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Hear from the folks that live, breathe and know the national parks best.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first edition of the Safe Travels Podcast. My name is Joey. I'm currently at Grand Canyon National Park here at my campground, and this morning I had the opportunity to sit down with Jason Nez, who is a fire archaeologist here at the park. He's also part of Navajo Nation.
Joey Liberatore:We had a great candid conversation about the rich cultural history here at the park, and we also talked about the details of his job as a fire archaeologist. We have a lot to talk about. Your job is incredibly fascinating and, you know, the goal of this podcast is really to teach current visitors and future visitors all about the canyon and how to view it in different ways and, you know, what makes the canyon special. And I think something something that's really unique to me about Grand Canyon is when you look at it, you're looking at an open Facebook of geological history from the rocks at the bottom being 1, 000, 000, 000 of years old to standing on 250, 000, 000 year old rock at the top. But beyond that, there's a lot of cultural history that I wanna talk about with you and a lot of stories that are buried in that rock and can be seen in that rock as well.
Joey Liberatore:So I just wanna start there and talk about, you know, some of the culture that exists within the park and, the native history that exists within Grand Canyon.
Jason Nez:Yeah, so here at Grand Canyon we have what we can prove with physical evidence is over 12000 years of human occupation. So we have artifacts dating back to the Clovis period about 12, 000, 12, 000 BC and most recently there was an exciting find in White Sands where they found footprints that were that dated back to 23000 years ago. So now we we have an older culture out there that's 12000 years before Clovis and I think that right now we're sort of scientists archaeologists we're trying to figure out what the markers are, what the artifact assemblage might be from this older culture but definitely the indigenous occupation of Grand Canyon goes back to time immemorial.
Joey Liberatore:I saw this video of you talking about when you view the Grand Canyon, you view, you know, ancestries from life to death to, what you just mentioned, the artifacts that you find on the rocks. What are ways that visitors when they come to Grand Canyon can pay respect to that and understand that they're they're on a living memorial for a lot of special, you know, ancestries.
Jason Nez:I think that a lot of visitors when they come here, they need to change their mindset. The Grand Canyon isn't just this awesome and beautiful geologic feature it's not just a place full of natural wonders like birds and other animals and it's not even just a place of plants. It's a place of human connections and I think that when we try to separate all of the little things that make up what the Grand Canyon is, we tend to confuse it. When we cart when we compartmentalize it, it becomes a distraction because we're constantly focused on that but I think that if in visitors if if visitors were able to embrace sort of our indigenous way of looking at things which is everything is connected everything is holistic and Navajo it's, hazon, nazhona everything is beautiful and everything is balanced. So when we think of the Grand Canyon and other places like this as balanced and beautiful, we think of everything as a whole rather than focus on just what's in front of us.
Jason Nez:And when we think of the when we think of nature that way, we incorporate all of the human connections and all of the animal connections and this amazing canyon, you're seeing all of the human connections, all this amazing canyon, you're seeing all of the human connections, all of our culture, all of our language, all of our religion from time immemorial all of it you take in with just 1 look. With just a few seconds of being quiet and listening to the to the canyon on the edge you'll hear birds, you'll hear people, you'll hear all of the sounds of nature, but you're also hearing this lifetime of indigenous use and indigenous occupation here.
Joey Liberatore:How would you recommend for people coming to the Grand Canyon, to invest or educate themselves prior to getting into the canyon so that when they do arrive here and they do look out in the canyon, they do recognize everything you had just mentioned?
Jason Nez:I I think there's a lot of ways that people can get ready for coming here and for me as an indigenous American I advocate to people like you know stop by your nearest reservation, stop by your neighbors, you probably have indigenous neighbors and they'll give you some insight into how to experience a place like this and to me that's the only way because you can't learn it from a book, you can't learn it from a TV show. It's something that you have to experience.
Joey Liberatore:When we talk about the history and the culture of indigenous tribes that have existed and continue to exist in Grand Canyon National Park, you know, there's there's always a, you know, a a tough story to tell behind that. And when the Grand Canyon became a national park in the 1900, how did that affect the tribes and how does that continue to affect the tribes today?
Jason Nez:So a lot of what happened in the past is very traumatic for a lot of indigenous peoples. We're over 300 years since Columbus arrived, we're over 200 years since the American government was established, and all of the things that have happened since. And those traumas aren't just personal experiences, they're passed down. We have parents and grandparents that went to boarding schools, and they were forced to unlearn a lot of the the things they learned and we were encouraged to leave our traditions behind, leave our language behind, and leave our culture low self esteem, it comes out in alcoholism, it comes out in low self esteem, it comes out in alcoholism, it comes out with domestic violence. All of all of those negative things are the result of this past trauma and exclusion.
Jason Nez:And here at Grand Canyon a lot of our tribes were removed from this area starting in the late 1800s and that exclusion of indigenous use and indigenous occupation has led to this massive unhealthy field build up. It led to the potential for catastrophic fires that didn't used to occur and that's just a result of us not being here. And later on in the late 1800s, the Navajo, we were removed from the Desert View area in 18/97 by the Coconino County Sheriff's posse, Ralph Cameron, who in the old days of this park they idolize him. They talk about him, Ralph Cameron did this, Ralph Cameron did that, and when in reality he was he was a criminal, he was a walking crime against humanity and then later on, even into the 1900 or the early 1900s, park service people burned down the Havasupai village that was within the park boundary and that's another great trauma that's still close. So, we deal with all these things every day, every time we come here and we look for ways to move past it.
Jason Nez:We work for we look for ways to avoid repeating those mistakes and I think that it's heavy on a lot of people's minds when they come here.
Joey Liberatore:The the tribes that were forced out of Grand Canyon, where do they relocate and how difficult is that to relocate when you have generations of people who have learned to farm on these lands and gather resources on these lands? And when you put them in a new location, how difficult that has that been, for those tribes to to leave the park and relearn?
Jason Nez:Yeah. So it's it's this ongoing issue that indigenous people face. We're trying to reconnect we're trying to find those relationships that we once had that we lost when we were moved out. The Havasupai people were moved down to Supai village down in the Grand Canyon and limited to just 500 acres The whole tribe was limited there. The Navajos were forced on to our reservation and the Hopis that were using the area were forced on to their reservations, the Paiutes in the north were forced way out of the area.
Jason Nez:So it's not just my tribe it's this collective exclusion and trauma that we're dealing with.
Joey Liberatore:I do want to go back to something you said earlier about when tribes left the Grand Canyon it left, a massive gap for explosive fires to go on within the canyon. Can you elaborate on that and you know how that process occurs?
Jason Nez:So in my job as a fire archaeologist, working with our fire management program to help facilitate, fuel reductions to keep our community safe to help facilitate prescribed fires to help keep the environment safe. And the unfortunate reality is that with the exclusion of native people, indigenous people to the reservations it left this it left this gap in the environment that's led to this imbalance. And that imbalance is this fuel build up. A park like Grand Canyon here in the South Rim, we should have 20 to 30 trees an acre but we probably have 2 to 300 trees an acre or more so we've created a very dense tree density that's unhealthy for the trees that are there now and with climate change any fire that gets into it tends to be too hot, it tends to be catastrophic. And that's a direct result of indigenous people being excluded.
Jason Nez:And it continues now with the further exclusion with our laws and policies that don't reflect 23000 years time immemorial of human occupation without us the environment becomes sick and unhealthy It needs us back, it needs indigenous people using this landscape and its resources in the way we've done for over 23000 years now.
Joey Liberatore:Has the Grand Canyon made, you know, strides in the area to include indigenous people in resources and occupations like this within the park?
Jason Nez:Yeah. I'm proud of the way this park has moved forward. Nothing's gonna be perfect. Nothing that that anyone does is gonna make up for all of the all of the bad things that have happened but we've taken those steps to include indigenous interpretation include indigenous stories and actually give us give us sort of this footing back in the canyon to be able to tell our history, our culture, and the way we see fit at places like like desert view at places around the park we're in we're changing the information on kiosks we've renamed Indian gardens to Havasupai Gardens to reflect their close cultural ties that go back a long time. So, yeah, I think we're making great steps forward, and I think that we'll be a model for other parks around the country.
Joey Liberatore:I'm glad you mentioned Desert View because Desert View is a point of emphasis for the Grand Canyon right now and developing that area into an area of resource for visitors to come and learn about, indigenous people and the tribes that have existed and continue to exist within the Grand Canyon. How important is that for the Grand Canyon to invest in an area like that where visitors can congregate and learn from, tribal members themselves? There's 11 tribes that are included in the planning of of this project.
Jason Nez:I think it's super important because, all of our parks, our recreation areas, our forest service, they've we've we be included we've compartmentalized people out of the picture and when we overemphasize nature, important and beautiful as it is, when we overemphasize the animals, when we overemphasize the trees, we're excluding this human and environmental relationship. And when we leave humans out of it, when we don't talk about them, when we don't acknowledge them, we forget about them. And all of a sudden, we have these unhealthy landscapes. But when we bring humans back into the story at places like Desert View, we're re establishing relationship, we're re establishing balance with the environment, which is going to become critical as things change in the environment, as the climate becomes hotter, as we have less and less water, we're going to have to look back on lessons from our ancestors to learn how to survive, we're going to have to look to this relationship that we've underrepresented, and we're going to have to start learning how to talk about it. We're going to have to start learning how to incorporate all of that, what we tend what we call traditional ecological knowledge that's out there.
Joey Liberatore:I, my time being here at the Grand Canyon this week it amazes me looking out into the canyon and how breathtakingly large it is and some of the hikes going down just knowing that I have to climb all the way back out. And then it puts everything in more into perspective when I think about this conversation that we have, the people who have lived here, as you mentioned, over 20000 years ago, and you're continuing to find evidence, of human life, that predates anything that we can, you know, memorialize. And so, you know, we have to encourage listeners and people who visit the park to remember that when they visit Grand Canyon to invest in the human culture as you just mentioned and to put human to land here. I remember I watched in the documentary Voices of the Canyon that the Canyon is is living. It's a it's a living place for a lot of people.
Joey Liberatore:And so when you simpleize kicking rocks or littering, you're disrespecting 1, 000 of years of heritage and culture, that people have called home. Can you can you speak to that and, you know, people when they do visit and respecting, you know, the the land that they're walking on?
Jason Nez:Yeah. So when we look at a place like the Grand Canyon when we can change the way we think about it and start thinking about it as alive we can look at our impacts and we can see the pain and hardships we're causing not just to the canyon but the people that associate with this place. When we litter, when we damage the the environment here we're damaging people with a close cultural connection, we're damaging people's self esteem. When we take care of this place, we take care of the people that come from this place. This place is a part of many tribes' DNA.
Jason Nez:It's part of our spirituality. It's part of our religion. What happens to this place, happens to us. And what happens to us, happens to this place. So a lot of indigenous people we take care of ourselves to take care of places like this and vice versa.
Jason Nez:We take care of this place. I do my job to the best of my ability. I'm taking care of not just my own people, but indigenous people and people around the world.
Joey Liberatore:I'm glad you said that because that's what I wanted to talk about. Next is your impact on the Grand Canyon and your specific role in preserving these archaeological sites and the findings of, you know, tribal history and indigenous people. Can you go into your all like
Jason Nez:all like a lot of indigenous tribes throughout the country we recognize the natural processes that it takes to have a healthy environment. We recognize the need for floods, we recognize the need for rains, we recognize the need for fire. There's a lot of mistakes that managers have taken in the past and part of those mistakes has been the exclusion of fire. And part of my job is facilitating the reintroduction of fire to the landscape, to the reintroduction of healthy fire to restore the balance that's out there. So I look at the landscapes and I identify resources that we need to protect, for compliance with federal law.
Jason Nez:Using my cultural background using my scientific education in environmental science and using my experience as an archaeologist helps me help managers make a better decision when it comes to prescribed fire. Should we burn or should we not burn? And I can say we got this many sites out there and 3 of those need fuel reductions, they need treatment, they need shelter wrap. So we'll go take care of that so we can have this fire and help keep the environment healthy. And that's been a lot of my role here and, I think that I take great pride in it because it helps take care of resources that are out there and it helps take care of the environment and everyone wins when we start restoring these balances.
Joey Liberatore:You talked about the decision making and the process of which sites you burn and which sites you don't. Can you take us through the process of what a healthy burn actually looks like? How do you start that process? How do you end the process?
Jason Nez:So we have we we're we're always pre planning here in the park and part of that is identifying certain units or blocks that we're going to burn within like 5 years we're going to burn this unit, 10 years we're going to burn this unit and part of my job is looking at those units and determining do we know what's out there? Do we have enough survey coverage? Do we need to put boots on the ground and go out implement some survey to see what's out there so that we can protect it? And when we know what's out there then we're able to provide information to say hey, we got 25 sites in this unit of those 20 3 are fire sensitive so we just need to take care of 3. And, the remaining sites have burned multiple times in past fires over the past 300 years, 1200 years, 23 100 years and a lot of our sites actually need fire to stay healthy.
Jason Nez:We don't think of sites as living but for a lot of us Indigenous people even our cultural sites what we call archaeological archaeological sites they need the same things that we need. They need water. They need they need fire. So fire comes in it burns off the fuel buildup so all of the fires afterwards are going to be light. It's just going to be burning through the grass and the fire will be over within 30 minutes but if we have an unhealthy build up on top of those sites the fire can burn for hours, if not days, and it can burn intensely.
Jason Nez:That intense heat can cause discoloration of artifacts, it can cause structures to burn, it can cause the soil to change, and it can have all manner of adverse effects that we got to look at. So when we find these sites and we know they're out there we can go out we can remove the fuels we can look at the different options we can cut line around it we can station a fire engine there with water so we can put the fire out if it gets too hot but for me I'm looking at these sites and recognizing that they need fire so I want us to be able to burn as close as we can to get rid of that fuel so that the next fire that the chances of it impacting the site are gonna be a lot less.
Joey Liberatore:We talk about the fires that the Grand Canyon manages, but what about, natural fires that occur whether it be from a lightning strike or or something within the park? What's your role in that?
Jason Nez:So during the summer fire season, the monsoons when we we start to get multiple lightning strikes per day, we're always looking at the potential to manage 1 what we call, wildfire use fire. So when we have a wildfire use fire what we call a wufu, we'll look at the area and see if it's part of a plan. So let's say, we want to burn in 2 years in this unit and we'll look at that we'll see what resources we have out there and make a determination okay we're going to let this fire burn naturally within these boundaries It probably won't get that big but we'll be monitoring it, we'll be keeping an eye on it, we'll bring in wildfire use module people that specialize in coming out and and dealing with those things and I'll work with those crews, I'll be out on the fire, if we have to dig any lines or do any prep work, I'll be checking for resources, I'll be checking our survey data to see what might be affected and helping managers like, okay, the same thing I do with prescribed fire. We got this many sites this is what it's going to take to protect them.
Jason Nez:I can get it done with a crew of 5 in like 5 days or a week and help them make better decisions too. And in addition to cultural resources I also get a lot of information from our science center here in the park. So I'm getting input from wilderness recreation specialists, from wildlife specialists, from our hydrologists, all of the information to say okay we shouldn't burn this area, we shouldn't burn this area, the birds are nesting, it's breeding season, like factors like that start to come in and we incorporate that into our fire management plans too.
Joey Liberatore:It's amazing. You talk about, you know, indigenous artifacts in the Grand Canyon. How does that play a role in, your fire management? I saw in your office you have the map with all the sites. Yeah.
Joey Liberatore:So how does that play a role with the fire?
Jason Nez:So we've over the past decade, we've developed our the information we use to help us make fast decisions so we've identified a lot of our fire sensitive resources which can be rock art panels, it can be old hogan's, old sweat lodges, brush structures, it can be historic camps that are out there that meet the values that define it as a cultural resource site. And we have those identified and we have our plans to whatever kind of work they need. So on my map it says we need to dig a line around it, we need to apply water or foam or we need to reduce the fuels around it or wrap it with shelter wrap. So all of that information is there already and all of our pre planning helps us make a fast a fast decision and it helps reduce stress and and increases the safety for people on the ground too.
Joey Liberatore:I found it interesting that, even some of the decisions that you make are what's underground too, so if you were to have a bulldozer out there respecting the land, that might be a memorial or or might have artifacts of history. Yeah.
Jason Nez:And part of part of the decision making process is knowing how artifacts can be affected. A lot of our culture resources they're fire adapted, they're fire resilient there's sherds on the ground, there's lithics on the ground that have burned repeatedly Here at the south rim of the Grand Canyon we have a 7 to 10 year fire return interval So for the past 12000 years we've probably been getting a fire every 10 years. So in a 100 years we've had 10 fires, in a 1000 years we've had a 100 fires and that's what keeps the sites healthy. So recognizing that a lot of our sites burn and our sites need fire it allows natural fire to move across the landscape and not have to create more disturbances by digging lines around rooms trying to dig line around every artifact but recognizing fire is going to help these sites in the long term. And we recognize that here in the park and we allow a lot of natural fires to occur and in other areas like the forest they'll be using other techniques to contain fires, bulldozers and handlines and their archaeologists, I often work with them a lot and will be out making sure that those ground disturbances don't impact the sites fire isn't going to impact the site but a bulldozer will, a retardant drop will so not just in this area but around the country other archaeologists other fire archaeologists are working within those those parameters of how fire can affect the sites and how suppression can affect the sites and what it's gonna take to allow healthy fire to happen.
Joey Liberatore:As it pertains to visitors, campers, hikers, do you see much, no fire starting from the campgrounds here or what are precautionary steps that visitors can take to make sure that they're not, you know, adding to what could be eventually a dangerous fire in the future?
Jason Nez:Yeah. Here here in the park our current laws and regulations say we can only have campfires in developed areas, and 1 of the reasons we limit camping to the developed areas is that so that we don't have these adverse impacts to the environment. Having people just camp anywhere causes the animals to be stressed. It causes stress on the local resources, and it causes it raises the chances of a wildfire, someone's campfire getting away or something like that. So, part of managing a park like this is determining where people can camp and where they can't camp.
Jason Nez:So we ask that people stay within those areas and adhere to the to the rules regarding campfires and all that.
Joey Liberatore:I know when it comes to, hikers and going off trail can be play a significant impact in erosion and erode, you know, the surface of the park even faster than maybe naturally. Yeah. Does going off trail as a hiker, does that maybe aid fires in terms of moving soil or eroding soil in areas that it shouldn't
Jason Nez:be? Yeah, any type of movement on the landscape starts to cause impacts to natural and cultural resources and here in the park we want people to stay on the trails, we want people to stay within those already areas and that's what it's going to take to help preserve and protect the the environment.
Joey Liberatore:How many active archaeological dig sites are there within the park from, from like a human history cultural standpoint?
Jason Nez:So we don't have any excavations going on right now and the the park service as with any federal unit we have consultation with the different tribes and a lot of our tribes it's our determination that any excavation would have an adverse impact to the site itself acknowledging that the site is alive and it has deep cultural connections. So tribes like my tribe, the Navajo tribe, we ask that people just leave things alone and they're better left alone for for our own reasons, and I think a lot of tribes have a similar attitude. But when we do have excavation like when we had 10 years ago the what we call the Grand Archaeology Project which was a series of excavations on the Colorado River we had input from the different tribes. Tribes were able to come in and participate, they were able to look at the artifacts and give their input and give their interpretation of things. So, we're able to work together to save these sites from erosion and ultimately that was why the excavation occurred was because these sites were eroding away.
Jason Nez:So, we're able to work together and preserve these sites and protect them for the future.
Joey Liberatore:When it comes to fire and the tribes that currently live within the Grand Canyon, how does your team in the Grand Canyon support them when they're faced with a fire or when they need to do a controlled burn of their own?
Jason Nez:So even though I work here in the park and we have resources in the park we have a helitack crew, we have a wildland crew we also help the different agencies and the tribes around us. So we're able to respond to fires on the Havasupai reservation to our our west and we can also respond to fires on the Navajo reservation to the east and on the north rim where we have areas that are associated with the Paiute tribes. So when we're managing and fighting fires up there we're protecting their resources too. So that's just within our region but nationally all of us our engines, helicopter, and our fellow resource advisor and archaeologists we respond to fires throughout the country and we bring our experience and our knowledge to fires in California, Oregon, and New Mexico. So it's not just this area that we're working in, we're also helping out across the country.
Joey Liberatore:You alluded to it a little earlier, but I find it fascinating that when there is a fire whether it's a controlled burn or, you know, a naturally caused fire, that there's a a team that specializes in various areas of the burn. So I was reading that, you know, there might be, someone who specializes, in, you know, in tree and grass controlled burns.
Jason Nez:Yeah.
Joey Liberatore:Someone in more towards water. And as that fire starts approach different ecosystems, they'd be able to give better input on how to stop it or how to, navigate it. Can you talk a little bit about that process and who goes into getting selected? Who goes to each site?
Jason Nez:Yeah. So throughout the country we have different incident management teams that work in specific areas, areas that are timber, areas that are grassland, areas that are mixed, wildland urban interface, which is where houses are built into the trees and areas that burn and they bring the teams are made of people from all of the different disciplines people that specialize in structure fire, wildland fire, and people that specialize in the resources to a particular area. And as fire season gets going these teams will go throughout the country deal with those resources in those areas facilitate suppressing or managing the fires and consulting with local units, their resource specialists. Grand Canyon, what kind of birds do you have out here? Grand Canyon, what kind of fish do you have out here?
Jason Nez:And how do we how is this fire gonna affect them and how do we mitigate those effects?
Joey Liberatore:Well, your role certainly fills a lot of stuff in terms of, you know, work within the Grand Canyon and preserving, you know, historic sites and, working to educate visitors that come to the Grand Canyon. What's 1, you know, final thing that you wanna give to visitors when they visit the park whether it be from a a resource standpoint or from a from an education culture standpoint?
Jason Nez:Yeah. I think that the best way that people can help us protect a park like this is to learn about it, to engage with it, to come here and experience with it. And I think that's the best thing they can do with it. They can come here and see natural processes at work. They can come here and experience the indigenous connections we have to this place, and that's the best thing they can do for it.
Joey Liberatore:Finally, I just wanna give you a moment to talk about what personally Grand Canyon means to you, in your life and and what it continues to mean to you every day.
Jason Nez:So a lot of my connection to the canyon goes way back to when I was a kid growing up on the Navajo reservation at this place called Coal Mine Mesa. And where I grew up, you can see the canyon and profile every day. At night the sun sets behind the Grand Canyon. During the day I can see South Rim, I can see North Rim for most of my life and growing up my grandmother was a very traditional person and she would refer to this place as this emergence place and knowing that, hearing that all my life, I recognized that the Grand Canyon is an emergence place. It's an emergence place for some of our Navajo clans.
Jason Nez:It's an emergence place for some of our neighboring tribes, and it has the same value that we would give to a human mother. That same value, that same connection we also give to the Grand Canyon and that's 1 of the reasons why we go out and we protect and preserve this place to the best of our abilities.
Joey Liberatore:Was there a turning point in your life where you knew that the Grand Canyon was the place that you wanted to protect and preserve?
Jason Nez:I think I've always I've always known that and felt that and for me being an archaeologist looking back at time I've seen and learned about the different threats of this place The the mining that they wanted to do here, the dams they wanted to do here, and most recently this Escalade project where they wanted to build this tram into the canyon and before my employment here with the park 1 of my pride moments that I look back that I'll always talk about is helping the local families fight against that development and not just local families but also the associated tribes and helping them keep this great desecration from happening. And I've recognized that my place in this world is going to be protecting and preserving places like this because of those deep cultural connections, because I recognize that this place is the mother of some of our clans and the mother of some of our tribes and I would protect it accordingly.
Joey Liberatore:Yeah. That's amazing. I you know, we could talk forever, but you just mentioned some of the projects that would have directly affected Grand Canyon and the history of its people and, you know, the Canyon effectively of itself. And, you know, I think when people come here, especially first time visitors to any national park, you think of ease of access. I wanna see the Colorado River, but I can't from most of the rim.
Joey Liberatore:Right? You can you can see parts of it at Desert View. But when you talk about projects like that, the escalator project that might maybe enhance access to the park
Jason Nez:Yeah.
Joey Liberatore:What are the cons of that? I know you alluded to a little bit, but there's there's a reason why those projects can't exist within the park while also keeping the purity of the park and then the health of the park alive.
Jason Nez:So management has changed over the past 100 years since the inception of the park service and the forest service. At 1 time, managing a park used to be, we need to build hotels, we need to make visitation easy, we need to, we need to be able to bring 1, 000, hundreds of people here a day. We need to have animals for them to pet. We need to have people here to serve them, but over time we've evolved to this more natural viewpoint of visitation that to come here you need to experience it. You need to experience the heat.
Jason Nez:You need to experience the struggle of hiking in and out, you need to experience the viewscape, the soundscape, and to some extent the smellscape even. And until you experience all of those, you're never going to truly experience this place and I think that now we recognize that part of that experience is part of what makes this place special. And when we do crazy things like building trams, building mines in the canyon, building mines near the canyon, it distracts from that. It removes that experience that we owe everyone in this world when they come here.
Joey Liberatore:Yeah. I love that. That's great. And to your point, I've tried the Bright Angel and the South Kaibab Trail. They are difficult.
Joey Liberatore:You really feel the canyon when you're doing those trails.
Jason Nez:When you work here long enough like just hiking up and down to me it's like put my headphones on. I'll be on top in 3 hours and I'll be flying.
Joey Liberatore:That's incredible. Well, Jason, thank you so much for the time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Your story is incredible. Your work here is amazing.
Joey Liberatore:So thank you for everything that you do for the people who visit here and, everything you do to connect people, you know, with the ancestry of the canyon and the tribes that have existed and continue to exist here.
Jason Nez:Yeah. Thanks for having me, and, thanks everyone for listening. And come come in and enjoy your part.
Joey Liberatore:Thanks for checking out this edition of the safe travels podcast. It was such a joy getting to learn from Jason Nez. And if you enjoy this type of content, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching from as it really does help out our channel and until next time, safe travels.