Beyond the Pines with Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter
15 episodes listed below
Sacred land, defended in full context.
Land Defenders centers the people resisting damage to sacred lands in the Greater Grand Canyon region. Its interviews move patiently through uranium mining, Snowbowl, tribal consultation, water protection, and the moral divide between stewardship and extraction.
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Land Defenders is an interview-driven series rooted in the lands of the Greater Grand Canyon region. It treats conservation as inseparable from Indigenous rights, cultural memory, and the defense of sacred places. The show is not casual environmental chatter. It is grave, deliberate, and openly committed to the people challenging extraction, desecration, and weak consultation. Much of its recent work circles the Peaks and Snowbowl. Those episodes bring together legal history, agency accountability, Diné cultural connections, and testimony from people who understand the conflict as more than a local land-use dispute. Dr. Chris Jocks is used to explain how Snowbowl was allowed to operate on a sensitive sacred place. Shawn Mulford appears in a student-supported mini-series focused on defense of the Peaks and Diné cultural connections. Laura Jo West speaks from the perspective of a former Coconino Forest Service Supervisor, reflecting on management, Snowbowl, tribal relationships, and the hard structure required for meaningful collaboration. The show also looks outward. An episode with Sabrina Mathues ManyGoats addresses uranium mining in the Southwest and Navajo Nation, including the threat of renewed extraction and the role of monument protections. Janine Phillips connects the Peaks to a larger celestial frame, including concerns about mining, power plants, memorials, and colonization proposals on the moon. Cora Maxx-Phillips brings the conversation back to nature's laws, sacredness, spirituality, biodiversity, and the deep conflict between Indigenous worldview philosophies and Western values. The result is a show that moves from place to policy and back again. It is patient. It lets guests build their arguments in layers, often beginning with personal or cultural grounding before reaching law, agency behavior, science, or public accountability. The editorial stance is clear: land is not treated as inventory, and consultation is not treated as a checkbox. That clarity gives the series its strength. It is best for listeners who want environmental politics with moral weight, regional specificity, and a sustained focus on Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.
Made for: For listeners interested in Indigenous rights, sacred-site protection, public lands, and water conservation in the Greater Grand Canyon region. It especially suits those who prefer long-form testimony and policy history over quick news summaries.
What sets it apart: Land Defenders stands apart by letting regional land defenders, students, and cultural knowledge holders speak at length. Its focus stays specific: the Peaks, Snowbowl, uranium mining, tribal consultation, and the Grand Canyon region as contested sacred ground.
Stories from Land Defenders at the forefront of conservation in the Greater Grand Canyon Region.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Land Defenders makes public-lands policy legible through sustained attention to tribal sovereignty, institutional responsibility and the people protecting sacred places.
Matea builds Land Defenders around patient interviews about conflicts in the Greater Grand Canyon region, connecting decisions over uranium mining, forest management and Snowbowl to tribal sovereignty and the defense of sacred places.
Snowbowl leads you from Forest Service procedure all the way to the moon.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear look at uranium mining, land protections, and the stakes of extraction.
Land Defenders treats uranium mining and land protections as the core dispute in the Greater Grand Canyon region. The episode stays close to mineral extraction and the prospect of more mines, while also giving real weight to the nearly one million acre national monument and the…
A measured interview about Peaks, Snowbowl, and the practical work of stewardship.
Laura Jo West anchors the first part by tying Peaks and Snowbowl to the broader effort to protect sacred places in the greater Grand Canyon region.
A focused look at trust, continuity, and tribal consultation around the Peaks and Snowbowl.
The episode returns to Laura Jo West and the Peaks and Snowbowl question with a sharper focus on how the Forest Service works with tribes without flattening that relationship into procedure.
A serious episode that ties the Peaks to the moon and Indigenous governance.
Land Defenders uses Janine Phillips' conversation to connect the Peaks to a wider frame: the moon, Indigenous governance, and the habit of treating separate knowledge systems as if they belong apart. It is serious about sacred place without turning it into a slogan.
A land-defense conversation linking sacred sites, biodiversity, and Indigenous stewardship.
Land Defenders follows Cora Max Phillips, a Peaks Defender for decades, as it frames sacred land and Indigenous stewardship around the greater Grand Canyon region and the unceded homelands of over 13 tribal nations.
Regional sustainability, explained through real-world change.
Campus, community, and faith in eastern Idaho.
Climate progress, measured against reality.
Accountability radio for serious citizens.
Two white settler women, Hilary Giovale (author of "Becoming a Good Relative") and Lydia Breunig, discuss their relationship to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff and Snowbowl ski resort.
Matea opens a new Land Defenders series on mineral extraction in the Greater Grand Canyon region, with uranium mining at the center of it.
Matea opens from the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter in Flagstaff.
Land Defenders opens by placing the conversation on the unceded homelands of over 13 tribal nations in Flagstaff and framing the greater Grand Canyon region as home base.
Land Defenders begins in the greater Grand Canyon region.
Land Defenders opens from the unceded homelands of over 13 tribal nations in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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This episode features an interview with Allen Stewart about the ecological dangers of using reclaimed wastewater at Snowbowl Ski Resort, part of a mini-series by NAU students in partnership with the Sierra Club.
This episode introduces a mini-series on Snowbowl Ski Resort, featuring an interview with Shawn Mulford about Diné cultural connections and defense of the San Francisco Peaks.
This episode features an interview with Shawn Mulford about the defense of the San Francisco Peaks and Diné cultural connections in relation to Snowbowl Ski Resort.