Five Tribes to Advise on Bears Ears, Slack’s “Work on Climate” Channel, Earth Guardians, Listeners’ Call to Action!

BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT WILL THRIVE UNDER ADVICE OF FIVE TRIBES

Last October, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation preserving more than 1.36 million acres in southwest Utah to create a monument that people from the Zuni Pueblo, Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray say is a sacred site. That site, known as Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, is where the five tribes successfully won a battle with the federal government now have it in writing that their interests must be part of land management plans going forward. 

The five tribes will work cooperatively with the federal Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, “by coordinating on land use planning and implementation, as well as the development of long-term resource management and programmatic goals,” according to the intergovernmental agreement. Zuni Pueblo Lt. Gov. Carleton Bowekaty said, “Instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them and plan for a resilient future.

Furthermore, the tribes are being asked to apply our traditional knowledge to both the natural and human-caused ecological challenges, drought, erosion, visitation. A key part of the agreement is to also create educational programs and opportunities for tribal youth from the five tribes to learn and practice cultural traditions at the site that are part of their heritage going back thousands of years. These programs are already running, led by organizations like the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which brought together the tribes in 2015 to create this plan. 

Why does the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument matter to us? Utah Zuni Pueblo Lt. Gov. Carleton Bowekaty framed it best when he asked, “What can be a better avenue of restorative justice than giving tribes the opportunity to participate in the management of lands their ancestors were removed from?”  

DEEPER DIVE: SourceNM, Bureau of Land Management, Bears Ears Coalition,

WORK ON CLIMATE—THE SLACK CHANNEL THAT CARES

We like to jokingly characterize people we profile on The Climate Daily, who invariably, by the age of 15 have founded a climate change community organization, won a Goldman Prize (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) and oh in their free time have also written a book as slackers, but we don’t mean it. We’re actually in awe of them. Maybe even a little jealous. But speaking of slackers, what we recently discovered is a Slack channel dedicated to people wanting to work on climate. It’s called Work On Climate.

Everything started in July 2020 when Cassandra Xia and Eugene Kirpichov, two software engineers at Google AI, quit their jobs to focus on finding the best ways to apply their skills to Climate. Eugene’s goodbye post on LinkedIn went semi-viral with over 500,000 views and hundreds of people reaching out to say they wanted to work on climate too. Inspired by this, they joined forces with Eva Marina Illescas Sanchez and founded Work on Climate so they could figure it out together.

The channel has many programs designed to help climate conscious people find full-time, part-time, or consulting work in the climate space. Or to volunteer, find a cofounder, and more. It’s free to join. According to an interview in Fast Company,  Work on Climate now has almost 9,000 members—and yes we signed up. Why does Work On Climate matter to us? Nearly a third of Americans say that climate change is their “top personal concern.” Among Gen Z, that jumps to 37%. While people often don’t know what to do—or feel paralyzed by the scale of the problem—the people in the Work On Climate community are ready to act.

DEEPER DIVE: Work On Climate, Climate Buddies, Fast Co.

MEET THE EARTH GUARDIANS

Earth Guardians is an intergenerational organization that trains youth to be effective leaders in the intersections of environmental and climate justice. Using art, storytelling, on the ground projects, civic engagement, and legal action, we advance solutions addressing the critical issues we face as a global community. The organization does that through programs including leadership training, frontline actions and campaigns.  

Earth Guardians 2022 Youth Leadership Training will bring together youth leaders from across the environmental and climate justice movements for a powerful five day event. This event is designed to strengthen their leadership skills, foster meaningful connections and conversations, hone their organizing work, and support them in engaging in the next steps of their activism and leadership. 

Earth Guardian believe they have unique opportunity to elevate youth leadership with impactful and inspiring public speaking training. Earth Guardians youth leaders and speakers are highly visible and are asked to share their knowledge and experience as youth organizers and community builders at leading universities, conferences, with our partners, and for corporate events. Our speakers have the potential to influence policy change, culture shift, and seed and multiply the next generation of youth leadership. 

There’s also the The 3rd annual historic Indigenous Youth Leadership Initiative will bring together Native youth leaders from tribal Nations across North America. All participants will celebrate, honor and share their traditional ways of life, while honing in on developing their leadership skills and inherent wisdom around social and environmental justice issues directly impacting their communities. 

That will occur August 2-6th, at Collins Lake Ranch, the ancestral lands of the Ute, Diné, and Apache lands, in Cleveland, NM. 20-25 Indigenous Youth leaders 18-25 will be invited.

DEEPER DIVE: EARTH GUARDIANS, EARTH GUARDIAN SPEAKERS,

THE CLIMATE DAILY LISTENER CALL OUT CHALLENGE

Recently, one of our listeners shared her story of how listening to the climate daily helped her deal so well with her climate change overwhelm, that she got out and started working with the local community based group. Then she challenged us to ask you all to share any stories you might have of how listening to the climate daily might have inspired you into action, so we can share them with the world.

Remember, we’re all about sharing stories of people taking positive action to combat climate change. And that’s you listeners. You can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at #wetheclimate or Jeffrey at The Climate dot org or Maude at The Climate dot org, also.