Bears Ears Buttes • At an annual outdoor gathering with Bears Ears as a backdrop, Beata Tsosie of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico compared the genetic memories of plants to her first trip to Bears Ears National Monument several years ago. Corn, she explained, adapts to a place where it is grown year after year, so that each seed carries localized memories into the next planting season.
When she saw Bears Ears, she recalled standing at an overlook above the landscape where her ancestors lived and feeling waves of emotion wash over her.