News from rural America.

This week, we’re taking a dive into autumn with Daily Yonder reporter Julia Tilton who brings us a story about fall leaves in New England. Then, Daily Yonder data reporter, Sarah Melotte, talks to us about Flock cameras and how rural communities are pushing back against automated license plate readers. American Creed: Citizen Power is a new PBS series. We talk to Jonathan Blair and Sam Schimmel, who are both featured on the new series, about how their respective lives in Alaska and eastern Kentucky compare and contrast. Then we have a conversation from the Rural Faith Initiative featuring Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies, and Mistie Johnson, who runs Ignite Ministry in Neon, Kentucky. Reporter Nhatt Nichols bring us to the Olympic Peninsula to a bird sanctuary where the local tribe is trying to expand protections. Finally, from southwest Colorado we bring you a bookstore owner’s favorite rural book. Our featured musical guest this week is from Seward, Alaska — Blackwater Railroad, a band who puts on a rocking good show.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Charity.

We host of Yonder Radio Rural Conversations with National Reach and indeed is here I am in Colorado where it's near peak leaf season and Julia Tilton, Daily Yonder reporter, she's in New England doing a story on how climate change is affecting leaf season.

And we have that.

Then also from Daily Yonder, data reporter Sarah Mallott doing a story on flock cameras in rural America.

And there's a new show on PBS.

American Creed Citizen Power is a new PBS series.

And we talked to two of the people on that show.

Two different parts of the country they grew up in.

But there's a lot of similarities.

And we are so excited to share this show as it goes on PBS.

And then from Rural Faith Initiative, Dee Davis, the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, talking to Misty Johnson, who runs Ignite Ministry in Neon, Kentucky.

Nat Nichols brings us an incredible story about how a tribe is trying to expand protections on a sanctuary and Blackwater Railroad in Alaska Band.

They're crushing it and going global.

We'll talk to them.

That's all on Yonder Radio.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you.

Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reach.

Hello, my name is Jared Ewee.

Thanks for coming back.

We have an incredible hour today.

We have the information for you, a conversation on flock cameras and also climate change.

We're going to be talking about that.

Blackwater Railroad out of Alaska.

Awesome band.

They are going global.

We're going to talk to them first, and Nat Nichols goes to Protection Island to tell an incredible story.

That's all in the way.

But first, simmer down, everybody, because we've got a chill in the air.

Autumn is here, here in Colorado, not to brag, but the mountainsides are lined with golden aspen leaves.

It is peak leaf right now.

We've got pumpkin carving, apple cider.

The PSL people are insufferable.

But changing climates could lead to a change in what fall looks like across the country.

Daily Yonder reporter Julia Tilton has more on how this is affecting the New England fall.

It's that time of year where there is yellow, red, and orange-colored magic beginning to appear along New England's rural byways.

But as fall foliage flaunts its showy colors and communities prepare for carloads of tourists, climate change is adding unwelcome uncertainty.

Each year, leaf-peeping tourism brings an $8 billion windfall to New England, per 2023 estimates from the U.S.

Forest Service.

In New Hampshire, meteorologist and foliage expert Jim Salgie has been predicting peak foliage windows for decades.

In terms of rural America, nothing brings tourism dollars people to rural towns in New England like fall foliage.

People want to experience that small-town, quaint culture.

They want to see the leaves behind the white-steepled church and the town halls and the tree-lined streets and the farms and the farm stands and the fairs and things like that.

But as climate change brings warmer temperatures and more precipitation to the northeast, Selgy worries that pests could threaten New England's forests.

The changing and warming climate is allowing invasive species to gain a foothold, gain a competitive advantage as well.

For instance, wetter conditions can result in leaf fungus growing on trees throughout the region.

This can devastate sugar maples, which are known for their bright red colors.

Other pests, like the emerald ash borer, can kill infected trees in just three to four years, and they pose a grave danger to ash trees across North America.

In New England, winters that once killed off these pests are increasingly not reaching their historic low cold temperatures.

This year, though, the next few weeks are shaping up to be your best chance of the season to enjoy this classic New England show.

Don't forget your camera and your apple cider.

For Yonder Radio, I'm Julia Tilton.

Well, thank you, Julia.

Now we have another story from the Daily Yonder.

It's a completely different direction from fall leaves.

This is the flock. communities around the country have started pushing back against these automatic license plate readers, ALPRs.

Today, we have Sarah Mallott on to talk about the data behind where Flock cameras are in rural areas.

Well, among the social media noise, and it could just be my algorithm, but Sarah Mallott, I see a lot about Flock on Instagram and TikTok, wherever I am.

And now I see it bleeding into Facebook.

And actually, I see it uniting people that I otherwise wouldn't see agreeing on Flock and their opinion.

But before we get to the opinion part, you've done a story on Flock for the Daily Yonder.

And you're asking the question, are rural communities using Flock?

And I think we just spoiled this mystery right away.

Are rural communities using Flock?

Yes, they are using Flock cameras.

If you look at a map of where Flock cameras are, you'll see that a majority of them are concentrated in metro areas, but that's just because of the fact that people live in cities and they're just high population centers, but there actually are a growing number of rural law enforcement agencies that are using flock cameras or that have contracts with automated license plate reader companies.

One of those companies, the most famous one is flock, but there are a lot of different brands.

According to my analysis from data from the Atlas of Surveillance, there are about 800 rural agencies that have contracts with Flock or a similar brand.

So we'll get to the critics, but clearly there are fans if they're signing up contracts for these areas.

What are the advantages of Flock?

What are the Flock fans telling you?

Yeah, the Flock pitch is that these cameras save resource-strapped agencies time and money.

You know, they always appeal to the most dramatic examples of what they can do, like finding a missing child.

The pitch is that they'll help you solve crimes.

They'll help your team save time and resources.

That's the pitch that Flock gives to communities.

And these really aren't cameras.

You said the words for ALPR.

What is the ALPR?

How do they work?

Yeah, they are cameras that use AI to code people and vehicles.

Flock says that they don't track people.

They track vehicle license plate numbers, but if you look at some of the public records requests that have been released on what FLOC does, what people search for in the FLOC network, people are absolutely searching for individual people, characteristics of individual people.

These cameras are different than traffic cameras because traffic cameras are only used for traffic violations, but ALPRs are used for investigative purposes, and often without warrants or the need for a warrant.

The article is our rural law enforcement agencies using flock cameras at daily yonder.com.

And at the very end of the article, Sarah, you throw up a website where people can see if they've been flocked.

Have I been flocked.com?

Have you been flocked?

Did you search?

I looked up mine.

I have not been flocked, at least not since the data had been updated.

It's a little bit behind.

It's like a few months behind and they update it every few months.

Have you been flocked, Jared?

No, it said it didn't have me.

But then it gave me that disclaimer saying that maybe it wasn't included in the data set.

Yeah.

Now, this brings us to the criticism.

Talk about some of the criticism.

Share with us some of the examples, if you will.

Well, people don't like ALPRs because they don't like to be spied on.

Flock cameras have been misused.

They've been abused.

Officers have used ALPRs to stalk women, track romantic partners and exes.

They have been used to help ICE deport immigrants.

They've been used to help find a woman who is suspected of having an abortion.

And like I said earlier, most agencies can use these networks without a warrant.

And so they can kind of just like search characteristics of anybody that they want to find.

It instills fear and intimidation.

And this is a bipartisan issue, it seems like.

It seems like they're broadly unpopular, despite more and more agencies signing contracts with them.

There have been a few examples of agencies trying to back out of contracts because of popular disapproval and people voicing their concerns during town council meetings and county commissioner meetings and things like that.

Yeah, in this one example of a Texas sheriff tracking down a woman who self-administered an abortion, They used 83,000 cameras in an ALPR database.

And they actually had a search term that was discovered they'd used over and over, had an abortion search for female.

That gives me the creeps.

It gives me the creeps too.

I think it's obvious if you read my newsletter what I think about them.

So I'm okay to express, you know, concern and disapproval of them for sure.

I think it's so creepy.

Did you come across examples of, say, rural resistance to the Flock Camera?

Yes, I came across a lot of rural resistance.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of that resistance is happening in South Carolina.

I'm from South Carolina.

Towns like Pageland, South Carolina, and Chester County, and Irmo.

These smaller communities are, you know, people there are fighting back against the cameras and attending town council meetings and telling local leadership what they think.

There's been some vandalism in these communities, too.

I haven't done like an analysis to try to see if like this recent wave of backlash to the cameras is actually making them more unpopular with the agencies that they work with.

But maybe there'll be some reporting about that in the future.

It is definitely a story to follow as it's one of those things quite literally working its way into our lives and people will want to know more.

So thank you so much, Sarah, for doing this work.

Thanks, Jared.

That story from the Daily Yonder, where Sarah is the data reporter.

You can find more of her data reporting in her bi-weekly newsletter, The Rural Index.

And I love talking to this band, Blackwater Railroad.

They are out of Seward, Alaska.

And they put on one heck of a show, complete with Brayden Rollins on saxophone.

Now, we talked to Brayden and frontman Tyson Davis about what Alaska is like, how they have built a following, and what it was like adding a saxophone to a string band. blackwaterrailroad.com beautiful website this picture of seward is just going to attract more people here's my question what is a fjord like dude everyone in the world i think should ride a boat in these fjords at one like at one point in their life they are incredible we're in this like beautiful nest in Seward, but it's all glacially carved.

There's a reason that we live in Seward at the end of the road, which no one who has any sense in music would ever recommend for us to live here.

It makes everything harder, but this place is like, it's a rare place.

As much as all of us have traveled, there are not very many places more beautiful than this.

The density of how much this place like calls to people a lot of people come up for a month and never leave fjords are cool man they're they're rad and i love what you're doing up there because before we started recording tyson you were talking about how it's a real you know diy situation in seward and you're building community through that so before we get into the music i just got to know what is a hatcher romp Alaska doesn't have a lot of infrastructure for really anything.

So if you want something, you kind of have to make it happen yourself or with the help of your community.

But if you have a DIY spirit about you, you can make a lot happen.

That's something that resonated with me coming from North Carolina.

I grew up on a dairy farm.

I've always been entrepreneurial in my spirit and in my family history.

So I came here and I'm like, I can work with all of this.

In the act of doing this band and realizing that there's not a lot of opportunities to be had for artists to showcase what they have, we realized that we could start these sort of DIY festivals and the idea of the romp came to be.

It started with Hatcher Romp.

Now we have two other festivals that we put on around the state as well.

On top of the rest of our tentpole events, we try to rally around the romp.

It looks like the romp is worth rallying around, even if you've got some big round trip airfare.

I mean, this is a big event. yeah we try to keep it at cost affordable once you get here uh and we try to give you resources on where to stay and where to visit there's so much i mean this is a wonderland and it's so vast you could spend the rest of your life here just hiking and not see it all it's a really vibrant uh creative scene here right now the music scene is probably the best it's ever been in alaska's history so it just seemed like the time to try to rally more opportunities for artists to do their thing.

Well, people are excited to see you.

I watched some of your Salmon Fest gig and Brayden, you were going full Clarence Clemens on that Bruce Springsteen song.

You were bringing it and the crowd loved it.

Yeah, we're a high-energy, good vibes band, you know?

You get engaged with the crowd and people are like, oh, I guess we're here, we're doing this.

You almost started a riot at Panorama Pizza, it looked like.

Yeah, on a floating deck, too, that whole time.

And then the whole deck's going up and down.

When we play Denali, it seems remote and there's not a lot going on, but there's like 6,000 college kids that are working there in the park for the whole summer.

They're dying for stuff to do, so bands like us are working the highway.

All summer long, entertaining these kids, and what works out well for us is that all these kids go back to wherever they're going to college.

We built quite a following in the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Western Canada, and Alaska.

Made a DIY following through just doing exactly what you saw at Panorama Pizza.

I see you guys throwing a party and it's just going off.

The music is incredible.

It's upbeat.

But then I see a lot of these videos where you're pretty pensive and you're standing in the mountains in the snow and you're telling an incredible story.

What do people get when they go to a Blackwater Railroad show?

Yeah, we try to hit on the entire wheel of emotion.

I know when I'm writing, I have to work my way out of like sad bastard country and then try to be happy.

Through the act of being in Blackwater and seeing how the music can move people, we really do try to craft these like three hour experiences where we'll take a break in the middle, but it's three hours or you're on a roller coaster.

Sometimes I'm crying on stage.

Sometimes it pulls it down to just a guitar and a story. and then there's just times where it's just absolute jubilation what we hope is that when people show up for shows now it kind of feels like we're offering something that is harder to find year after year where like you come together with your friends and you feel things and you dance and you have joy and you smile with people you never met what did you say about real life?

oh yeah real life is better in real life as we say oh man I just want to hug you caravan is your new album i feel and hear some departure there also in arrival and i think a lot of it is due to brayden because he's added that sax sound but what do you what would you say about caravan as far as people curious as to what it is it's us kind of like dipping our toe into a new world because after covid our fiddle player that we had it was just a beloved part of what we do left the band um we were kind of reeling as though like what are we going to build the sound around because so much of what we do is like these improvised sort of solo jams that'll go and like you know and then we'll come back to a song and that was about the time brayden moved to town we realized that he could do the fiddle licks on the saxophone he could give that spirited sort of performance that we need and then we were but we realized that we need to add drums so that was the biggest addition even more so than the saxophone being a string band going and having drums it just changed the dynamics so much you're going to be touring uh in the 48s but then off to japan how does a seward band get invited to japan oh easy you just meet a guy in spokane you know that's a good plan we were on tour in the pacific northwest and uh we were playing a place called the chameleon in spokane on like a wednesday night to like 30 or 40 people you know we show up every time and we're giving it our all to these 30 or 40 people one of the guys in the audience uh had a connection with a booking agent that does math rock bands to and from japan so we've been just building from from scratch from the ground up no one even knew who we were at all over there but we showed up and we're like what do you think and they they dug it but japan is incredible and what we're doing and like so much of why we're going there is to bring japanese bands to alaska we brought our first band to the romp from japan they had never left tokyo they had never played an outdoor show before and we brought them to alaska and we're like turned on the light for them it was so cool to see it was cool to see alaskans absolutely embrace the japanese music even if they didn't understand the words they knew meant and it was beautiful man well tyson davis brayden rollins blackwaterrailroad.com it's just an honor to talk to you because i absolutely love what i stayed up way too late watching last night on youtube and in the history of blackwater railroad so thank you so much for coming on man thanks jared pleasure that was tyson davis and brayden rollins from blackwater railroad you can find their upcoming shows on their website, blackwaterrailroad.com.

And this is such a great conversation.

We had to cut a lot from it.

So if you want more, check out this week's Pathfinder newsletter at dailyyonder.com.

And now it's time for this week's first trivia clue.

This is why we're here, folks, just to grow the bean.

Okay, we're growing the bean with the first clue.

What geographic location was established from two major agreements, the Treaty of 1818 and the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

And if you're stumped, so am I.

We are together on this journey with all the way, more trivia, clues, and the news from Jan Patolsky on Yonder Radio. guitar solo yonder radio rural conversations with national reach and i gotta say there's nothing that adds to your intellectual cred like interviewing a program from pbs i feel like i've made it we're gonna do that talk about american creed citizen power this documentary we'll be talking about that right after jan patolsky the daily yonder news editor from daily yonder.com jan patolsky what is going on hi jared this week we start with reuters and a story on how democrats are trying to push deeper into Republican territory for the midterms.

A number of Democratic operatives and strategists told Reuters about how they are trying to basically force Republicans into spending more money defending seats that were traditionally considered safe and thereby drawing resources out of those truly competitive ones.

I mean, there's probably a lot of examples, but do you have something that can draw this picture?

One that's really prominent and highlighted in the story is the 9th Congressional District in Tennessee.

It's an example of a district that used to be a Democratic stronghold.

Then it was redrawn and became heavily Republican.

That one district is on the list along with 13 others that were added to the Democratic target list, expanding it to 66 Republican-held seats that are now in the run.

Well, I was going to ask if it's working, but you brought up that perfect example because Trump went to Clarksville, Tennessee, called out Justin Pearson.

And Justin Pearson is now using that in his campaign ad saying that if the president is talking about this little race, then what you're doing and volunteering for me is working.

So it might be working.

And of course, is it working?

That's a great question.

Republicans are trying to play it down.

Democrats are saying that indeed it's a good strategy.

What we know for a fact is that in some of those races, money started shifting.

Republicans are starting to put more money into those races.

Whatever the outcome, people seem to be concerned.

Another story here.

This is big and potentially a crisis with the Northeast's reliance on heating oil.

Yes, that's the story from Grist.

The Warren Witheron has pushed the cost of heating oil up.

A couple of weeks ago, we actually talked about what it means for rural communities in Alaska.

Well, it turns out not only Alaska, but also almost entire northeast of the contiguous United States relies on heating oil, with about 82% of homes using it as their primary heating source.

We've seen a jump from mid $3 per gallon in February of this year to around $6 currently.

The Strait of Hormuz continuing to be closed, along with the Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, further limit the supply of oil, all add up to increasing prices.

The one serious threat is that the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, That's the program, that's a federal program that is a sort of a safety net, helping those who can't afford to heat their houses actually heat them, might become overwhelmed.

That's the number one fear of many in the Northeast.

And it's become such a serious situation that the governor of Massachusetts declared a state of emergency not long ago.

Thank you so much for the headlines.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thank you, Jared.

That was Jan Patolsky, news editor for the Daily Honor.

He has all of this week's top rural news and sometimes an attitude, which you're going to have when you go through as much news as Yon does.

American Creed Citizen Power is a PBS documentary series about young people working to bring their communities together around ideals of self-determination and opportunity.

This week, we have two of the young people who are featured on American Creed Citizen Power here on Yonder Radio.

Jonathan Blair lives in eastern Kentucky and works at a college helping first-generation college students.

And Sam Schimmel is an attorney from the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska who is helping to keep Salmon a part of his people's way of life.

The two met up in Kentucky to film for the Citizen Power series, which compares and contrasts their two rural communities.

The first thing I think of is, Sam, your area is being affected by climate change.

Your food supply, it seems, is being affected by climate change.

And Jonathan Blair's from cold country.

And that makes me see a difference there.

But I want to get to the similarities before we talk about that.

Jonathan, what are some of the similarities that you notice between you and Sam?

Well, I definitely think that one of the things that binds people from rural communities together, regardless of where they're from, is that it's very common for those communities to be tied to a certain resource.

And for Sam's community, that's fish.

And for mine, that's coal.

I mean, for generations as far back as I'm aware of, my family was involved in the coal industry and I'm the first generation to not be involved in that.

Coal has always been kind of a two-sided affair here in Appalachia.

I mean, it's put the food on the table for countless generations.

However, I guess the best way to put it is once there was no longer such a great need and there was also a depletion of the resource, A large number of jobs just went away with that, and there has not been a great replacement.

Sam, where you grew up, the focus is on salmon.

Have you seen that your community has been able to maintain that focus, or have you had to shift to other food sources?

Growing up in Kenai, fish was what we set our calendar by, you know, in our native ways of being and native ways of knowing. what we've seen over the last generation is is the erosion of abundance that means that we've watched over the last generation we've watched king salmon chinook salmon which we relied on since time immemorial going down in abundance to the point where there's no longer a viable fishery the fish are not doing well we're watching coho salmon silver salmon going that same direction and now we're seeing sockeye following you seen that same thing jonathan in your community with that phrase erosion of abundance?

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, the bulk of the United States of America and also the world was at one point powered by coal.

And to now see a time when there's viable alternatives to energy, but there was never a viable alternative to the workforce here.

It's just obviously coal comes with its pros and cons on a broader scale.

But as it's been depleted, we've definitely saw the economic prosperity of the region be depleted as well.

And Sam, how are you breaking precedent with your career path?

I am first in my family to go to law school, to become a lawyer, to practice law.

And then one of very few in our tribe and, you know, one of very few Alaska Native people who have a law degree and are attorneys.

That doesn't mean that I'm outside of the ecosystem that we live in.

In fact, it means that I'm a tool within it.

For too long, we watched others make the rules that we have to abide by when we access the resources that are truly ours.

When that ownership and that regulatory component is outsourced to those who are not from the community, you see mismanagement.

You see a lack of collaboration and a management regime that doesn't necessarily produce the best result in the long term.

One of the things that's very important to us is thinking far into the future, thinking what does this mean for the generations that come after me and how do we make sure that our way of life will continue no matter what.

We've been here for 15,000 years and we'll be here for another 15,000 and 15,000 after that.

It's our job to make sure that our children can catch fish and know our ways of life.

Jonathan, what did you learn from Sam in the time you spent together?

I think that what I learned the most was how much people from thousands and thousands and thousands of miles apart from completely different backgrounds can sort of have in common at the expense of our history.

It's just we had a lot in common that wouldn't necessarily be expected.

Sam, what about yourself and visiting with Jonathan and being a part of this project?

What have you come away with?

What I learned from Jonathan is that in our places there is a commonality, and that is that hardworking people will find a way to survive. hardworking people will find a way to thrive in conditions that would eradicate others.

You know, where my family and my people have carved out our existence as some of the harshest environments on the planet.

You know, where my people in St.

Lawrence Island are from, it regularly goes to 60 below.

Brown bears the size of a Volkswagen bus.

And we chose to live here.

We chose to stay.

Jonathan's people chose to stay in Appalachia.

You know, when there's a connection to place, whether it be hundreds of years old or thousands of years old, that connection is important.

And that connection is one of the strongest things that people can have.

And if you can find people that are connected to land, no matter where they are, there's a commonality there.

Whether intended or not, you've both been put in the position and you have the vision, you have the experience.

Perhaps some people would say it's hindsight, but this hindsight now perhaps gives you foresight.

Jonathan Blair, how do you feel you're set up for the future?

I've always said that these blue collar roots here in Appalachia provided an enormously strong foundation in our, I mean, I guess literally in our DNA for what comes next.

I've been raised by hard workers.

My role models are hard workers.

So I think that speaking for myself and for many of the first generation low income students that I serve, I think that our lived experiences, whether that be through the storytelling of our families, the continuation of our traditions, I think that we have a very firm foundation to stand upon on these shaved off mountains.

I'm not sure our generation will fully ever sit in the shade of the trees that we're trying to plant.

And I'm OK with that.

You know, it's about the next several hundred years.

That's interesting, though.

Shaved off mountaintops are good launch pads for what's next.

Sam, the cliche is standing on the shoulders of giants, but maybe it's as simple as sitting around your Uncle Bill's table and eating smoked salmon.

How is it for you continuing with tradition, but also the future in mind?

You know, we were brought up with the idea that there is no choice but to survive.

There is no choice but to thrive.

You know, failure is not an option. because for so many generations failure meant death.

You know, I always say that a salmon is the greatest teacher a child could ever have.

It teaches you hard work.

It teaches you dedication.

It teaches you how to get up at two in the morning and go to bed at midnight and do the same thing the next day.

It teaches you to take care of others and it teaches you the importance of community and the reliance on others and how to function in a team.

Our future is bright.

We have a big fight ahead of us, which is to make sure that our resources continue into the future.

But like the others that we have succeeded in in the past, we will succeed in this one as well.

And so there is no option but success.

Well, and people can see this story now.

American Creed, Citizen Power, a PBS documentary.

Also going to be in classrooms on PBS Learning Media.

Really, I think anything PBS, you will learn the story of Sam Schimmel and Jonathan Blair and how not just this present, this moment in this great conversation, but the future beyond it is at good hands.

Well, thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

American Creed Citizen Power can be streamed on PBS as of October 13th and is also available for classrooms at PBS Learning Media.

You can see and read Jonathan and Sam's photo essays both on PBS Learning Media and also on the Daily Yonder website.

We'll have more from this series coming up soon.

And now, more from Blackwater Railroad.

Here's Caravan, off of their new album of the same name, on Yonder Radio.

Caravan like a string of lights Caravan like a string of lights Caravan like a string of lights Six o'clock leaves right on time Only one left is mine What's love that's lost I made up my mind I made up my mind We move, we're moving through the night Choose a free ride from the outside Won't last Won't last for a little while You'll burn, you'll burn so bright You'll light on the western sky That was Caravan by Blackwater Railroad.

Try saying that three times fast.

You can find more music from Blackwater Railroad on their website, blackwaterrailroad.com and wherever you stream music.

Misty Johnson runs the Ignite Ministry in Neon, Kentucky.

Dee Davis is our esteemed president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

He has a conversation with Misty about what it's like to minister in a small town and how rural churches have changed over the years and how she sees the role of her church in the community.

I've been here my whole life.

When I was a little girl, the churches were full on Sundays.

Everybody and their brothers, my little mamaw, would fill up her car.

She would go up and down the neighborhood.

Every kid in the neighborhood, get in, we're going to church.

She would fill up the car to go to church.

There was just a lot of love and a lot of commitment and faithfulness to the church.

Throughout the years, that has changed completely.

I don't see anybody running up and down the roads collecting kids to take them to church anymore.

There's a lot less faithfulness and commitment to the local body.

COVID, I think, really decreased numbers.

Well, that's got to be a different kind of challenge because there is something about the fellowship of touching someone, of being there with them when they're in trouble.

Yes.

Well, it goes away from like Acts 2, 37 through 42, I think it is, talks about community and being in fellowship and getting together and praying together and eating together and having that fellowship, having that community with one another.

It's like iron sharpening iron.

So we are very community oriented.

We want to be involved in the community.

Our ministry is not inside the four walls of the church.

We want to be on the outside.

That's where Jesus was most of the time.

How would you describe what it meant for you growing up here in this place?

Now, when I was young, young, we still had some businesses in town.

But as the years progressed, by the time I was in high school, about all of them had started to close down.

There might have been one or two left.

In high school, it was like, well, there's nothing around here.

You might as well get out of here.

But then I started thinking, like, as I got older and I started thinking about it, It was like, there's nothing here because nobody has any hope left for this town.

Nobody sees anything good or prosperous.

And it reminds me of the story of Jesus when they say, does anything good come from Nazareth?

And he did.

And he's the best.

You always have a smile.

I was interested in, if you think about that, it's like, are these, you know, what is the way we face our challenge?

During the 22 flood, I really did see community come together, laying aside all the differences and let's focus on what we're going after and the goal in mind rather than all the things that keep us separated and divided.

That really made a difference in this community.

Now what if that happened in southeast Kentucky?

What if that happened in Kentucky or in our nation?

We're so divided right now, but what if we could lay aside the differences and work toward what we're going after, which is better, and quit fighting over the small stuff.

So those dividing walls come from denominational differences, and there's not going to be different rooms in heaven.

Baptist room over here, and Pentecostal over there, and charismatic over here, and free will over here, and presbyterian.

We're all going to be in one heaven.

We're going to have to learn to get together down here.

I mean, that's just the way I see it.

There's one heaven, it ain't divided up there.

That was a snippet of conversation between Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies, and Misty Johnson, who runs the Ignite Ministry in Neon, Kentucky.

This conversation was produced by the Rural Faith Initiative, a project of the Center for Rural Strategies.

Well, it's already time for our second trivia clue. what location includes landmarks like the International Peace Garden located between Boisevain, Manitoba, and Dunseith, North Dakota?

That's the second one that's supposed to help us?

Well, we will have more for the trivia that is on the way on Yonder Radio. video.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reach.

Hello, my name is Jared Iwi.

And before we talk to Nat Nichols, yes, final trivia clue and answer coming up.

And we have a book recommendation, that on the way.

But food and environment reporter Nat Nichols, she heard local rumblings that the Jamestown Scullum, one of the tribes native to the Olympic Peninsula where she lives, was trying to take over and remove protections from a local bird preserve.

She set out to find the real story and, in the process, learned about a new movement in tribal land management.

Off the coast of the small town of Blinn, you'll find Protection Island, a small, mostly uninhabited wildlife sanctuary in the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the top of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula.

This 364-acre island has been through a lot, from over-farming to artillery practice and housing development.

Its importance for local birds was only recognized in the 1980s when it was turned into a refuge and closed to visitors.

Protection Island, along with its sister conservation site the Dungeness Spit, are about to enter into a new phase through a radical conservation partnership.

The Jamestown Scallam Tribe are hoping to move the management of both places out from under Fish and Wildlife and instead under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, creating a new type of management system designed to support birds, plants, and native people alike.

I spoke with two of the tribe's ecology and wildlife experts to get the whole story.

I'm Hunsey Hals.

I work for Jamestown Scallam Tribe as the Director of Natural Resources.

My name is Fawn Wagner.

I'm the wildlife refuge manager and ecologist for the Jamestown-Sklilam term.

Back in 2024, Jamestown-Sklilam implemented a co-management agreement with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service to oversee the day-to-day operations at two protected locations.

In federal speak, they say we assumed all of the programs, functions, services, and activities of both Dungeness and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuges.

Since then, they've been up to a lot.

We've continued a lot of the work that U.S.

Fish and Wildlife was doing in the past, and then also expanded on that work.

So some of the signs had the Sklalem people in the past tense, which is problematic for many reasons.

We have new signage down the trail, so we have plant signs that have the Sklalem language, the scientific language, and the common name.

And that's just some of the visible things that we've been doing.

Some of the less visible things include managing invasive green crabs, restoring wetlands, and controlling invasive plants.

They've also been a part of a cool regional program called Listen Up that uses avian acoustic monitors on land trusts and preserves to track bird behavior.

And birds are why these preserves are so important, and where the controversy really begins.

Local environmentalists are worried that moving management to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Sklalem means that the birds will lose the long-term protections they currently have.

I think now the question of would the bird protections remain and what does accountability look like?

The Protection Island National Wildlife Reserve was created in 1982 thanks to efforts by bird lovers Zella Schultz and Eleanor Stops and with the help of the Seattle Audubon Society.

The island is an incredibly important breeding ground for Glucoswing Gauls, the home of what is thought to be the third largest rhinoceros ocklet colony in North America, and a place you can find a rare brewer that fawn counts as a favorite.

For me, it's definitely the Tufton Puffet, which is like the center stone of Protection Island.

Hansi explains that those concerns come down to a general misunderstanding of what the Jamestown Scolumn are asking for.

There is a remaining federal nexus and there is a remaining U.S. government accountability structure for community members and citizens who think they're seeing something that is awry and they want an accountability through the U.S. government.

That will remain.

There will also be the tribal government.

If the Land Transfer Act were to be passed, enacted, It is federal law, and the intention is to retain all of the wildlife refuge conservation purposes and to have these pieces accountable in that law.

In short, it's still federal land.

It's just going to be managed by the tribe through the Department of Indian Affairs, not through the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife.

And there's a few good arguments that the Jamestown Scolam are the right government to be overseeing it.

First, it means they no longer need to wait for fish and wildlife to approve things like trail restoration projects, a process that currently involves waiting for their projects to make their way up a regional list of priorities.

It's also important to the tribes for cultural and historic reasons.

The relationship with tribes and Protection Island has been disrupted for a really long time.

Even though it was protected only in the 80s, there was European settlement on that island since the late 1800s.

So tribes haven't really been able to access that area for a long time.

But it was probably very likely that tribes harvested from around the island.

And not just fish and shellfish, but also things like plants.

Every time public lands get protected like that, unfortunately it displaces the people who have a cultural connection to those lands, who have utilized those lands for generations.

There's a tribal saying that every river has its people, every people has its river, and the Dungeness is Jamestown's Glallam's river and place that they've been stewarding with so much pride in the decades that I've been working with Jamestown's Glallam tribe.

Skeptics of this plan say there are big questions about everything from federal funding to local property tax money going to support the management of the spit and protection island.

In short, yes, they would still need federal money to keep their work going, and property taxes don't directly fund federal projects.

We've also brought in a lot of additional dollars aside from the co-management funding, so the tribe has put up hard dollars, and we've also gotten quite a few grants to help do what we're doing.

It was time to look at how radical an idea moving stewardship over to the tribes really is.

It turns out that it's mostly uncharted territory.

I'll say just that we are one of the first tribes to actually enter in this type of co-management agreement so there's lots of like land back and co-stewardship things happening but and this is relatively new and we hope that we're like helping to set you know a positive trend.

What I'll say is James Jones Gollum Tribe looked at that opportunity for co-stewardship that was really it was a federal initiative and said we're interested and Jamestown's doing it through a self-governance compact which is a little bit different than just a contract where a tribe may come in and do one function and have a grant agreement for it.

This is much broader and it recognize the the self-governance of of Jamestown's Clam Tribe.

We are a very early adopter and we had to sort of really wrap our heads around it.

We have other tribes that are calling saying how'd you do it?

What do we need to know?

Jamestown's Clam Tribe learned a lot from Bison Range so So Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes preceded us, and we learned a lot from them.

And now it's time for the Jamestown Sklalem to lead the way for other tribes, as the Makah, Swinomish, and Lummi Nations are all considering their own co-management plans with federal agencies.

Perhaps those tribes will even be able to enter an agreement to transfer land management to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, just like the Sklalem are trying to do.

The song you're hearing now is The Happy Song, and it is courtesy of the Jamestown Scollum tribe.

I'm Nat Nichols for Yonder Radio.

Well, here on Yonder Radio, we're asking people around the country quick questions about rural America.

Today, we have Wren Gates, a small business owner from southwestern Colorado.

She's in Mancus with her current favorite rural book.

Here she is on Yonder Radio.

My name is Wren, and my business partner Hannah and I own Hand in Hand, the bookstore in Mancus.

And I am choosing a piece of literature that kind of sticks out as rural to me.

It's called This Haunted Land by Betsy Gaines Kwaman.

It's brand new.

It's only been out for a few weeks now.

And it kind of fits that role description for me.

It's about ghost stories in the West and just kind of the haunting of America.

It's full of ghost stories and legends that can be unsettling and dark at times.

But it's kind of our history as Americans that we really need to be able to wrap our heads around. face full on and she talks about the importance of that and you know in our current political climate people are trying to erase that and it's an important thing that we learn about and accept and talk about and so she does a wonderful job of that from a historical perspective and it was a wonderful read.

That was Wren Yates and her favorite rural book This Haunted Land.

Wren is the co-owner of Hand in Hand Books, the favorite bookstore of Yonder Radio producer Ilana Newman.

You gotta be friends with a lot of people.

She connects us with a lot of incredible talent.

We're actually gonna have Betsy Gaines-Quammen, author of This Haunted Land, on the show in a few weeks, so stay tuned.

And we wanna hear your voice on Yonder Radio.

Send us an email at info at yonderradio.com and tell us what your favorite piece of rural media is.

It could totally be Yonder Radio.

We're okay with that if you want to say that because now it's time for the final trivia clue.

See, we deliver.

What location is a political boundary that spans over 1,200 miles in an unusually straight line?

The answer is the American-Canadian border on the 49th parallel.

From Minnesota to Washington, the American-Canadian border follows the 49th parallel.

Most other borders follow geographical features rivers, or mountains, so the western part of the border between the United States and Canada is unique in its man-made design.

In the Treaty of 1818, the British and Americans settled on the 49th parallel as the border from the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains.

That borderline was later expanded to the Pacific Ocean in the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

This somewhat arbitrary border bisected the historical lands of many indigenous peoples, including the Lakota and Blackfoot.

Okay, well, that trivia really wrecked me.

I had no idea.

Apologies to Canada and everybody along the border.

But the trivia is the American-Canadian border.

This has been another hour of Yonder Radio, which if we need some wordplay, borders on excellent, I think, just because you're here.

And I'm not pandering.

It doesn't work without you.

Tune in every week, wherever you listen, wherever you get your podcasts, and you can always learn more at yonderradio.com.

Thank you for listening to Yonder Radio, a production of the Center for Rural Strategies, publisher of The Daily Yonder.

I'm your host, Jared Ewe.

Thanks to Don Castle and the Tennessee Sheiks, Steph Gunno and the Lone Tones, Quincy Ponfair, Leo Pozel, and Tim Merima for the great music.

Our editor and producer is Susanna Brown.

This episode was also produced by Alana Newman with additional support from Anya Patron-Slepian and Julia Tilton.

Our executive producer is Joel Cohen.

The executive in charge of production is Adam Georgie.

Yonder Radio, rural conversations with National Reach.