“Welcome to Steep Mountain farms. We are so excited to have so many people gathered here on a cold day,” said Jaimi Butler.
That is Utah scientist and author Jaimi Butler. She lives next to the farm and organized this event. She has studied and raised awareness about Great Salt Lake for most of her career.
Farm steward Tara is giving us a tour of the regenerative farm located just south of Logan, surrounded by towering mountains. It’s below freezing on this sunny morning as guests walk on snow-crusted ice to the goat and sheep pens.
“They are overly friendly,” said Tara referring to the heritage turkeys roaming freely on the farm.
We went into the pen of friendly ungulates before gathering around the fire. Nate is the other steward here.
“That’s exactly what we are, what we see ourselves, as land stewards. We decided we wanted to come here and steward the land and nourish ourselves and the land, give back and try to nourish some others in the process. So we appreciate Jaimi bringing the lake here because it’s all connected, the land, the rivers, the streams, the air we breathe. It’s all one,” said Nate.
“Cool, and we would like to recognize that we are on the ancestral homelands of many tribes of people including the northwestern band of the Shoshone folks and so I’m really stoked to have Darren Parry here. I have alot of respect for what he is doing now,” said Butler.
Darren Parry is an educator and the former chairman of the Northwest band of the Shoshone Nation.
“We are gonna need to get away from that land ownership mentality and getting ahead at all costs and having as much as we can get, using our land for extraction and depletion. When you are stewards that changes things. I remember my grandmother telling me all the time that she called our plants and animals and our water kinfolk. To me, kinfolk means it’s our relative and we should treat that relative and we should treat that relative as we treat any relative, with kindness and love and respect. The Great Salt Lake is hugely important to our people. In my book I talk about my grandmother collecting duck eggs at the Bear River Bird Refuge, which would not have been a bird refuge then, as a little girl. She talked about doing all kinds of those things because of the water that was there and the fowl that were there. The fact we are here talking about Great Salt Lake that might die is such a big problem for us and it always has been and so we just felt like what we can do at Bear River, will put millions of gallons back into the Bear River. All things are connected and what we do here, we feel will have a big outcome on what happens there,” said Parry.
Parry is talking about the restoration of the Bear River Massacre site called Wuda Ogai. The site is being restored as close to the native and natural habitat as possible, including the creek and river.
He recently found an old recording of his grandmother made nearly 60 years ago. It was given to him by Compass minerals, a company making health supplements from Great Salt Lake materials.
“And I turned it on and I sat there and I listened to my grandmother’s voice that I have not heard since 2007. All she talked about was what the lake meant to her, the healing properties of the lake and how there is medicine in the water and how our Shoshone people use the plants and things that are around the lake. And I thought ‘I think I need to spend the last part of my life, however long that is, talking more about the environment and our stewardship and what the world needs to do to change.’ We have the science out there but all the science in the world won’t make up for our selfish behaviors. And so sharing that indigenous perspective has become my mission. It’s not because I think our voice is any more important than anybody else’s, I’ve never thought that. But I think how do you really solve a problem and how do you learn about anything without having multiple perspectives, different perspectives? We are so better when we are so more informed with things we may not even agree with but let’s have that conversation and it might end up being a combination of a lot of different things that solve the problem,” said Parry.
Part II of this conversation is taking place tomorrow at the Antelope Island Vistor’s Center, organized by poet Nan Seymor. Darren Parry will be there singing and continuing of the healing of Great Salt Lake. For more information visit riverwriting.com
This story is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late.
