An off-white teepee rose up from a flat, expansive field in one of Salt Lake City’s largest untouched and most politicized landscapes on Wednesday afternoon.
It was there as a reminder of the Shoshone, Ute and Goshute tribes’ “sacred” ancestral hunting and gathering connections to this land — as well as a symbol of opposition to a massive state-run distribution hub that is planned for this area in the city’s northwesternmost side.
“I’ve heard politicians say this land has no use, it’s void,” Darren Parry, chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, told a group of nearly 50 people at a rally opposing that development on Wednesday.