Join JHTU at Mountains of Color June 8th and 9th!

Jackson Hole Trout Unlimited is proud to be the fiscal sponsor and partner of the second Mountains of Color Film Festival, June 8^th and 9^th, a film festival we helped launch last year that is dedicated to celebrating BIPOC+ (Black, Indigenous, People of Color, + other intersecting marginalized groups ) in outdoors, adventure, and conservation filmmaking. In its second year, the festival has a beautiful adventure and conservation film lineup of healing, triumph, and joy that we’re excited to share, as well as workshops and other activities. Each evening screening will have food trucks, raffles (benefiting JHTU, Coombs Outdoors, and Camina Conmigo), and panelists from the films. Sunday’s screening will also include fly casting and macroinvertebrate stations by JHTU. We are grateful to all the sponsors and grant funders that have made this programming possible for our community! Please visit www.mountainsofcolor.org for more information and to purchase tickets and register for workshops and special screenings. There are free and discounted options for all festival events open to the public.

A few fishing and conservation-related films that we would like to highlight from the lineup:

Covenant of the Salmon People (Sunday afternoon special screening) is a 60-minute documentary portrait of the Nez Perce Tribe as they continue to carry out their ancient promise to protect Chinook salmon, cornerstone species and first food their people have subsisted on for tens of thousands of years. As a dammed river system and climate impacts threaten the extinction of Chinook salmon, a cornerstone of their culture and ancestral diet, they continue to do their part to uphold this relationship–but will it be enough to save wild salmon from extinction? Trout Unlimited is a proud partner of the Nez Perce Tribe in their effort to remove the 4 Lower Snake River dams and the event will include a panel discussion with Nakia Williamson, Cultural Resource Program Director for the Nez Perce tribe.

Don’t Doubt the Trout (Saturday night): Bernard and Rebecca of the band, Par Avion, are not your average surf rock musicians. They're passionate fly fishing anglers and conservationists who are advocating for the protection of California's endangered Steelhead trout. As ambassadors to CalTrout, they've become observers on the ground to document the health of Southern California's waterways, especially around Malibu's 100-ft Rindge Dam, a major obstacle to wildlife. Thanks to the efforts of CalTrout and advocates like Bernard and Rebecca, the Rindge Dam is due to be removed with demolition work planned to begin 2028 and finish in 2035.

Visibility (Sunday night): Lael Johnson, steelhead guide, navigates Washington waters while unpacking challenges faced throughout his youth and present day.

Keepers of the Land (Sunday night): In the heart of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, one Nation is reclaiming the power they held for millennia. As the impacts of colonial exploitation and mismanagement take an increasing toll on their territory, the Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation finds strength in its stories and culture, emerging as a stewardship leader in a new age of reconciliation in Canada. A powerful story of resurgence, the weight of hereditary leadership, and the responsibility they carry into the modern world told through the eyes of elder and hereditary chief Nismuutk, Ernest Mason Jr., and the new young leaders following in his footsteps.