Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
Food trucks put the world on a plate for University of Utah students
02-07-2026 By Austin Mino
Truck owners talk about bringing a variety of cuisines to the U., adding an “international flavor” to the Salt Lake City campus.
At a Utah debate tournament, teen refugees find their voices and build their confidence
12-15-2025 By Elle Crossley
Developing the skills to argue intelligently allows refugee students to ‘leave the label to the side,’ an organizer said.
This Utah community was ‘suspicious’ of a new addiction recovery home for women. That’s changed.
12-13-2025 By Faith Rust
“Addiction affects all walks of life,” said program director Heath McDougal-Deans. “It could be your neighbor, you have no idea.”
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A documentary focused on Indigenous stewardship of Great Salt Lake is the latest work of art centering on the declining levels of the lake and a cry, filmmakers say, for state leaders to listen to Indigenous voices who believe the issue has been “scienced to death.”
“Diverted: Indigenous Stewardship and Saving Great Salt Lake” has been two years in the making, despite reshoots and the personal struggles of balancing work, families and daily life. Now, it's ready for two screenings this month: Nov. 6 at Fisher Brewing and Nov. 20 at the Utah Film Center.
Director and producer Valene Peratrovich said she initially got involved with the project after co-producers McCaulee Blackburn and Cristian Martinez asked her to do voice-over work for the documentary, which was still in pre-production, and later invited her to attend planning meetings. At first, Peratrovich said, the amateur crew had no idea what they were doing.
“We just knew what we cared about, and that really taught us that you don't need perfect and you don't need to be an expert,” Peratrovich said. “If the intention is true, and the heart is there, everything else will grow from that.”
The documentary centers Indigenous voices and focuses on traditional connections and their ecological knowledge to save the lake, Peratrovich said. Interviews with Darren Parry, former Northwestern Shoshone Nation chairman; Carl Moore, a member of the Hopi, Chemehuevi, and Colorado River Indian Tribes; and Elizabeth Kronk Warner, dean of the University of Utah’s law school, bring the threads of the story together on screen.
“I was super passionate about it because I am Indigenous myself,” said Peratrovich, who is Tlingit (Eagle Clan), Unangan and Athabascan, from the Anchorage, Alaska area. “I was raised really to believe in my people, in my culture, understanding all the positive and negative things that have impacted us as people, and really using it to push the culture forward, advocate for my people and really amplify our voices.”
Peratrovich led the crew of two producers, Blackburn and Martinez, whom she met in 2022 while studying journalism at Salt Lake Community College. They initially worked on the documentary as a passion project outside of the classroom, but they later pitched it for a documentary class at the college and premiered a first cut of the film through the school in December 2023.
In 2024, “Diverted” received a Rocky Mountain Student Emmy and a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant from the Salt Lake City Arts Council.
Andrew Shaw, special projects coordinator for the Salt Lake City Arts Council, runs Wake the Great Salt Lake, a temporary public art project funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies to educate and inspire people about saving Utah’s capital-city namesake. Salt Lake City was one of eight cities to receive the $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The money was divided amongst several art projects and artists and funded murals, photo exhibitions and performance art.
Shaw said he believes the documentary has the potential to be seen and make an impact at film festivals across the country and the world.
“I think this film has such great potential … as a good depiction of a community caring about the water and the natural resources around them,” he said.
Peratrovich said their $10,000 portion of the grant was really helpful.
“We're going to be able to afford to enter into film festivals,” she said, though they’re not sure which festivals yet. “It's not free, it ain't cheap, so we're very lucky for their support.”
Shaw said he’s been impressed by the crew’s approach to the film, finding the right people to interview and showcasing how communities can find solutions together. The upcoming screenings, he added, mark the beginning of something great for added awareness about the lake and its connection to some of Utah’s Indigenous communities.
“Artists have a way of touching people's hearts in a way that the data doesn't,” he said. “Data shows us what's going wrong and helps us really get into the weeds, but art can show a much bigger picture and can be much more accessible to a wider audience.”
Still, as a grassroots project, the documentary faced several obstacles – from the technical to new laws – during shooting and post-production, Peratrovich said.
“I looked at it as each barrier or obstacle or hurdle was presented in getting this film done and completed,” she added. “It really was always a checkpoint: are you dedicated to the story?”
The first iteration of the documentary wrapped while the crew were still students at SLCC, giving them access to classrooms and other filming resources. Peratrovich said she took specific classes just to be able to use certain equipment, like drones, to keep moving the project forward.
The crew took a blow in 2024, when the Utah Legislature passed HB 249, banning governmental entities from granting personhood to bodies of water. The idea of giving a body of water or a natural resource personhood, or granting the same legal rights as a human, comes from Indigenous practices and an environmental personhood movement across the world.
In 2014, New Zealand’s Te Urewera Act gave a forested area a legal identity to protect its natural and cultural value. New Zealand’s bill acknowledges Te Urewera as an ancient, spiritual and living forest with distinct Indigenous history and importance. It hit hard for Peratrovich, she said, because other natural resources with personhood allows people to sue on behalf of that resource if it is believed its rights are being violated.
“It was a punch in the gut,” she said. “That was hard in our documentary when we saw that happen, because we were so hopeful about that idea [of granting personhood to Great Salt Lake].”
The crew persisted and updated the film following the personhood ban, making sure the new information was included in a written note at the end.
Earlier this year, the crew screened the film at a “work in progress” session through the Utah Documentary Association. One thing that shocked Peratrovich and her crew, she said, included reactions from some viewers who expressed the film didn’t appear to feature enough Indigenous voices in its mix of interviews.
“I think many people see Indigenous folks as people that are in traditional regalia [or] elders,” Peratrovich said. “As a director and an Indigenous woman, I'm very much right here right now, and I may not look the way you think a native person should look. And that's an interesting thing, too.”
The crew, Peratroovich said, realized they needed to go back and help people understand what it means to be Indigenous and to help break long-standing stereotypes. They went back through their footage of interviewees explaining their Indigenous experience, and made sure to ask other participants on film to share their definition of what it means to be Indigenous.
“In order to make this conversation and help it go along, we'll go to wherever we need to and grow and develop that part of the film,” Peratrovich said.
But, she added, it’s motivating to know people are “thirsty” to hear from Indigenous voices.
“People are excited to hear indigenous voices,” she said, “and they really helped wake us up to what we need to shine a light on … when it comes to sharing Indigenous stories, Indigenous ecological knowledge, and Indigenous issues and challenges.”
And that’s the hope, she added – that people see and hear different perspectives so the whole community can work together to find ways to save the lake. It won’t be just one entity or a single person with a solution.
“I hope this plant seeds, seeds of understanding, seeds of hope and bridges,” Peratrovich said. “Seeds to build bridges and communities so that we reach out to each other and consider each other's perspective and how we can work together.”
Vanessa Hudson, a recent journalism graduate from the University of Utah, wrote this article through a collaboration with Amplify Utah and the Great Salt Lake Collaborative.
A steady rain drove a “teach in” on censorship at Weber State University indoors on Friday, but the speakers and attendees were as persistent as the turbulent weather.
“The rain hit us hard, but people were still willing to stay for it,” said Barrett Bonella, a professor of social work at Weber State. “People really wanted to hear and be a part of this.”
Bonella is chief steward of The Wildcat Collective, a branch of the American Federation of Teachers’ Utah College Council — the union that represents university faculty and staff. The union organized the “teach in” as an alternate conference to Weber State’s annual Unity Conference.
Organizers canceled the Unity Conference this week, after being told by university officials that speakers would have to censor some of their talks. The topic of the conference was censorship.
Among those attending Friday’s campus event was Ogden School Board member Stacy Bernal, a Weber State alumna who was, according to her biography, the first manager of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Utah Jazz.
“It’s wild to me to be living out this censorship in real-time,” Bernal said. “To be just someone watching it as it was coming up in the news and on social media, I just truly couldn’t believe it.”
The alternative “teach in” was scheduled to be held Friday on the front steps of Stewart Library. When the rain started to pour around 11 a.m., and kept going through the two-hour event, The Wildcat Collective worked with campus police to move the event into a temporary indoor space.
Once inside Lindquist Hall, though, attendees were told discussions would have to adhere to the limits placed by the Utah Legislature under HB261. At that point, the event shifted to small-group discussions.
The “teach in,” which organizers called “Unity Conference: Uncensored Version,” included open-mic opportunities and speeches, featuring presenters from the canceled conference. About 50 people attended the event, as speakers discussed book banning, the limitations of censorship on scientific research and other topics.
HB261, passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, restricts how certain topics — such as anti-racism, bias, critical race theory, oppression, intersectionality, discriminatory practices, systemic bias or personal identity characteristics — can be addressed in some higher education settings.
In an email sent to faculty and staff Friday, the president’s office at Weber State addressed the cancellation of the Unity Conference. The office cited poor communication and unclear definitions of HB261.
In the email, the administration wrote that “we recognize that this has been difficult to navigate and that there have been times when communication could have been clearer.
“We apologize for the frustration this has caused. We are truly working to move forward, through what has sometimes been shifting guidance, together.”
The administration stressed that faculty are exempt from HB261 when they teach, conduct research, join scholarly events and discuss complex or controversial issues in their field. However, other campus events — like those under the umbrella of the university’s Student Access & Success department, such as the Unity Conference — are not exempt, and must follow the content limits of HB261.
“Because of this difference, some proposed Unity Conference sessions were better suited for academic venues, while others raised compliance concerns because this was a conference hosted by Student Access & Success,” the administration wrote.
Richard Price, a political science professor at Weber State, was one of the original panelists scheduled to discuss censorship at the canceled Unity Conference. When university officials said speakers would have to restrict their language, Price wrote to the university’s president, Brad Mortensen, saying they “could no longer ethically participate.”
Price told The Signpost on Friday that while, in theory, HB261 shouldn’t affect their teaching, in reality there is no way the law won’t change how professors in Utah educate students.
“I could teach what I want in theory within the confines of my academic discipline, which is what I do,” Price said. “But I can’t talk to a general audience on campus about it, because they start to worry that it looks like the university is endorsing what I’m saying.”
Last fall, Price said they gave a talk on LGBTQ history, and administrators pushed back — even though, they said, the administrators only had access to the title of Price’s talk: “LGBTQ Education and Higher Ed.”
“The perspective that administrators are taking essentially is that anything that references groups of people — whether it’s queer people, Black History Month, whatever — can’t be done because it might piss off a legislator,” Price said.
The administration in its email closed by saying it plans to discuss the situation further with Weber State’s faculty senate and staff advisory council meetings.
Alfonso Rubio, Jared Mitchell, James Gordon and Kyle Greenawalt reported this story as student journalists at Weber State University’s The Signpost. It is published as part of an ongoing collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
Weber State University’s annual Unity Conference was set to take on a big topic — censorship — with workshops, panel discussions and the screening of a documentary about book banning.
Organizers announced Wednesday that they canceled the event, originally scheduled for Thursday and Friday, because university officials wanted speakers to remove some of what they were going to present.
Professor Richard Price, one of the scheduled speakers, wrote in an email to the university’s president, Brad Mortensen, ”Little did I expect that the university would censor the content of the conference to the point at which I could no longer ethically participate.”
On Thursday, Weber State’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers’ Utah College Council — a union that represents faculty and staff in higher education — told The Signpost via email that it would host a “teach-in,” titled “Unity Conference: Uncensored Version.”
That event, unaffiliated with the university, was scheduled to take place at the same time and place as the original conference: Friday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., in front of Stewart Library on the Ogden campus.
The decision to cancel the conference came after organizers received an email from Jessica Oyler, Weber State’s vice president of Student Access and Success (SAS), in which she sought “to provide clarity” about whether the conference’s programming conformed to state law.
Oyler cited HB261, passed by Utah Legislature and signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, which requires Utah’s higher-education institutions eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly referred to as DEI.
“The intent here is not to suggest that operating this way is ideal, as I know there are strong feelings about the legislation itself, but rather to be transparent about how we are operationalizing the law,” Oyler wrote in her email to organizers.
Oyler told The Signpost on Thursday that her department — which funded the conference — does not enjoy the academic freedom that faculty do, and so is not exempt from the restrictions of HB261.
“That distinction in funding and coordination matters under HB261 because SAS staff and other non-faculty employees fall outside the academic freedom protections specifically carved out in the law,” she said.
HB261, Oyler said, doesn’t allow university programs to talk about what the Legislature called “discriminatory practices.” Those include anything that suggests any people, based on characteristics of personal identity, are inherently privileged, oppressed, racist, sexist or victims. The same goes for political systems or conflicts over power.
Price, a political science professor at Weber State, wrote in a blog post Thursday that administrators wanted to block information that suggested censorship is the result of a partisan strategy.
“I, a political scientist, was told not to talk about politics,” Price said. “In other words I was ordered to lie to my colleagues, students and the general public.”
The 27th annual Unity Conference, which was free to the public, was scheduled to take place Thursday and Friday at two locations: Stewart Library in Ogden and the D2 building at the school’s Davis campus in Layton.
Roughly 120 people were registered for the event, half of them conference organizers and people scheduled to present, Bryan Magaña, public relations director for the conference organizers, said in an email.
The committee in charge of the Unity Conference — whose title was “Redacted: Navigating the Complexities of Censorship” — sent an email to the conference’s collaborators Wednesday, “to share the difficult news that we have made the decision to cancel” the event. The notice also was posted on the school’s website.
An email signed by the conference’s co-chairs read: “After careful consideration of concerns raised by conference planners and participants, we have determined we cannot in good conscience deliver the high-quality, meaningful experience that our community expects and deserves.” At the bottom of the email, the sign-off, “Co-Chairs of the 27th Annual Unity Conference,” was crossed out.
Sarah Herrmann, who organized one of the conference’s panels, posted on a private faculty Facebook group, obtained by The Signpost, that presenters were directed to remove any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion by the end of the day Monday.
Herrmann wrote that she was concerned “about the precedent this sets for academic freedom, student scholarly development and the integrity of conferences and events hosted on campus.”
James Gordon, Alfonso Rubio, Jared Mitchell and Kyle Greenawalt reported this story as student journalists at Weber State University’s The Signpost. It is published as part of an ongoing collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
Eleven days later after right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, the campus — now adorned with flowers, mementos and sidewalk chalk messages — stands silent, only disquieted by a steady flow of mourners in quiet conversation.
Utahns of all ages were gathered at the university; some to pay respects, some to find peace after witnessing Kirk’s death.
Kyle Pastor, a Brigham Young University (BYU) student who was in attendance when Kirk died, said that returning to the scene was “healing.”
At first, Pastor and his friends weren’t aware of what was going on. They then saw Kirk fall and everyone started running, he said.
“We all hid behind this wall for like, 10 to 15 seconds, and then we all just ran,” Pastor said. “Honestly, it kind of puts you in shock.” The impact of the shooting and his proximity to the event didn’t settle until later that day, Pastor told The Chronicle.
Payton VanSteenkiste, a student at BYU, described the scene’s environment as “heavy” yet uplifting.
“It is kind of awesome to see everyone just gathering in unity,” VanSteenkiste said. “It’s so horrific what happened, but people are able to kind of just gather together and find some sort of peace.”
Lewis Bever, a senior at UVU, said that the campus has always been a commuter school with a “disconnected” student body, but that the atmosphere changed after the shooting.
“[Students] just come here to get a degree and move on,” Bever said. “Now, I feel like there’s a lot more people that are taking pride in being a UVU student and being together.”
A corner on the UVU campus where Pastor hid after Kirk was shot, Sept. 21, 2025. (Photo by Addy Cowley | The Daily Utah Chronicle)
Directly following the shooting, both UVU and BYU offered mental health resources to students who needed help processing the event.
“[BYU] made sure everyone knew that therapists were readily available,” Pastor said. “I feel like they handled [the situation] pretty well.”
Other Utah schools, such as Weber State University, Utah State University and the University of Utah offer mental health resources for students, as well.
Recently graduated UVU student Austin Bauer said during his time at the school, campus police and security were always on campus. However, he never thought much of it.
“I never really felt like there was a huge need for a lot of security,” Bauer said.
Police are stationed at UVU 24/7 and will most likely be for the next few months, a UVU police officer told The Chronicle. The site of the shooting will be blocked off until next spring. BYU, located 11 minutes away from UVU, has now increased security measures on campus, according to Pastor.
A memorial for Charlie Kirk at the UVU campus in Orem, Utah on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025. (Photo by Addy Cowley | The Daily Utah Chronicle)
Given the varied reactions to the nature of Kirk’s death, Pastor said the public must be able to disagree and still be able to have honest conversations.
“I think kind of what Charlie thought, [which was that] we should all stand up for our beliefs,” he said. “I don’t think you should stop anyone from sharing their opinions and their beliefs.”
VanSteenkiste discussed the importance of open dialogue.
“The biggest source of strength in person is being able to understand two different values of where people might stand, still have different opinions and still be able to respect each other,” VanSteenkiste said.
Given the shared experience, Bauer said that students must put their political views aside and “lean on each other.”
“We’re all family, we’re all humans,” Bauer said. “I hope this brings people together.”
Kelly Ryskamp, an Orem local who works 6 miles from campus, said the tragedy’s proximity makes unity not just a campus concern, but a statewide one. “How could it have happened in Utah?” Ryskamp said. “It feels like an extra layer of grief.
This story was written for The Daily Utah Chronicle at the University of Utah by news editor Addy Cowley and news editor/writer Teanna Sorensen.
