19th
Gila River Festival
After taking a break in 2023, we’re back with the 19th mostly-annual Gila River Festival!
As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Gila Wilderness in 2024, the Gila River Festival will not only celebrate this important milestone in protecting America's first Wilderness River, but will also look to the Gila’s future. By exploring themes of long-term protection, climate resilience, cultural exchange, and stewardship, we will envision together the Gila River’s next hundred years and beyond.
This year’s festival features a keynote presentation by Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., the San Carlos Apache leader who has worked tirelessly to prevent the desecration of Oak Flat, an Apache sacred site in what is now southeastern Arizona, from a mine operated by international mining giant Rio Tinto.
Friday night a diverse panel of community leaders, including Guadalupe Cano, Ray Trejo, Michael Darrow, Martha Cooper, Joe Saenz, Corina Castillo, and Luke Koenig will discuss their perspectives on the future of the Gila River and its watershed.
Other presentations will take place on Saturday afternoon September 28 at the Silco Theater. Michael Robinson starts the afternoon off at 1pm with a talk on jaguar reintroduction. At 2:15 pm, the Mogollon Concerned Citizens will present efforts to protect the watersheds that flow from the western slope of the Gila Bioregion. Diné filmmaker Tony Estrada will follow at 3:30 with the world premiere of his documentary “Untrammeled: MCC’s Pursuit of the Wilderness Ideal.”
The L&J Ranch’s Airstream Mobile Lab will be on hand throughout the Festival with its Gila River Project that will challenge participants to explore the relationship between place and the life it enables. Opening reception with Open Space Brewing, music by Colt Stragoon and guided tours on Thursday, Sept. 26 from noon - 5:30 pm.
Recuerdos de Nuestra Gila with The Semilla Project is a photo gallery that captures the voices of our communities and the impact the Gila has had on their identity, culture, and practices through 20 multigenerational storytellers who shared stories from different parts of their lives, the interactions that brought their family closer, and what strengthened their relationship with the land while reflecting on the importance of protecting these places for future generations.
In keeping with tradition, the Festival will host a series of field trips. Alex Mares, of Diné and Mexican heritage, is an ever-popular interpreter of rock art. Luke Koenig, New Mexico Wild’s Gila Grassroots Organizer, will lead a free family-friendly hike to the Gila River. Geologist Dylan Duvergé will take participants to Mogollon Box to discuss weather and climate impacts on the Gila River. As always, the Festival will host birding, wildlife tracking, native plant hikes, horseback riding, restoration and composting tours, and more!
Field trips taking place on U.S. Forest Service land have been permitted by the Gila National Forest.
Schedule of Events
We’ll be offering a variety of expert-guided field trips and tours, presentations, and arts and entertainment events.
Full schedule and registration for the 2024 Gila River Festival is now available.
PARTIcipants
Speakers
The 2024 Gila River Festival will feature exciting and thoughtful speakers and field trip leaders that will explore themes of long-term protection, climate resilience, cultural exchange, and stewardship as we envision together the Gila River’s next hundred years and beyond.
Dr. wendsler nosie sr.
Guadalupe cano
Michael darrow
martha s. cooper
Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. is the founder and leader of Apache Stronghold and Director of Gaan Bike Goz aa where he advocates for indigenous religious and human rights. He has led the fight to protect the Apache sacred site of Oak Flat (Chi’chil Biłdagoteel) from a proposal to develop one of the world's largest copper mines. Wendsler is a former Peridot District Councilman and Tribal Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, which consists of nearly 17,000 tribal members on the San Carlos Apache Reservation.
Guadalupe Cano is currently serving her fourth term as the District 4 Town Councilor in Silver City. She also serves as the Mayor Pro-Tem and is a Certified Municipal Official (CMO). She is also in her second term as Vice President of the board of Outdoor New Mexico. A native of Silver City, her love of the Gila began as a small child, when her late father introduced her to the art of fly-fishing. She uses her elected title to further any work to conserve and protect the Gila River and its surrounding forest. Her main interest lies in finding sustainable ways to make public lands more accessible, especially to those with mobility issues.
Michael Darrow is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, and has been the designated Tribal Historian since 1986. He attended the University of Oklahoma, majoring in botany, and received an associate degree in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He has worked for the Tribe on Native American Grave Protection and Reparations Act and on cultural and language preservation issues.
Martha Cooper provides strategic direction for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in New Mexico’s freshwater conservation priorities, works closely with TNC’s Colorado River Program and collaborates with partners. In Southwest New Mexico, Martha manages restoration, monitoring and stewardship projects with partners on the Gila and Mimbres River Preserves and in their watersheds. An ongoing priority for New Mexico is to protect the natural flows of the Gila River through science and policy.
joe saenz
corina castillo
luke koenig
ray trejo
Outfitter Joe Saenz, owner of Wolfhorse Outfitters, is of Chihe´ne (Warm Springs Apache) ancestry and is part of the Red Paint Tribal Council. He has extensive guiding experience in horseback and backpacking expeditions throughout the American Rocky Mountains including Canada, Mexico’s Sierra Madre, and Alaska’s Brooks Range.
Born and raised in the Mining District, Corina Castillo has a special connection to the Gila and the surrounding area. She went to school in Arizona and graduated with a degree in Health Sciences from Arizona State University. She is the Development and Communications Specialist with Gila Resources Information Project. She hopes the work she does with GRIP encourages local representation from Hispanics and those from the Mining District in matters of conservation.
Luke Koenig is the grassroots organizer for New Mexico Wild. He seeks to connect people to the wild landscape right in our backyard and elevate community voices as we aim to better protect it. When he’s not working (and sometimes while he is), he’s off exploring the Gila Wilderness, usually with his backpacking gear, fly rod, or a rope. He’s proud to call Silver City home.
Ray Trejo, an avid sportsman and lifelong educator, is southern New Mexico outreach coordinator for the NM Wildlife Federation. He is a past federation president and grew up hunting and fishing in southwestern New Mexico. Trejo has worked with several statewide sportsmen’s groups to promote public access, equitable tag reform and sound wildlife management practices. He was instrumental in helping to create the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument.
Phil Connors
Sharman Apt Russell
Mónica Ortiz Uribe
Tony Estrada
Phillip Connors left his job at the Wall Street Journal in New York City to embrace his new profession as a fire lookout in the Gila Wilderness and as a writer and essayist dealing with environmental and wilderness issues. A Song for the River is his third book, after Fire Season, winner of the prestigious Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and All the Wrong Places, a memoir of his brother’s life and death. Phil spends the fire season as a lookout in the Gila National Forest and for the rest of the year he lives in southwestern New Mexico with his wife Mónica.
Sharman Apt Russell has published some dozen books translated into nine languages. Her Diary Of A Citizen Scientist won the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing. Her most recent nonfiction book is What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs (Columbia University Press, 2024). Sharman teaches in the MFA program of Antioch University in Los Angeles and is a professor emeritus at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. For more information go to www.sharmanaptrussell.com
Bilingual, binational reporter based on America's southern doorstep. Co-host of @iHeartRadio Forgotten: The Women of Juárez.
As a Diné filmmaker, Tony Estrada creates his own original docs & feature films on social causes & environmental issues to raise the spiritual awareness of global audiences – inspiring them to make a pro-active change within their own communities. As a production company, Wild Horse Films serves non-profit programs/projects dealing with climate justice, environmental justice or social justice issues to raise awareness of their cause, call to action, and enlist potential allies, stakeholders, and financial supporters in moving their program goal forward.
Michael Robinson
Stanley King
Leia Barnett
Mike Hasson
Michael J. Robinson is a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West (University Press of Colorado). Robinson is also the primary author of the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition-for-rulemaking to reintroduce jaguars to the Gila National Forest.
Stanley King retreated to the Gila Wilderness in 1979 to get back to nature and felt a very connected calling to the largest road-less and wilderness area in the continental US. His calling on the western slope of the Gila, one of the most pristine areas left on planet earth, is to be a custodian of this environment and protect it from reckless pollution and abuse.
Leia Barnett was born and raised in the foothills and arroyos of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. She is thrilled to bring her love and deep reverence for the high desert country of the Southwest to the Greater Gila campaign as the Greater Gila New Mexico Advocate for WildEarth Guardians.
Mike Hasson is a 22-year resident of Glenwood. The last 20 plus years of his career was spent as Technical Director for a company providing solutions for eliminating aquatic invasive species from being transported in ship’s ballast water. He is a husband, gardener, woodworker, and aspiring luthier.
Location
Silver City, NM
The Gila River Festival is based in Silver City, New Mexico, the gateway to the Gila Wilderness -- America's first wilderness area.
THANK YOU TO THE 2024 FESTIVAL SPONSORS
MAJOR SPONSORS TO DATE
SPONSORS TO DATE
FRIENDS OF THE FESTIVAL
Huge thanks to the 2024 Gila River Festival Planning Committee:
Charles Kreizenbeck (coordinator), Dylan Duvergé, Guadalupe Cano, Michael Darrow, Siri Khalsa,
Luke Koenig, Carol Martin, Joe Saenz, Leia Barnett, Joel Davis, Naomi Hartford, Allyson Siwik
“Wild rivers are earth’s renegades, defying gravity, dancing to their own tunes, resisting the authority of humans, always chipping away, and eventually always winning.”
