Hannah Shew (‘21 CO)
Work
Student in the social sciences focusing on the Bears Ears National monument in SE Utah and the prioritization of Indigenous voices, decolonization, and more sustainable management of these lands.
Priority areas for mentorship
Community Organizing
Connecting with Thought Leaders
Research
Hi, I'm Hannah Shew, a 21-year-old college student from Durango, CO! I fell in love with moving through landscapes and building deep relationships with land in high school when I moved to the small mountain town Durango in high school. I had originally moved from Atlanta and never had really experienced what it was like to get to know a place so well that you truly would do anything to protect it. High school was also when I started learning, reading about, and participating in climate action work because I knew that this was going to be something I and the larger global community were going to be working on for the rest of my life. In college, I have worked for two years as a sustainability tracking coordinator for the office of sustainability to make change at the institutional level! The San Juan mountains of SW Colorado were my first introduction to public lands worth protecting, communities that wanted to protect them, and my newfound sense of self as I learned to push my limits running through these landscapes. Getting introduced to the ultra-running community gave me a first glimpse into a like-minded group of people who worked as hard to protect these land as they played in them.
Since moving away from the San Juan mountains (where my and the inaugural Footprints camp was held) I have fallen in love with the canyonlands of Southeast Utah, where I have worked seasonally and lived for the past two years. I work as a river guide when am not in school which has given me yet another beautiful sport/way to move through the landscape as I form my relationship with it. In the desert and on the river I have found yet another community of people that want to protect these lands as much as we love them. I am now doing my culminating thesis work and research on the Bears Ears National Monument in SE Utah, as we fight for the prioritization of Indigenous voices, decolonization, and more sustainable management of these lands. Once I graduate, I hope to continue this work in the Southwest fighting for environmental and social justice!
What I learned at Footprints about creating proposals, marketing, and public speaking/conveying my ideas about climate action actually landed me a job at my school's sustainability office!
I knew that for a project like green roofs, this office would be a key partner for me as they are the main folks who get sustainable projects pushed through to the administration. We ended up getting two green roofs built on top of buildings on campus over the two years I worked with them! Once I started communicating with them about this project, and sharing about my skills/experience I gained at Footprints, they ended up offering me a job as the STARS coordinator! STARS is a national sustainability tracking and assessment platform that institutions can use to measure a comprehensive amount of their sustainability efforts. STARS was a platform I learned at Footprints with my mentor, Nate because we used it as a persuasive strategy in my proposal to the office (green roofs increase an institution's STARS "score", and the office is always looking for ways to do that). I served at the Colorado College Office of Sustainability for two years after leaving Footprints, and I attribute a huge amount of that success to my mentors and the work that I was inspired by at camp.
Now that my time at the office and my green roof project is over, I have started exploring other passions in the realm of climate action! One thing that has always stuck with me from camp and in my classes in school is how much we need to work on the climate as a human community. I have fallen in love with social and environmental justice as it relates to the lands I know and love so well. For me, in the southwest, that means fighting for and listening as much as I can for Indigenous Environmental Justice. The climate crisis is the biggest challenge we have had to face, and Indigenous voices need to be prioritized and respected if we are going to learn how to live on these lands and in relationship with them sustainably.
This passion has led me to starting my thesis work and will be doing research on Indigenous Collaborative Management of public lands. Specifically, I will be living, listening, and doing research in Bears Ears National Monument this summer to learn from the Indigenous leaders in the Southwest that have achieved such a big step forward for Collaborative/Co-management in and around their homelands.
