High Country News October Vol. 56, No. 10

ON THE COVER Latinos active in the 2024 elections. Pictured from left, top row: Elizabeth Rentería, Culinary Union shop steward and guest-room attendant, Las Vegas, Nevada; Jonathan Soto Robles, deputy director of grassroots, The LIBRE Initiative, Phoenix, Arizona; ELLA founder Maria Fernandez, Sunnyside, Washington; Victor Rodriguez, potential voter, Phoenix. Middle row: Ismael Luna, potential voter, Phoenix; Audrey Peral, Chispa Nevada program director, Las Vegas; Maria Barquin, Forge Radio Network program director, Radio Campesina, Phoenix. Bottom row: Alejandra Gomez, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), Phoenix; Bryan Hurtado, Make the Road Action Nevada volunteer, Las Vegas; Osvaldo Franco, producer and radio host, Radio Campesina, Phoenix; Chelsea Dimas, Washington state representative candidate, Sunnyside, Washington. Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN…

I’M IN THE HIGH COUNTRY, above treeline, walking through a rock garden. Undulating slabs smoothed by glaciers are dotted with smaller boulders, stones and pebbles that broke off from bigger formations. It is a riot of color: Deep reds fading to red-orange, crystalline white cutting through a light gray substrate, bluish-green facets so polished they resemble jade. I’ve spent the week exploring a “research natural area” where no overnight camping is allowed. The flora here is stunning: Late-season yellow-and-red groundcover and swaying grasses. The patterns and symmetries evidenced in the rocks and vegetation seem holy to me somehow. It’s election season, but I’ve been beyond the range of texts and emails and the nightly news — a blessing. From one of these long, rolling rock slabs decorated with erratics, I…

High Country News is dedicated to independent journalism, informed debate and discourse in the public interest. We welcome letters through digital media and the post. Send us a letter, find us on social media, or email us at editor@hcn.org. WHAT ELSE WAS LOST? I found Savanna Strott’s piece on City and other land art interesting (“What is Permanence?” September 2024), but one thing bothered me: almost no mention of City’s intrusion on — even destruction of — its environment. It’s not only Indigenous peoples that lived there. The article does mention that the area had been a Native hunting ground. This indicates the presence of game — that is, fauna and flora. It’s hard to believe a concrete construction a mile and a half long by a half-mile wide in…

IN INDIAN COUNTRY, majorelectionyears bring a deluge of messaging that “voting is sacred,” as then-Congresswoman and current Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said during the 2020 Democratic National Convention. The push to get out the Native vote is strong; it’s sometimes credited for swinging the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Every election cycle, Native communities and individuals grapple with a web of dilemmas: Are polling stations accessible? Are any of the candidates not directly hostile to Indigenous interests? Is voting in American elections compatible with Native cultural value systems? And, ultimately, is it even worth doing? This year marks the centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act, which theoretically gave Native people the right to vote in U.S. elections — though it was several decades before all 50 states actually honored it.…

TEN YEARS AGO, hundreds of people gathered in a dusty wash underneath a freeway overpass 80 miles east of Las Vegas, near the town of Bunkerville, Nevada. They arrived at the behest of a reedy-voiced 68-year-old man in a cowboy hat — Cliven Bundy, who owned a 160-acre farm there but grazed his cattle illegally on the federal land around it. In April 2014, Bundy urged people to support him in his fight against the federal government. “Now it’s time to get on our boots and I guess make our stand,” Cliven said on a phone call to a right-wing YouTube show. At the time, Bundy, who owed the Bureau of Land Management more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees, had already defied several court orders demanding he remove…

THIS NOVEMBER, most of the nation will be transfixed by the presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But there’s also plenty to see downballot in the West. SHIFTING AFFILIATIONS Arizona has long been home to old-fashioned Barry Goldwater-style conservatives. But MAGA hijacked the state Republican Party, alienating its more moderate members. Republican John Giles, for example, the mayor of Mesa, endorsed Kamala Harris. The shift gives Rep. Ruben Gallego, a progressive-turned-moderate Democrat, an edge over election-denying Trump acolyte Kari Lake, R, in the race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who veered from left to right politically before finally dropping her “D” in 2022. Democrats might even win control of the state Legislature for the first time in decades. ▪ It’s a long shot, but…