Washington, D.C. — Chispa Arizona and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) hosted an art activation on Friday August 29th during an annual Latine community camping trip to the Grand Canyon. The event featured two large communal tents with art painted by Phoenix artists Jesse Yazzie and Cora Quiroz to represent our defense of Madre Tierra (Mother Earth).

This event is part of the multi-state Protect Our Public Lands campaign to raise awareness and fight against the Trump administration’s sell-off of public lands and threats to our clean water, highlighting the value of these sacred places and resources like Grand Canyon National Park and the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

The event comes as the Trump administration continues to threaten public access to trails and lands in Arizona and across the country by targeting our national parks, monuments, and forests – places that have been safeguarded for years thanks to locally-led efforts and overwhelming public support. As the Trump administration continues to fire national park staff, cut funding, and attempt to sell off our public lands, it puts the cultural,  recreational, economic, and health benefits these treasured places offer at risk.  

“Our public lands belong to the people and are not for sale,” said Chispa Arizona Federal Organizer Dana Orozco. “Indigenous communities and allies worked tirelessly for more than a decade to protect the areas around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. Rolling back this and other lands’ protections will cause us to lose them to the highest bidder and they will be gone forever. This weekend we saw that people are united in the defense of our lands and waters from greedy corporations that want to extract resources and ruin them in the name of profit. We stand in solidarity with our indigenous relatives, who are impacted first by the destruction and pollution of the natural resources they depend on, and to our future generations who deserve to experience the beauty and sacredness of our lands.”

“The Trump administration continues to attack our national parks and monuments, cutting funding for our nation’s critical programs for the health and safety of all our communities,” said LCV Conservation Program Director America Fitzpatrick. “Trump and his allies have opened up millions of acres of our lands to drilling and logging, gutted our land management agencies, and allowed corporate polluters off the hook after they poison our lands and waters. We are united with our local partners to fight back against the sell-off of public lands and defend the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon and all national monuments. ”

The local artists who collaborated on this activation shared what this work meant to them:

“This painting focuses on movement and travel, particularly focusing on Indigenous people who have traveled across sacred lands long before borders,” said artist Cora Quiroz. “It is about the land we get to experience today, and a reminder that public land connects us to our history and culture.”

“This work honors the responsibility to safeguard sacred lands through the Navajo traditions I was raised with,” said artist Jesse Yazzie. “The background features a Navajo rug pattern interwoven with subtle graffiti elements, a bridge between cultural heritage and my artistic roots. In the foreground, a lit sage rises in smoke, symbolizing blessing and protection. This gesture comes from my grandmother, who would bless new spaces and each direction with sage—an intimate practice of cleansing and grounding. Through this painting, I share that blessing with the land and community it now resides in.”

On Trump’s first day in office, he signed several executive orders declaring a national “energy emergency” calling for increased oil and gas leasing on federal lands, including in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and 13 million acres of the Western Arctic. He has issued executive orders repealing protections for the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, opening them up to industrial-scale commercial fishing. The Trump Administration also expanded oil drilling on millions of acres of public lands, fired thousands of career staff at Interior, issued executive orders expanding logging on millions of acres of national forests, and announced plans to roll back critical clean water safeguards. Congressional Republicans also passed the Big Ugly Bill, which cemented these efforts to drill, log, and mine even more of our cherished lands, including pristine places like the Arctic Refuge.

Public lands enjoy some of the broadest support of any major issue. In April, a poll commissioned by Trust for Public Land found that 74% of Americans oppose the closure of national public lands, and 71% oppose selling public lands to the highest bidder. In addition, 88% of voters are concerned about the pollution of lakes and rivers and 82% of voters think the U.S. should protect more of its lands and waters.

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