - (Chris Clarke): And we'll have a link to the management plan planned in our show notes so that you can just click through and read that. What do you hope to see or your successors to see in Bears Ears and the surrounding area in say, 50 or 100 years?

0:32:19 - (Davina Smith): I would like them to feel that their voice is still heard. That they that their voice and our trust tribes, as my ancestors before me, understand the resilience that we've what we've Done every time. Even when I was young, I always felt, who's going to help us? Who's going. What person can step in and stop this, stop the extraction, stop or hear the importance of why tribes are so connected to the land.

0:33:01 - (Davina Smith): And that's why I'm here. I'm here to be a part of that voice because I was shared from my mother, my grandmother, and I'm sure the grandmothers before her, them of what it means to be where I'm at in terms of continued protection of this land. And I want my story to be shared down the road for future generations to understand the importance of what we did here.

0:33:32 - (Chris Clarke): I didn't ask you about your campaign. Did you want to say anything about that? Or is there anything else that I should have asked you that I haven't?

0:33:40 - (Davina Smith): Quickly, my campaign, it was something that I didn't think. Think I'd ever do, but it was something I knew that I had to do. And what I mean by that is my two grandmothers, as I mentioned before, I have to say they're my yin and my yang. My grandmother in northern Arizona, she was more of very vocal. She'll tell it in your face. She's even told it to the late Senator John McCain. So I saw that part of what it meant to advocate and stand for.

0:34:12 - (Davina Smith): For issues that are important to native people. Then I had my grandmother on my mother's side, who is a rug weaver, who was an herbalist. She really always spoke softly. She spoke about, let's think about this. Let's, you know, weaver mindset. That's what she had. She had a weaver mindset. And I became a part of that when I would see her in her mind and how she would just speak, calm and think of how everything works in terms of the sheep, taking care of your sheep, sharing the sheep, then thinking of what she's sharing, what design is she going to make? Where is she going to get the colors, the song she's making as she's putting the loom.

0:34:54 - (Davina Smith): So I had that in my mind as well. So that's why I say they're my yin and yang. And I had the opportunity. My first campaign, I was asked if I would be interested running for a position in our county. And I said, what is that? What are those positions? And I was traveling, actually to Boulder, Utah. I was invited to a women's outdoor leadership event, and I was a speaker there. And so I got the call and told me there was several positions. And then one of them was a Utah state house. And I said, let me think about that.

0:35:31 - (Davina Smith): The weekend I was out there speaking, sharing what I've shared with you, some of what I shared with you, and it just hit me, like, why am I waiting? I don't. I'm not well experienced, but I feel I'm. I am experienced enough to do something like this. So I called and I said, I will run for Utah state house in 100. And I think, I don't know, 46, seven years. I became the first Navajo woman to run in our state.

0:36:06 - (Davina Smith): Yeah, I ran against Phil Lyman my first campaign. The second campaign, I ran again, but I didn't stop because, again, I know the importance of what it meant to advocate for our rural communities.

0:36:19 - (Chris Clarke): So that's pretty ambitious. Phil Lyman is kind of like the big bad, right?

0:36:25 - (Davina Smith): Yeah, I. I always like to say my. When I was running my second campaign, I said. I called Phil Lyman to congratulate him, and I said, okay, I'll be back in two years. And I always like to tease. Like, I guess I. When I said that, he decided to run for something else. How big was immersion? Oh, my gosh. Let's see. My first camp, it was, I think, 41 to 50. I can't remember, like, 58, something like that. So it was still pretty close.

0:36:59 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah.

0:36:59 - (Davina Smith): That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it was our. It was a very. It was a grassroots organizing, and it was amazing. I learned a lot that first campaign. I learned a lot to prepare myself for my second campaign. But I got to meet so many amazing people. People not only in our state, but from other states. I was just amazed how many people across our nation stepped in, even volunteered locally. We had a lot of locals. I travel in our house. District 69 is a very large district.

0:37:35 - (Davina Smith): It is the largest district in our state. I was told it's equivalent to the size of the state of West Virginia. But I wanted to engage as many people as I could from one end to the other, which one way would be six hours. So that was the thing I wanted to hear from people different. Didn't care what party. Yes, there were some that were very, very intense. But I set myself up because I told myself I generally do want to hear everyone's concern, and those are also my shared knowledges as I speak on certain issues to today.

0:38:12 - (Chris Clarke): I did see a campaign sign in Green river stuck in a window of a storefront day before yesterday. So that was pretty cool.

0:38:20 - (Davina Smith): That is so amazing. Yeah, I know. I've heard people that said, I'm going to save your sign just in case if I decide to run again. I said, oh my gosh, I'm truly honored. And I think that's the thing that keeps me going, not only when I hear something like that, but also from our Native communities. I know, as I've been shared by several of our Native community members that have said, when you ran it gave me a voice.

0:38:49 - (Davina Smith): I didn't have to say anything because I'm not going to say anything because or I'm afraid to say something. But you know where we came from and where we're coming from and the issues we're dealing with. So when I heard you speak, it hit me because I know that woman is going to represent us. And so that's what I try and do in the work that I do right now.

0:39:14 - (Chris Clarke): That's a good place to close, I think. Davina Smith, it is a real pleasure to meet you and I am very grateful for your time in talking to us.

0:39:24 - (Davina Smith): Thank you so much and I am so glad we have the opportunity opportunity to have this conversation. But again, I'd like anyone and everyone to encourage them to look at our website, Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, because aside from myself, we have some amazing commission members as well and the work they're doing in their leadership role for their communities in each of the tribes.

0:39:54 - (Chris Clarke): And that's it for this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. Huge thanks again to Davina Smith of the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition for meeting with me in that rainy park in Blanding, Utah. It was an incredibly pleasant conversation and the air just smelled so dang good, I can't tell you. Folks, thanks as well to our wonderful donors including Carol Corbett, Reed Humphrey, Kevin Garcia, Chuck George and Anonymous.

0:40:21 - (Chris Clarke): You guys are awesome. And you other guys can join them by going to 90miles from needles.com donate and picking a size and frequency of donation that you feel good about. Additionally, thanks to our voiceover guy, Joe Jeffrey and our podcast artwork artist Martine Mancha. Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode is by Premium Beat. It has gotten really hot in the Mojave at least the last few days. This should be a really productive monsoon season.

0:40:58 - (Chris Clarke): As I mentioned earlier, after the interview with Davina Smith, I was driving south through Monument Valley and actually had to pull over on the side of the road of that famous northern approach to Monument Valley featured in movies. The rain was just that hard and you're talking to somebody that learned how to drive in the Bay Area. I will put a couple of photos that I took from that vantage point into our show notes, so check them out at our website 90 miles from needles.com

0:41:28 - (Chris Clarke): we bested 110 fahrenheit in our yard two days ago over the weekend and it has stayed up around there since. Going down a little bit in the evenings. Mornings before the sun really gets ahead of steam, worked up have been pretty pleasant because we sit out front, we eat breakfast with the dogs running around, but all of us retreat indoors during the middle of the day, as should you. Unless of course, you are standing vigil with a sign protesting deportations or militarization of law enforcement or whatever is bothering you at the moment. There's a lot to pick from.

0:42:02 - (Chris Clarke): At any rate, it is hot and that ramps up the importance of knowing how to take care of yourself in the desert, knowing the signs and symptoms of heat injury. Another link in our show notes you will find will be to other episodes that we've done on just that topic. It's really important for you to keep those details fresh in your mind. On a happier note, next week we will be talking to Parker Lloyd about the Tracy Aviary Nature center at Pia Okway on the Jordan river in West Valley, Utah.

0:42:32 - (Chris Clarke): I think this is going to be a really cool episode. We have a lot of good ones coming up in addition to the one with Parker and the Pia Okwe Nature Center. Please stay tuned and I will see you as always at the next watering hole. And I might be up to my neck in the water. Bye now.

0:42:57 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.