Welcome to Science Matters Colorado. The podcast that explores the environmental issues shaping our beautiful state. I am your host, Alex Hippenhammer.

Today I’m honored to share a deeply candid and illuminating conversation with Dustin Freyta, an Indigenous American and one of the leading voices at Sacred Water Mountain Society, based in Taos, New Mexico. Sacred Water Mountain Society is centered on the revitalization of an ancient Indigenous practice known as water planting—a sophisticated method of land and water stewardship that has largely disappeared from public awareness, though its physical traces remain hidden in plain sight across the landscape.

Dustin brings not only extraordinary knowledge of Indigenous histories—including the often-overlooked legacy of slavery and oppression across the Americas—but also a personal story that is just as remarkable. From surviving the generational impacts of colonial marginalization, to a period of monastic solitude in the wilderness of Colorado, his path has been one of reclamation, resilience, and return. What emerges is a reimagining of his relationship with the natural world—one rooted in ancestral wisdom and lived through an unflinching commitment to land-based practices.

This conversation is frank, sometimes unsettling, and always grounded in truth. Dustin does not claim to speak for any tribe or nation—his heritage includes Apache, Comanche, and Pueblo ancestry—but the insights he offers are the result of hard-earned experience and deep research. I’m grateful for his willingness to share them.

Wherever you’re listening from, I hope this episode serves as a reminder of who the original stewards of this land are. For those of us in Colorado, that includes the Ute—specifically the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe—as well as the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Apache, Shoshone, Comanche, Kiowa, and Navajo peoples.

There is much to learn—still—from those who have long held knowledge of how to live in balance with the land. I hope this conversation challenges, inspires, and calls you toward that deeper listening.

Here is my conversation with Dustin Freyta.

Links:

Sacred Water Mountain Society

Outro

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please like the show and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Ruth Massera for introducing me to Dustin and water planting.

For additional features like video, you can find transcribed versions of this and future episodes at my personal Substack, Echoing Earth.

The music for this podcast is Siesta by Ikson, part of the “Tell Your Story” project—a library of free music for content creators. Visit ikson.com to explore the full catalog.

Today I am sharing a conversation with fire mitigation specialist and trained wildland firefighter Ruth Massera. Ruth works out of Crestone, Colorado for a nonprofit called E3KFM. Their work is centered around wildfire mitigation through regenerating healthy forests and restoring the watershed. A lot of Ruth’s work recently has been centered around an initiative to reintroduce beavers to the watershed. Additionally, they have been working with the Sacred Water Mountain Society out of Taos to learn the ancient indigenous practice of water planting.

This is a great episode for you if you are interested in ecological restoration, beavers and the impact of keystone species, wildfire mitigation, reciprocity, and indigenous land management practices. Regardless of what brought you here, this interview will leave you with plenty to chew on.

Links:

E3KFM

Sacred Water Mountain Society

Outro

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please like the show and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Lisa Wimberger for introducing me to Ruth for this episode.

For additional features like video, you can find transcribed versions of this and future episodes at my personal Substack, Echoing Earth.

The music for this podcast is Siesta by Ikson, part of the “Tell Your Story” project—a library of free music for content creators. Visit ikson.com to explore the full catalog.

It’s projected that by 2050, 7 out of 10 people in the world will live in urban areas, totaling 6 and half billion people. The ecological footprint of these cities will be vast, and the more we can do to make these areas self-sufficient, the more habitable the entire planet will be. Today’s guest offers a novel solution to this challenge. Inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the stratification of an old-growth forest, Dr. Jennifer Bousselot studies the benefits of combining solar panels with green roofs. This method - called agrivoltaics - brings agriculture and photovoltaics together in a shared space. Growing food under the shade of solar panels has some surprising benefits, which are being revealed through research institutions like Colorado State University, where Dr. Bousselot serves as a professor of horticulture and landscape architecture.

In her 2020 TED Talk, Dr. Bousselot coined the term “rooftop agrivoltaics”, referring to an innovative approach that integrates solar panels with green roofs. I recently toured the rooftop agrivoltaics site at CSU Spur, one of several agrivoltaics projects that Dr. Bousselot oversees. Touring this site gave me a new perspective on how rooftops can be utilized to produce energy, grow food, manage stormwater, and cool our cities. This conversation is for anyone curious about renewable energy, urban agriculture, green roofs, or sustainable design. Whether you are just discovering agrivoltaics or are already invested in the intersection of energy and ecology, I think you will find this conversation illuminating. Please enjoy!

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Episode Links:

• CSU Spur Agrivoltaics
• NREL
• Green Roofs for Healthy Cities
• Journal of Living Architecture

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If you enjoyed today’s episode, please like the show and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

For additional features like video, you can find transcribed versions of this and future episodes at my personal Substack, Echoing Earth.

The music for this podcast is Siesta by Ikson, part of the “Tell Your Story” project—a library of free music for content creators. Visit ikson.com to explore the full catalog.