Yumi Janairo Roth in conversation with Lincoln Bramwell

Private property was essential to citizenship as it was conceived by the ancient Greeks. The framers of the United States Constitution also saw property ownership as all but necessary to citizenship and enshrined the right to own and protect private property in the government, laws, and institutions they designed. The establishment, use, and maintenance of federal land in the US seems to contradict this founding principle at the same time that it defines our vision of the American West and informs American identity. Join artist Yumi Janairo Roth and US Forest Service Chief Historian Lincoln Bramwell for a discussion about the complexities of property rights and public lands. 

This event will be livestreamed on MCA Denver’s YouTube channel. 

Yumi Janairo Roth was born in Eugene, Oregon and raised in Chicago and suburban Washington, DC. She currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a professor of sculpture at the University of Colorado. Roth has created a diverse body of work that explores ideas of immigration, hybridity, and displacement through discrete objects and site-responsive installations, solo projects as well as collaborations. In her projects, her objects function as both natives and interlopers to their environments, simultaneously recognizable and unfamiliar to their users. She received a BA in anthropology from Tufts University, a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston and an MFA from the State University of New York-New Paltz.

Lincoln Bramwell is the Chief Historian of the USDA Forest Service. Bramwell, who is based in Fort Collins, Colorado directs all aspects of this federal agency’s history program, including research and publication, public speaking, digital asset management, archival storage, external outreach, producing and managing oral histories, as well as policy support, expert testimony in federal court, and developing a strategic vision for history within the land management agency’s mission.