WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Gavin Abundis watched as firefighter Adrian Chairez demonstrated how he uses pulleys and harnesses to rappel down buildings. “You’ve probably seen it in the movies where they’re going down ‘Mission: Impossible’ style,” Chairez said with a laugh one day this past winter as he prepared to step off a tower. “We get to do that.” 

Abundis, a then-senior at Aptos High School in Santa Cruz County’s Pajaro Valley Unified School District, has a friend whose home burned down a few years ago in a fire sparked by lightning. He said it’s pretty common to know someone who has been affected by fires in California, especially as they become more frequent and intense because of climate change. That drew him to this class on fire technology, and may steer his career. 

“Knowing that there’s something that I can do about it to serve my community definitely encourages me to pursue this career,” said Abundis. 

Demand for the course has grown so much in recent years that the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which jointly runs the class with the Watsonville Fire Department, doubled the number of classes offered, from two to four, this school year. “There was a time when we would go into the schools and recruit students,” said Rudy Lopez Sr., fire chief of the Watsonville department. “Now, they just sign up.” 

As climate change alters the environment and economies, the need is growing for jobs that help prepare for, respond to and lessen damage caused by fires, floods and other natural disasters. That’s led schools and community colleges to explore how to prepare students for careers in such fields as fire science, protecting and restoring watersheds and other ecosystems, forestry management and search and rescue. In some cases, student interest is driving the new courses — surveys show teenagers and younger adults are more environmentally conscious than older people and more likely to support action on climate change. 

Kate Kreamer, executive director of Advance CTE, a nonprofit that supports state leaders who oversee career and technical education programs, said more school districts are offering climate-related CTE courses, but it’s challenging to find statistics because the issue is so politicized and because what the classes are called differs by school, district and state. One example of that growth: A “resiliency careers in forestry” program, which trains people as foresters, fire program managers and log truck drivers at five California community colleges, enrolls some 700 students compared with 37 when it launched three years ago, according to the Foundation for California Community Colleges. 

Students in Santa Cruz’s yearlong fire science course say they love that it’s so hands-on. They practice putting on and taking off more than 70 pounds of equipment in under 90 seconds, watch water cannons blast from the top of fire engines and get a chance to hold “attack lines,” 200-foot-long water hoses. They also learn about the specialized vocabulary of firefighting, the range of jobs available and the certifications that are required. The course helps expose students to careers in firefighting, which is facing a significant shortage of people to fill jobs in California and some other regions of the country. In the state, entry-level jobs pay between roughly $50,000 and $100,000 per year, according to the statewide group California Professional Firefighters.  

Charlotte Morgan, a soft-spoken then-senior from Aptos in the Watsonville class, said she wanted to take this course specifically because of her interest in climate change: “Growing up in Santa Cruz, we spend so much time outside and we care so much about it, and I want to protect that.” 

Her friend Bellamy Breen said she felt the same way, though she’s interested in working on water conservation issues. “With climate change there’s more droughts, there’s more saltwater intrusion, and with all the agriculture here, it’s very important,” she said.

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President Joe Biden championed such initiatives as the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which invested billions of federal dollars in supporting jobs that tackle climate change, including clean energy manufacturing, water infrastructure projects and wildfire prevention and preparedness efforts. Under President Donald Trump, who calls climate change a hoax, there has been a swift reversal of those initiatives. In recent months, the federal government has let go of hundreds of climate scientists, halted research funding and canceled 400 grants to help communities prepare for more extreme weather events. 

Yet for communities that have been hit with natural disasters, there is a demand for jobs that transcends politics, even in conservative communities where climate change is sometimes dismissed as fake science. 

John Gossett, president of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in North Carolina, said that after Hurricane Helene devastated his region last year, college presidents in Mississippi and Louisiana who have endured catastrophic natural disasters told him to expect an enrollment drop of 40 percent to 50 percent. But Gossett said that while enrollment in several programs has remained flat, courses in fields that were highly visible during the hurricane — such as fire and rescue, EMT and paramedics and nursing — have drawn more interest from students. 

Police officers played a big role during the disaster, participating in search and rescue missions and directing traffic. Gossett said the college had to double its number of basic law enforcement training cohorts from two to four this semester in response to the unexpected demand. It also reinstated a course in geomatics, or land surveying, and added a class in agri permaculture, an approach to land management that imitates natural ecosystems in rebuilding. The college’s construction program offers additional environmentally friendly certifications, including in green buildings and solar technology.  

Gossett sees a strong link between these in-demand courses and economic development of the region, even though there is no mention of climate change in course descriptions. “It’s in our mission, it’s what we do,” he said. “We’re trying to help people get to a better place in life, where they can make more money and have more options. And all of that is wrapped around workforce development.”

Related: Apprenticeships for high schoolers are touted as the next big thing. One state leads the way

Southeastern Kentucky has also been hit recently by disasters, including catastrophic floods in 2021, 2022 and 2025 that led to a devastating number of deaths, unsalvageable homes and mud-filled businesses and school buildings. It’s the region served by Hazard Community and Technical College, with 4,400 students across campuses in Central Appalachia. “You just can’t believe how much water there was, there was 6 feet of water in one of our buildings,” recalled its president, Jennifer Lindon. 

She said the college is rethinking course offerings to be more responsive to the disasters. Hazard offers an annual firefighter training, but water rescue is becoming such an important part of the job that the college is adding a swift water rescue component, focused on saving people from fast-moving floods, for first responders from across the state. Its classes in construction are changing too, to incorporate information on how to rebuild homes on higher ground to better withstand winds and floods. Because of the demand, Hazard now runs several construction courses simultaneously, and the curriculum is accelerated — what would have taken 16 weeks now takes six. 

Lindon said there are waiting lists for Hazard’s heavy equipment and line worker classes, as the community clears debris and rebuilds infrastructure. The college is also designing a new course on water treatment systems, after a plant flooded, leaving several counties with no drinking water for days. Lindon said the county is building a new treatment facility, which means there will be several jobs available. 

“It’s time to really sit down and think about how we plan for 10 years, 20 years, because I don’t think that these disasters are one-offs,” she said. “What we thought was a 1,000-year flood has happened in three of the last five years. So it’s a different time for sure. Most of us all really love this area. We want to stay here, so we need to figure out how to better protect it.” 

Other institutions are seeing the need to reach out to students to get them interested in these careers early on. John Boyd leads Mayland Community College, about an hour’s drive from Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene. 

Boyd’s community is still cleaning up from the storm, and the college has lost students as many residents moved out of the area. But it hired a firefighter instructor to teach the area’s all-volunteer firefighters and work with K-12 schools to expose younger students to careers important in the region. The college is also building an environmental science center featuring exhibits for children to give them a better understanding of local environmental changes, like how physical damage during Hurricane Helene caused rivers to become permanently wider and deeper. 

In this deep red area, no one mentions climate change. “We’re a very, very conservative area here,” said Boyd. “We focus on what it is and what we do now, not how it got there.” 

The college is also training operators of large machinery like backhoes and bulldozers. Half of the trees in one local county were downed in the storm, and other debris still needs to be cleared. “That timber in another year is going to become a massive fire hazard,” said Boyd. “For the next few years we’re going to have a lot of fuel laying on the ground.” 

Related: How colleges can become ‘living labs’ for fighting climate change

Kreamer, with Advance CTE, said disaster-related coursework is one piece of a bigger shift, with high schools around the country altering courses in fields as diverse as construction, HVAC, fashion technology and cooking to adapt for climate change. Matt Siegelman, president of Burning Glass Institute, which analyzes labor market data, said many traditional jobs now require an understanding of green technology. Construction, for example, increasingly relies on sustainable materials, energy-efficient designs and newer construction techniques. Green jobs are growing at about 2 percent a year, but traditional construction jobs that require some green skills are growing much faster, he said. 

Kreamer said that as demand for these roles grows, a number of challenges must still be overcome, including improving collaboration between education and industries and between community colleges and K-12 schools. “You can only do so much by reskilling,” she said. “Adults have to look at the next generation as part of that pipeline strategy,” by introducing students to career options in elementary and middle school. 

In firefighting, career opportunities differ by geography, with rural areas often relying on volunteer squads and larger cities on paid workers. Concerns about the health risks facing wildfire firefighters have also been intensifying. 

In California, more than 6,500 wildfires have broken out so far in 2025, putting this on pace to be one of the worst years for fires on record. In Santa Cruz, district administrators expect more than 110 students to complete the fire science program this school year, compared with 57 last year. 

Students say they learn not just about fighting fires, but also about standing up for others, persevering and not getting discouraged. “It’s super-valuable life advice,” said Jack Widman, a then-senior, during last winter’s class at the Watsonville fire station. Like his classmate Gavin Abundis, Widman is considering a career in firefighting.

“Firefighting doesn’t solve climate change,” added Abundis, “but I feel I’m part of the solution.” 

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about climate change was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Every spring, investors flock to Omaha, Nebraska, for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, where Warren Buffett holds court. Insiders call it Woodstock for Capitalists, and CNBC covers it with the fervor of Fox Sports on Super Bowl Sunday. 

Last year’s meeting held particular weight. Investors were watching closely to see if Buffett, the company’s 93-year-old CEO, would name Greg Abel, Berkshire’s vice chairman, as his successor, and how the company would weather the billions in wildfire lawsuits threatening its energy utilities. Buffett dodged the succession question, but the meeting revealed something just as consequential: the company’s strategy to avoid wildfire liability. 

Two months earlier, the Utah legislature had passed a law allowing utilities to charge their own customers to build a fund for future fire damages. The state also has a 2020 law on the books that capped the amount fire victims could sue utilities for damages. Combined, the two laws mean that if homes in Utah burn down due to a power company’s faulty electrical line, the financial damages residents can seek are limited — and they may already have been paying into the fund that covers them. For utilities, the result is reduced costs.

At the shareholder meeting, Abel singled out Utah as “the gold standard” of utility protection — a model he urged other states to adopt. “As we go forward,” he told the crowd, “we need both legislative and regulatory reform.”

Berkshire Hathaway Energy, or BHE, Buffett’s $100 billion energy arm, operates a vast power grid that stretches across the West. BHE subsidiaries such as Rocky Mountain Power and PacifiCorp are responsible for maintaining more than 17,000 miles of transmission lines that serve roughly 10 million customers across 10 states. In recent years, BHE has been slapped with lawsuits in Oregon worth nearly $10 billion for fires caused by its faulty equipment. For BHE, the Utah laws were a significant win, shielding the company from that kind of liability in at least one state. Across the West, BHE-owned utilities and their lobbyists are now trying to replicate that success, securing laws that both cap wildfire damages and shift costs onto customers. 

“It’s infuriating to me that they are creating these situations,” said Stephanie Chase, a research and communications manager at the Energy & Policy Institute and a former consumer advocate in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. “They’re not doing a good job at maintaining their power lines. Then when they start fires, they don’t want to pay for them.”

BHE’s infrastructure is aging, and maintaining it is expensive. Climate-proofing measures, like running power lines underground, can easily cost more than $1 million per mile, according to the Institute for Energy Research, and would put the cost of sending all BHE-owned equipment into the ground at well over $17 billion. Other resilience measures, such as trimming branches that grow over power lines and inspecting equipment in rural areas, are also expensive. 

“Vegetation management is not one of the things that they receive a return on investment,” said Chase. State regulatory agencies typically set utility prices using a formula known as the rate base, which excludes routine maintenance like vegetation. By contrast, utilities earn a return when investing in new infrastructure, Chase added. “Utility companies have a much bigger incentive because they’re receiving a return on equity on any funds that they put into capital expenditures: building a new plant, building construction, building new lines,” she said. BHE did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Earlier this summer, the Wyoming legislature passed a law that limits damages that can be awarded to victims of a utility-caused fire, so long as the company followed its own wildfire plan. In July, Idaho also enacted a similar law, shielding utilities from negligence if they prove they adhered to their wildfire plan. According to state regulatory filings, at least one representative for Rocky Mountain Power and other utilities operating in the state lobbied lawmakers in March and April to get the law passed.

One state senator who voted against Idaho’s law, Bruce Skaug, told Grist that it leaves little regard for residents who may have legitimate grievances. “We don’t want to bankrupt utilities,” Skaug said. “At the same time, if they burn down your house, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the claim through a jury trial.” Yet, the law could do just that, he said. Skaug hopes to tweak the law to better protect residents during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

PacifiCorp is also running the same playbook in Washington. The company has petitioned state regulators to start tracking the cost of insurance increases and wildfire liability, which Chase calls a “stepping stone to getting those costs included in customer rates.” From there, utilities could begin to press regulators or legislators for permission to pass those costs on to customers.

In Utah, Rocky Mountain Power’s lobbyists benefited from a friendly legislature. Carl Albrecht, a co-sponsor of the two bills, spent decades working for utilities — including 23 years as CEO of a small electric cooperative — and takes several thousand dollars in political contributions from the energy utility industry and Berkshire Hathaway each year, according to campaign finance disclosures. Perhaps most crucially, Utah hasn’t had any major wildfires in recent memory. 

That’s not the case in Oregon. In September 2020, fires enveloped hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, burning down 4,000 homes — including a state senator’s — and killing 11 people. In the aftermath, PacifiCorp became the state’s arch-villain — and a chance at the perks it won in other states vanished.

Soon the public learned that at least some of the half-dozen fires burning across Oregon that Labor Day stemmed from downed power lines owned by PacifiCorp. A subsequent investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that oversees energy markets and transmission,  found that the distance between vegetation and power lines did not meet safety standards and that some of these violations were so severe that “at least 45 percent of PacifiCorp’s BES lines” should not have had any power running through them at all. 

Public outcry turned into class action lawsuits against PacifiCorp, which turned into a costly lesson for BHE. Since 2020, juries have awarded more than $300 million to several dozen plaintiffs. Yet the fate of thousands of other claimants remains unresolved as the lawsuits drag out in court. In the end, the company may be on the hook for around $8 billion more in potential damages. 

But the lawsuits may not bring much relief to the victims. 

“Warren Buffett is not just going to dump billions in to settle,” said Bob Jenks, executive director of Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. More likely than meeting the claimants’ demands, Jenks predicted that “the company will go into bankruptcy.” 

Despite its pariah status in Oregon, PacifiCorp has been trying to secure the same protections that it has in Utah. Earlier this year, when state representatives introduced utility-friendly bills in the Oregon legislature, they were dead on arrival. “I didn’t expect the degree of anger at PacifiCorp that’s out there,” Jenks said. “I understand. Your house burns down, and PacifiCorp is playing hardball and doing everything they can to prevent liability.” 

The notion of offering some financial support to utilities in the form of ratepayer funds isn’t inherently problematic, experts acknowledge. For example, utilities in California rely on wildfire funds to pay for damages caused by their fires. As in Utah and other states, ratepayers contribute to the pot. But unlike other states, a government entity called the California Earthquake Authority — and not the utilities — oversees the distribution of that fund when it’s needed. After a tree felled a PG&E power line in 2021 and sent the Dixie Fire burning across Northern California, the fund has provided $445 million in support to the utility.  As a result of the program, utilities like PG&E can avoid bankruptcy, but aren’t allowed to pass on the costs directly to their own customers.

So far, catastrophic fires haven’t hit states where PacifiCorp has won liability caps since they’ve taken effect. But with the track record of BHE subsidiaries and rising temperatures drying out Western forests, experts believe that it’s only a matter of time. 

“The risk is there,” Jenks said. “Climate change has made our forests so much drier than they used to be, and we don’t have the same June rain. Our forests weren’t designed for this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who pays for wildfire damage? In the West, utilities are shifting the risk to customers on Sep 19, 2025.

Another man died while in the custody of the Shasta County Jail, the second person to be discovered unresponsive in their cell in 2025 and the sixth to die in Shasta’s custody in the past 21 months. It’s been more than 48 hours since the man was discovered unresponsive in his cell, but the Sheriff’s office has still not released his name. Public Information Officer Timothy Mapes said that as of 4 p.m. Tuesday that the Sheriff’s Office is still “pending notification to the next of kin.” 

The Sheriff’s brief press release earlier this week offered few details except confirmation the dead inmate is a “male subject.” On Sunday, jail staff discovered the anonymous inmate unresponsive in his cell during a routine check. Medical staff declared him dead after attempting to perform life-saving measures, the Sheriff’s Office said. 

According to the Sheriff’s policy handbook, all in-custody deaths must be reported to the California Attorney General within 10 days. Jails are also required to conduct a report on the death within 10 days and submit it to the Board of State and Community Corrections within 60 days.

Additionally, counties must list online anyone who dies while in jail custody within 10 days, as outlined by Assembly Bill 2761,  noting their race, age, gender, and where the person died within the facility. California’s Federal Death in Custody Reporting Act’s implementation plan cites that if a Sheriff isn’t able to reach the deceased’s next of kin within 10 days, they can delay the publication of their information online for an additional 10 days while they continue to make a good-faith effort. 

Since AB 2761 went into effect in 2023, data on Shasta County’s website lists five deceased men. Only three of the reported deaths indicate the cause: two are classified as accidental fentanyl overdoses and the other as a “natural” death that occurred due to compounding health conditions. The other two causes of death have yet to be determined by the county coroner, despite it being over a year and nine months, respectively, since the deaths occurred. 

Three of the men died in their cells and another in the medical unit. The cause of the 2024 death for Manuel Galindo Diaz, whose death occurred while he was in a sobering cell on charges of public intoxication, is still undetermined by the coroner. 

Of those who died, three were charged with crimes and were serving sentences, in contrast to the aforementioned Diaz, who was sobering up when he died, and the latest death listed on the site is from January 2025: Juan Moreno, who was awaiting trial. Three of the five deceased men were Hispanic, one was Native American and one was white. 

A report produced by the Shasta County Grand Jury in May found that in the past six years, the number of deaths at the Shasta County Jail significantly surpassed other similar sized counties such as Madera, Butte and Imperial. Assessing the five deaths that occurred during a 13 month period between December 2023 and January 2024, the Grand Jury concluded that the deaths “were due to lifestyle, not because of jail procedures,” but that the reason for the jail’s higher-than-average mortality could not be determined with the data they were given. 

The Grand Jury’s report fails to make mention of Wellpath, the recently bankrupt private contractor that provides medical services at the Shasta County jail. In recent years, Wellpath has faced over 1,000 lawsuits across the country, including numerous multimillion dollar settlements for allegedly substandard healthcare. 

Just this June, Alameda County and Wellpath paid a combined $10 million to the family of an incarcerated man who was found dead in his cell at the Santa Rita jail in Dublin. Body camera footage revealed that nobody had checked on the deceased Maurice Monk for days. He suffered from hypertensive disorder, schizophrenia and diabetes. When he was eventually discovered deceased, there was a pool of urine at the foot of his bed and multiple unconsumed meals and medication.

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.

Fresno County residents can expect more transparency in this year’s county budget hearing process, after years of criticism over its truncated budget process.

Last year, the county passed their $5.2 billion budget in about 92 minutes.

The Fresno County Board of Supervisors will begin budget hearings later this month on their $5.3 billion proposed budget, with the addition of eight scheduled presentations from county department heads.

Freshman county supervisor, and former Fresno City Councilmember Garry Bredefeld campaigned to introduce the changes leading up to his election win last year, and even during open sessions at board meetings. 

“I’ve very clearly said I needed, in order to support this budget, to have department heads from what most would consider some of the more critical departments — and departments that have a lot of resources that the public access a great deal — to come before the board and make a presentation so that board members and the public can address, question, inquire about what’s taking place in those departments,” Bredefeld told Fresnoland in an interview.

In recent years, the county’s budget hearings have had presentations given by staff on an “as-needed” basis. The hearings would also be presented through categories on the budget — like “General Fund” and “Capital Projects” — instead of by county departments. 

This year, eight of the county’s 20 departments are scheduled to give public presentations: behavioral health, district attorney, probation, public defender, public health, public works and planning, sheriff, and social services. 

Fresno County Communications Director Sonja Dosti told Fresnoland that the county administrative office selected the eight departments based on “primary services that the County delivers.” She added that these departments have also “experienced impacts based on federal or state cuts.” 

Bredefeld, an ex-city councilmember, says that these changes make the county’s process much more similar to the city’s.

“That, to me, is the important part of any budgetary process,” Bredefeld said. “I think the City of Fresno historically has done that in a very lengthy process, which is good, and the board is doing that now as well.”

The City of Fresno’s public budget hearings take place in late spring, with each department making a presentation. The process is much more lengthy than the county’s. 

This year, the process for the city’s budget, which totaled out at a record-breaking $2.3 billion, took about a month to complete. 

The county budget hearings will have the same rules for public comment as it does for its normal board meetings: three minutes maximum per person, and a 15 minute cap for each department. However, the board’s chairman has the discretion to extend public comment. 

Bredefeld, who has said in the past that he would like to see the county’s public comment policy changed, said he’d support time extensions during the budget hearings. 

“The main thing is that the public has the ability and the right to comment,” Bredefeld said. “If it needs to be extended beyond 15 minutes, I will certainly support that. I would assume the board would support it as well.”

But in order for an extension on public comment to be warranted by the chair, enough members of the public will need to show up during the budget hearings. Bredefeld said he hopes changes to the county’s budget process motivate residents to look more closely at the proposed budget this year, and participate in the hearings.

“I would love that,” Bredefeld said. “I don’t think the public has been engaged, but I think maybe that’s because they haven’t had these kinds of public presentations in the past. The city has every department present before council, and the public is certainly more engaged there. So it’s my hope that the public will be more involved with the county budget as well.”

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Many communities have foods that define them: Los Angeles has tacos, Green River, Utah, has melons, while New Mexico’s Hatch Valley is famous for its green chiles. Historic power dynamics — from colonization to migration — have always influenced how and why people began growing, cooking and consuming these symbolic dishes and crops. Today, these foods and those who prepare, raise and sell them carry cultural power; people travel hundreds of miles to buy a juicy Crenshaw or sweet canary melon from a family-run stand in Green River. And yet the farmers themselves often struggle to stay afloat. They lose access to markets as large companies buy up smaller, locally run grocery stores. 

Most grocery stores across the West trace back to a few major corporations. Whether you’re visiting King Soopers in Colorado, Smith’s in Utah or Fred Meyer in Oregon, you’ll find the same Kroger-brand products. The original names of the once-locally owned grocers might remain, but the shops are now just part of one of the nation’s largest grocery corporations.

A handful of companies control the production and distribution of most of our food, and the West plays a leading role in that system. The U.S. headquarters for the world’s largest meatpacker, JBS S.A., is in Greeley, Colorado, while Driscoll’s, the largest berry producer, is headquartered in Watsonville, California. These companies rarely confront the riskiest parts of agribusiness, raising the cows and growing the berries. Instead, they produce, brand and ship them. 

This global food system has profound impacts on the West’s farmers, workers and consumers. It’s getting harder for family farms to turn a profit, and those who seek alternatives to the consolidated corporate market must navigate complicated policies and finances in order to sell directly to consumers. Berry-pickers and meatpacking workers — often immigrants — face exploitation and unsafe conditions, with workplace protections varying from state to state. 

Meanwhile, food insecurity has increased across the West, and yet Republican-led states, including Utah and Idaho, opted out of a federal summer grocery program for kids last year, in part because of anti-welfare politics. 

Beyond its connection to this international system, the West has deeply rooted myths and policies around water and land that create and sustain other layers of power. In the 1800s, settlers stole land from Native people and killed off bison as they drove tens of thousands of cattle westward. Ever since, the cowboy and his glorified cattle have held cultural power that politicians are rarely willing to tarnish. 

As “The Big Four” meatpackers have consolidated most of the beef industry, the economic power of ranchers has dwindled. Only 2% of U.S. beef comes from cows that graze on public lands, and yet multigenerational ranching families and large landowners continue to influence and benefit from antiquated federal grazing policies. 

Most land in the Eastern U.S. is privately owned, but the federal government owns nearly half of all land in the West. Ranchers graze cows on huge swaths of public lands, paying fees well below the actual cost of managing those lands. Over the past century, grazing policies have changed little even as cows destroyed native vegetation and degraded waterways. State and federal policies often put the health of livestock above that of the region’s arid soils or the lives of large carnivores like wolves and bears. 

Ranchers and Big Beef also intersect and overlap with those who control water in the West. Agriculture consumes nearly 80% of the water diverted from the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin, primarily to grow alfalfa and other cattle-feed crops. An investigation by ProPublica and The Desert Sun found that most of the water consumed in California’s Imperial Valley goes to just 20 farming families, with one of them using more than the entire metropolitan area of Las Vegas. Only four of those families use the majority of their water rights to grow foods people consume, like broccoli or onions. The rest use their water to grow hay for livestock. 

Many of these families have senior water rights, and that increasingly means power in the arid and rapidly growing West. Together with livestock associations, irrigation districts and their political allies, they have sought to influence food and water policy. 

Yet in some parts of the West, other interests are gaining power. In the Northwest, years of advocacy from tribes and environmental groups led federal agencies to decommission dams on rivers like the Elwha and Klamath. The farmers might worry about their ability to continue irrigating, but tribes are reclaiming their traditional foodways as salmon return. 

And the Northwest’s rivers aren’t the only places where tribes are reasserting their culture and food sovereignty: Indigenous-run restaurants, farms and cooking classes are springing up across the West. 

Farmers markets, mutual aid efforts and community gardens are creating new forms of cultural, social and economic power, often led by and benefiting those who are excluded and marginalized, including queer, immigrant and Black farmers. Their efforts encourage people to take back intrinsic food traditions while they act in resistance to the global, capitalist food system. 

Still, the corporate structures of our food system are so deeply entrenched that they can be hard to fully comprehend or even notice. In this region, food is power, and that power is not equally shared. Before that can change, however, we need to understand the complexities of this system, tracing its roots to the growth of retail giants and the consolidation of Western agricultural production. 

The grocery giants

The illusion of competition

Farmers markets — a bright spot in the grocery landscape

Get big or get out: Consolidation in agricultural production

The small family farm holds a special place in the American imagination. Today, however, a modest and diminishing portion of our nation’s food is grown on smallholder farms. Production is shifting to larger-scale factory farms in every Western state and across nearly every commodity.

The Redding Rancheria says since launching its Harm Reduction Program at the Tribe’s Churn Creek Recovery Center eight weeks ago, the number of people they’re serving each week has grown from about seven each week, to 20. Clients of the program are picking up clean syringes, food, and clothing — all at no cost.

Staff have also safely disposed of more than 600 used syringes that were turned in as part of the program, ensuring the used needles are kept out of public space and parks. 

The Tribe is using a harm reduction approach to reducing substance use. Harm reduction is designed to meet the needs of people, right where they’re at. It’s an approach that facilitates an environment in which people can continue using substances more safely, if that’s what they choose.

As the Redding Rancheria pointed out in a recent press release, harm reduction is rooted in compassion, connection, and taking care of people. “This principle drives the program’s approach of creating a welcoming, judgment-free space,” the Tribe wrote, “where relationships are built and individuals learn they have options.”

Data shared by the Center for Disease Control indicates that users of clean needle exchanges are “five times more likely to enter drug treatment and about three times more likely to stop using drugs than those who don’t use the programs.” 

The new initiative is led by Recovery Director Katherine Haley, who states, “We understand there are countless reasons why people who use drugs may avoid treatment and generally healthcare. Our goal is to change that by creating an environment where individuals feel safe, respected, and cared for.”

The Safe Project points out that harm reduction is a well-known approach to reducing risk in many scenarios, not just substance use. For example people wear seat belts while driving, bike helmets while riding, and sunscreen while spending time at the beach. All of these are harm reduction efforts designed to make something with inherent danger, safer. In the substance use setting, harm reduction includes clean syringes. It also includes the use of Naloxone to reverse overdose and the use of medically-supervised medications as an alternative to illicit drugs. 

A common criticism of harm reduction is the belief that it incentivizes people to continue to use, but research has shown that people who are using substances will do so even without access to clean needles, at greater risk to themselves and others. Reuse of needles can cause life-threatening skin infections and spread blood-borne diseases like HIV.

Fostering a safe space can be a catalyst for change, the Rancheria says, noting that “research shows it can take at least seven positive contacts before someone with a substance use disorder accepts treatment,” and emphasizing that positive contact helps bring more people into the fold of eventual recovery, if they so choose. 

Multiple participants in the Rancheria’s new harm reduction program have also sought out medical treatment during their visits and some have working with caseworkers to find more permanent housing. 

The Redding Rancheria’s Recovery Center provides  “drop-in” style harm reduction services every Friday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m at 3110 Churn Creek Road. 

Disclosure: In 2024, Shasta Scout received a $2500 grant for office supplies from the Redding Rancheria.

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.

(RNS) — San Diego Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Pulido noticed the way a father held his young daughter and stood close to his wife and teenage daughter in the courtroom. The love and care they had for each other was palpable on Tuesday (Aug. 12), when Pulido accompanied the asylum-seeking family for an immigration court hearing.

“As an immigrant, I got emotional because of that connection I have with my own family — I put myself in his shoes,” said the Catholic bishop, who was born in the Mexican state of Michoacán before immigrating to Yakima Valley in Washington as a teenager. He finished high school there, worked picking produce and eventually was ordained a priest.

Immigrants are facing court appointments with newly heightened levels of fear as the Trump administration has begun sending agents to detain migrants as they leave the courtroom. If immigration judges dismiss their cases, they can immediately face expedited removal proceedings without a chance to make their case for asylum. Previously, a 10-day response time  to the dismissal was allowed.

Guided by their faith, clergy like Pulido and other representatives from religious groups are accompanying immigrants to court appointments to provide comfort and information and, in cases where their worst fears are realized, to pick up the pieces of a shattered American dream.

The Rev. Noel Andersen, national field director at Church World Service who is ordained in the United Church of Christ, holds a weekly call on faith-based court accompaniment. He told RNS that through accompaniment, “Faith leaders bear witness and speak out against the ways masked ICE agents are abducting our community members.” Accompaniment is taking place “in every major city and in some rural areas, just about everywhere there is an immigration court,” he said.

When it was time to leave their San Diego hearing, Pulido said, the family saw half a dozen United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and the mother told him she was scared. The bishop stuck close to the family, talking and reassuring them as they walked by the agents, he said. The judge had given them another hearing in December.

Pulido was present because the San Diego Catholic Church has partnered with Episcopal, Lutheran, Jewish and Muslim clergy, as well as lay people, to provide accompaniment for immigrants at the courthouse every day in August. They have more than 50 volunteers, and as more sign up, they’re planning to continue the ministry.

It was only when they’d gotten through the ordeal safely that the family asked Pulido which church he was with. The Catholic family were stunned to learn a bishop had accompanied them that day, he said.

Pulido said he was inspired by Pope Francis’ words last year when he attended “baby bishop camp,” an orientation for new bishops in Rome, to get involved in the court accompaniment ministry. “Be a sign of hope for the homeless, for the migrants, for those who are in prison,” he recalled Francis saying.

He said he believes sometimes ICE agents choose not to detain migrants even after their cases are dismissed because his priests are walking with them, though they have also witnessed detentions.

Pulido isn’t the only Catholic bishop who has gone to immigration court. In Orange County, where priests and deacons are also accompanying the faithful in immigration court, Bishop Kevin Vann attended the July bond hearing of Narciso Barranco, an immigrant without legal status and father of three U.S. Marines who was filmed being beaten in the head by immigration agents during his June arrest.

El Paso, Texas, Bishop Mark Seitz was also in immigration court on Tuesday, said Scalabrinian Sister Leticia Gutiérrez, the director of the diocese’s migrant hospitality ministry.

Seitz witnessed the detention of three people — “the sobbing, the anguish of the wife of one of them,” said Gutiérrez in Spanish. Seitz told her, “I saw Jesus walking through the hallway, sister, defenseless.”

Gutiérrez, who has organized a precise system for the diocese’s immigration court accompaniment in the last two months, arrives at immigration court at exactly 7:50 a.m., four days a week, and stays until the final cases have concluded.

Before ICE agents arrive (about 20 minutes after she does), Gutiérrez and a priest who is a retired immigration lawyer introduce themselves to migrants arriving for court and provide them basic legal advice and information — and try to sit with them in their anxiety.

While some of the diocesan team members observe the court sessions, ICE agents have also allowed them a protected zone in the waiting room, so when immigrants leave their court appointments, Gutiérrez helps them arrange their affairs, sometimes taking up to 30 to 40 minutes before they walk toward the agents. She encourages them to call their families one last time and share their Alien Registration Number, and then to write phone numbers on their bodies so they can call family if they’re detained.

If they’re willing to share personal information and their keys, she offers to let their family know if they’re detained, send another team to visit them in detention, connect them with a lawyer when available and move their vehicle so it doesn’t incur fines before their family can pick it up.

Many people are in shock when judges dismiss their cases, Gutiérrez said. “It’s incomprehensible for many of them, who say, ‘I paid taxes. I already have an apartment. I have a car … why are they going to detain me?’”

At that point, Gutiérrez said, “There really is no escape. You have to pass, no matter what, by the immigration agents. So it’s like Jesus, who goes directly to the cross.”

The Rev. Chloe Breyer, an Episcopal priest and director of the Interfaith Center of New York, told RNS witnessing detentions was “harrowing.”

“ All I could do is get their name in this tiny millisecond between when they left the courtroom door and when they were picked up by these officers,” she said.

“ We’re witnessing a kind of public display of lawlessness,” Breyer added. She, like Gutiérrez, said there seemed to be no “rhyme or reason” behind which immigrants were detained and which were able to leave.

The Episcopal Diocese of New York has publicized that three of their parishioners have been detained in courthouse arrests and has held a training on court accompaniment for over 80 clergy, said Mary Rothwell Davis, the diocese’s vice-chancellor for immigration and refugees. On July 8, Bishop Matthew E. Heyd witnessed immigration court detentions.

Breyer said she has gone to immigration court about half a dozen times in the last six months, along with rabbis and other Christian leaders. She has worked with the New Sanctuary Coalition, through which she shows up to accompany immigrants who happen to be there that day, and also with specific clients at the request of their lawyers.

In Los Angeles, Isaac Cuevas, director of immigration and public affairs for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has trained about 180 priests, deacons and religious sisters in court accompaniment. While they make an effort to match parishioners who request accompaniment for immigration court with someone who has gone through the program, the vowed religious largely create their own schedules for going to courts in the area.

“If people are in need, then we try to come forward and answer that call however possible,” said Cuevas, emphasizing that they do so not by civil disobedience, but through prayer, solidarity and recommendations to seek legal advice.

Another LA group, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, observes courts daily.

In Arizona, Alicia Contreras, executive director of Corazón AZ, part of the grassroots multi-faith Faith in Action federation, said faith leaders in the state attend immigration court when community members request accompaniment. It is part of the group’s broader work, including know-your-rights and family defense planning, when a family makes plans for children, pets and bills in the event of a crisis. Corazón AZ has partnered with Puente, another Phoenix organizing group that maintains a more regular presence at the courthouse.

Corazón AZ has sent Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Catholics, Unitarian Universalists and volunteers without a specific tradition to the courthouse. The majority have been lay people.

“If I can offer a word of prayer, if I have brought folks a rosary or just sat with them, give them a gentle touch on their back, a hug when they need it, this goes a long way to calm the nerves,” Contreras said. She reminds immigrants to breathe. “We are not in control of a lot, but we are in control of our breathing.”

Fear can also cause immigrants to “black out” during their hearings, leaving them unable to remember what happened, Contreras said, explaining that faith leaders can help explain what happened afterward. In the worst cases, fear can lead community members to skip their court dates, a guaranteed way to enter deportation proceedings, she said.

Court accompaniment is an expression of faith, Contreras said.

“I know that their higher power, or in my faith tradition, God, does not want this for them,” said Contreras, a Catholic. “God is not putting the barriers, and God also is not wanting us to look away.”

In 2023, the only general hospital in Madera County closed due to financial distress. The Central Valley health care center mostly served low-income patients and relied on government-funded programs like Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to partially fund that care. 

That’s problematic because government programs like Medicaid often pay providers below the cost of care, making it difficult for hospitals that serve a high number of Medicaid patients to continue providing all services and to even keep their doors open. The closure of the Madera Community Hospital, which has since reopened, caused a domino effect: clinics affiliated with the hospital closed, so people needing care tried going to a nearby children’s hospital, which was only designed to treat children with its smaller beds and equipment, or to hospitals in Fresno, which started seeing more patients in emergency rooms. 

With recent federal cuts to Medicaid, health care officials in California are worried more hospitals could face the same fate. 

“We don’t want to see that situation repeat itself again, if we can help it at all,” said Jan Emerson-Shea, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association (CHA). “We’re very concerned because of the impact.” 

The federal budget reconciliation bill, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” was signed in July and includes significant cuts to Medicaid. Experts say these cuts will not only impact those who lose Medicaid coverage, but may also severely affect hospitals that serve a large proportion of low-income people, something that’s more common in rural areas. 

They explained it like this: The millions of people who could lose coverage due to cuts will still need medical care. Since hospitals are legally obligated to provide care to people regardless of insurance coverage, they will treat those uninsured people — but  won’t get paid for it. The resulting revenue loss may lead hospitals to reduce overall services to make up for the lost costs, or in dire situations, close entirely if they can no longer support the facility’s operations or staff. 

Peggy Wheeler is the vice president of rural health care and governance at the CHA, a non-profit that provides advocacy and representation for the majority of California hospitals at state and federal levels. Like her colleague Emerson-Shea, she’s concerned about the impacts of Medicaid cuts on hospitals throughout the state, especially rural ones, like those in Shasta. 

“This is not a short-term problem,” she said. “This is a really long-term problem, and it’s going to take long-term thinking, long-term and innovative approaches to how we are going to adjust to the new health care system. I think that our hospitals have weathered a lot of storms, but this one feels a bit different.” 

A few weeks before the bill was passed, a letter from several U.S. senators to President Donald Trump and other government officials about the risks of Medicaid cuts to rural hospitals was widely circulated online. The letter names more than 300 hospitals nationwide at risk of closing or having to reduce services due to cuts, including Mayers Memorial Hospital in Shasta County and several others in the North State. It was based on research provided by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina.

CHA officials said this list isn’t entirely accurate because of how the hospitals were calculated to be at risk, noting that several hospitals they believe to be at risk weren’t included. Wheeler explained that the researchers only looked into two characteristics, one about how many years a hospital has been in negative margins and another about how many Medicaid patients they see, when other factors should’ve also been considered to make final calculations.

Nonetheless, she said the point of the letter was still an important one to make.

“In general, what the senators did was call attention to an issue that is real,” Wheeler said. “The One Big, not-so Beautiful Bill is going to be problematic for these hospitals that, for the most part, operate around the margins providing care, not getting appropriately reimbursed for the cost of care.”

Shasta Scout reached out for comment to five hospitals in the North State that were on the list — some didn’t respond, but the ones that did explained that they’re not able to comment on how the Medicaid cuts will affect their services because they’re still assessing impacts. 

Mayers Memorial posted a statement on Facebook about the federal budget bill, stating that it is “closely following the many changes and examining the potential effects” of the bill. 

‘Nobody’s going to escape this’: Officials say impacts will be widespread

The federal budget bill will reduce Medicaid spending in rural areas by $155 billion over 10 years, causing 10 million people to become uninsured, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Wheeler of CHA emphasized that most, if not all, rural areas in California will be impacted by the Medicaid cuts because they tend to have higher percentages of low-income people that rely on Medicaid than hospitals in urban areas. 

But her biggest point of emphasis was that those impacts on rural hospitals will cause a wide range of trickle-down effects, not only in rural communities but also in surrounding areas. “Nobody’s going to escape this,” she said. 

CHA officials explained how hospitals often act as anchor institutions to other businesses and services in less populated areas, with rural hospitals often being one of the biggest employers in communities. If hospitals close, many people lose their jobs, resulting in additional economic impacts to the community as people stop going out to eat and spend less at stores, they said.

Wheeler said people may also move away from rural areas if they lose their job or don’t have close access to a hospital or crucial service. 

“When people have to start leaving their community to get those other services, they start to make decisions about whether they can stay in rural [areas], and then that has an impact, not only on hospitals, but every business in that community loses out,” she said.

The shift, she pointed out, can also lead to significantly higher wait times in emergency rooms that remain open.

“We cannot tinker with one part of [the system] and not expect that it will have an impact on another part,” Wheeler said. 

It’s important to note, she explained, that these trickle-down effects will impact both uninsured and insured people alike — hospital closures hurt nearly everyone in the community, and insurance doesn’t prevent long wait times in emergency rooms. 

Donnell Ewert, former director of the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency, also weighed in on the issue. He said about 37% of the population in Shasta County is on Medi-Cal, meaning hospitals in Shasta County will be significantly affected. Like Wheeler, Ewert said this problem will impact everyone, not just uninsured people. 

“Even if [people aren’t] on Medicaid … if their hospital closes, they’re still out of luck,” he said. “They’re still gonna have to drive 55 miles to come down to Redding or drive to Reno or whatever to get care.” 

Amid fears and outcry over the federal budget bill a few months ago, the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) was added by lawmakers to help mitigate the impact of Medicaid cuts in rural areas. RHTP will allocate $10 billion a year to rural hospital-related services throughout the country for five years. 

Wheeler said the funds, which require an application process, would bring money into the state to help rural health care. But CHA spokesperson Emerson-Shea said this funding isn’t necessarily specific to rural hospitals — it’s for any kind of health care provided in rural communities, including telehealth. It also restores only a little over one-third of the estimated loss of Medicaid funding in rural areas. 

Many California hospitals have already been struggling for years. According to an analysis by health care consulting firm Kaufman Hall, one in five hospitals in the state were already at risk of closing as of 2022, largely due to financial strain resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Wheeler said CHA will continue working with hospitals in the state and try to bring their voices to the table when advocating for state and federal support. 

“It’s going to be a challenging time for all of us, but we’re going to do this together,” she said.

Madison Holcomb is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She’s reporting for Shasta Scout as a 2025 summer intern with support from the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.

Cody Two Bear, who is Standing Rock Sioux, served on his tribal council during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2017. Growing up in a community powered by coal, the experience was transformative. “I’ve seen the energy extraction that has placed a toll significantly on tribal nations when it comes to land, animals, water, and sacred sites,” said Two Bear. “Understanding more about that energy, I started to look into my own tribe as a whole.”

In 2018, Two Bear founded Indigenize Energy, a nonprofit organization that works with tribes to pursue energy sovereignty and economic development by kickstarting clean energy projects. Last year, with nearly $136 million in federal funding through Solar for All, a program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, the nonprofit launched the Tribal Renewable Energy Coalition, which aims to build solar projects with 14 tribal nations in the Northern Plains.

But when President Donald Trump took office in January, those projects hit a wall: The Trump administration froze Solar for All’s funding. That temporarily left the coalition and its members earlier this year without access to their entitled grant (it was later released in March). However, the EPA is considering ending the program entirely. 

The coalition is back on track with its solar plans, but now tribes and organizations, like the ones Two Bear works with, are bracing for new changes.

When President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, or OBBB, became law last month, incentives for clean energy projects like wind and solar tax credits and clean energy grants were cut — a blow to the renewable energy sector and a major setback to tribal nations. Moves from federal agencies to end programs have shifted the project landscape as well. The current number of impacted projects run by tribes is unknown. According to the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, at least 100 tribes they have worked with have received funds from federal agencies and the Inflation Reduction Act; however, those figures could be higher. “Without that support, most of, if not all of those projects are now at risk for being killed by the new unclear federal approval process,” said John Lewis, the Native American Energy managing director for Avant Energy, a consulting company. 

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The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, for instance, has planned solar projects reliant on federal tax cuts. The projects were designed to power a community health clinic, schools, and a radio station that broadcasts emergency notices during winter storms. However, with the passage of the OBBB, the tribe must now begin construction by July of next year or lose credits, a feat that doesn’t account for the time it takes to secure capital in various stages, seek a complete environmental review, and navigate long permitting timelines through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

“Some of these projects, at a minimum, have stalled, or they’re having to be reworked in some way to fit within the current parameters that have been laid down by the administration,” said Verrin Kewenvoyouma, who is Hopi and Navajo, and a managing partner at Kewenvoyouma Law that assists tribes with environmental permitting, cultural resources, and energy development. “We have clients that are looking at creative solutions, trying to keep them alive.” 

In June, the Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan, a joint organization representing 12 federally recognized tribes in the state, joined a class-action lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, alongside a tribe in Alaska, arguing that the agency illegally froze access to promised project funds from the Environmental and Climate Justice block grant program. The now-defunct program promised $3 billion to 350 recipients to fund projects addressing pollution and high energy costs. Plaintiffs hope the program will be reinstated so that pending projects can be restarted.

Tribes are now seeking philanthropy, short-term funding, and conventional financing to cover delays and gaps in project costs. After the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians in California lost access to a $3.55 million BIA award to the tribe for solar microgrid development in March, the BQuest Foundation, which specializes in covering expenses needed to continue housing or climate-related projects, gave the tribe $1 million to resume the project’s timeline. 

Currently, the self-funded Alliance is covering tribal projects that have experienced a sudden loss in tax credits, rescission of federal funds, and uncertainty of direct pay. “We’re helping try to navigate this challenging period and continue on their self-determined paths, whatever it looks like for them — to energy sovereignty,” said Shéri Smith, CEO of the organization. At the moment, the Alliance is offering a mix of grants from $50 to $500,000, and loans up to $1 million, which will be converted to grants should a tribe default. 

“Tribes need to build up internal capacity to carry that out and to have control of their energy situation, for their at-risk members, and members in general,” said John Lewis. “ At such a critical stage, access to affordable, reliable electricity is paramount. The country is getting hotter. The world is getting hotter. It’s warming.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tribal nations scramble to save clean energy projects as federal support vanishes on Aug 11, 2025.

Lea este artículo en español aquí.

West of San Juan Bautista, on a hill turned gold by the summer sun, stands a barn built in the early 20th century. Just beside it, a group of archaeology students kneel in the dirt, sifting through layers of San Benito County’s past. 

One unearths what appears to be a button from the late 19th or early 20th century. Another finds a splintered redwood plank with rusted nails still in it, and carries it to Gabriel Sanchez, an archeologist and assistant professor at the University of Oregon.

“That’s most likely American, right?” Sanchez asks, and, around him, about a dozen students nod. It’s the nails, Sanchez explains, that give it away. If the plank dated back to the Mexican period—before the mid-19th century, when California was still part of Mexico—the nails would have been produced by blacksmiths, not machines.

But the plank, while curious, isn’t why they’re here.

Archaeology students from the University of Oregon and 16 members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band are searching for the remains of a two-story adobe once owned by Manuel Larios, a 19th-century Californio, one of the first Spanish settlers in California. 

Larios owned 48,000 acres east of what is now Hollister, as well as a smaller 4,000-acre property known as El Ranchito in the area that would become San Juan Bautista and surrounding San Benito County. 

Larios, Sanchez says, is “integral to the history of San Benito County,” because he lived through the three eras that shaped modern California. 

Born in 1798 during the Spanish period, he enlisted in the Spanish army as a young man. In the 1830s, under Mexican rule, he acquired his San Juan Bautista ranchito after the secularization of the missions, when the government stripped the Franciscan order of its land and sold it off. By the time he died in 1861, California had become part of the United States.

The land is now owned by the San Benito Agricultural Land Trust, which acquired the property in 2023, including the century-old barn visible from Hwy 156. During early efforts to stabilize and restore the barn, there were signs that an older structure might lie nearby, land trust Vice President Bob Connolly told BenitoLink.

Suspecting it could be the long-lost adobe in Manuel Larios’ ranchito, the organization reached out to Sanchez, who specializes in California history, and to the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, which identifies as descendants of the Indigenous people who survived the missions of Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista. 

“We’re collaborating because the adobe affects all of us,” Connolly said. “It brings the past to the present.”

Sanchez visited the site with a ground-penetrating radar and, a few feet from the barn, detected a rectangular shape which suggested there was a human-made structure underneath. “You usually don’t find rectangular things that occur naturally in the world,” he says.

So, in early July, he returned with a group of students and members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to excavate.

For the Amah Mutsun, finding the adobe would mean bringing their history to light.

“Who would have been on the rancho working?” Sanchez says. “It would have been the Mission Indians. And who were the Mission Indians? It was the local Mutsun people, people from the surrounding areas, all the way to the Yokuts from the Central Valley.”

To Alec Apodaca, a staff member with the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, the nonprofit which protects and stewards the tribe’s cultural heritage, the adobe, if found, could help people today understand the world the Amah Mutsun once inhabited.

“When people made those adobes, they collected signatures of the environment,” Apodaca said. “When they made those adobe bricks, it preserved those seeds. So if we find that adobe—and if the conditions are right—we can extract those seeds and analyze them.”

The tribe also sees the excavation as an opportunity to train its members in archaeological methods and reconnect with their history. Unlike burial grounds or sacred sites, the barn and its surroundings are a place to practice excavation in a respectful way. Because the land holds layers from each of California’s historical periods, it allows for study without the fear of disturbing sacred sites.

The group plans to return to the barn in September to continue excavating. The hope is to uncover the adobe and, through it, tell the story of the Indigenous people who lived in what is now San Benito County, and whose lives are often left out of the history books.

“Through archaeology,” Apodaca said, “we can actually tell their story.”

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