Below is the transcript for Episode 10 of the Stay Salty podcast. Listen to the episode here.
Daniel Hernandez: The river was something that I identified with because it was in the hood like us, it was an urban river, it was urban green space, it was polluted. It was stigmatized, and we felt that way, too. And so I always felt like, Oh, this is kind of like our experience on this side of town. And so there was always this kind of intimacy with the river because of that, and a complicated relationship too. Because we had to challenge the deficit views that a lot of people in the society had of us growing up and still a lot of that still persists to this day.
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Olivia Juarez: That was Daniel Hernandez, AKA Arcia Tecun, talking about his relationship with the Jordan River, or Pia Okwai in Newe Taikwa, or the Shoshone and Goshute language.
Daniel is the former Director of Culture for the Tracy Aviary. He recently left that position after successfully overseeing the renaming of the Jordan River Nature Center to the Nature Center at Pia Okwai. It took two years for Daniel to accomplish this name change following conversations with the Tracy Aviary board, local tribal leaders and the urban Indigenous community.
Using and remembering indigenous place names is one way Daniel is addressing the cultural crisis which he says is at the root of the ecological crises we face.
In the spring, I met up with Daniel at the nature center while he was still with the Tracy Aviary. We chatted about place names, his relationship with Pia Okwai and what we can learn from urban Indigenous communities to heal our relationship with the lake, the rivers and one another.
If you’ve been listening to our show for a while now, you know that we explore what it means to stay with Great Salt Lake — or Pia’pa — as she recedes. We’ve been asking why people stay, who gets to stay (or leave), and how to stay. In this penultimate episode of our first season, we dive into all these questions.
You’re listening to Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories. I’m Olivia Juarez.
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DH: So my name is Daniel Hernandez in Spanish, or Daniel Hernandez in English. And I also go by Arcia Tecun, which is after my maternal and paternal grandmother's. And the reason I use that is because I share my legal name with a lot of people. And if you Google “Daniel Hernandez,” you're going to find Tekashi6ix9ine more likely than you will find me. And so it's just so people know which one it is. And it's a chance for me to honor my grandmother's…
And I currently live in Rose Park, 84116, that's the zip code that I grew up in, so west of the train tracks here in Soonkahni, or Salt Lake Valley. And that's where I'm currently at. I've lived in a lot of places and also call Tamaki Makoto home, which is Auckland, New Zealand and lived there for almost a decade
I work across our campuses and in the community with a lot of efforts around eco justice, or thinking about nature as being everywhere and that it should be accessible for everyone and available to everybody. And also Indigenous ecological knowledge, both local and global. I also adjunct for the University of Utah on occasion.
I'm a dad, I've got four kids and big ass family. And so yeah, I'm a relative, I think I think about that more than I do my professional life.
OJ: Daniel has been curious about native place names since childhood.
DH: I grew up here and I remember always being curious of what those Indigenous names were. My family is from Iximulew, also known as Guatemala, and I have a lot of Highland Maya roots, as well as a lot of other ancestries. And so I think there's always this Indigenous consciousness that I grew up with, in terms of respecting the elders of this place. And that's something I got from my parents. So it was something I was always curious about. But I didn't know. I think the first place name that I heard wasn't until I was maybe in my late teens, and that was Soonkahni, that means many houses in Newe Taikwa, or the Shoshone/Goshute language. And that was the first one that I remember hearing in my youth, still. But I was always curious, what is Utah's Jordan River, and what's the Great Salt Lake.
OJ: This curiosity stuck with Daniel, and it became something he’d go on to study.
I became a professional nerd, made it to the 25th grade or something along those lines. And so I learned how to research, and I did my doctoral work in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and place name consciousness there is much more robust, still a lot of challenges and indigenous struggles there. However, when it comes to place names, I could Google and find out a range of names from a variety of different tribal relationships. And so I was missing that when I moved back here to Soonkahni.
OJ: When he returned, Daniel used his research skills, and local relationships, to begin learning more about Indigenous place names here.
DH: I was really looking at what had local folks written and said already, and starting with that route — I did have some connections and networks growing up here — but before really engaging with tribal nations, or urban Indigenous populations, I wanted to say, “hey, what's out there already?” And there is a lot of books that have been written by a lot of different people: Forrest Cuch, and Darren Parry, Dora Van, and many more.
And over time, I learned there's a range of things. And so another name for this river is Pia Okwoi, Pia meaning big and Okwoi, meaning flow or river. And an important thing to mention is that it's not the only waterflow that has that name. And so shifting into that Indigenous ecological knowledge context, there isn't that same logic of kind of fragmentation or categorization, that rationality and reason within modern Western science has. So instead of trying to distinguish, there’s often moments of how these things relate. So at least to my knowledge, I know of at least another two water flows that share that name. So it's one of the names for this river. And then it flows into Pia’pa, which is again, one of several names for the Great Salt Lake. Another common one that I've encountered is titsa. And that one refers to being bad drinking water, because it's so salty. Pia’pa, just means big, so again, pia, big, and then “pa” is water. And that's a shared with amongst a lot of different groups in the region in the valley.
The University of Utah’s Shoshone Language Project was very helpful also in pronunciation, because they have a talking dictionary, we can hear indigenous folks that are pronouncing a range of expressions for those words. And that's kind of where I really spent a lot of time and still spent a lot of time trying to get the pronunciation right. For those and I like to use Pia’pa, just because the current crisis, I think, for me, that's an important name to remember. But also that it's not the only name. It's one of the names for that big water. But trying to remember that it was a big water that it should be a big water, and perhaps we can protect away for it to still be big water.
OJ: These place names that Daniel is using are from the Shoshone and Goshute languages, which are in the Uto-Aztecan language family and are closely related to the Ute language.
OJ: How does the way that we refer to a place inform our understanding of that place?
DH: It's honoring the relationship that people have had to place and that still have to place and honoring that memory. This river, it's interesting when I meet people, or even myself thinking about other rivers that I've seen in different parts of the continent, or the world even, and sometimes you won't be like manner that y'all call that a river. I mean, it looks kind of like a channel or a creek or something because of its size, and then to be called Big River, Big Flow, it calls on a different memory of time. And that's when this river was five times larger than it currently is. I remember growing up and being told the dominant narrative here that we were in the desert, right? And that the desert needed to be made, you know, cultivated, so it can blossom. And then hearing this other side of the story is like, well, wait a minute, this was, you know, thriving wetlands and marshes, and reimagining this part of the valley as a food forest, that was a wetlands, that's getting all this water from the mountains. And yes, there is desert here. But this particular area, what had this big water flow that was, again, five times larger than it currently is. So that name speaks to that. And I think that's the same with Pia’pa. I like thinking about that one, that's, again, one of many names for the Great Salt Lake. But to me, it kind of catalyzes a memory in a relationship. And I want to not only honor my relationship to what I see as the elders of this place, and my elders in this place, but also their relationship and their wisdom from living here for 1000s of years prior to the current crisis that really escalated in about a century and a half. And so I think that is an important lesson that those names give us.
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OJ: Can you talk about your relationship with the river and what it means to you?
DH: For me, the river is something that I always identified with for a variety of reasons. And this includes the stigma. So I remember growing up, and I know very well, the stigma of the river, and of the neighborhood I grew up in, you know, being from Rose Park would call, you know, growing up in the hood, you know, west of the train tracks.
OJ: For 150 years after colonization, the Jordan River was a dumping ground for sewage, agricultural runoff, and mining waste. The river runs through the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, which was redlined in the 1930s when home mortgage lenders deemed the area high risk because of racist and classist perceptions of people of color, immigrants and working class white people who lived there. It was harder for people in these neighborhoods to get a loan to buy a house. Even though redlining is now illegal, income inequality and housing insecurity on the west side persists after that cycle started some 90 years ago. Because these neighborhoods were deemed less worthy back then, industry concentrated on the west side. If you bike along the Jordan River today, you may pedal under the towering smokestacks of oil refineries or hear the roar of I-15. In contrast, if you go to Red Butte, Parleys, or Emigration Creeks on the east side, you’ll find well kept trails and clear water in the middle of wealthier, predominantly white neighborhoods.
DH: It was often made clear to me when I would leave the neighborhood because this valley is very segregated in terms of race and class and many other factors. And so I was always aware of that. So for me, the river was something that I identified with because it was in the hood like us. It was an urban river. It was urban green space. It was polluted. It was stigmatized, and we felt that way too. And so I always felt like, oh, this is kind of like our experience on this side of town. And so there was always this kind of intimacy with the river because of that, and a complicated relationship too because we had to challenge the deficit views that a lot of people in the society had of us growing up and still a lot of that still persists to this day.
So for me, there was always this point of relationship that kind of accepted that we were connected and intertwined. And then trying to now recover and reclaim that there is this strength from the river, right? Like, despite being channelized and polluted and siphoned, it's still such an important habitat for migratory birds. It's such an important habitat for other mammals and other non-human animal relatives that we have here, as well as for our relations and human beings as well. And so it's trying to reclaim that and highlight that, despite all of that abuse, it's still flowing, and it's still supporting life. And to me, that resonated a lot with my own family's kind of colonial experience and with what I know of the colonial experiences here and other challenges that we still face in kind of the modern society that we've inherited.
My mom grew up in a rural community. My dad grew up as a third generation urban Maya but was regularly finding access to the outdoors. And then to their kind of story of displacement and arrival here and in the early 80s, early to mid 80s, you know, they brought that consciousness with them. And so for me, I saw it as like, yeah, we grew up with smokestacks all around. Like we know that there's differences in terms of what we have access to. There's not a lot of, whether it's food, you know, access. There's a lot of Seven Elevens, a lot of processed foods, and that's what's cheap. I remember drinking this really bad drink, Belly Washers, growing up, and it just looked like it was radioactive, but it was $1 for a gallon. I mean, just things like that. I mean, you're aware of those things. But then I also think about my parents' consciousness and value for place. And seeing that little green space in this urban setting was a refuge. And I know that was the case for myself, for my sister, for others who could see that there was something else here, that there was something special about having this green urban space in the midst of all these other issues
OJ: Race and class segregation has pervaded our environmental movements. Many environmental organizations in Salt Lake have been predominantly staffed by white people; here and elsewhere wages in these roles can be so low and unlivable that those jobs are only accessible to people with wealth. Daniel shared how this informed his work at the Tracy Aviary.
DH: So while I'm new to a conservation organization, I've always, I think, been involved in conservation or environmentalism. I wasn't always comfortable calling it that because I had grown up with the stereotypes of what that meant, and maybe more importantly, what that looked like. And it usually was people that didn't look like me; they didn't have as dark skin as me. They were skinnier than me. They ate granola.They, you know, they have all this fancy equipment or, you know, gear.
And so one of the things that we were doing, or one of the projects that I was involved with here, and still working on, is thinking about eco justice. And in essence, one of the components of that stereotype was, where is nature, right? Now, nature itself is a complicated word with a complicated legacy in terms of its formation as something separate from so called civilization. And who is part of nature has often been a tool to exploit not only Indigenous peoples, but people who were gendered as non-masculine or non-cis, het masculine. And so nature's got its baggage.
That said, understanding nature as an important living source, or source of life, nature then is also separated to this thing of like, oh, the national parks only, right? Very important thing to have these quote unquote wild places. But at the same time, if you don’t got access to that, then it's kind of, you know, ignoring that nature is everywhere and all around us and especially these urban green spaces like Pia Okwai here in the Valley. And so for me, this project was a way to highlight those stories. And there was a film series, called Stories of Place…
OJ: We’ll put a link to the film series in the show notes so you can check it out!
DH: and it highlighted a few different people with local ties and with different narratives and, maybe more importantly, different language that they use to relate to conservation, to relate to environmentalism. I don't think any of them use those words. But that's also what they were doing. And I think it challenges the mainstream conservation movements to think differently as to hey, like, why do we need conservation in the first place? And why would we ignore all these different traditions that have, you know, embedded it as a connected system. Just like we talked about connected water systems, environmental issues, or social issues, or food issues, they're connected to people's livelihoods, housing, habitat, homelands all are interconnected.
So that project highlighted four different individuals. One was my sister, and she is much more skilled and adventurous with water than myself. She's become a world class kayaker and ended up, you know, starting on the river here. I mean, we almost died getting into that river, me, her, my cousin, in a donated canoe that was leaky, that we didn't know was leaky, probably was for one person. But all three of us got in there — no boat ramps, barely made it out alive, barely made in alive. But that experience was like our first, you know, connection to water. And she talks about that. And she eventually ended up, you know, river guiding in different parts of the state. She ended up being a kayaker in the Amazon, in West Virginia, Oregon. So again, for me, she's a world class kayaker. She probably would get embarrassed because she would maybe identify differently, but for me, she does incredible things. And it all started right here. And so it was a chance for her to share her story, and that there's this West Side girl who had her relationship to place in her story and her empirical observations over time growing up next to that river.
It's also a Secadio “Son” Sanchez featured in there who is Dine and Chicano and, using this strip right here next to the nature center, leads prayer runs and prayer walks with his community in the urban Indigenous community here. And, you know, for him, this is a sacred place. And that's not always how people think about this parkway, or, you know, this river. And so that was another really important story. Again, his empirical observations of spending time there and the relationship that him and his community have with this place and that this urban green space is also part of sacred ecology.
I'll share one more. And that's Tēvita Ka‘ili. He grew up both here in West Valley and in Tonga. And so he comes from another global Indigenous community. And he shared some really important insights too in terms of responsibility. And that's what this project was about. We're just highlighting all these different perspectives that exists and that, in my opinion, aren't not known. They're ignored, right? Because they don't speak the quote unquote right language or the more familiar language but have really important insights to place. And he was talking about how birds along the river are in the same families as birds that are in Oceania, all the way in the Kingdom of Tonga. And that one of those birds in particular, the Cincotta in Tongan, in English it's the belted kingfisher, here is, you know, really important in his cosmogony. And so he really offered this important kind of global Indigenous insight as an Indigenous person from somewhere else that had ties to this place. And he says, when I see that Kingfisher that's tied to one of my ancestors, right, I have responsibilities to protect, not just that bird, but the habitat of that bird as a Tongan in this place. And so that was another really great and important lesson too.
So each of these stories, to me, are tied to both local, urban but also global, urban Indigenous stories that exist and that are already here and have been here for a long time. And that's something that to me, I think, is really rich to me. Soonkahni, right, means many houses, and to honor the name and what Indigenous elders have talked about, you know, there was a lot of different bands that shared this place. So it's always been a shared space. And then to think about today, the global communities that are here, including many Indigenous peoples from other parts of the world, bring with them that consciousness, also, oftentimes, and are looking for ways to uphold the local authority of other Indigenous peoples here and looking for ways to come into good relation. We’re forced into bad relationships in the way we arrive because of empire, capitalism, cis, hetero patriarchy, racism, anti-blackness, white supremacy, you name it, all these things, ableism, forces into bad relation and the systems that we have. But there are people who still have this consciousness, and they bring that with them. And they're here, and they have these incredible stories and lessons to share. And for me, that's what I wanted to do in that project was highlight that knowledge that these relations have. And I think that is a way of thinking about community-based, community-led approaches to relating in a better way to this place and to this river.
OJ: Speaking of urban Indigenous communities, Stay Salty producer Brooke Larsen dug into U.S. census data and found that 55% of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Utah live along our populous Wasatch Front. At the national scale, approximately 70% of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban areas. When you incorporate people who are part of the global Indigenous population, that number is even higher.
OJ: How can work to protect Great Salt Lake — Pia’pa — do better at following the leadership visions and values of urban Indigenous communities?
DH: Urban space is Indigenous space, right? The cosmopolitan areas that we’re in, the metropolitan areas that we're in, are all on Indigenous lands. And so that's an important thing to think of. And another one, I think, is that there is this growing phenomenon, not just regionally in the continental occupied parts of the United States, but also in a much global, larger global setting too is, many people are, have been displaced continuously, right?
I remember reading an article that talked about how seven out of 10 Native American folks in the US context were living in cities, right? So even the Indigenous experience in the United States is primarily, the majority of Indigenous populations are in urban settings, and that might be people that are still in close proximity to their ancestral homelands or sites of creation, or maybe even more distant. And so I think we have to constantly respond to the continued consequences of empire and colonialism and urban Indigenous populations is a really important way to do that in terms of tribal nations, of course, I mean, we are very much in Indian country in terms of Utah, eight federally recognized tribes potentially another if the Timpanogos are able to gain that in the coming years, but the urban Indigenous population is massive…
So that's an important starting point. And it's a very practical starting point in terms of working with Indigenous folks in a local urban setting. And from there, I would say that you can continue to build and extend beyond that as well. I mean, beyond the continental US, we also have a, for me, I'll say Mona, which means ocean in a lot of the Eastern oceanic languages, but there's a lot of Mona peoples here. There's also people from Tasi, oceania as well, that are occupied territories that the US has also occupied. And so there's those Indigenous relations that are also here in large numbers. And then beyond that, even more across these continents, we have that too.
And I think about my family, and we have a colonial relationship to Guatemala, but we also have an imperial relationship to the United States. And so our arrival here is very much linked to that also. And so there's layers upon layers of people and relationships that are here that constitute both a local and global urban Indigenous population. And I think that's a really important area that is growing in, I think, conversation and consciousness. It's not a new phenomenon, but it's just the continued consequences of global empire. And so we can't ignore it.
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OJ: Would you say that there's a consciousness among communities who live among the Jordan River’s vicinity of its direct connection as an inflow to Great Salt Lake?
DH: I would say, at least subconsciously, I think there is this feeling that you're connected to something bigger. When I think about my relationship to Pia’pa, for example, it wasn't by, like, going there often. I mean, I did, I remember being taken to the Saltaire as a young person and making it up to pa'rĭ-bi-na, or Antelope Island. But my relationship to that big water was the river. And so I know, like, at least for me, and like close relations, there was always a sense of you're connected to something bigger. You're connected to, I didn't know the word watershed, but that's essentially what it was, is that we knew we were connected to the watershed, even though that wasn't the language that we had. And it might have been subconscious, at least for me growing up. But there was that sense. And I do get that still. It's not always overt. And sometimes again, because of the stigma, there's depending on how people respond to it sometimes I find people attempting to distance, others who want to find that connection and reclaim it. So there's a diversity of relationships. But I do think that whatever way you respond, that is indicating that you see this connection to a lot of other issues or the water in the valley.
OJ: Can you share any specific experiences or memories that you have at the lake?
DH: More of them are in later life when I have some increased mobility, I guess, access to get out there. But I do remember going with a youth group and camping out overnight. And that's one of my, I think formative memories of being out there, especially on pa'rĭ-bi-na, the Antelope Island. And I just remember it was, it's kind of surreal thinking about it, you grew up, I don't know the environment that you do, then you end up here. This is like, how was it that we have like this mini ocean, for lack of better words, like this salty water right here up in the mountains. And then at that time, like, it did feel like we're on an island because you cross that Causeway and there was water all around, and it was much higher. I remember just kind of this surreal experience of thinking about wow, I cannot believe that this is right here. And it really wasn't that, I mean it’s a 45 minute drive, and thinking, you know, it wasn't like that inaccessible in theory. But it wasn't accessible in terms of having the time, or the resources, or the mobility to get out there. But I do remember that I think that's why it was so formative was because of the limited access I felt when I got out. I was like, wow, this is, I just yeah, all I can remember is it felt so surreal.
And then now going back and taking my kids, and it's still this very powerful place to go. And especially thinking about what it means to Newe, to the people, Shoshone and Goshute folks, and that their cosmogony is tied to that place. To me as a relative, continentally, I have to honor that. Like that's a sacred ecology. I hope that people will honor and respect, you know, my people have sacred sites. And so that is something that we always think of, and simultaneously this tragedy of seeing the water levels to where it's at, and having to explain to my kids and trying to get them to imagine my memory, which was different from even what they're seeing. And trying to get them to come into relation to, hey, this is a sacred place. And that's why it's important, first and foremost. And there's all these other reasons that are practical and are also important. But for us, that's enough, right? This is our relatives' land, that's their cosmology. This is their side of creation. And that's enough for us.
OJ: Respect, honoring and respecting others, sensing that theme come up a lot in every interview that we're doing. How are the health of the river and the lake interconnected?
DH: I'm learning more and more about that. The more time that I spend, especially my work here at the nature center, and at Tracy Aviary, because I have the ability to spend more time thinking about it. And I think that's important. But growing up, I think there was this sense of connection of interconnection, I think growing up with that consciousness. In Spanish, we call it cosmovisión Maya, or in English would be like this kind of a cosmic worldview that kind of I have this ancestral tie to, and it's that all things are connected. And it's something that's shared amongst a lot of Indigenous peoples, in terms of a value in the kind of more general worldview, but there's also very important distinctions, I think, and that is where I begin to think of you know, all the different stories that have existed in this region and across this valley are ones that I'm very curious about, because it helps speak to that one. When I think about Nuchu and their cosmogony, and not to go into detail, I, you know, respect that some of those stories are for certain people at certain times. But in general, knowing that wolf or coyote has a significant role, and thinking about how many wolves used to be in Utah, thinking about the role of coyote and so many stories across this continent. And that coyote still go along this river, right, and so they connect, they connect that. But wolves are not around anymore in the same way, and same with bears. And so thinking about how the impact of removing people was also tied to removing non-human animal relatives that got in the way of a particular consciousness of how to live here.
And part of that is fragmenting and separating different entities, right? And I think that is part of the issue, is when we think about it as, oh, this is a river and not thinking about it, actually, this is the connecting water body between pa'ga-dĭt or Utah Lake, you know, the Great Salt Lake. And then that's done through, you know, legal, governmental differences. And we can see that going along the river. I mean, there's some parts of the parkway that are better kept than others. And there's a reason for that: depends on which neighborhood, we're talking about what resources are put into that. And so there definitely is not a consciousness of that these things are connected. And that reinforces that idea, I think, when you live in one place, and especially if you end up getting isolated in a place, which again, our society does a pretty good job of isolating folks, you know, if you're just grinding and trying to pay the bills and survive, it makes it hard to be mobile, it makes it hard to have the time to see different parts. And so for me, I guess there's that two sides of it is that we do have a society that has fragmented or created the illusion of a fragmented water system.
But the reality is, it's always been connected. And what happens, you know, one part of the river impacts the other side of the river, what happens to that lake impacts a whole valley and region. And I think that consciousness is really important to remember. And to magnify. We share the water, we share the air, whether we like it or not, whatever our political affiliations, we're all in different ways related to the water and air here. And even that's connected, right? More water, better air quality, better snow, better rain, and so it's all connected. But often, that's not the, at least in my experience and observation, not the mainstream view.
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DH: While this is absolutely a climate crisis, it's an ecological crisis. For me, I see it primarily as a cultural crisis of how we relate to place. And so for me, that's where I find the most hope, is thinking about the consciousness when I was a kid. And now that I'm rounding, I'm not there yet, but I'm also 40. And thinking about how there is definitely a much more, or a growing, collective consciousness of the importance of this river, of the Lake, of the area, and that to me, is what excites me, is seeing that cultural consciousness shift that there is more value being given socially.
OJ: What does success look like for you and for our community to address this cultural crisis?
DH: Symbols are powerful. And I know that it's not enough. But even just having those place names reinstated, and we have enough resources, not only to reclaim and remember, or, or rather refuse to forget those names that still are very much present. We also have resources to learn how to say them and pronounce them correctly. We can do a lot more, and we should do a lot more in terms of the relationships, the place and the relationships that many peoples have to place, beginning with what I see as kind of the elder peoples, right Indigenous peoples of the land. And that's an incredibly important thing that we should do. And I think it's being in different places, I mean, even so, coming, having lived in Aotearoa, like I was there at a time when Te Reo Maori or the Maori language was small underneath the English, but it was underneath the English at least. And before I moved back, it was the main language, and then English was a small print underneath. And I'm like, that's a very powerful symbol.
When I go to Iximulew, or Guatemala, where my family's from, a country that has a majority Indigenous population and an incredibly poor track record with Indigenous peoples, including very recent, you know, acts of genocide. And even there in that context, you see Maya names being reclaimed and being remembered, right? A lot of the communities still know those names, and still use those names. And so to see it in those different places, and then to see what we have accessible and available it really is, it's about flipping the narrative of it's not that we can't do it, it's why is it being refused? Right? You have to intentionally refuse to do it. And so I think, putting it from that position, it's kind of how I think it's, it helps me shape, I guess, the political platform that I come with in terms of that, and it really is, for me, it's pragmatic as well. If we want to not just survive, but find a way to live with dignity with all of our relations in this place, then we have to, we have to stop refusing to see the knowledge that is present.
OJ: That reminded me of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s initiative to replace derogatory names on public lands with Indigenous place names. I asked Daniel if he thought these sort of government efforts play a role in shifting culture.
DH: I'm gonna use another cultural example, because that's kind of for me, but I know that Utah has changed their flag now. Right, the state flag. And on one hand, like, I understand there's important things with that symbolic change. On the other, it still represents this kind of dominant colonial occupation, in terms of the token symbol for indigenous folks is this small star. And I'm like, that should be in reverse, right? I think here in terms of policy, in terms of, I'll give a story of here, the Nature Center at Pia Okwai, was this long, I mean, we're working for about a year with a lot of amazing colleagues here, to move towards changing our name to highlight an Indigenous name, and we're not the first to do it. The Ogoi People's Garden is using Ogoi. The Songoni Ggalena reserve is also using an Indigenous name. So there is a precedent for it in a couple of locations already.
But one of the things that happened with us when we went to present the tribal leaders meeting that's facilitated by the Division of Indian Affairs was, we essentially had to ask for a blessing, not for permission, because we were showing up after the fact that this project was underway. And because the current policy and governmental relations don't require us to work with Native communities, to work with tribal nations. And so that is part of the issue is we had to do that on our own accord, to go and meet with them and report and say, hey, we're doing this project, these are some of the things that we're trying to do. But at that point, we were asking for a blessing, not permission. And that needs to change: the policy shouldn't be consult with tribes, the policy should be negotiate with tribes, pay lease for the lands that are being occupied. And so you know, I think that needs to be a complete shift. And it might sound really, I don't know far fetched to radical, depending on your position, but for me, it's ethical in terms of at least my cultural consciousness.
OJ: Another government related initiative that could protect waterways and shift culture is to give Nature, like a lake, personhood and the rights of a person. You can hear more about this in Episode 2. Here’s Daniel’s thinking on rights for nature:
DH: One of the tragedies of modern life, in my opinion, and my perspective, to draw from David Graber’s work is not how do we get here? But more importantly, how do we get stuck here? The planet has such a tremendous diversity and legacy of diversity, of different ways of being, different ways of living, different ways of relating that to end up at this moment in time that is increasingly monolithic and homogenous. We have a global economic system. I mean, that is a tragedy when we consider the legacy of all of our ancestors on this planet. And that, to me, is what I want to push for ultimately, is that there's so many ways of living. There are so many societies that are possible, so many economic systems that are possible. It's not just one or two. And that's evidenced long before the few centuries of the recent history of our species on this planet. So I'll start with that. So for me, rights of nature is an important step to remember that there are different ways of operating.
I also think about the great indigenous scholar Vine Deloria. And you know that rights can be also very limiting in terms of how do we move from rights to responsibilities, right? How do we move from rights to relationships and upholding and keeping good relation? Or as Nick Estes has said, how do we return to right relation. Winona Lauduke is another one who has has emphasized that. So again, looking at all these different ideas for me, I do see rights as an important step and pathway, thinking about the impact that it has had in different parts of the world, such as Ecuador. Think about Costa Rica as well, Aotearoa. Having that is, it's an important step because of where we're at, that we require putting rights to something in order to protect it, that we require associating personhood in order to respect it. And that's something that we shouldn't end there. But I do think that it's an important step, because not everybody has been considered human, right? And that includes our own species, right?
So I think thinking about the hierarchy, and the baggage and the legacy of even what humanity has meant or means is why I say it's just a step. But I do think it's an important step in terms of creating protections in the current system and reality that we're in, but then always pushing for more beyond that, that there's so many other possibilities. I mean, there are societies that live right next to each other, they have completely different systems, culturally, socially, economically. I mean, it's not an impossible thing. It's happened before and for a much longer time than our very recent history has attempted to do otherwise. And so I think that's how I would frame it. And I think that's an important way of thinking about it. If, if this is a site of creation, if this is an ancestor, then what's your relationship to that place? What's your responsibility to that place? And I think that culturally carried a lot of people for a much, much longer time than the current framework with what we have to work with. But again, my practical side is it's a good starting point.
MUSIC BREAK
OJ: Will you stay here if the lake dries up?
DH: I don't know, it depends on what our circumstances are. I hope that me and my family and relations will have an option to consider it. If it gets to that point, I just don't know how much of that we will or not, and I think it's a big crisis that we're facing. At the same time, I feel like I grew up in pollution, I grew up, you know, breathing bad air, I mean, it's gonna get worse. But I feel like that's also always kind of something that I have as part of me too, is like, I grew up eating, who knows what kind of food it was, that belly washers as I mentioned earlier, looked like it was radioactive. You know, like, it definitely wasn't good for me. I mean, it's, I grew up, you know, ingesting all kinds of bad stuff out of what was available. And so, I don't know, maybe at least hopefully, I can afford a gas mask or, I don't know if you've seen Dune, spoiler alerts, if anybody hasn't, but I'm like, that's the future right now. You know, like, and I think about what kind of tools or strategies we might have. And I think about family who has lived in all kinds of, my parents escaped the war zone, in all kinds of different, you know, kind of proximity to pollution. And so, it's not something out of our wheelhouse to try and survive. But part of me hopes that I'll be able to have some privilege to offer some at least the consideration of options that I know my parents didn't have. I don't know. We'll see.
MUSIC BREAK
I'm a critically hopeful person. And so I love that stay salty because I think I just grew up with a lot of salty people, I’m salty myself and doesn't mean I can't have my sweetness, right but it's an it's an important edge to have to drive us and if we can harness that then there's hopefully some good work we can keep doing.
I grew up with the Great Salt Lake also being lago salado in Spanish, and then Tongans called the vai māsima, masima means salt. And so for me, like I like saltiness too. And like I have these personal relational ties to Oceania. So salt water is also life water in a different way. So I yeah, there's a lot of different ways that we can take saltiness. But yeah, I'm salty.
I’ll end with this. Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa, a great African American Banaban intellectual and activist said you know, we sweat and cry saltwater. So we know that the ocean is in us. And she's speaking from an oceanian context, but I think that can speak to us here as well being next to the Salt Lake. You know, salt is in us so let's embrace it.
THEME SONG
CREDITS
Meisei Gonzalez: If you like what you’re hearing, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories is an “Of Salt and Sand” production. We explore what it means to stay in Utah through economic transition and climate crisis by producing multimedia projects with, by, and for impacted communities.
OJ: The Producers are Maria Archibald, Amelia Diehl, and Brooke Larsen. Podcast cover art is by Frances Ngo. Our Visual Director is Jeri Gravlin…. Ashley Finley and Katherine Quaid are our Event Curators. Music is by Amelia Diehl. We’re your hosts Olivia Juarez
MG: and Meisei Gonzales.
OJ: This project is funded by grants and foundations which you can find on our website. Today we thank three donors: Mr. Charles Martin, Luis Miranda, and Lauren Wood. Thank you!! Please join them in supporting our work by donating at lakefacing.org. You can learn more about the podcast on our website and on instagram @OfSaltAndSand. Until next time…
OJ+MG: Stay salty!
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