Welcome to The Landscape, your show about America's
parks and public lands for as long as
we have them. I'm your host, Erin Weiss,
with the Center for Western Priorities in Denver.
And I'm Kate Gretzinger in Salt Lake City.
Today on the podcast, we're talking to indigenous
activist and scholar, Len Nesseffer,
about a new feature length documentary he worked
on. The film is called the American Southwest,
and it highlights the rich ecological
and cultural value of the Colorado River.
It's also the first blue chip nature documentary
to be narrated by an indigenous person.
It's a great film, and I can't wait
to share our conversation with you. But first,
the news.
Well, the White House this morning released its
wish list for the fiscal year twenty twenty
six budget.
As far as public lands go, it is
a
dream, I guess you could say, of this
administration
as they've been projecting
sweeping cuts across national parks and public lands.
Our executive director Jen Rokala called it a
bleak vision even.
Let's just run through
some of what they wanna do here because
it it does involve everything we've been
warning about,
handing over public lands to states or just
outright disposal,
deep cuts to firefighting,
forest service, you you name it. So alright.
Starting with the National Park Service.
The president wants to cut $900,000,000
from National Park Service operation,
and that includes
transferring,
quote, unquote, certain properties from the National Park
Service
to states.
They're careful to say they're not talking about
national parks themselves, but
many of these other national park sites that
are run by the National Park Service, places
like,
for example,
Montezuma Castle National Monument in Arizona. Lots of
these smaller sites that are historic in nature
run by the National Park Service. You could
look at things like
Stonewall
National Monument recently designated in in New York.
All sorts of stuff. Yeah. Hovenweep National Monument
in Utah, that's run by the National Park
Service.
A lot of the older national monuments are
run by the National Park Service and,
would be, you know,
included in this order.
It's really shocking,
that the Trump administration is proposing this. Here
in Utah,
state legislature ran a bill to allows the
state of Utah to co manage
national parks with the federal government. It was
more of a resolution because they don't actually
have the power to,
wrest control over the parks.
But that bill failed because the state of
Utah doesn't wanna take on the cost of
managing these places,
which is exactly
why this is such a big threat. If
it was to come to pass, you know,
these
parks would essentially just be shut down and
privatized, sold off, because the states don't have
the money to run these.
And the cuts to the National Park Service
that are proposed
keep going from there. A hundred and $58,000,000
cut from historic preservation,
$73,000,000
from long overdue construction projects
trying to address that national parks
maintenance backlog.
That's just park service. Okay. Moving on to
the Bureau of Land Management,
A hundred and ninety eight million dollars in
proposed cuts. All of that targeted at national
monuments,
including,
what this budget proposal calls deep reductions to
undo, unquote,
national monument designations
made under presidents Biden and Obama.
It That's confusing because I don't understand where
you get a you get $200,000,000
just from removing
monument designations. Monuments don't come with funding.
So
I'm curious, Aaron, if you have thoughts on
that math.
It doesn't math, of course, and that's why
they just released this as a very
broad sort of top line spreadsheet with no
details. Because as soon as you release details
on where those cuts are coming from, you're
talking about the land managers
who do the work of managing visitors
and grazing
and all of everything that goes into multiple
use. You you can't get a hundred $98,000,000
from the BLM budget without that also being
serious staffing cuts
on the ground. Right.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposing to cut
a hundred and $70,000,000
from species conservation programs that are managed by
states or tribes or other nations.
A half billion dollars
from the US geological survey cutting
pure science. That's the research and investigations and
surveys that we need in order to find
out what is happening
to our planet.
And then moving over to the Department of
Agriculture,
the Forest Service,
seven hundred and eighty three million dollars in
proposed cuts,
proposed to forest system management and operations,
including
a big sell off of our national forests.
The White House calls that rightsizing
their real property footprint.
And, again, the only reason you sell off
a national forest is because you are saying
goodbye to sustained yield, you are saying goodbye
to multiple use, you are just saying, okay,
go right ahead and chop down all the
trees. That's the only way you reach a
number like that, $783,000,000.
And and then we get into proposed cuts,
to tribal nations, Kate.
Yeah. The they're proposing a 617,000,000
cut from tribal communities and self governance,
a hundred and 7,000,000 from tribal public safety,
which,
you know, with my experience back, living near
the Navajo Reservation, that will not be popular
among tribes. They are constantly asking for more
public safety funding,
and a hundred and 87,000,000 from tribal school
construction, which is just just embarrassing and and
shameful.
In addition to cuts from the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, their
the proposal includes
cutting around $30,000,000
from the federal rental assistance program, and that's
under the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Now that's not exactly a public land funding
cut, but
it does connect to public lands because the
budget on that line item says that this
model would incentivize states in the private sector
to provide affordable housing
in combination with efforts related to opening up
federal lands. Now this is referring to that
Department of Interior and HUD MOU
that was announced earlier this year, where, basically,
the BLM is gonna look for public lands
to sell off to the private sector and
states to develop housing.
And, you know, this is really a tell
that the administration doesn't actually care about providing
affordable housing. They're taking $30,000,000
away from rental assistance programs. Sorry. They they
are suggesting
taking out taking away $30,000,000 from the federal
rental assistance programs and instituting a two year
cap on rental assistance for able-bodied adults. So,
they're not serious about helping people find affordable
housing.
Couple other things to flag. Private conservation,
proposing a 3 quarters of a billion dollar
cut from private land conservation under the NRCS,
Natural Resource Conservation Service, that's part of the
agriculture department. There, you're just talking about taking
away money that was going to farmers
to have
conservation and farming coexist providing habitat
on private lands.
Yeah. That's conservation easements. Right? That's conservation easements.
That's
that's crop rotation.
Any number of,
ways that farmers are crucial,
to conservation in America.
And then finally, the really bonkers proposal here
doesn't even come with a dollar figure.
This budget is proposing
consolidating
wildfire
operations.
Now
maybe at first glance, that doesn't sound so
bad, but when you realize what they're proposing
to do and how they wanna do it,
they wanna take all wildfire operations
away
from the forest service and consolidate
all of that at the interior department.
Now the office of Wildland Fire at Interior
is currently controlled
by Tyler Hasson, who is Elon Musk's Doge
operative, who is serving as the assistant secretary
for policy management and budget under a secretarial
order that we talked about earlier on this
podcast.
Tyler Hasson has complete control over the interior
department's staffing and reorganization,
and this is a guy who is completely
unqualified
for that job to say nothing of his
lack of qualifications
to oversee
all wildfire response across the federal government. That
proposal
just
bonkers.
Anyway, all of this, it's a statement of
values. It's a statement of what president Trump
wants congress to do.
We now have the first inclination of what
that could look like on the congressional side
as well. The House Natural Resources Committee has
released its first funding bill. We're not even
gonna get into how that aligns or doesn't
align with the president's wish list here, but
that's where the table is set right now
going into the reconciliation
process in congress that will play out over
the next several months.
Needless to say, this is bleak, but also
all of this will put a lot of
members of Congress
in a really tough spot once the details
start coming out and it begins to be
clear exactly where the Trump administration
wants to do these cuts, especially
handing over national park sites to state governments
that don't have the money to run them.
That's where we're at. Sorry, this was a
bit of a longer detour news segment than
usual,
but wanna make sure everyone here is up
to speed on what could happen next.
Our guest today is Len Nesseffer,
CEO and founder of Natives Outdoors, a native
owned outdoor media apparel, and consulting company. You
may also know him as the man behind
the Snore and Avalanche Center Instagram account. Len's
here today to talk about his latest project,
a documentary film about the Colorado River Basin
titled the American Southwest.
Len, thanks so much for joining us.
Yeah. I'm happy to be back. It's been
way too long.
I know. Sorry about that.
First of all, I just wanna say, wow.
The film is spectacular.
It's,
you know, as someone who's worked on
some date some nature documentary style films for,
my job here at CWP, I know how
much work probably went into this. It's,
really there's just, like,
perfect from top to bottom.
Beautifully written narration, incredible
b roll of animals, which I know is,
like, the hardest thing to get. There's like
it seems like
a original score by a symphony.
It's just, like, spectacular.
So
will you describe,
like, the documentary and and what it covers
for our listeners,
so they have a sense of what we're
talking about here?
Yeah. So the film American Southwest
is a story of the Colorado River told
through
the animals and people along the river from
headwaters
in the Upper Basin states all the way
down to the Sea Of Cortez.
And along that journey of the river, we
tell
a multitude of stories
that capture
the threats and pressures and also the historical
significance of this river told through the lens
of animals, which I think is really fun.
But
in many respects, it's a timely movie and
we made it
as such just given the compact renegotiation that's
going to be happening next year.
And a big push of the film is
the importance of
flowing rivers and how important it is for
rivers to have a right to
exist. Over the last hundred years, we've managed
to engineer
that river and basically into oblivion. And so
it doesn't run
into the Gulf anymore.
And we think there's an opportunity
to inspire
folks through this movie and also get them
acquainted of what's happening along the river.
And, of course, animals are always fun. Yeah.
I
like, one thing that I especially loved about
the film was sort of the personification
of some of the wildlife, like,
the scene about the beavers and how their
their dream is to own a home and
and have babies. It was really cute.
So I'm curious. How did you guys, how
did Natives Outdoors get involved with this,
film? It was produced by a group called
well, coproduced by you guys in a film,
production group called Fin and Fur Films. So
how did you get pulled into this?
Yeah. So in
2022,
or '21,
I went to a a film festival in
Texas
for another film that we released,
called Spirit of the Peaks.
And we were screening it there, and we
just happened to be paired with,
another film group,
Phun and Fer, and, the director Ben Masters
was in the crowd and in the audience
watching our film. And,
he reminded me of the story of how
we first met is that he
raised his hand at the end of our
film and said, hey. I'm a white filmmaker
from Texas. I don't know anything about the
Colorado River. I don't know anything about indigenous
cultures.
How should someone like me,
go about
making a movie about this? And I said,
well, you can hire us, and we'll figure
it out. And we'll hire or we'll, you
know, if you hire us, you know, we'll
hold your hand, and,
we'll make it possible. And and so we
stayed in touch after that and,
you know, kept talking, and he,
secured funding for this film. And and,
and one of the things that we
early on discussed was how do we talk
about the incredible human history along the river.
And there's one sequence in the film, halfway
through the film, that talks about the human
history of Bears Ears, and,
one of the things that we talk about
there is just,
the
let me take a step back. So one
of the ways that we talk about,
human history is through rock art. One of
the things that you see in Bears Ears
is,
thousands of years of history, lots of depictions
of animals and people.
And in many ways, our film sort of
does the same thing. Those
inscriptions on the rock were meant to tell
a story and to tell people afterwards about
what was happening, where the animals were at,
and what's going on. And in many ways,
our film aims to do the same thing.
And so
we worked with Ben on about and in
the Fin and Fur crew with about 50%
of the film, more or less. And
so the elk
rut was one of the was my first
foray and another one of our filmer's first
foray into,
wildlife filmmaking, and it's very different than action
sports.
It's a lot more waiting. It's
way less scripted and a lot of the
magic happens in post production and editing.
But really
one of the things that we aim for
is just trying to capture animals' behaviors that
can tell the story and help us weave
a coherent narrative.
And so in in many respects, it was
like jumping in the deep end. And
in in that respect,
I could on also understand where Ben was
coming from when we wanted to incorporate things
like
the the story about Bears Ears and human
history. And so, you know, in many respects,
we were learning together, and we come from
such wildly different backgrounds.
Ben's from Amarillo, Texas, and I've grown up
in the Southwest on on reservations. And, you
know, it was I think one of the
things that really made that film powerful is,
the friendship that we all built as a
team through this process. And,
but also just getting to spend these really
long periods of time on landscape with each
other and just having these long discussions about
how do we approach
telling these stories, what's a priority,
and and really just trying to weave this
coherent narrative together.
And and prior to,
we filmed this elk rut, went really well,
and then we then went off to do
this sequences about Bears Ears and Lake Powell
in that area. And,
I
snagged
a cancellation river permit on, like, the weekend
right before we were supposed to film. And
I said, Ben, like, if you can just
make it out a couple days early,
we can get on the river.
And
when Ben arrives, you know, he's getting his
camera gear together and
and,
you know, it's like in work mode. And
I just I remember telling him, I was
like, Ben, we we're not supposed to start
shooting until Monday. It's Friday. And I said,
just put that away. Let's just go
float the river. Let's just go be in
this place just to experience it together
and have conversations that will lead to that.
And,
so that plus, you know, a bottle of
tequila will do go go quite far on
a river trip. And so we had these
long discussions, and we we rode the river
over a couple days.
And, I think what came out of that,
though, is this real deep thoughtfulness and transformation
for both of us
of me showing this place
of the American Southwest that I've
become so deeply connected to, through my other
work. And for Ben, it's, you know, a
place that he's visited, but now hasn't had,
like, sort of this deeper connection. And it
was really cool to be able to introduce
that to him and really just see how
this gets
threaded through the film. And in many ways,
the,
you know, I was consulting with Ben and
giving him direction on where to take this,
but a lot of that is it's sort
of a a synthesis through, Ben and and
the editorial team, but really it's in at
its core, it's this friendship that came out
of it. That makes a lot of sense,
because it it does the film does a
lot. It does it tells, you know, the
history of the Bears Ears region while also
talking about the Colorado River Basin and the
Colorado Compact. Like, it's covering
so much ground, but it didn't feel forced
at all. So I can I I can
see how,
like, you guys
really work together and sort of used your
strengths to make that all work?
And so I assume that you that you
and,
Natives Outdoors were also involved in identifying the
narrator,
Quana Chasing Horse, who did a fabulous job.
And the film is billed as the first
blue chip natural history film narrated by an
indigenous person. Could you sort of explain why
that what what that means and why it
was important to have a native person in
that role as narrator?
Yeah. I think there's a few pieces that
led to that. You know, one of the
the other thing that we
did with this film was incorporated this element
of human history and people.
And, you know, there's,
you know, indigenous and native history along the
entire section of the river.
And one of the questions that we were
kind of balancing and trying to figure out
is, like, is this something that would spring
sprinkle through
each of the sequences? And some of it
felt forced if we did.
And we said, well, let's do one really
good section that talks about it in-depth and
really just,
I think, speaks to the rest of,
the film as well where we just highlighted
some of the gems
along the river, and we said we're gonna
do these sections really well. We're not gonna
force this particular story. And in that in
itself is incorporating
that human history and,
native history along the river,
is in many ways a first as well.
We haven't seen that sort of coexist along
with another wildlife film, and that was intentional
because a lot of native peoples
along the rivers
see their identity and existence intertwined with these
ecosystems as well. And so in some in
sort of a larger approach,
we tried to weave this in throughout.
And
in the discussions about
the river and who would narrate, you know,
we really were not,
kicking around a bunch of ideas about who
that could be. And,
you know, one of the things that we
just thought was really important was just,
in in looking at
how blue chip wildlife films have been done
in the past, you know, we think of,
like, David Attenborough and planet Earth and these
very male voices. But in the Navajo world
view, in a lot of worldviews of native
peoples along the river, rivers are female. Mhmm.
They can be male too, but, you know,
a lot at least those major sections that
we were looking at are female rivers.
And,
and that came up on our river trip,
you know, just like talking about these perspectives.
And I think what came of that is
we had worked with Quanah in,
some of our team members. Isaiah Branch Boyle
specifically had worked with Quanah on her film
that she made with The North Face
about her advocacy. And
I had been connected through,
the steering committee and the work that I've
been doing with the and other films like
welcome to.
With that community, and I knew her mom,
Jody, and we had actually hired Quanah's brother
on another
film as a as a PA and,
incredibly funny guy. And so we just kinda
knew the family. We knew them. And, one
of the things that came up in in
talking in in Quanah's film is that we
learned that she was actually born on the
Navajo Nation. So she was born in the
basin,
in, on the Navajo Reservation. And,
so this was a river that formed her
and part of her life. And and later
in life, she moved up,
along the Yukon River
in Alaska. And,
you know, I think in some ways, it
was like a full circle moment where we
said, well, she's great. You know, she's come
to
prominence through her modeling, and largely her modeling
came out of her advocacy and activism work
around protecting the,
activism work around protecting the, porcupine caribou herd.
And,
we said this is a great fit. It's
a little bit like,
how would you say,
a novel but unexpected feature,
of why would, you know,
a half Lakota, half Quichetchen model be be
the voice over. And and really, as you
notice in the film,
I
even for me watching it on a big
screen again, I I,
I forgot that it was her that was
narrating it. Just like she it was almost
like she became the river Yeah.
In in listening to that. And I think
that just, you know, that sort of culmination
of all those factors, you know, just really
and seeing it on screen, I think, just
makes it feel like we made the right
choice, and it's been awesome to have her
work with her in this capacity.
Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I thought
her narration was just, like, so well done,
and her voice was
really lovely to listen to. So
I second that that was the right choice.
So
you mentioned this earlier. The Colorado compact states
are renegotiating
the compact essentially,
not to get into the weeds. And they've
been doing that for the past five years
or so. So I think that it probably
already began by the time you guys started
talking about this film. Actually, you did say
that.
They're now facing a deadline to reach a
deal by this summer, or it goes to
the federal government or courts to sort of
actually make those water cuts, if the states
can't agree.
How does that context
like, how did that apply to the film
as you were making it, and how do
you,
like did you have that this deadline in
mind,
like,
to to release it sort of so close
to this deadline, or was that coincidental?
It was very deliberate in some ways.
You know, we could have gotten the film
done sooner in some respects, but also we
we were aiming for this year.
And largely,
you know, when I I've worked in the
world of policy, and I've seen that in
a lot of decisions that happened in places.
And sometimes with people that have never had
a meaningful or deep experience on the river,
no fault of their own, but,
you know, I think one of having
worked in that world, I think there's an
incredible
importance if you're making consequential decisions on these
landscapes. You need to
have some sort of tangible connection,
to these places. Otherwise, you're gonna miss something.
And I think, you know, what we're trying
to do in this particular piece is speak
to the broader public because in many respects,
the discussions of the compact, the discussions of
water shortage,
it just makes things
so abstract
for most folks.
And we forget that
this is a living river with living beings
all along it. And
I think in many respects,
they deserve to have a say in this
too. And
I think
part of what we were thinking in this
is just giving
the voice to the things that can't speak
for themselves. I mean, I hate to
I hate to reference the Lorax here,
but this is kind of a Lorax moment
where,
you know, these animals and beings have been
so critical to native peoples
and, of course, all of the peoples that
live along the river. There's many ecosystem services
that occur
that we are unaware of that happened because
of this.
And I think,
you know,
agreements will
this river will long outlast us. Mhmm. Right?
And
these agreements will come and go and pass
and,
institutions will crumble, whatever. You know, just things
will happen, but we have to remember that
this river is a powerful force that will
continue to shape our futures,
and I think we need to be treating
it in, I think, a more,
respectful way of the services that it provides
and specifically
just the importance of having a river continue
to live.
And,
you know, we've
we've engineered it for our purposes, and we
are at a time now where we have
another opportunity to make a decision about its
future. And we're hoping that this will just
be a part of that conversation. Yeah. Totally.
It's you know, what I remember when I
first learned about the compact and that the
way it works is that all of the
water gets split up to be used.
I was shocked. I was like, wait. What
about the river?
Like, you're gonna just take all the water
out of it? That's crazy.
And I think your film does a really
good job of of,
illustrating why that's a
a, you know, bad way to look at
this and that, like, there there is a
river there,
that has a right to exist.
And you end with a really sort of
clear
yet surprising message. At least it kind of
took me,
by surprise.
It says there isn't a shortage of water
in the Southwest.
There's an opportunity to better steward this landscape
and its most essential resource.
So I'm curious how you guys
decided on that because I think, you know,
there has been this
there's this sense that, like, we're running out
of water. There's not enough water, and that's
driving so much of the discussion around the
river. But you really chose to sort of
invert that, and I'm curious how you came
to that decision.
Decisions got us here, and decisions can get
us out of it. And I think part
of I mean, some people reference the Overton
window, which I think is a little bit
limited in terms of a political concept. But,
you know, a lot of my thinking,
actually, this the book that just came out
that kind of has shaped and give more
clarity to this this idea that we were
kind of circling around and talk and pointed
to was this idea of abundance as recline's
new book,
had the chance to read it. And and,
you know, in the beginning chapter, he actually
talks about the Colorado River, and there is
a future in which this river can flow,
and we can have,
you know, all of the things that we
need to come from this river, water for
people, water for food.
And we can also have this reality of
water for the environment. And I think,
I think in some respects,
we've so commodified this river, and water itself
has been so commodified in the West
that
it's hard to imagine a different future. And
I think that's in in many respects the
idea of let's imagine a future where there's
enough water, and it is within is is
well within reach.
You know, and we
controversial, but, you know, biggest source biggest user
water on the river is alfalfa. Mhmm. And
there are legislative fixes to figure that out,
and granted there are farmers that really depend
on this.
But in many respects, these farmers are just
players in the larger economy. Right? They're responding
to market forces and,
but I think we can imagine a future
in which
their needs are met
financially,
and also we can live in a world
where,
that river flows again. And I think it's
entirely possible. And
I don't know what that looks like, just
how we get there Yeah.
Just yet. And there's there's things that we
can do that. I mean, I hate saying
this, but, like, you know, what about lab
growns meets? Like, it's kinda crazy to think
about that. But, you know, imagine a world
where that that could be a part of
that solution. Yeah. And,
you know, and I think that's that's been
increasingly,
this idea of of I think increasingly, we've
entered a political moment
in this country
where we are thinking and operating in a
world of scarcity. Mhmm. And
that is a cultural framing, and that's a
framing that has not always exist existed.
And,
you know, the role of film, the role
of media, and the role of things like
in this in podcast is
we can shift culture. Culture is fungible and
culture can be moved, but it takes very
deliberate action. And so in many respects,
we wanna push people to that idea of
abundance as possible and this river can flow
again. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. You're
you're spot on with that
observation that, like, there's this this
sense of, scarcity right now, and it's you
know, drives people to make decisions based on
fear. And it's,
just not a good place to be operating
from, especially when we're talking about the Colorado
River.
So
who are you hoping will sort of take
this message and run with it? Who do
you think you know, what's your like, if
you could put this film in front of,
you know, a group of people or or
one person, who would it be?
Yeah. I
I hope policymakers
watch it, and they're gonna have their gripes
about the way we frame things or the
way we talk about things and this and
that wasn't right,
you know, or why certain ideas aren't feasible.
And and I get it. You know, they're
operating in a different ecosystem than we are
and political constraints that we don't have as
filmmakers.
But
I hope they watch it, and we're gonna
force feed it to some of them and
try to try to try to try to
hunt them down and get them into a
theater and and say, you need to watch
this film. And,
you know, one of the one of the
folks that we're gonna be showing it to
is Deb Holland at some point and and
some other tribal leaders. We're gonna be doing
a,
theatrical release this fall, and part of that
work
is
with with the support of,
like, folks at the Mighty Arrow Foundation is
doing screenings and releases
on reservation in which tribal,
lawmakers.
And,
you know, that's a very targeted release,
but this wider release, we really want to
get this in the eyes of the general
public because
we kind of forget that, you know, policy
in many respects
responds to the temperature in the room. And
sometimes politicians can turn that thermostat, but not
always.
But these larger
efforts to shape public opinion can
be that that adjustment on the thermostat, and
that's when policymakers,
they often respond to the temperature in the
room.
And we think that engaging the public and
engaging kids, like, if you watch this movie,
this is a kid's movie in many respects.
And
we think that putting this idea into the
idea of kids and their families, I think
this is really where
we think we can make a big impact.
And,
just to, like, be inspired by landscape and
be inspired by this place and just really
seeing what the water
of this river does for ecosystems along it,
I think is, like, it's hard to refute.
Yeah.
And so,
really, you know, there's gonna be a deliberate
effort in helping to turn the temperature up
a little bit, at least in the directions
that we want it, but also just really
calling in people to think about this river
differently and thinking in about it through the
lens of wildlife.
Absolutely.
So a bit of a,
detour here, but you are an activist
in addition to a filmmaker and many other
things, a PhD,
etcetera.
How are you personally thinking about advocating for
public lands and indigenous communities under the Trump
administration
right now? I know that
you were active last time around, but,
things are different now. And how how are
you sort of approaching advocacy from an abundance
mindset, for example?
I had a lot of naysayers a lot
during the election when I was trying to
prevent a second Trump presidency, and I just
wanna say I told you so. It's, like,
worse than we thought. But
they said they they're doing all the things
they said they were gonna do. So,
you know, I
the door is open. I'm having to happy
to have the conversation with folks that, you
know, regret their choices of sitting out is
the past election because that was a huge
driver.
And I think I'm still in a place
of, deep frustration
with where we're at. On the left, it's
fractured.
I think we've also empowered some of the
worst voices in in some respects around our
advocacy that don't really aren't looking towards a
larger cohesive vision.
And
I think
I think we need to do a lot
more soul searching of figuring out who are
the voices are and who do we empower
to speak on our behalf. And
right now, I mean,
you know, it's like it's it's,
how should I say?
All of it it's the first things that
are gonna be attacked are things that, at
least with public lands, are gonna be tribally
led
or co man or co stewarded man or
national monuments Mhmm. Because
it represents two things, empowering a marginalized community,
shaping differently how we do public lands.
It doesn't surprise me that that's if when
I'm pretty sure. I'm, like, 95%
certain certain those are gonna be the first
announcements.
I think,
I think really,
one of the things that I've been really
trying to shift towards is this idea of
not being afraid.
The Trump administration
and the MAGA movement
has really
capitalized
on in this in the first, whatever, eighty
days of this presidency
on people's fear.
And it's paralyzing. Things are moving at a
million miles an hour. But I think for
me, I felt less scared about it, but
really just reminding people that there's a power
in showing up and talking back, and people
are doing it.
And I think more than ever,
we have to be reminded that we cannot
give these,
assholes our fear. You can
you can, you can,
bleep that if you want. But,
the the thing is is that I always
the this administration
has is authoritarian
for all respects. But the thing about authoritarians
is that their view of the world is
so narrow,
and their imagination of what's possible is so
narrow,
and what they know is very narrow. And
the thing is is that if you have
some sense of the world, some sense of
embracing complexity, some sense of
a deeper understanding of the world around us.
You we can run circles around these guys.
And, really,
you know, they're trying to keep us in
this place of fear because if we're in
a place of fear, we can't think strategically.
And
increasingly, I've been trying to remind folks in
my circle of, like, yep. They're gonna do
some terrible things, and everything that you love
or care about is probably gonna be impacted
in some negative way.
But they're the ones that have to keep
the momentum, and they're the ones that have
to,
basically try to keep this ball moving forward.
And increasingly, as the days go on,
this is gonna be much much harder than
it than it has been for them in
the past few months. And
now when I start looking at, you know,
the political landscape and what's out there,
you know, there's a lot of local races
and local elections
that have a lot of impact and, you
know, kind of detouring from things like public
lands, like,
housing and cost of living are a real
thing. And when we look at blue states,
blue states do some of the worst jobs
at,
of of of affordability,
and housing cost and housing availability.
And I think, really, like, if we look
at Blue States, like, we gotta get our
we gotta get our act together,
and really do these things and meet people
where they're at. Because if if
we don't take care of people at their
base level of housing, of
cost of living concerns. Why you know, people
aren't gonna have the bandwidth to show up
for these things, like, public lands.
And,
you know, when we look at the states
that are threatened, I mean, Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado, Utah, I mean,
it's it's
it's gonna be a challenge, and I think
there's gonna have to be multiple fronts that
we're gonna have to fight it on, and
there's gonna be some setbacks that, you know,
are gonna take decades to undo. But I
think
this
is a crisis that we can't let to
go to waste. And
we really have to be forward leaning and
imagining a new future. And
I've been increasingly trying to move into that
world of,
yeah, just thinking about
how better the future could be because the
current administration and this current political environment is
just
forcing us into this mindset of scarcity. If
this person gets
this, that means I get less of that.
Right? And that is the worst way for
us to live. And I think we can't
build a co a
cohesive coalition
in left leaning spaces if we continue to
operate in that mindset.
Yeah. Yeah. That's such
that is so resonant.
We've been talking a lot about the housing
and the this
sort of plan that the Trump administration has
floated to to take public land and make
it make housing on it. And it's
like, we can't Yeah. We can't just be
saying no to everything all the time. We
have to come to the table with solutions,
that work for us. And, you know, so
same with NEPA, same with housing. It's same
with water shortages and drought. It's like we
have to be coming to the table with
solutions
and say and saying do this. We can't
always just be saying, no. No. No. Don't
do that. Don't do this. Don't do this.
So I think you're onto something.
Alright. Well, we'll leave it there. Len Nesseffer,
CEO and founder of Natives Outdoors, thank you
so much for being with us.
Yeah. Thanks so much.
Alright. Well, that is it for us. Take
a look in the show notes, for a
link on how to follow the upcoming theatrical
release of the American Southwest so you can
go see it at the movies sometime later
this year. And as always, we welcome your
feedback. We welcome your questions.
Drop those over to podcast at westernpriorities.org
and find us on all the social media
platforms. Go follow us. TikTok, Instagram, you name
it, wherever you are. We're probably there too.
Thanks again to Len for his time today,
and thank you for listening to the landscape.