Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories

To cap off season 1, we hand over the mic to hear from youth! For young people growing up with a drying up Great Salt Lake, this crisis defines a generation – and is an opportunity to re-imagine a collective future. Young people are leading the way to create solutions, from contributing vital scientific research to organizing on-the-ground collective action that centers environmental justice. We talk with Muskan Walia, an organizer with youth-led environmental organization Utah Youth for Environmental Solutions (UYES), and Amanda Lee, a biology student who conducted research on Great Salt Lake at the Westminster Great Salt Lake Institute. While grief is part of the story, we also talk about how important it is to laugh and share joy together – in other words, to stay salty! 

If you are a youth in your teens to early twenties, you can join UYES! Muskan says a good way to get involved is send them a DM on Instagram (@utahyes). Their website: https://utahyes.org/ 

This is our last episode of season 1, and we really want to make season 2! Please consider making a donation to help us continue vital storytelling work. Thank you for listening and all of the support!

Pia Okwai, often referred to as the Jordan River, is one of Great Salt Lake's (or Pia'pa's) major tributaries. For generations, the river has been stigmatized and polluted, but in this episode we explore how people are reclaiming and honoring relationships with the river.

We talk with Daniel Hernandez (Wīnak/Urban Diasporic Highland Maya), also known as Arcia Tecun, who is the former director of culture at the Tracy Aviary. Daniel grew up in Rose Park near Pia Okwai, and he has always identified with the river.

Recently, Daniel successfully led the effort to rename the Jordan River Nature Center to the Nature Center at Pia Okwai. Daniel uses Indigenous place names to honor relationships and memory of a place. He also centers the voices and experiences of the urban Indigenous population in his work, including in his film series Stories of Place that focuses on relations with Pia Okwai.

Daniel views the current crisis at the lake as a cultural crisis that requires a shift in cultural consciousness. Listen to learn more about the ways Daniel thinks we can begin this cultural shift.

Stories of Place: An Eco-Justice Film Series

The Nature Center at Pia Okwai: The Story Behind the Name

The Northwestern Shoshone have called Great Salt Lake and the Bear River home for time immemorial. In 2018, the tribe bought back their land at the Bear River Massacre Site, where the U.S. Military murdered an estimated 500 Shoshone people in 1863. Now, the tribe is reclaiming their land and leading a massive restoration effort, including repairing the waterways and planting thousands of native plants. The tribe estimates that these efforts will return 13,000 acre-feet of water annually to Great Salt Lake — with hopes of increasing that number.

In this episode, host Olivia Juarez talks with Brad Parry, Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, about the Wuda Ogwa project and the importance of Great Salt Lake and the Bear River to the Shoshone people.

Resources and references:

RSVP for the tree planting day at Wuda Ogwa

The Northwestern Shoshone are restoring the Bear River Massacre site [High Country News]

‘You Can’t Erase Us’: Shoshone and Ute Connections to Great Salt Lake [Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories, Episode 3]

This is part two of our exploration of the working waterscape and landscapes of Great Salt Lake. In this episode, we turn to farming. Farms across the watershed grow alfalfa, fruits, vegetables and raise livestock for meat and dairy that eventually end up on grocery store shelves. These farms use about 80% of the water that is diverted from the Bear, Weber and Jordan Rivers, Great Salt Lake's tributaries. We talk with farmers in Cache Valley about the challenges they face and pathways forward to stay in the Great Salt Lake Basin that work for both farmers and the lake. One major theme: let's localize and reconnect with our food.

This is part one of a two-part exploration into Great Salt Lake as a working waterscape. In this episode, we learn about brine shrimping! We dive into the ways the lake and brine shrimp contribute to our global food system. Great Salt Lake contributes over 40% of the global supply of brine shrimp, which are fed to larger shrimp, like prawns, and other fish cultivated through aquaculture. We hear about what it's like to work as a brine shrimper, the history of the Brine Shrimp Cooperative and the ways the industry is adaptively managed to ensure a sustainable harvest and healthy ecosystem. We learn how the health of the brine shrimp industry is inextricably tied to the health of the lake and explore what we can learn from brine shrimping as we find pathways to stay as the lake recedes.

Recreation opportunities are a big reason why people live in Utah. Our mountains and waterways are ideal places to ski, bird watch, bike and refresh oneself. But as we face drought, these activities that bring many of us joy are under threat. In this episode of Stay Salty, we talk with Lulu Avila, a snowboarder, and Frances Ngo, a wildlife biologist and birder, about the ways they bring people into relationship with Great Salt Lake through recreation.

Lulu and Frances both approach this work with a focus on diversity and justice. Lulu breaks down barriers for people of color in snow sports, while Frances hosts birding outings for the queer community. We explore the joy and challenges they both experience as they strive to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the outdoors while simultaneously confronting ecological collapse.

Find a transcript of the episode on https://www.lakefacing.org/blog.

If the Great Salt Lake dries up, toxic dust from the exposed lakebed will reach the lungs of millions of Utahns. This would be a public health disaster. People with disabilities will be disproportionately impacted by this crisis, but they also have knowledge, experience and solutions to help us navigate our uncertain future. In this episode, we talk with Flor Isabel, a mom and activist whose family has struggled with asthma from Utah's already poor air quality. We also speak with Nat Slater, an artist and disability justice organizer who shares lessons from the disability justice movement on community care and adaptation.

Episode transcripts can be found on our website: https://www.lakefacing.org/blog

Learn more:

Sins Invalid, disability justice organization: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/

Nat Slater is quoted in this story in Prism on Utah’s discrimination against disabled people: https://prismreports.org/2024/02/12/why-utah-discrimination-disabled-people-matters/

A story in SLUG Magazine about the Embodied Ecologies Project curated by Nat Slater: https://www.slugmag.com/arts/art/embodied-ecologies-where-disability-meets-the-natural-world/

Article in the Salt Lake Tribune about Flor Isabel's struggle with asthma during bad air days: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/01/23/reaching-air-there-are-solutions/

People who are incarcerated at the Utah State Correctional Facility face the impacts of the drying Great Salt Lake firsthand. While some of us may have the choice to leave if Great Salt Lake dries up, those who are incarcerated don't have such freedoms. For this episode of Stay Salty, co-host Meisei Gonzalez talked with Tea, a person incarcerated, and Sunny, a mental health advocate who works with people at the prison. The prison is built on Great Salt Lake wetlands, and it's often forgotten and invisible to society. In this episode, you'll hear challenges and reflections of what it's like being locked between land and lake, from hoards of mosquitos to toxic dust storms.

For time immemorial, the Goshute, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute people have called the Great Salt Lake Basin home. In this episode of Stay Salty, we learn about Shoshone and Ute connections to Great Salt Lake. We talk with Rios Pacheco, the cultural and history advisor for the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, and Forrest S. Cuch, a member of the Ute Indian Tribe and former director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. Pacheco and Cuch share the importance of Great Salt Lake to their people and how colonization has impacted that relationship.

As we ask who gets to stay (or leave), we must remember this question is not new for Indigenous people who have been forcibly removed from the Great Salt Lake Basin.

CORRECTION: In this episode, Forrest Cuch said the Ute Ouray Reservation was established in 1860, but it was established for the Uncompahgre Utes in 1880.

In this episode, we reference a 2018 article in YES! Magazine by Kyle Powys Whyte, titled "White Allies, Let's Be Honest About Decolonization." We recommend reading the whole piece: https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/decolonize/2018/04/03/white-allies-lets-be-honest-about-decolonization

You can also learn more about the Indigenous history of the Great Salt Lake Basin by reading Forrest Cuch's book, A History of Utah's American Indians: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31200154726&dest=usa&ref_=ps_ggl_17721428148&cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade_20to50-_-product_id=COM9780913738498NEW-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjw26KxBhBDEiwAu6KXt2w-oYA-o29y0L-QfhC6F3MJ69Ag0EB8F98Jd84QN4i11UkDCVbFyhoC5mwQAvD_BwE

Great Salt Lake is an excellent place for a date. But chances are the lake herself will steal your heart. Two Utahns who outspokenly love Great Salt Lake are Nan Seymour and Sarah May. You may have seen them walking waves or dancing on the capitol steps in brine shrimp and bird costumes EVERY DAY during the Utah State legislative session this year. They also stayed with Great Salt Lake during the legislative sessions in 2023 and 2022, holding vigil and camping out on Antelope Island in the bitter cold. We talked with them in the middle of the 2024 state legislative session in February. This episode also includes date stories at Great Salt Lake and even an engagement story!