INTERVIEWS BY ELLEN HEYN
United by a love for the Colorado Plateau, over 100 young leaders gathered in Durango, Colorado last summer for the second annual Uplift Climate Conference. The three-day event drew people from big cities, college campuses, and tribal lands alike for a stellar line-up of speakers, workshops, and discussions. Meet some of the fresh faces who are speaking up for climate justice on the Colorado Plateau.
Michael Remke, 28PhD student, Northern Arizona University
Mycorrhizal ecologist
Generally, when I go to a conference, it’s long-lived professionals who are experts in their field. They’re older and perceive themselves to be a prestigious researcher or an educator, where Uplift was mostly people my age. It felt like everyone there was engaged with the mutual understanding of being a student. People were teaching each other and learning from each other instead of thinking, “Oh, I know everything there is to know about this.”
Just a profound unity. I have never been at a public gathering where so many strangers were so connected to one another. It had the feel of a microcommunity. I saw lightbulbs turn on for a lot of people, and I think people left feeling really empowered to engage in advocacy and develop their career with more intentionality. I think for a lot of people, Uplift was a concrete platform of inspiration to help them move forward with what they want to do, whether it’s advocacy, scientific research, or a different subset of environmental science.
New ideas. We see what previous generations have done, previous scientists, and previous land managers have done, and we look at it with a new angle. Whether or not it’s for better or for worse, we tend to construct and build on what’s been put in front of us, and have this new complexity of knowledge just because society is so complex now. So I think it’s flat out just raw, new ideas. And associated skill sets. Our computing skills and ability to come up with solutions to complex problems with these complex skill sets is profound.
It’s already filling this nice niche of gathering young people with passion for environmental issues to share ideas. But I think where it can shine is bridging that gap between science and advocacy. I think as an organization, the Grand Canyon Trust is already filling a niche by using science to inform decisions and drive advocacy. So, I think if we can bring that down to Uplift and a youth-centric approach, it could be a really powerful.
Elea Ziegelbaum, 18Senior high school student
Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy
It was actually my science teacher, who’s the sponsor for the environmental club that I started at my school, who told me about it. He suggested I go, and I wasn’t sure about it at the time because I was only 17 and would have to go alone. But I just decided it would be a really cool thing to do.
I didn’t really know anyone prior to the conference, and there were just so many amazing people. But I really connected with Isabel Abadia on the trip because we were both 17 and both by ourselves. After Uplift, Isabel helped me turn my school environmental club into an Earth Guardians Crew. She helped with that transition, and now we have more support. It’s not me just winging it. We actually have guidance.
Uplift was one of the most transformative experiences I’ve had in my life. I think what I got most out of it was that social justice and climate justice go hand in hand. And it’s been really important for me because I’ve done a lot of humanitarian aid the past couple years, and social justice is another thing that is pretty important to me. So realizing that they’re synonymous with each other was really big.
I’ve been doing a lot of work with students from FALA [Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy] and Flag High to put on advocacy workshops, trying to get youth from other schools to get mobilized and writing for these issues. We recently had a workshop on uranium mining, and I focused more on cancer rates on the reservation and how it affects people — and that’s a human rights issue.
Marshall Masayesva, 28Bacavi, Hopi
Director of Adventures for Hopi
The biggest challenge I had when I first moved back home and started Adventures for Hopi was that I tried to sell the mainstream idea of what recreation was — extreme sports with all this nice patagucci gear, what you see in magazines. I tried to convey that same image in my marketing and materials, and I immediately found out that folks just don’t see themselves in that position. They’d say, “Oh cool, I wish I could do that,” while I was actually saying, “no, let’s go do that right now.” So I spent a lot of time trying to explain to folks that no, this is not who we are or what we represent as an organization. Instead, we’re focusing on developmental aspects and the challenges these types of activities naturally provide. I really had a hard time filling seats and filling harnesses. But the community has really opened up to the idea quite a bit more. I completely backtracked with my imagery, focusing instead on the social aspects of these types of activities — hanging out with your friends, hanging out with your family, hanging out with your kids.
My panel was on diversity and inclusion in the outdoors. What I was trying to convey was that diversity and perspective in the outdoor world is really important, and being able to come together from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different knowledge bases and meeting on common ground — the outdoors — is super important. Basically, we can try to overcome a lot of social issues that the whole world population faces by just sitting face to face around a fire and sharing perspectives.
How we teach our young folks is completely different than what western education teaches us. I struggle with that sometimes, with trying to introduce these new western concepts like recreation but still trying to relate it back to our history and who we are as a people. What I landed on was the concept of experiential education. Experiential education is just a high academic term for what we just consider traditional education — education through native systems, which is direct experience and meaningful reflection. That’s just how we’ve learned as native people throughout the years. So I take my students outside and try to teach them environmental issues, integrating them with who we are as a people, our values, and how we see our place in the world.
I think we’ve been pushing for a long time to get diversity for diversity’s sake, but I think we need to be a little bit more meaningful in the way that we diversify our programs and our collective experiences. So my advice to folks is — I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. But it’s important work. It’s meaningful work, and it’s work that needs to be done.
Eva Malis, 21Uplift Coordinator
Grand Canyon Trust
I find a lot of power in bringing people together, and I think that’s one of the things that Uplift has the most potential to do and has the most potential for change in doing. So I’m really just excited to continue doing the work of bringing people together, because I think that’s one of the most crucial steps in movement building.
We really want to be a resource to connect all the awesome people who are doing great work. We are, on top of the conference, trying to organize a Youth Action Council, where we can bring together young leaders from across the Colorado Plateau to strategize for the future of the region. We are also thinking of setting up webinars and pop up community events in different towns to help build the leadership skills and engagement of the Uplift community.
I think one of the things we want to focus on this year is how are we going to support people of marginalized identities in their work. What are we going to offer them, as opposed to how do we get them into our space? Because I think it’s becoming more evident that if you want a more inclusive space you have to really go out of your way to make it clear that you are an ally to the people who might feel excluded in your space. That you’re going to make them feel welcome and safe in your space, and that your liberation is every bit as connected to their liberation. So, we really want to highlight this as one of the big changes to Uplift this year.
We’re planning the conference right now, and we’ve narrowed it down to late September, some place in southern Utah. Our event and our work is still rooted in climate justice but I’m confident in saying that we can expect more and more social justice to be brought in. There will definitely be a lot of talk on how are you supposed to be an ally to other movements, and how can we show up for each other in supportive ways.
Communications & Outreach Associate Ellen Heyn hikes and writes for the Colorado Plateau Explorer.
Also in this issue:
Terry Tempest Williams on the beauty of the Bears Ears proclamation. Read now ›
