The ongoing collaboration between Indigenous leaders, local communities, land managers, and the climbing community is some of the most important work happening in conservation today. Protecting climbing landscapes requires more than preserving access to rock—it means learning from and following the lead of the Indigenous communities who have cared for these landscapes since time immemorial. Their deep knowledge, cultural connection, and stewardship practices can help guide how we protect and care for these places amid growing visitation, climate pressures, and an increasingly complex conservation landscape. In April, Access Fund partnered with Indigenous leaders Angelo Baca and Shaun D. Ketchum Jr. to continue building those connections through storytelling, film, and conversation centered on Bears Ears and the surrounding landscape.
Shaun, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Navajo Nation, scholar, and storyteller, shared stories from his “100 Years of Silence” project, which documents Indigenous experiences and histories in the region while creating space for Indigenous communities to tell their own stories in their own voices. Angelo, a Diné/Hopi cultural activist, filmmaker, and scholar, shared his award-winning film Shash Jaa’: Bears Ears, which documents the historic collaboration between five Tribes to protect more than a million acres of culturally significant public land to create the Bears Ears National Monument.
Together, their work highlights the importance of Indigenous leadership in conversations about conservation and stewardship. Through storytelling, film, and conversation, the event created space for local climbers to learn from Angelo and Shaun and engage in thoughtful dialogue about what it means to visit responsibly in the Bears Ears landscape. It also helped climbers better understand places like Bears Ears not just as climbing destinations, but as landscapes deeply connected to living cultures, histories, and communities.
Conversations like these are an important step forward in building stronger relationships between Indigenous communities and the climbing community, but they are only a beginning. Meaningful stewardship requires ongoing effort—a willingness to keep listening, learning, showing up, and building trust over time while working toward a deeper understanding of the places we love and the people connected to them.
We’re deeply grateful to Angelo and Shaun for sharing their time, stories, and perspectives with the climbing community. Their leadership is a powerful reminder that stewardship requires ongoing commitment to respect, relationship-building, and learning from the Indigenous communities who have cared for these landscapes since time immemorial.
Learn with us through this event and by following the work of the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition as they guide management of the Bears Ears National Monument through Indigenous leadership and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge.
