Shifting who sees themselves in outdoor rec is one step toward saving the planet

By Elizabeth Miller

When Len Necefer, who grew up in the Navajo Nation, told his friends he had started to do more outdoors than mend fences and herd sheep, their responses sometimes came down to: “Rock climbing? That’s what white people do.”
Scroll through Instagram and it’s easy to confirm that image. Punch in #climbing and the results are a lot of white faces. Necefer saw that as fix worth tackling, so he started the account @NativesOutdoors to diversify that stream. The photographs show them shredding steep powder, holding up a fish so long it requires both hands or clusters of freshly gathered sage, or just perched on an overlook in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Posts include comments on what these natural places mean to them—sustenance from fishing, peace and quiet, or the place to ski for the 84th day in a row.

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