This week, Indigenous youth crews from the Ancestral Lands and Southwest Conservation Corps are carrying out TWP-supported efforts in Southwest Colorado to restore degraded areas of the Mancos river. Much of this riparian corridor is managed under conservation easement, and new collaborations with private landowners are facilitating restoration activities within some of the most impacted stretches.

What is Indigenous sovereignty? The Merriam-Webster online dictionary tells us that indigenous sovereignty is “supreme power especially over a body politic,” or “freedom from external control.” But in practice, Indigenous sovereignty means much more than that, and means different things to different people.

On October 13, 2022, second graders from Kwiyagat Community Academy (KCA) in Towaoc, Colorado, participated in a planting event in the Mancos Canyon on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.