Nevadans for Cultural Preservation

September 2022

Ten minute podcast Sitting around the table @ Mystery Ranch eating tacos and talking cultural site respect

Podcast context: On a relatively cool Sunday morning, Rayette Martin (NVFCP Executive Director), hitched a ride with Steve Dudrow (Volunteer) down to a place called the Mystery Ranch to do a podcast with artist Kim Garrison Means. Rayette had met Kim at the opening of Spirit of the Land, an art exhibition at the Barrick Museum of Art a few months back. The traveling exhibition is to honor the history, culture, and natural wonders of the Mojave desert landscape south of Las Vegas, in light of the recent proposal to establish the Avi Kwa Ame (Ah-VEE kwa-meh) national monument. Avi Kwa Ame is the Mojave name for Spirit Mountain and the surrounding landscape in Southern Nevada.

Kim, a co-curator for the traveling exhibition, is a conceptual artist and caretaker of the Mystery Ranch located in the Mojave outside of Searchlight. She and her partner, Steve Radosevich, make up United Catalysts. Their work explores the connections between action, environment, community and self.

After a wonderful walk around the ranch property, in which we saw two snakes, a handful of birds, blooming desert plants green from all the monsoon rains, the full length podcast recording was completed. The recording equipment was put away while a taco lunch was had by Kim, Steve, Rayette, Jim and Alex. Jim and Alex were on a hike while the full length podcast was being recorded. During lunch conversation, Steve asked if he could record the discussion on cultural site respect. The link to the podcast above is ten minutes of that conversation.