At noon on May 5, the Citizens for the Red Desert coalition will present an online panel discussion with three advocates from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. The public is invited to join the event via Zoom to learn about Indigenous narratives of the Red Desert.
The Red Desert is an ancestral landscape and a living cultural corridor. Since time immemorial tribes including the Shoshone, Ute, Goshute, Paiute, Bannock, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Crow have lived, hunted, and prospered in these vast lands. The desert retains many Traditional Ecological Knowledge plants, sacred sites, and ancestral stories, and tribal members still use this land today for a variety of traditional and contemporary purposes.
Panelists will include Wes Martel, senior Wind River conservation associate for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and former longtime member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council; Jason Baldes, the tribal buffalo coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation; and Yufna Soldier Wolf, the Wind River organizer for the Wyoming Outdoor Council and former tribal historic preservation officer for the Northern Arapaho Tribe.