2021
02
Mar
Hope for Oak Flat
Dear Friends,
Recently, a friend from Phoenix commented that she was looking for a higher-elevation summer home. “I’m tired of breaking records for 115-degree temperatures like we did last summer.” [Fact check: In summer 2020, Phoenix had 145 days in triple digits, 53 days of 110 or more,...
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2021
02
Feb
An Enlightening and Hopeful Conversation with Sally Jewell
Dear Friends,
I ended last week’s note with a call: Let’s get to work!
This week, I’d like to take a big-picture view of the work that needs doing.
I find the latest issue of Scientific American very helpful. The editors identify the four most pressing science priorities for the...
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2021
26
Jan
It’s Time to Permanently Protect the Greater Chaco Landscape
Dear Friends,
Last week’s list of fresh words I hope we'll be using more going forward was a bit too short. Here are the contributions of your word-savvy fellow readers.
Compliance (as say, for mandatory masks)
Humor (as in, good humor) (2)
Tolerance
Thankfulness, Gratefulness, Gratit...
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2020
15
Dec
Continuing Coverage: Fighting for Oak Flat
Dear Friends,
It has been another long day in the field. But I’m not complaining—for me, these days out on the desert landscape are days of renewal, experiences that reignite my passion for what I do.
Focusing my eyes on the ground so I don’t miss subtle, centuries-old physical remnants ...
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2020
17
Nov
Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition Ready to Work with New Administration
Dear Friends,
How do you know when you have the perfect job?
For me, it’s when you get home after an 11-hour day and you’re relaxed, energized, and ready to face the ever-mounting challenges to Archaeology Southwest’s Preservation Archaeology mission.
I left home just before 7:00 a.m....
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2020
10
Nov
Interior Appropriations Bill Excludes Chaco Protections
Dear Friends,
Weeks are longer than they used to be. I can barely remember the geologic era of the last time I sat down on a Tuesday evening to write to you.
That’s the problem with archaeologists: We expect time to be linear.
Sometimes, it can be helpful to consider the antitheses ...
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2020
21
Jan
Indigenous Art Exhibition at Yale Challenges History and Perception
Indigenous Art Exhibition at Yale Challenges History and Perception
“Place, Nations, Generations, Beings,” a somber and moving display of two centuries’ worth of Native American artworks at the Yale University Art Gallery, comes with a conventional list of acknowledgments plus an unconvention...
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2019
26
Dec
Congressional Spending Bill Includes Protection for Greater Chaco
Congressional Spending Bill Includes Protection for Greater Chaco
The U.S. Senate has approved a $1.4 trillion spending package for the 2020 fiscal year. The White House has said that the president will sign the legislation. Importantly, the legislation includes interim protections for the landscap...
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2019
10
Dec
National Monument Reductions, Two Years Later
Commentary: “Relentless assault” in the Two Years Since National Monument Reductions
This week marks the two-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s decision to decimate two national monuments located in Utah. With the stroke of a pen, the president removed protections on 85% of the Be...
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2019
01
Oct
Federal Judge Rules that Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante Suits May Move Forward
Federal Judge Rules that Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante Suit May Move Forward
A federal judge has turned down an attempt by the Trump administration to dismiss legal challenges to its 2017 decision to cut the size of Bear Ears National Monument in southern Utah. In a three-page ruling issued...
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2019
03
Jul
Fighting the Downsizing of Bears Ears National Monument
Commentary: Fighting the Downsizing of Bears Ears National Monument
The value of a landscape scale is that it is the best tool to capture the diverse human stories represented in the archaeological record of an area. These maps and images make it clear that the Trump-downsized monument fails to enc...
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2019
28
Jun
Fighting the Bears Ears Downsizing (with an Agèd Friend)
Bill Doelle, President & CEO
(June 28, 2019)—On June 8, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law.
And yet, 113 years later, in the year 2019, at about the same time, there were no headlines announcing that President Roosevelt had risen from his grave to ma...
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