Mesa Verde Voices

05/30/2025

Mark your calendars!!

Call for Indigenous Artists and Performers for the Annual Indigenous Arts and Culture Festival, July 5 & 6, 2025 at Mesa Verde National Park. For more information on the festival visit our webpage www.mesaverde.org/festival, where you can also find the link to apply online.

04/17/2025

🎙 S E A S O N 6️⃣ E P I S O D E 5️⃣ - A SEASON OF CHANGE 🌀

While the mission of the National Park Service is to preserve and protect our nation’s natural and cultural resources for future generations, this doesn’t mean that the methods of preservation are stagnant. Over the past decade, park staff at Mesa Verde National Park have taken steps to tell a more complete story of the people who once lived on this landscape.
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In this episode, we hear about the current renovations to the park’s museum and the collaborative process that has informed these updates. And the Indigenous Ranger Interns we’ve heard from throughout this season share their experiences working in the park in the 2024 season.
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Mesa Verde Voices is a production of Mesa Verde National Park and the Mesa Verde Association.

04/10/2025

❄️🎙 S E A S O N 6️⃣ E P I S O D E 4️⃣ - WINTER 🌨️

Winter is a crucial time of year for both the landscape and humans of Mesa Verde. While this is generally a time for rest, reflection, and community, the people living at Mesa Verde would not have been sitting idly by waiting for spring.
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In this episode, two of Mesa Verde National Park’s Indigenous Ranger Interns help us picture one of the most important elements of every home across Mesa Verde - the hearth.
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And Theresa Pasqual (Acoma) tells us about the importance of oral tradition and oral histories that have been passed down during winter time around the hearth, and how this has been crucial to the longevity of Mesa Verde’s descendants since time immemorial.
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Mesa Verde Voices is a production of Mesa Verde National Park and the Mesa Verde Association.

04/03/2025

🍂🎙 S E A S O N 6️⃣ E P I S O D E 3️⃣ - FALL 🍁

As the autumn winds bring cooler weather and vibrant colors to the Mesa Verde landscape, this seasonal transition also brings a time of harvest, celebration of the growing season, and preparation for the long winter months ahead.
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In this episode, two of Mesa Verde National Park’s Indigenous Ranger Interns paint a picture of life in the cliff dwellings during the autumn months, and share how they see these traditions and ways of life continuing in their communities today.
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And Theresa Pasqual tells us about life at Acoma. She shares stories about the cultural knowledge and observances of seasonal change, and we hear about two particularly special foods harvested in New Mexico today: pinyon nuts and chiles.
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Mesa Verde Voices is a production of Mesa Verde National Park and the Mesa Verde Association.

03/27/2025

☀️🎙 S E A S O N 6️⃣ E P I S O D E 2️⃣ - SUMMER 🌽

In episode 2, we hear about the busiest time of year at Mesa Verde. Two of Mesa Verde National Park’s Indigenous Ranger Interns paint a picture of the busy farming plots on the mesa tops during the summer months. And Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson tells us about the modern practices of dryland farming at Hopi.
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He offers insights into how his ancestors may have farmed the landscape at Mesa Verde based on his personal experiences as a farmer and the traditional knowledge that has survived for centuries within Hopi. He also discusses the concepts of “ways of knowing” in terms of ecology and agriculture.
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Mesa Verde Voices is a production of and the Mesa Verde Association.

03/21/2025

🌱🎙 S E A S O N 6️⃣ E P I S O D E 1️⃣ - SPRING 🌼

In Episode 1, we’ll be exploring spring time in the canyon bottoms of Mesa Verde. As the melting snow begins to reveal new growth across the sandstone cliffs, this would have been a busy time of year for people living on this landscape.
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While the Ancestral Pueblo people would have been preparing for the growing season ahead, not all peoples with connections to Mesa Verde were farmers. The Ute Mountain Ute people, who still live adjacent to the park today, view spring as the start of their seasonal calendar, and in this episode we’ll hear about their relationship to this time of the year.
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Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Mesa Verde Voices is a production of Mesa Verde National Park and the Mesa Verde Association.

03/07/2025

🌱⛈️🍂❄️ In season 6 we'll be talking about... the seasons. We'll be exploring the Mesa Verde landscape as it transforms throughout the year - from how the plants, animals, and weather change, to how the lives of ancestral people would have shifted alongside these changes in the natural world.

🌀 And finally we'll hear about some big changes coming to the museum at Mesa Verde National Park.

🎙️ Episodes will be released weekly starting on the Spring Equinox - March 20th.