Starting Conversations with Aldo Leopold: The Indigenous Influence

Starting Conversations is celebrating the Gila Wilderness Centennial with a special series featuring Steve Morgan, Chautauqua performer, as Aldo Leopold in conversation with three scholars working directly in forestry, environmental restoration, and land ethics.

Aldo Leopold was stationed in New Mexico from the early 20th Century and was immediately influenced by the Indigenous community and how they stewarded the land around them. Living alongside these communities he began to understand his relationship to his environment differently. . Much of Leopold’s practices in naturalism and environmental conservation are credited to the Indigenous people who had stronger ties and the longest tenure to the regions that eventually became federally protected land.

This episode of Starting Conversations with Aldo Leopold features a discussion between Aldo and Dan Shilling, scholar and author who has focused on the life and practices of Aldo Leopold.


The New Mexico Humanities Council is a non-profit seeking to understand who we are, who we were and who we aspire to be.