Our Shared Lands: Rally for Public Lands Featuring Way of the Masks

Update: We are honored to announce the Our Shared Lands rally will now host the kickoff event for the 2025 Way of the Masks campaign with Lummi master carver Jewell James. Come here about this year's totem pole journey that brings attention to the Trump administration's threats to Indigenous lands, waters, forests, and lifeways in the Pacific Northwest. Learn about Way of the Masks here.

America’s public lands and the people who care for them are under threat as never before. Join us for a rally to protect these invaluable national resources and the workers who manage them. The rally will include a ceremonial blessing of the totem pole created by Jewell James and the House of Tears Carvers for this year's Way of the Masks campaign.

Why should we care about our shared public lands?
They are crucial for:

• Biodiversity: Providing vital habitat for countless species, helping to maintain healthy ecosystems.
• Clean Air and Water: Helping to ensure that all of us have access to clean air and water.
• Climate Change Resilience: Providing places of increased resistance to the impacts of climate change through CO2 absorption and flood mitigation.
• Cultural heritage: Protecting Indigenous sacred sites and preserving our national heritage.
• Outdoor Access: Allowing all of us access to natural environments, for our physical, psychological, spiritual, and social well-being.
• Economic strength: Tourism and hospitality connected to public lands boost the economies of local communities and small businesses.
• Education and Research: Providing educational and research opportunities for scientists and students.

What is threatening America’s public lands?

• Development: Logging, mining, and energy extraction negatively impact the quality of our shared lands and their ecosystems through deforestation, pollution of the air and water, and disruption of visual landscapes and soundscapes.
• Plans to sell public lands to the highest bidder of give them to states: These schemes would forever alter the quality and diversity of our public lands and their invaluable nature.
• Climate Change: Due to the increased potential for wildfires, droughts, catastrophic winds, and other extreme events.

What is happening to public lands workers?

• Approximately 5,000 people have been fired. This threatens the management of our national parks, national forests, national monuments, wilderness and marine protected areas, wildlife refuges, and scenic rivers.
• Negative Impacts
• Loss of public access
• Threats to Indigenous cultural sites
• Loss of maintenance of campgrounds, trails, educational resources, search and rescue services, and many more!
• Adverse impacts on local economies
• Hardship for workers and their families