This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Visit Arizona, home of Len Nesifer.

My name is Len Nesifer. I'm a professor of American Indian Studies.

Len is an academic, an adventurer, and the founder of a company called Natives Outdoors.

Natives Outdoors is an apparel company and we also specialize in consulting and

storytelling as well.

The idea of natives outdoors

is to build up an outdoor recreation industry

for tribes in Arizona.

It's a project that combines both his passions,

native history and playing outside.

One of the things that we see is that a lot of tribes are on or near very scenic places.

And there's a really big opportunity to build an outdoor industry on tribal lands with native people.

Len should know.

He grew up on the north rim of Canyon Desche, a Navajo-run national monument, but now he lives in Tucson.

Mountain biking is awesome around the area, trail running.

Course hiking, you can always do most of the times of the year,

but one that I've been exploring the most has been climbing.

When we talked to him, he was getting ready to go up the Cochise stronghold, a spectacular

climbing area about an hour from Tucson where the Apache leader

Cochise took refuge. The Apaches considered this place home and it's kind of

neat to think about what a like how do how would I consider this place home

how would I take care of this place?

...