Last week's episode featured a special on-location recording with Jason Baldes, founder and ED of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, and VP of the InterTribal Buffalo Council. It has drawn some wonderful responses since (thank you!). And again, given the episode was a little over two hours, I thought to release it in two parts this week for those of you who prefer to tune in that way. All the more because the conversation sort of evolved into two distinct parts naturally.
So welcome to Part 1, from where we first meet Jason at the Initiative's HQ, and prepare to head out into the field with the buffalo. We're straight out of the gates with the breaking news here of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe officially and overwhelmingly designating buffalo as wildlife again, with its myriad and profound restorative ramifications - on culture, health, justice, spirit, other wildlife, rivers, land, through to notions of ownership and property. And when the engines are cut about ten minutes in, the air stills and the conversation deepens.
As always, you can browse a list of chapters and navigate that way if you like.
I'll have Part 2 for you in a couple of days, from right amongst the buffalo with some hilarious and profound encounters, from feeding Ruby the orphan buffalo and her little horse mate, to passing by some big bulls, to what ends up being an incredible time face to face with the herd.
Recorded 16 September 2025 at the Wind River Reservation, home of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Nations, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in current day Wyoming.
Title image by Olivia Cheng.
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Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
AJ (00:00):
G'day Jason.
How's it going?
Jason (00:03):
How are you Good to meet you, man.
AJ (00:04):
Nice to meet you.
Yeah, how are you doing?
That's my wife, olivia.
Hello nice to meet you, nice tomeet you.
And that's Yeshi, that's Jason,hi, yeshi.
Jason (00:10):
Hi, nice to meet you.
How are you guys doing?
AJ (00:12):
We're doing good man.
How are you?
Jason (00:14):
Thanks for these guys helping out.
AJ (00:25):
Oh, AJ here for The RegenNarration, your independent
, listener-supported podcastexploring how people are
regenerating the systems andstories we live by.
Welcome back to the Wind RiverReservation, home of the Eastern
Shoshone and Arapaho Nations,and the Wind River Tribal
Buffalo Initiative, atribally-led non-profit founded
in 2023 here at the foot of theRocky Mountains in current-day
Wyoming.
We left off part one of thisseries last week, just as we met
(00:48):
the initiative's founder, jasonBaldes, and prepared to head
out on the plains to meet thebuffalo and hear their and
Jason's stories.
All right, you got everything,everything.
Jason (01:04):
We'll jump in this red one here.
AJ (01:05):
Cool.
Jason (01:10):
You can go in either one you want.
AJ (01:12):
You want to come with us?
Yeah, I'll get the door for you.
You might remember, jason hadjust come to us from
preparations for the comingSundance, which reminded me it
was in the lead-up to theirSundance, just two years ago,
that the tribe sourced meat fromtheir own buffalo on their own
land for the first time innearly 140 years.
(01:34):
That's all part of enacting abroader vision of buffalo living
as wildlife, not livestock,once again protected under
tribal law.
And this vision doesn't stop atWind River either.
Jason is also VP of theIntertribal Buffalo Council,
where 87 tribes and counting arecurrently involved in efforts
(01:54):
to restore the buffalo and allthat entails, from the
reacquisition of land, therestoration of rivers and other
wildlife, along with the health,language and spirit of many
nations.
So let's head out in.
The side by side, we pull upand turn the engines off in 10
minutes or so to hear thebrilliant story of what's
(02:15):
happening here, including how itcame close to never happening,
and about halfway in we headover to feed the orphan buffalo
Ruby and hear about the oldShoshone grandmas, before
ultimately arriving back at theherd for an incredible,
unexpected face-to-faceencounter Right on, right on OK.
(02:45):
Thanks for having us here, man.
Yeah, you bet Really appreciateit.
Jason (02:48):
Yeah, glad to make fun.
Yeah, thanks.
This was going to be theoriginal town when the
reservation was opened up forhomesteading.
This was a hotel that was builtin 1920, that was on the
stagecoach route and this wassubdivided into ten acre plots,
(03:11):
and that church used to be outin the middle of the field.
That swapped.
If we didn't buy it, it wasgoing to be subdivided into ten
acre plots again.
Oh my goodness.
So we were really glad to beable to prevent that from
happening.
AJ (03:25):
Yeah, when was that?
When was the port?
Jason (03:32):
2019.
Oh, pronghorn are out here too.
AJ (03:36):
We like the pronghorn 2019.
Jason (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, there's been some, so you can see them right
there.
Oh yeah, beautiful, they'vebeen hanging out with the
buffalo a little.
They had twins.
Some of them had twins recently.
AJ (03:48):
I read some of this in some of the newsletter stuff.
Hey, yeah.
Even one you had to bring upbecause the mum didn't like.
Jason (03:55):
Yeah, we had one last year and we got little bull calf
and he's out with the herd.
Now you can't tell which one heis, but the other one this year
, she's five weeks old now.
She's over at my house.
I've also got a little orphanhorse.
(04:16):
Yeah right, so they're beingbottle-fed together.
Oh wow, and I just startedintegrating them back with
another horse so he can start tolearn about being a horse and
then the buffalo can go up andsee the calf too.
AJ (04:31):
That's outstanding To the horse and buffalo going through
this process.
Do they connect?
Jason (04:37):
Yeah, they're pals.
If we get time we'll go overthere and look at them.
Cool, this is them the othernight.
Oh, that is gorgeous.
AJ (04:48):
You've got to love it.
Jason (04:50):
Yeah, I mean, you've kind of got to pinch yourself every
day.
It's pretty amazing.
AJ (04:57):
I imagine the work's not always easy, but they're the
rewards, huh.
Jason (05:01):
Yeah, it's certainly challenging.
There's some bulls there.
Yeah, certainly challenging.
You know, you wouldn't thinkthat there would be the level of
opposition to something likethis that there is.
It's overwhelming support.
(05:24):
But you're just always kind ofsurprised by the people that
don't support something likethis.
How can you not?
AJ (05:35):
Where do you find that opposition and where is it
surprising, I suppose, in thatway.
Jason (05:42):
Well, I suppose that it's from cattle industry, the
cattle producers, and I think ithas to do with competition for
grass, it has to do with theidea that the West was won.
There's still semblances ofmanifest destiny, and I guess
(06:03):
that's understandable.
You know that the racism isstill out there, but we don't
realize the own level of our owncolonialism.
If a tribal member is a rancher, he has a hard time recognizing
that that was a lifestyle thatwas imposed on his grandparents
(06:27):
and now he's embracing it.
Okay.
But if you understand historyand you understand what was
brought to our people here, itwas to colonize us.
It was to Christianize us.
It was to assimilate us.
It was to destroy our language.
Our was to assimilate us.
It was to destroy our language,our cultural ways of knowing
(06:48):
and belief systems.
And so it's a bit ironic whenyou have tribal cattle producers
preaching about theirlivelihood in the cattle
industry and not being able torecognize the irony in that.
AJ (07:05):
Yeah, I guess all the more when it sums to opposition.
It's not just okay.
This is where I found myself.
It's hard to switch over orwhatever.
And yeah, competition for grassand whatever, but if it does
end up being a sort of I don'tknow what is it, we can't go
back, or it's just been soembedded.
(07:25):
I'll never forget Stephen Biko.
In fact, this is relevantbecause you've got this
transformative experience Iheard you talk about in Africa
too.
But just thinking about Africa,because I remember as a young
guy I came across this book bywell, it was actually the
testimony of Stephen Biko, sohim under trial, an African
bloke there and there was apassage that I never forgot.
(07:47):
It was something along thelines of the greatest weapon in
the hands of the oppressor isthe mind of the oppressed, what
you internalize.
Jason (07:59):
Yeah, that's a good quote .
I mean, buffalo restoration isfoundational to who we are.
It's in our songs, it's in ourceremonies.
We even called ourselves thebuffalo eaters, the Guchendika.
But for the most part, mostpeople still know that and
(08:21):
actually, out of the two tribesthere's 15,000 tribal members.
Less than 5% are ranchers.
So the majority of people,tribal people, support this.
Yeah, it's a few loud ones,confused ones, that see this as
(08:42):
some threat to their livelihood.
Now, I get it For non-tribalpeople who don't have a cultural
connection or understanding.
How would they know?
So you have to educate, youhave to inform them, and we have
a lot of support fromnon-tribal people, and that's
(09:04):
because they maybe have a littlebetter understanding of their
own history.
Do they have more compassionand empathy?
I don't know, but we do have alot of non-tribal members who
support this.
It does seem to be somethingthat's changing non-tribal
members who support this.
AJ (09:25):
It does seem to be something that's changing.
Jason (09:29):
Do you sense that?
Yeah, I mean, this is the rightthing to do.
I mean, if there's very littleto argue about this and I think
people get that I think peopleare looking for something good
(09:51):
or positive happening in theworld and this meets that
criteria.
You know, with everything elsegoing on, the world's in chaos,
the country's in chaos, thecountry's in chaos.
This is stability and hope andresiliency, and I think that's
what people want.
AJ (10:12):
I'm here with that too.
Yep, this is really wetunderfoot, huh we have the
irrigation season, so there's aditch that brings water.
Jason (10:24):
Of course, this is agricultural ground and
practices, and so when we boughtthe property, it already had
the agriculture.
We reseeded it with buffalograss so that it's more
preferable grasses over alfalfaor anything like that.
So it is.
It is um very green and lush.
(10:47):
We've had a lot of rain.
We're right in that time ofyear where we need that, so it's
a good time to be here.
It's going to dry out.
August, late July.
August is going to be brown.
AJ (11:02):
Yeah, it gets hot.
Here too it gets hot.
Jason (11:05):
Yeah, well, relatively it's not.
We only get a few days over 100degrees, okay, 91, which was
yesterday.
That's really hot for us, is itOkay?
We like 70s?
Yeah, that's our idealtemperature.
Yeah, like today, this is agreat temperature here today.
AJ (11:26):
Oh, it's beautiful, it's.
It's funny.
You know, jason, like even as aand as an australian, like what
, in a sense, you could say, whywould I feel this so strongly?
Yeah, but I do.
Yeah, there's something aboutit, and on these lands there's
something else.
Jason (11:42):
There's this there's, there's power in that.
And the story getting the landrestored, getting the relative
brought home, yeah, I thinkpeople really relate to it.
With the Shoshone tribe, youknow, supporting the designation
(12:03):
for these to be wildlife,that's huge, you know.
AJ (12:05):
Yeah, when was?
Jason (12:06):
that About two months ago .
Finally, yeah, wow, I've beendreading that Really, the
hardest audience to speak to ismy own people.
So you know, to take a topiclike that in front of our people
, it's like a firing line andpeople just vicious negative,
(12:28):
wanna bring you down.
The vote was 90 to seven.
Wow, so overwhelming support.
Wasn't even a question, and sothe vote speaks for itself.
AJ (12:43):
You didn't necessarily expect that.
I didn't.
No, yeah, some calves in there.
It's beautiful, they're laidout.
I think we have 28 calves 28calves.
So you started with just 10 in2016.
Yeah, and now there's 28 calves, just now, just this year.
Jason (13:02):
So we're up to 140-something here that is
outstanding.
So we're up to 140 somethinghere that is outstanding.
So we're gonna pull over righthere and we'll turn off our.
AJ (13:10):
I know the vehicles are kind of driving by, but they're
clearly at ease with you guys inthese vehicles, even huh.
Jason (13:19):
Yeah, we're out here about every day with them.
We don't harass them, we leavethem alone and they generally
know that we're not out here to.
Yeah, they're not habituatedbut they're acclimated.
But there'll be a lead femalethat'll get nervous with our
(13:41):
presence and she'll startwalking off Really and then
they'll kind of trail out behindyou.
Traffic jam around here.
AJ (13:50):
Comes in bursts.
Huh, yeah, it does.
Jason (13:51):
I think it's because of the construction over by
Riverton where they let them by.
And then they're yeah, we're 10.
In 2016.
We had the first calf born in2017.
We added kind of a new batch ofanimals that came from some
conservation population.
They started with the first tenfrom the Neil Smith Wildlife
(14:13):
Refuge in Iowa and then somefrom the National Bison Range.
We brought some from the NatureConservancy City of Denver,
Antelope Island in Utah,Soapstone Prairie in northern
Colorado.
It's tied to Colorado StateUniversity.
So I think eight, seven oreight different batches of
(14:35):
animals over the ten years, nineyears, and then plus what's
been born over 60 calves havebeen born here.
So if they've got an ear tag,they came from somewhere else.
If they've got no ear tag, theybeen born here.
So if they've got an ear tag,they came from somewhere else.
AJ (14:46):
If they've got no ear tag, they were born here I'm so
curious about that, in terms ofwhen they come here, they I mean
I've heard this elsewhere, thatand it looks like it happens
here that they know what to dothat memory like because they
come from everywhere.
You might think there'd beconflict.
You might think they might notrelate to the land.
(15:07):
Like that they might struggle,but there's memory.
Jason (15:10):
They have.
You know it's innate for them.
You know it's ingrainedgenetically how to be what they
need to be.
It's not like livestock that'sbeen genetically made dumber and
more reliant upon man.
They don't need man.
One thing we always do in bisonconservation is if you're
(15:32):
starting a herd or you'rebringing in new animals, is that
you only bring in yearlings ortwo-year-olds or three-year-olds
because they're matriarchal.
The young ones will integrateinto an existing population if
they're young.
If they're older, they're goingto want to go back to what they
know, and there's been a.
(15:53):
You know, you hear aboutbuffalo breaking through fences
and running off, and that'sprobably a 7 or 8, 10-year-old
animal that's just trying tofind its way home.
Whereas if you start with ayoung population, they're going
to learn what's available tothem, grow and mature and know
where the water sources are andthe plants are, the minerals and
(16:15):
the dirt are, and so then theybecome part of the landscape and
, as you like, for here, as weacquire more ground, we can open
it up and they learn it.
And so, incrementally we'vegrown from 300 acres to now 2
000 acres for these animals andthen at some point, you know
(16:37):
thinking beyond that opening,opening it up to a larger
landscape, they'll learn it andthey'll utilize what's available
to them.
But these animals have nowhereto go back to.
This is what is home to them,so that's why it works.
We don't really have breachesof the fence, because they have
(17:02):
food, they have water, they havethe mineral needs and they have
each other.
Main thing is each other.
They're a herd animal, so theyneed that.
However, the bulls you know thesatellite bulls will hang off
by themselves and the main herdwill kind of roam around, but as
they grow and mature they'regonna start developing family
(17:26):
groups.
And because none of theseanimals are really over 12 years
old, this is still a young,growing population and we
maintain a natural female tomale ratio which is about 60-40
or 50-50.
And that ensures that duringthe rut, during the mating
season, that the buffalothemselves are the ones choosing
(17:49):
who who breeds.
Therefore not geneticallymanipulated by any of our needs.
You know we don't.
We don't have a reason toselectively breed for anything.
That's their job.
That's them as wildlife, havingthe ability to exist as buffalo
(18:15):
without our intervention.
And that's part of thatparadigm shift of thinking
differently not of buffalo aslivestock, buffalo as livestock
and buffalo as wildlife,wildlife where they can exist as
such, and you know they don'tneed our help.
All they need is the land,space and ability to exist.
AJ (18:36):
Yeah, man thinks they got to control everything, and then we
make things hard for ourselves.
Arguably.
Jason (18:41):
Yeah, it's like why would you want to do that?
Why make it harder for yourself?
These guys don't really needall that much help.
It's way easier than cattleproduction.
AJ (18:51):
There's even Aboriginal folk at home I've heard say don't
plant trees, let nature plantthe trees.
But yeah, create the conditionswhere nature can plant the
trees, yeah, and don't bestripping them out or whatever.
Yeah, but yeah, the ways wethink, even in solving stuff,
that we have to fix it.
That it's on us to fix it.
(19:13):
Just seeing the pronghorn dashacross the field, oh yeah.
Yeah, it's a beautiful sighttoo.
I've seen that.
It's been a really distinctivefeature of Wyoming that we've
seen, Not in other states asmuch, just Pronghorn.
Jason (19:27):
This is Wyoming is the last place for Pronghorn.
AJ (19:29):
Is that?
Jason (19:30):
right, yeah, and we had a pretty drastic winter two years
ago where, in the state, over200,000 deer in Pronghorn died
because of the snow.
Well, had Buffalo been there,they'd cut the trails through
the snow that allow the deer andpronghorn to be able to eat in
(19:51):
conditions that are like that.
So another example of howbuffalo could have prevented,
been preventative to that.
But yeah, in my father he was abiologist.
Well, well, he's a retiredbiologist, he's 83 now.
When I was growing up therewere no pronghorn or bighorn
sheep on this reservation, so heworked for the US Fish and
(20:13):
Wildlife Service.
He was in a unique position asa tribal member but alsoa
federal employee working touphold trust responsibility for
tribes.
So as a biologist, he wasworking to protect fisheries,
water, wildlife.
And in the 80s it wascontroversial then too was to
(20:40):
create a game code that wouldprotect or create seasons and
bag limits for hunting.
Now, indigenous people, wealways hunted year round, that
was always how we fed ourselves.
But you put us on a limitedland base.
With modern tools andtechnology, we drastically
(21:02):
reduced the number of wildlife.
So the game code was to setseasons Controversial, but what
was predicted would happen did,and that would be that our
wildlife populations wouldincrease and we'd have better
hunting opportunities and easierways to sustain ourselves with
(21:22):
management, and that's whathappened.
We now have significantexponential increases in deer
pronghorn elk.
So I was a little kid and gotto witness and participate in
the gathering of pronghorn andbighorn sheep, and then we
brought them back to thereservation and released them.
My dad told me that I'd be ableto hunt a pronghorn in 10 years
(21:46):
, and they did so.
Well.
I was able to kill my first oneeight years later and I've
harvested a pronghorn ever,every year.
Since how old?
AJ (21:55):
were you then 11.
?
Jason (21:57):
but the buffalo was always missing he always told me
if you're going to work onbuffalo, make sure you bring him
back as wildlife and notlivestock.
Told me, if you're going towork on buffalo, make sure you
bring them back as wildlife andnot livestock.
They should have been broughtback in the same way.
Pronghorn and bighorn were thatyou get that wildlife in their
habitat and you bring them totheir new habitat.
We had to start on 300 acreswith these because they were
(22:18):
seen as competition for cattleproduction.
So unless they have thatclassification or status above
livestock, then that's how wecan prioritize ensuring they can
exist, because the cattleproduction.
Those are individual cattleproducers.
These are the tribe's buffaloand so why doesn't the tribe
(22:46):
have a priority on how lands aremanaged over the individual?
AJ (22:52):
And so it's that paradigm shift.
Yeah, did your dad consider itwas a bridge too far to deal
with the buffalo back then?
Jason (23:01):
No, he tried Really.
Yeah, towards the tail end ofhis career he did a habitat
assessment of the entirereservation which basically
showed this reservation has morehabitat for buffalo than
Yellowstone does Really.
Basically, animals bison in thelate 1800s were forced into
Yellowstone and they were soisolated that they were hard to
(23:21):
get to.
That's why that population grewthere Out here they were
millions of them but they werewiped out.
So towards the tail end of hiscareer he worked on that.
But for him and during thatperiod of time the elected
leaders of the two tribes werecomprised of cattlemen who
(23:44):
directly benefited from themanagement of the two tribes,
were comprised of cattlemen whodirectly benefited from the
management of the reservationbeing prioritized for cattle,
and so he had a very difficulttime convincing leaders that
buffalo were somehow importanton the reservation, even though
they were a small contingent ofthe population.
They had really say over howlands got utilized.
(24:10):
So despite the conservationsuccess stories like the very
first wilderness in the UnitedStates, the game code in the 80s
, protecting wolves and bears inthe 90s Buffalo's wildlife is
not that much different Fightingthe longest-running court
battle in the history of Wyomingover who controls water on the
(24:31):
reservation.
So we've got a long history offighting for land, water and
wildlife, if we can elect theright leaders and if we can
navigate the federal trustresponsibility part.
AJ (24:43):
Yeah, how's that going now?
Oh dude, yeah, how's that goingnow?
Jason (24:46):
Oh dude, yeah, not very good Really.
We got a meeting.
I'm on the board of theIntertribal Buffalo Council as
well.
We got 87 tribes across thecountry.
So we've been working on somelegislation that would help
codify the trust responsibilitythe Indian Buffalo Management
(25:08):
Act.
We were very close in the lastCongress, but the new house
rules and the people in thatadministration make it difficult
.
But we got a trip over there intwo weeks to meet with the
acting assistant secretary ofDepartment of Interior, which is
(25:30):
a meeting that we've beentrying to get for a while.
So we'll see.
Okay, I don't know how, I don'tknow if we have to just ride
this out or something happens.
It seems like something's gotto break, you know, yeah.
I think it did yesterday withthe largest protest against
(25:52):
Trump in the history of thenation today yesterday.
Largest mass protest in thehistory of the country was
yesterday.
AJ (26:01):
It does feel that this isn't a country that would roll over
no, so we'll see what happens, Ithink, the I think the good
will prevail so you know, what Ifound really interesting is
listening to the people whovoted for him, at least the ones
who, but these haven't beenhard to find who are thoughtful,
(26:21):
and some have even said thingslike I, I feel and this is going
back a bit right, it's goingback to around the election
maybe and then up to 100 days,in the first 100 days thing they
were still saying reallythoughtful things like including
empathetic, like I hate thethought that my countryman,
fellow countryman would be,would think I've unleashed
something.
That scares them.
You know things like that.
(26:42):
So I've been really interested.
That scares them.
You know things like that.
So I've been really interestedin listening to them and to hear
how they might change as thingsroll out.
I haven't heard much of it yet.
I mean, these poles are diving,so they've got to be out there.
But it does make me wonder.
In your experience and thengrowing up with your old man, it
seems like it's been part ofyour life too that you've found
(27:04):
yourselves in situations thatare politically tough and you've
had to find ways to navigatethat deftly.
It makes me wonder.
I mean, arguably that's theskill we need most right now in
the world is how do we deal witheach other without ripping each
other's throats out when thingsget tense or when we're
(27:26):
confronted by something?
What have you internalized inthat?
I mean even to get a 97 votelike how was that achieved in
bringing people together likethat?
Jason (27:53):
Well, most Shoshone people know that how important
Buffalo was for our grandmas andgrandpas.
You know, we went through theboarding school era.
We went through the reservationera.
We went through the reservationera.
We've gone through multipleeras of history with the United
States government and personallyI've kind of invested in
(28:13):
understanding a lot of thathistory and was fortunate
because through my dad's work Ihad to familiarize myself with
why things were the way theywere for him.
So I've been a bit of a studentof history and trying to
understand that.
And on the surface it's easyfor Shoshone people to know that
(28:37):
buffalo were important to us.
But most of us are not ranchers.
Most of us have been subject tothe Bureau of Indian Affairs,
subject to corrupt leadership,subject to these things.
But foundationally it's nosecret that buffalo were that
important.
The 90 to seven vote it wassurprising, but not unexpected
(29:04):
Like I knew.
It was there and we just neededpeople to show up, the right
people to show up and, as it is,be the same way for the
Northern Arapaho tribe too.
AJ (29:15):
I was going to ask.
Jason (29:16):
Yeah, we come from Buffalo people.
Most tribes did, and so if westill have the songs, if we
still have the ceremonies,that's the foundation for it,
and most of our peopleparticipate and still practice
those ceremonial belief systems.
The ranchers don't, and so thisbuffalo is providing a voice to
(29:43):
a demographic of our tribalmembers who've never had a voice
.
It's big, isn't?
AJ (29:49):
it.
Yeah, you know, I've oftenobserved and I'm talking a whole
decades long journey of my own,but even just this decade, with
the podcast going aroundAustralia and now here and
beaming in occasionally otherparts of the world is that it's
not felt trite to say that thewind's at your back when you're
(30:12):
doing stuff like this, partlybecause of what you're saying
before, like the buffalo, do thework, just let them.
But also there seems to be abigger thing at play where that
and you're talking about here, Ithink, with ceremony and songs
that are remembered that thereare bigger forces.
(30:33):
You could even say power,powerful forces.
That well, you know, we'll justtake that 90 to 7 vote as a as
a touchstone for this, but couldtalk about a range of ways it
manifests.
But that where the ways thatpeople can be reached in really
powerful ways that theythemselves feel and don't need
(30:55):
to be coerced or convinced orwhatever, that when you're
tapping that, well, arguablythat's the key to tap that
domain.
I wonder what you think aboutthat.
That if you are just fightingon that, I don't know more
rational, superficial level,there's an inevitable war.
But if you can get under it tohuman instinct, buffalo instinct
(31:18):
, where they connect thatthere's more on offer.
Jason (31:23):
We call it the great mystery, the power of the
unknown, the power of creator,the spirits however you want to
call it that there is energy inthe cosmos and our ways of
knowing and our belief systems.
(31:45):
It's all in those ceremonies.
It's in what those ceremonialleaders say, it's in the way
that they've been told to carryon specific protocols.
All of our ceremonies have somelevel of suffering that you
(32:05):
have to endure in order toachieve and it's that reciprocal
relationship.
You don't take without giving.
It's why we pray before we takea buffalo, or it's why you put
tobacco down when you take aplant, or if you're going to go
and ask somebody for a favor,you give something.
(32:27):
This idea of relationality andreciprocal relationship is
evident in what we are taught inthose ceremonies.
You know, for me I had to digdown very deep to find my own
(32:49):
level of healing and I looked toceremonies to find my pathway
through that and I've come tounderstand a bit more about
meeting your prayer halfway.
And you know also be carefulwhat you ask for.
And you know also be carefulwhat you ask for, because I
(33:10):
prayed very hard for my ownhealing.
I suffered for several yearsthrough fasting and finding my
pathway through those protocols.
So for me, this is grounded inceremony, but I had to be
willing to meet my prayerhalfway first in what I've
(33:33):
learned about how everythingties together.
And so for my foundation, for mybelief systems, my values, what
I'm trying to put forth, it'sgrounded in ceremony, it's
(33:56):
grounded in prayer and theimportance of our belief systems
and values and language andsongs and ceremony.
It isn't monetary, it isn'tsuperficial.
For me, it goes something muchdeeper and that, I think, is
what they provide.
Everything we have here isbecause of them and what they've
(34:17):
done.
And I don't know if they cameto help me in a dream or came to
help my uncles or my grandmasor my grandpas in dreams, but
this is a result of prayers thathave been cast well, well
before we ever got started, andthat is that reciprocal
(34:39):
relationality of our connectionto the cosmos through ceremonies
.
People very, very long, longtime ago prayed for this and
somehow it works itself out.
AJ (34:52):
I'm curious then did you, was there a time in your life
where you really got that, Isuppose.
Jason (34:59):
So I think I was, uh, probably about rock bottom and
alcoholism and drowning, myshame and sorrow and guilt or
whatever it was I was carryingaround by the bottle and, you
know, sitting in the back of acop car, you know, getting
thrown in the slammer.
Yeah, this, a lot of all ofthis, was really close to never
(35:24):
happening because of my ownchoices in drinking and alcohol
and that pathway.
So, yeah, all of this wasreally close to never happening
and I thought to myself you know, I'm in a very lucky, fortunate
(35:46):
position to be able to work onbuffalo restoration.
Yeah, I worked very hard for itthrough academia.
But here I am talking about howbuffalo are healing and how
much we need it, and I'm notwilling to accept that myself.
So I had to dig down real deepand do what I needed to do and
(36:09):
find the help that I needed.
That was about eight years agonow, so it was right around the
time we brought the first ten.
AJ (36:19):
I was struggling with my own stuff.
Jason (36:23):
They were bringing the medicine and I was confronted
with some pretty tough decisions.
But I was able to find the helpthrough ceremony to get myself
where I needed to be, insobriety and recovery.
And then the blessings just keepcoming yeah, there you go and
here we are 140 buffalo grownfrom 300 acres to 2,000, but
(36:50):
actually adding 17,000 acrossthe river over there.
So you know 300 acres to 20,000acres and over 250 collective
buffalo.
Now the two tribes, with adecision by general council to
move towards wildlife,continuing to raise funding to
(37:10):
buy fee lands back so they cango back to tribal ownership.
Yeah, we've come a long way innine years yeah, we're there.
AJ (37:20):
I really want to talk more about those, all those bits and
pieces too.
But were there when you came toceremony like that and made
that choice?
Were there people around youthat you could turn to, that
guided you through?
Jason (37:35):
Yeah, there's a gentleman who was an elder and he had
been passed down the bundles ofmedicines from the old timers
that carry with them theprotocol and the knowledge and
(37:56):
songs and things that he's ahealer.
So I went to him and told him Ineeded help and him and his son
who's since been passed thatway the old-timer he passed away
a couple years ago.
But yeah, I went to that familyand to that father and son for
(38:20):
help and I go to ceremoniesthere at least once a week now
sometimes twice a week.
I help now in part of thoseceremonies.
I know the songs.
So because I've gone throughsome of those protocols, then
(38:41):
some things will be passed to me.
But that's really not.
It was never my intent.
I just needed help and whathappens is when you seek help,
you eventually become the helperand I never knew that wasn't my
goal or intention at all.
(39:01):
But now others need thatsimilar type of help.
You know Someone's trying toget you right.
Oh yeah, my phone's beenblowing up all this while the
ceremonies.
There's a Sundance gettingready to happen down there, so
everybody's looking for buffalomeat.
AJ (39:19):
There we go.
Yeah, that trip you did toAfrica then that was as a late
teen.
Yeah, it was in between being ayoung that was as a late teen.
Yeah, it was in between being ayoung kid and this moment in
time that we're talking aboutnow.
Jason (39:31):
Yeah, I was 18.
AJ (39:34):
You were 18.
Jason (39:34):
So your dad had work over there or something.
Huh, he's a photographer.
He really liked to photographthe wildlife and he had as a
biologist.
He kind of gained some alliesfighting for water rights here.
He joined the board of theNational Wildlife Federation.
He was one of the longestserving members of the national
(39:55):
board members of NationalWildlife Federation and actually
the first tribal member, and sonow I think there's five tribal
members on the board ofNational Wildlife Federation.
Now I think there's five tribalmembers on the board of
National Wildlife Federation.
So he made good connections andgood friends and contacts.
So he'd been there severaltimes.
(40:21):
And then when I was 18, you knowI liked to do art and I played
football and liked to dowoodworking and auto shop I
didn't have any intention ofgoing to college.
When I was in high school Iactually had the afternoons off
but we played in three statechampionships in football.
So I thought I was a goodfootball player and was a good
artist.
But I didn't have any intent togo to college, especially not
(40:44):
for science.
I understood the importance ofit because growing up with my
dad, I knew he was a biologistand was always hunting, fishing
and knew things about the rocksand the landscape and that was
always an interest to me.
But it wasn't until.
(41:04):
We got over there, traveledaround a bit together in Kenya
and Tanzania witnessing thewildebeest.
It was the light bulb moment.
It was kind of my life'sepiphany probably.
Yeah, wow, realizing that wecould travel that far in amongst
this herd of wildebeest andthat was less than 5% of what
(41:28):
the bison was here.
That blew me away.
Oh, it blows me away, becausewe drove for over 100 miles and
as far as you can see in everydirection is wildebeest.
Yeah, that seems like a lot.
But for that to be less than 5%of what the bison was here, for
it to be so systematicallyexterminated from 30 to 60
(41:50):
million to less than 1,000 onthe continent in less than 100
years, that is disgraceful, thatis awful.
And when I can look at thesebuffalo right now and I can have
a relationship with them, I canraise one up and integrate it
back into the herd and for thatto have been purposely destroyed
(42:10):
, that's what gives me the fuel,that's what gives me the fire
to keep going.
And because that's anincredible thing to have a
relationship with an animal likethis, that sheds light on the
millennia-old relationship thatwe had living alongside this
(42:30):
animal and for it to be nearlyannihilated as a means to take
our lands.
That makes me sick, and so, inorder to take that energy and
turn it into something good, wehave to continue this.
We have to continue to show ouryoung people what that means.
Continue to createopportunities for more of our
(42:53):
tribal students that are goinginto academia.
Make sure that our ceremonialleaders have access to this
animal for conducting thoseceremonies.
That we get it into our dietagain to help curve the rates of
diabetes and other diet relatedissues that plague our
communities.
It's like this is the solutionfor all of our problems.
AJ (43:15):
It's another symptom of call it war, where rations were the
order of the day in Australiatoo, right.
Yeah yeah, and just crap,essentially to survive on, to
find a way to survive on Flourand sugar and salt.
Yeah, so the layers of it sopowerful and with that ceremony
aspect, right, you've got amobile processing unit too, yeah
(43:37):
it allows us to be able toculturally field harvest.
Jason (43:41):
You know when we're going to take an animal.
We come out here and take itlike right here.
We don't round them up into acorral and put them on a trailer
and ship them off to I mean,imagine how stressful that would
be.
So the cultural field harvesttrailer allows us to bring it
out.
We have our prayer, we have ourceremony right here.
Generally a buffalo willpresent himself.
(44:02):
That's the one we take and thenthat allows us to to process
that buffalo right there in thegrass, with grass still in his
mouth, no stress.
One bullet, one kill and thenin when it's hot.
You know they're so big thatyou got to get that hide off and
you got to get them into acooler and cooled down.
So that cultural field harvesttrailer makes that possible.
(44:26):
And for tribes, that's how wewant to be able to have.
That reverence and respect forthat animal is to take it right
there with its grass in itsmouth, with no stress and with
its family.
You know that's the way itshould be.
And they don't.
You know it's not a hunt, it'sa harvest.
(44:48):
We want to come out and takeone.
We pray for it, we take it.
They don't run after.
That's what I was curious about.
AJ (44:54):
They don't run off it's not like you break the trust.
Jason (44:56):
No, yeah they don't have a reason to run off.
They actually mourn and, likeelephants, they have a ceremony
of their own to honor that onethat passed.
They're trying to help it up.
They have compassion, empathyand love for one another that we
sure as heck could emulate, andthat's how we used to do it,
(45:20):
and that's why our societieswere matriarchal after the
buffalo.
That's why we gathered inAugust so that our babies would
be born in May.
That's why we have the storiesand the songs and the teachings
that you can see and witnessright here in front of you now,
(45:42):
that we haven't been able to forwell over 100 years, unless we
went to Yellowstone.
It's not like this.
So, yeah, we have to relearn alot of that, yeah, and we've got
to see it and witness it andbring the kids out and show them
(46:05):
how we use the hair, the hoovesor the horns and understand
their matriarchy and how theyraise up these little ones and
how the bulls are protectors.
It's like the circles of life,and there's a whole lot of
metaphor we can put into that,but it's like the little calves
(46:27):
are in the center of the circle,and then it's the mothers, and
then it's the elders, and thenthe outside circle is the bulls.
And if you think about that interms of our own societies, how
the boarding school era, how ourbulls, our men, were taken away
(46:50):
and then the children weretaken away, it was like the, and
then they were brought back butdidn't know.
It's like our elders and ourchildren are barely making it
together and our parents and ourmen are gone and so those
(47:10):
circles have been broken andthat's why we see, you know, the
high suicide rates, the highhigh school dropout rates, low
life expectancy, the chemicaldependency, the emotional
spiritual damage, the emotionalspiritual damage, those circles
are broken.
So, this buffalo, as we bringthem back and we come to
(47:32):
understand and learn andreintegrate, we're putting those
circles back and we're buildingour men up and we're trying to
bring our young women, to bringthose life givers back, protect
our elders and bring our menback to be warriors and that
(47:54):
they're the providers and theprotectors of our people and not
these Hollywood notions of BSthat is out there providers,
protectors, and it's like them,buffalo, bulls.
So we have lots to learn abouthow we reintegrate those things
and ideologies again.
AJ (48:12):
I'm really tuning into that.
That's a really powerful way toput it, I think.
How have you observed thatthat's going to the next
generations?
In that context of difficulty,can I feel it too?
Jason (48:26):
On a case-by-case basis.
We have to create more of anopportunity to do that and
there's this nonprofit over onthe Menominee Nation in
Wisconsin and they're calledMedicine Fish and we helped get
Medicine Fish some buffalo andthey've started a herd there and
then they are also working totake down dams and restore the
(48:49):
sturgeon.
And part of the way that theyare helping these young young
men heal is by connecting themwith song, ceremony, culture,
spirituality, but it's throughfly fishing and so they're
connecting these young men andhelping them become leaders.
And many of these young menhave had the hardest stories and
(49:13):
backgrounds that you can comefrom.
But because they've been givenopportunity and shown love and
shown appreciation and respect,they've really created a way to
heal these young men.
So we've been partnering withMedicine Fish for a couple of
years and want to be able tointegrate more of what they're
(49:35):
doing here and perhaps more ofwhat we're doing here and there,
and share and build.
We're trying to heal ourcommunities.
We're trying to heal our youngmen.
We're trying to heal our youngwomen.
We're trying to heal ourcommunities.
We're trying to heal our youngmen.
We're trying to heal our youngwomen, and what they're doing
(49:55):
there we're trying to implementhere.
So we've got a couple differentyouth opportunities youth camps,
youth leadership, where webring our ethnobotanists and our
scientists and our hydrologistsand give students an
opportunity to understand whatthose things are.
We had a culture climate youthcamp the last couple of years
(50:19):
where it's a three-day event.
You have elementary and middleand high school that come out
and then in a couple of coupleweeks we're doing another camp
with ronan donovan, who's a natgeo explorer and he's a
photographer and he's for thecouple last years he's worked
(50:39):
with some of our tribal youthand getting them engaged with
photography and then culture.
So we're bringing medicine fish.
Ronan donovan is coordinating ayouth photo camp and and we're
going to utilize our, our groundup in the mountains to give,
give those those young guys,kind of a triple approach type
(51:02):
of an opportunity to just getbetter, see more of what we have
out there.
For me, I got the opportunity togrow up with my dad and as a
biologist he spent a lot of timein our wilderness area
understanding the lakes andrivers and streams, so I got to
(51:26):
be up there a lot of the time onhorseback and so part of the
nonprofit here I've been tryingto build a horse program so that
we could take our young leadersinto the wilderness for week
long pack trips on horse,because horse culture goes hand
in hand with Buffalo culture andif we're trying to heal with
(51:47):
relationship in in buffalo, wecan also integrate horse, horse,
uh culture into that.
And being able to take kidsinto the wilderness and have
experiences like I did mighthelp formulate some more ideas
and opportunities for them,which is why I do what I do, and
(52:14):
so I think that's an importantaspect of having a non-profit
that is doing work like this isthat we can bring a unique
perspective and opportunities toour communities that really
wouldn't happen otherwise.
AJ (52:26):
Yeah, and the non-profit is only what?
A couple of years Opportunitiesto our communities that really
wouldn't happen otherwise.
Yeah, and that's the non-profitis only what.
Jason (52:31):
A couple of years, yeah, February of 23,.
So, yeah, very young.
Yeah, and yet so much hashappened just in that period of
time I was fortunate to havethat platform with National
Wildlife Federation and thenbuilt out a network of a support
base that could bring resourcespretty quickly for land
acquisition, because NWF can'town land, and so it was
(52:56):
necessary to not only start anonprofit that could, but also
it needed to be tribal-led.
You know, national WildlifeFederation is a predominantly
white large conservationorganization.
The Nalai Federation is apredominantly white large
conservation organization.
This is the showcase for howNWF can work with and engage
tribes on conservation.
So this is a keystone projectfor NWF.
(53:19):
But what that did was allow meto tap into some resources that
otherwise wouldn't have beenthere to get it up and off the
ground.
And then key folks like Xavierand Taylor and Pamela and Albert
and our team, once we kind ofgot off the ground, we were
ready to hit the ground running.
(53:41):
We've got a lot of fundraisingto do for land acquisition and
now keeping uh, somesustainability and longevity
into to what we're building.
So there's, there's, uh, thework's just beginning yeah,
we're just getting we're justgetting started talking about
the land acquisition.
AJ (54:00):
It's a great story in itself in many ways, but I think I
even heard you say it once thatit's land that was stolen that
you're having to buy back.
So there's still that.
There's still that thing aboutit isn't there.
And I have seen back home and Iknow this happened over east
here a bit as well in thiscountry where land has just been
(54:21):
given back, bequeathed ordonated even ahead of dying,
just given back, and that themovement of that in in australia
is people have spoken aboutthat like we all die, like
what's your life gonna havestood for?
Yeah, and so they set upstructures where they could
still have access themselves,but they're given that ownership
(54:42):
for want of a better word thattenure, tenure back.
Is that an option here?
Have you seen that?
Could it be the people you'veworked with?
Can that be broached?
Jason (54:54):
Not.
Well, I'm an optimist so Iwon't say no, but I think that
there are levels of difficulty.
You can come across anindividual landowner who loves
your idea, knows that he's goingto be passing on and he wants
(55:18):
to do something meaningful withhis land.
I've had several people likethat want to have a conversation
about it, and actually a few Ineed to follow up on even.
But they're not contiguousground and out here these like
priority is contiguous ground,so you can have a neighbor who's
(55:40):
very supportive or you can havea neighbor who could give a
crap about what you're doing,and so there's obviously that
spectrum.
Then you get to the localgovernment and agency level and
here that's like Fremont County,the commissioners, or you got
Riverton City Council or you gotthe Bureau of Reclamation,
(56:03):
which is a federal agency buthas no track record of really
working with the tribes.
Bureau Reclamation could changea lot of the problems that we're
having right now with a strokeof a pen, but they won't because
of the non-native influence atthe legislative level.
(56:23):
You know, you can kind of takea picture like this and you go
all the way towards Riverton andyou got Pavilion and Kinnear
and these are the white farmersand ranchers that are out here.
They don't consider themselvespart of the reservation, even
though they are within theexterior boundaries of the
reservation.
So even this land right herethat we're on was one of those
(56:47):
pieces that was privatized andopened up to homesteading in
1902.
So everybody out here wouldargue that the tribes have no
stake in it.
Now you go over there 20 milesthat way to our tribal
communities and thatconversation is flip-flopped
where tribes are like that'sstolen ground and you're selling
(57:12):
it.
So these lands go for about$55,000 to $7,000 per acre and
they're 160, 300-acre parcelsand so that makes it pretty
expensive when you're trying topiece back a few hundred acres.
I mean that's a pretty goodprice tag.
Tribes don't have the money tobuy that, and so this was the
(57:38):
mechanism that I found to getland back, because buffalo
restoration is land rematriation, which is a form of
reconciliation.
People can literally buy intothis.
Now, they're not going to wantto buy land and just give it
away to the tribe.
They want to give land tobuffalo and they want to see
(58:03):
Buffalo restored for itsimportance to the people and the
land, and that brings much morecredibility and their ownership
into wanting to supportsomething like this, and so I
think that that's part of thereason why we're generating
(58:25):
revenue is that, and support isbecause it's not just about the
buffalo, it's about the land andit's also about the people.
AJ (58:35):
Yeah, fascinating.
I remember in one of the shortdocumentaries that's been made
here there was an old white guyis his name tom doherty, maybe
tom doherty, yeah?
And he said something like thathe basically learned through
this work what it was to be withthe tribes and to see it from
(58:56):
that lens.
So he, he got it.
Jason (58:58):
Yeah, at the other end of it, he was one of the only guys
who did see it Really Early on.
When my dad was fighting thestate and the feds on the
management of the river duringthe water rights case, he was
looking for help out there withother NGOs, other organizations,
(59:20):
other states.
Nobody would help him.
Tom Doherty was the guy whostepped up and he was the
president of the WyomingWildlife Federation at the time,
which is an affiliate of theNational Wildlife Federation,
and that's how my dad was ableto get connected to more support
and that was because of TomDoherty, and Tom is probably my
(59:42):
dad's closest friend even todayJust goes to show.
AJ (59:47):
hey, like not to get too down on the knockbacks, because
you'll find a connection and somuch can come of it.
Jason (59:57):
Yeah, I mean, you just have to be willing to take that
step and Tom Doherty was willingto take a step when no one else
would.
Those two and many others whowere supportive of tribes and
sovereignty andself-determination and in-stream
(01:00:18):
flow to protect fisheries orthe wilderness, or wolves and
bears or buffalo as wildlife.
Those are big concepts, thoseare big challenges and we still
got a lot of battles to fight.
And buffalo as wildlife is likeone step closer to helping us
(01:00:42):
undo a little bit of thatmanifest destiny that was thrown
at us.
Like you, play a big step.
Allows us to take some fencesdown.
AJ (01:00:53):
And, you know, in an Australian context this lands
big time right now.
From a very interesting angle,right now in Australia what's
become a really big story is astation, as we call them, a
ranch, in the north of WesternAustralia, 200,000 acres.
It's interesting too, right onmultiple levels, because this is
(01:01:14):
a guy whose literally had toflee family, had to flee now
Zimbabwe, old Rhodesia, whenthere was the revolution
happening there.
So he finds his way to theKimberley, the region we call
north of Western Australia, andends up on this station.
What's interesting frommultiple levels is that he was
(01:01:35):
part of the Savory School.
He really latched onto AlanSavory, whose epiphany came from
watching the wildebeest.
So it's interesting thatwhitefellas, as they get called
in Australia, whitefellas andIndigenous folk coming back to
the same source, through thesource, through actually
observation of these animals.
(01:01:56):
And then what's happening inthis place is that he's gone.
Okay, the old megafauna inAustralia is gone.
Yeah, he's managing some cattleout there.
Sure, he's gone.
That's not enough.
And then we'd see there are allthese wild herds of animals that
were domesticated, brought toaustralia, domesticated, but
(01:02:16):
then let go when we developedthe train and the car or
whatever.
So I'm talking donkeys, forexample.
Yeah, but there are camels andthere's tons of others too, so
the meaning of this has hasmassive reverberations.
So what he's managed to do isget back in relationship,
trusted relationship, with thesedonkeys.
(01:02:37):
So they're not domesticated,they're not fenced, but they're
doing the work of grazing theupper ranges so that fire
doesn't get them, and all theland benefits to that.
They're re-socializing intoherd, so all the benefits for
them, yeah, and the wholething's working really
beautifully.
Except the donkeys are stilldesignated as feral pests that
(01:03:02):
have to be shot and it's thestation's responsibility to do
it if it's on their land.
So this has now been goingthrough a state mediation
process for years and itcontinues.
It keeps sort of coming up toJudgment Day, but adjourns and
adjourns, and adjourns.
And I think because it's such aparadigm shift, because what if
(01:03:22):
you can work with wild animals?
You don't have to make themdomesticated, right, but they're
managed in some kind of way.
So whatever language you wantto put on it, they're still free
to be what they are and they'redoing amazing things for the
whole community, including thehumans in the space.
(01:03:43):
So when I saw that you'd donethis, this designation as wild,
I thought, wow, theramifications of coming up
against that paradigm change?
Basically isn't it?
But I'm so curious then howit's.
Well, a then we've heard a bitabout how it's come about and
happened here, happened here,but what's the practicality for
(01:04:06):
you then on the ground in havingthat happen, in bringing down
fences and in negotiating theperceived threats in others?
Jason (01:04:12):
Well for me.
I'm a member of the Shoshonetribe and getting that
designation through the Shoshonetribe was easier for me.
It's harder for me to make thatkind of influence on the
Arapaho tribe, so I need alliesin the tribe that can be
advocates at leadership level,and what that means is that once
(01:04:34):
we have that 17,000 acres outthere fenced off, that we could
essentially let out familygroups from the Shoshone tribe,
from the Arapaho tribe and growa population out there that has
a distinction as wildlife.
Arapaho tribe hasn't made thatdecision yet, and part of the
(01:04:54):
reason why we need that wildlifedesignation is not only for the
purposes of trying to keep themas wildlife, but it also has
practical reasons in that theseare the tribe's buffalo, not an
individual's, and right nowpeople see them as they're
somehow mine or theorganization's, or this is
(01:05:16):
somehow my personal project orsomething.
These are the tribe's buffaloproject or something, and these
are the tribes buffalo.
So we're caretaking the theseanimals so that they can be come
the seed population for thewildlife that will essentially
become the reservations Buffalo.
So if they didn't have thatdistinction as wildlife, they
(01:05:41):
would be seen as competition forindividual cattle producers and
they may also be subject to apermit system under Bureau of
Indian Affairs because theywould have livestock status.
It doesn't make any sense forthe tribe to pay Bureau of
Indian Affairs to graze its ownbuffalo on our own tribal land,
(01:06:02):
to graze its own buffalo on ourown tribal land.
So having that distinction anddesignation means that BIA can't
impose some kind of permit onthe tribe Interesting and
working with the Arapaho, thenhow's that going?
AJ (01:06:19):
Is there interest?
Jason (01:06:20):
Yeah, but there's a couple of cattle producers that
are on leadership and they kindof undermine or question the
legitimacy of some of our asksbecause they see buffalo as a
threat or don't understand orhave misconceptions or are just
not supportive.
You worked in the past Tuhatewith some water rights stuff,
(01:06:41):
misconceptions or are just notsupportive.
AJ (01:06:43):
You worked in the past Touhei with some water rights
stuff, with the Arapaho and youwere in some kind of position
where you were trying to reachthat common ground Wind River.
Jason (01:06:53):
Alliance?
Yeah, we had, and my dad wasinvolved with that too.
Yeah, we've always thought weneed to challenge the whole
court, the whole legality ofthat court case and what.
Just how wrong it is you knowwe're talking about.
This is right.
That whole water case is wrong.
(01:07:14):
Like there's holes all overthat damn thing.
That it makes no sense, andmakes no sense to people who are
even on the other side, oncethey understand it.
AJ (01:07:27):
It's, it's just a bad, bad court case, and this is still
ongoing yeah, the river stillgets diverted um.
Jason (01:07:35):
They dewater the entire wind river there's.
There's places you can walkacross it, not get your feet wet
really geez, this echoes aust,echoes Australia's situation
with our main.
AJ (01:07:46):
So they take all.
Jason (01:07:47):
Non-Indians take all of the water for high-water-use
crops like alfalfa and sugarbeet, almost out of spite,
because the state says all waterin the state is for ag.
And the tribes are like, well,wait, what about all the other
uses is for ag?
And the tribes are like, well,wait about what about all the
other uses?
And yeah, it's a just a just aridiculous, ridiculous case.
(01:08:09):
That should have never went theway it did.
When was that?
The state of Wyoming filed suitagainst the tribes in 77.
And then a case was essentiallydecided and there was kind of a
couple it was Bighorn,adjudication 1, and there was
Adjudication 2.
Essentially, 92 was the finaldecision.
(01:08:31):
Right, yeah, that's a wholeother can of worms.
Yeah, but the land that we'rebuying back is within an area
below the diversion dam whichwas put in by Bureau Rec in the
30s, or in the MidvaleIrrigation District.
So we could essentially beginto question water rights and use
(01:08:55):
by Midvale Irrigation Districtin the BOR once these lands can
be restored to tribal status,and so Buffalo are going to make
it possible BOR, once theselands can be restored to tribal
status, and so we're Buffalo aregonna make it possible for us
to take on the water rights caseat some point.
I don't know how and I don'tknow when, but it's inevitable.
AJ (01:09:15):
Yeah, it's interesting.
They should lead back to that.
Yeah, but sort of obvious whenyou think about it.
Jason (01:09:23):
It's just to us.
AJ (01:09:24):
Yes.
Jason (01:09:26):
You guys.
Good, are we in a tight frame.
AJ (01:09:28):
I don't think so.
Jason (01:09:29):
You guys are looking at me like we got somewhere to be.
No, we can do the loop aroundif you want.
Oh, yeah, I want to go checkout the rest of the ground.
Yeah, I probably may have tofeed the two knuckleheads, but
Okay, the little ones.
AJ (01:09:41):
Yeah, knuckleheads, but the little ones.
Jason (01:09:42):
Yeah, we'll come for that , you guys want you got time for
that yeah, I think we do too.
All right, let's go do that,yeah.
G'day Jason.
How's it going?
Jason (00:03):
How are you Good to meet you, man.
AJ (00:04):
Nice to meet you.
Yeah, how are you doing?
That's my wife, olivia.
Hello nice to meet you, nice tomeet you.
And that's Yeshi, that's Jason,hi, yeshi.
Jason (00:10):
Hi, nice to meet you.
How are you guys doing?
AJ (00:12):
We're doing good man.
How are you?
Jason (00:14):
Thanks for these guys helping out.
AJ (00:25):
Oh, AJ here for The RegenNarration, your independent
, listener-supported podcastexploring how people are
regenerating the systems andstories we live by.
Welcome back to the Wind RiverReservation, home of the Eastern
Shoshone and Arapaho Nations,and the Wind River Tribal
Buffalo Initiative, atribally-led non-profit founded
in 2023 here at the foot of theRocky Mountains in current-day
Wyoming.
We left off part one of thisseries last week, just as we met
(00:48):
the initiative's founder, jasonBaldes, and prepared to head
out on the plains to meet thebuffalo and hear their and
Jason's stories.
All right, you got everything,everything.
Jason (01:04):
We'll jump in this red one here.
AJ (01:05):
Cool.
Jason (01:10):
You can go in either one you want.
AJ (01:12):
You want to come with us?
Yeah, I'll get the door for you.
You might remember, jason hadjust come to us from
preparations for the comingSundance, which reminded me it
was in the lead-up to theirSundance, just two years ago,
that the tribe sourced meat fromtheir own buffalo on their own
land for the first time innearly 140 years.
(01:34):
That's all part of enacting abroader vision of buffalo living
as wildlife, not livestock,once again protected under
tribal law.
And this vision doesn't stop atWind River either.
Jason is also VP of theIntertribal Buffalo Council,
where 87 tribes and counting arecurrently involved in efforts
(01:54):
to restore the buffalo and allthat entails, from the
reacquisition of land, therestoration of rivers and other
wildlife, along with the health,language and spirit of many
nations.
So let's head out in.
The side by side, we pull upand turn the engines off in 10
minutes or so to hear thebrilliant story of what's
(02:15):
happening here, including how itcame close to never happening,
and about halfway in we headover to feed the orphan buffalo
Ruby and hear about the oldShoshone grandmas, before
ultimately arriving back at theherd for an incredible,
unexpected face-to-faceencounter Right on, right on OK.
(02:45):
Thanks for having us here, man.
Yeah, you bet Really appreciateit.
Jason (02:48):
Yeah, glad to make fun.
Yeah, thanks.
This was going to be theoriginal town when the
reservation was opened up forhomesteading.
This was a hotel that was builtin 1920, that was on the
stagecoach route and this wassubdivided into ten acre plots,
(03:11):
and that church used to be outin the middle of the field.
That swapped.
If we didn't buy it, it wasgoing to be subdivided into ten
acre plots again.
Oh my goodness.
So we were really glad to beable to prevent that from
happening.
AJ (03:25):
Yeah, when was that?
When was the port?
Jason (03:32):
2019.
Oh, pronghorn are out here too.
AJ (03:36):
We like the pronghorn 2019.
Jason (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, there's been some, so you can see them right
there.
Oh yeah, beautiful, they'vebeen hanging out with the
buffalo a little.
They had twins.
Some of them had twins recently.
AJ (03:48):
I read some of this in some of the newsletter stuff.
Hey, yeah.
Even one you had to bring upbecause the mum didn't like.
Jason (03:55):
Yeah, we had one last year and we got little bull calf
and he's out with the herd.
Now you can't tell which one heis, but the other one this year
, she's five weeks old now.
She's over at my house.
I've also got a little orphanhorse.
(04:16):
Yeah right, so they're beingbottle-fed together.
Oh wow, and I just startedintegrating them back with
another horse so he can start tolearn about being a horse and
then the buffalo can go up andsee the calf too.
AJ (04:31):
That's outstanding To the horse and buffalo going through
this process.
Do they connect?
Jason (04:37):
Yeah, they're pals.
If we get time we'll go overthere and look at them.
Cool, this is them the othernight.
Oh, that is gorgeous.
AJ (04:48):
You've got to love it.
Jason (04:50):
Yeah, I mean, you've kind of got to pinch yourself every
day.
It's pretty amazing.
AJ (04:57):
I imagine the work's not always easy, but they're the
rewards, huh.
Jason (05:01):
Yeah, it's certainly challenging.
There's some bulls there.
Yeah, certainly challenging.
You know, you wouldn't thinkthat there would be the level of
opposition to something likethis that there is.
It's overwhelming support.
(05:24):
But you're just always kind ofsurprised by the people that
don't support something likethis.
How can you not?
AJ (05:35):
Where do you find that opposition and where is it
surprising, I suppose, in thatway.
Jason (05:42):
Well, I suppose that it's from cattle industry, the
cattle producers, and I think ithas to do with competition for
grass, it has to do with theidea that the West was won.
There's still semblances ofmanifest destiny, and I guess
(06:03):
that's understandable.
You know that the racism isstill out there, but we don't
realize the own level of our owncolonialism.
If a tribal member is a rancher, he has a hard time recognizing
that that was a lifestyle thatwas imposed on his grandparents
(06:27):
and now he's embracing it.
Okay.
But if you understand historyand you understand what was
brought to our people here, itwas to colonize us.
It was to Christianize us.
It was to assimilate us.
It was to destroy our language.
Our was to assimilate us.
It was to destroy our language,our cultural ways of knowing
(06:48):
and belief systems.
And so it's a bit ironic whenyou have tribal cattle producers
preaching about theirlivelihood in the cattle
industry and not being able torecognize the irony in that.
AJ (07:05):
Yeah, I guess all the more when it sums to opposition.
It's not just okay.
This is where I found myself.
It's hard to switch over orwhatever.
And yeah, competition for grassand whatever, but if it does
end up being a sort of I don'tknow what is it, we can't go
back, or it's just been soembedded.
(07:25):
I'll never forget Stephen Biko.
In fact, this is relevantbecause you've got this
transformative experience Iheard you talk about in Africa
too.
But just thinking about Africa,because I remember as a young
guy I came across this book bywell, it was actually the
testimony of Stephen Biko, sohim under trial, an African
bloke there and there was apassage that I never forgot.
(07:47):
It was something along thelines of the greatest weapon in
the hands of the oppressor isthe mind of the oppressed, what
you internalize.
Jason (07:59):
Yeah, that's a good quote .
I mean, buffalo restoration isfoundational to who we are.
It's in our songs, it's in ourceremonies.
We even called ourselves thebuffalo eaters, the Guchendika.
But for the most part, mostpeople still know that and
(08:21):
actually, out of the two tribesthere's 15,000 tribal members.
Less than 5% are ranchers.
So the majority of people,tribal people, support this.
Yeah, it's a few loud ones,confused ones, that see this as
(08:42):
some threat to their livelihood.
Now, I get it For non-tribalpeople who don't have a cultural
connection or understanding.
How would they know?
So you have to educate, youhave to inform them, and we have
a lot of support fromnon-tribal people, and that's
(09:04):
because they maybe have a littlebetter understanding of their
own history.
Do they have more compassionand empathy?
I don't know, but we do have alot of non-tribal members who
support this.
It does seem to be somethingthat's changing non-tribal
members who support this.
AJ (09:25):
It does seem to be something that's changing.
Jason (09:29):
Do you sense that?
Yeah, I mean, this is the rightthing to do.
I mean, if there's very littleto argue about this and I think
people get that I think peopleare looking for something good
(09:51):
or positive happening in theworld and this meets that
criteria.
You know, with everything elsegoing on, the world's in chaos,
the country's in chaos, thecountry's in chaos.
This is stability and hope andresiliency, and I think that's
what people want.
AJ (10:12):
I'm here with that too.
Yep, this is really wetunderfoot, huh we have the
irrigation season, so there's aditch that brings water.
Jason (10:24):
Of course, this is agricultural ground and
practices, and so when we boughtthe property, it already had
the agriculture.
We reseeded it with buffalograss so that it's more
preferable grasses over alfalfaor anything like that.
So it is.
It is um very green and lush.
(10:47):
We've had a lot of rain.
We're right in that time ofyear where we need that, so it's
a good time to be here.
It's going to dry out.
August, late July.
August is going to be brown.
AJ (11:02):
Yeah, it gets hot.
Here too it gets hot.
Jason (11:05):
Yeah, well, relatively it's not.
We only get a few days over 100degrees, okay, 91, which was
yesterday.
That's really hot for us, is itOkay?
We like 70s?
Yeah, that's our idealtemperature.
Yeah, like today, this is agreat temperature here today.
AJ (11:26):
Oh, it's beautiful, it's.
It's funny.
You know, jason, like even as aand as an australian, like what
, in a sense, you could say, whywould I feel this so strongly?
Yeah, but I do.
Yeah, there's something aboutit, and on these lands there's
something else.
Jason (11:42):
There's this there's, there's power in that.
And the story getting the landrestored, getting the relative
brought home, yeah, I thinkpeople really relate to it.
With the Shoshone tribe, youknow, supporting the designation
(12:03):
for these to be wildlife,that's huge, you know.
AJ (12:05):
Yeah, when was?
Jason (12:06):
that About two months ago .
Finally, yeah, wow, I've beendreading that Really, the
hardest audience to speak to ismy own people.
So you know, to take a topiclike that in front of our people
, it's like a firing line andpeople just vicious negative,
(12:28):
wanna bring you down.
The vote was 90 to seven.
Wow, so overwhelming support.
Wasn't even a question, and sothe vote speaks for itself.
AJ (12:43):
You didn't necessarily expect that.
I didn't.
No, yeah, some calves in there.
It's beautiful, they're laidout.
I think we have 28 calves 28calves.
So you started with just 10 in2016.
Yeah, and now there's 28 calves, just now, just this year.
Jason (13:02):
So we're up to 140-something here that is
outstanding.
So we're up to 140 somethinghere that is outstanding.
So we're gonna pull over righthere and we'll turn off our.
AJ (13:10):
I know the vehicles are kind of driving by, but they're
clearly at ease with you guys inthese vehicles, even huh.
Jason (13:19):
Yeah, we're out here about every day with them.
We don't harass them, we leavethem alone and they generally
know that we're not out here to.
Yeah, they're not habituatedbut they're acclimated.
But there'll be a lead femalethat'll get nervous with our
(13:41):
presence and she'll startwalking off Really and then
they'll kind of trail out behindyou.
Traffic jam around here.
AJ (13:50):
Comes in bursts.
Huh, yeah, it does.
Jason (13:51):
I think it's because of the construction over by
Riverton where they let them by.
And then they're yeah, we're 10.
In 2016.
We had the first calf born in2017.
We added kind of a new batch ofanimals that came from some
conservation population.
They started with the first tenfrom the Neil Smith Wildlife
(14:13):
Refuge in Iowa and then somefrom the National Bison Range.
We brought some from the NatureConservancy City of Denver,
Antelope Island in Utah,Soapstone Prairie in northern
Colorado.
It's tied to Colorado StateUniversity.
So I think eight, seven oreight different batches of
(14:35):
animals over the ten years, nineyears, and then plus what's
been born over 60 calves havebeen born here.
So if they've got an ear tag,they came from somewhere else.
If they've got no ear tag, theybeen born here.
So if they've got an ear tag,they came from somewhere else.
AJ (14:46):
If they've got no ear tag, they were born here I'm so
curious about that, in terms ofwhen they come here, they I mean
I've heard this elsewhere, thatand it looks like it happens
here that they know what to dothat memory like because they
come from everywhere.
You might think there'd beconflict.
You might think they might notrelate to the land.
(15:07):
Like that they might struggle,but there's memory.
Jason (15:10):
They have.
You know it's innate for them.
You know it's ingrainedgenetically how to be what they
need to be.
It's not like livestock that'sbeen genetically made dumber and
more reliant upon man.
They don't need man.
One thing we always do in bisonconservation is if you're
(15:32):
starting a herd or you'rebringing in new animals, is that
you only bring in yearlings ortwo-year-olds or three-year-olds
because they're matriarchal.
The young ones will integrateinto an existing population if
they're young.
If they're older, they're goingto want to go back to what they
know, and there's been a.
(15:53):
You know, you hear aboutbuffalo breaking through fences
and running off, and that'sprobably a 7 or 8, 10-year-old
animal that's just trying tofind its way home.
Whereas if you start with ayoung population, they're going
to learn what's available tothem, grow and mature and know
where the water sources are andthe plants are, the minerals and
(16:15):
the dirt are, and so then theybecome part of the landscape and
, as you like, for here, as weacquire more ground, we can open
it up and they learn it.
And so, incrementally we'vegrown from 300 acres to now 2
000 acres for these animals andthen at some point, you know
(16:37):
thinking beyond that opening,opening it up to a larger
landscape, they'll learn it andthey'll utilize what's available
to them.
But these animals have nowhereto go back to.
This is what is home to them,so that's why it works.
We don't really have breachesof the fence, because they have
(17:02):
food, they have water, they havethe mineral needs and they have
each other.
Main thing is each other.
They're a herd animal, so theyneed that.
However, the bulls you know thesatellite bulls will hang off
by themselves and the main herdwill kind of roam around, but as
they grow and mature they'regonna start developing family
(17:26):
groups.
And because none of theseanimals are really over 12 years
old, this is still a young,growing population and we
maintain a natural female tomale ratio which is about 60-40
or 50-50.
And that ensures that duringthe rut, during the mating
season, that the buffalothemselves are the ones choosing
(17:49):
who who breeds.
Therefore not geneticallymanipulated by any of our needs.
You know we don't.
We don't have a reason toselectively breed for anything.
That's their job.
That's them as wildlife, havingthe ability to exist as buffalo
(18:15):
without our intervention.
And that's part of thatparadigm shift of thinking
differently not of buffalo aslivestock, buffalo as livestock
and buffalo as wildlife,wildlife where they can exist as
such, and you know they don'tneed our help.
All they need is the land,space and ability to exist.
AJ (18:36):
Yeah, man thinks they got to control everything, and then we
make things hard for ourselves.
Arguably.
Jason (18:41):
Yeah, it's like why would you want to do that?
Why make it harder for yourself?
These guys don't really needall that much help.
It's way easier than cattleproduction.
AJ (18:51):
There's even Aboriginal folk at home I've heard say don't
plant trees, let nature plantthe trees.
But yeah, create the conditionswhere nature can plant the
trees, yeah, and don't bestripping them out or whatever.
Yeah, but yeah, the ways wethink, even in solving stuff,
that we have to fix it.
That it's on us to fix it.
(19:13):
Just seeing the pronghorn dashacross the field, oh yeah.
Yeah, it's a beautiful sighttoo.
I've seen that.
It's been a really distinctivefeature of Wyoming that we've
seen, Not in other states asmuch, just Pronghorn.
Jason (19:27):
This is Wyoming is the last place for Pronghorn.
AJ (19:29):
Is that?
Jason (19:30):
right, yeah, and we had a pretty drastic winter two years
ago where, in the state, over200,000 deer in Pronghorn died
because of the snow.
Well, had Buffalo been there,they'd cut the trails through
the snow that allow the deer andpronghorn to be able to eat in
(19:51):
conditions that are like that.
So another example of howbuffalo could have prevented,
been preventative to that.
But yeah, in my father he was abiologist.
Well, well, he's a retiredbiologist, he's 83 now.
When I was growing up therewere no pronghorn or bighorn
sheep on this reservation, so heworked for the US Fish and
(20:13):
Wildlife Service.
He was in a unique position asa tribal member but alsoa
federal employee working touphold trust responsibility for
tribes.
So as a biologist, he wasworking to protect fisheries,
water, wildlife.
And in the 80s it wascontroversial then too was to
(20:40):
create a game code that wouldprotect or create seasons and
bag limits for hunting.
Now, indigenous people, wealways hunted year round, that
was always how we fed ourselves.
But you put us on a limitedland base.
With modern tools andtechnology, we drastically
(21:02):
reduced the number of wildlife.
So the game code was to setseasons Controversial, but what
was predicted would happen did,and that would be that our
wildlife populations wouldincrease and we'd have better
hunting opportunities and easierways to sustain ourselves with
(21:22):
management, and that's whathappened.
We now have significantexponential increases in deer
pronghorn elk.
So I was a little kid and gotto witness and participate in
the gathering of pronghorn andbighorn sheep, and then we
brought them back to thereservation and released them.
My dad told me that I'd be ableto hunt a pronghorn in 10 years
(21:46):
, and they did so.
Well.
I was able to kill my first oneeight years later and I've
harvested a pronghorn ever,every year.
Since how old?
AJ (21:55):
were you then 11.
?
Jason (21:57):
but the buffalo was always missing he always told me
if you're going to work onbuffalo, make sure you bring him
back as wildlife and notlivestock.
Told me, if you're going towork on buffalo, make sure you
bring them back as wildlife andnot livestock.
They should have been broughtback in the same way.
Pronghorn and bighorn were thatyou get that wildlife in their
habitat and you bring them totheir new habitat.
We had to start on 300 acreswith these because they were
(22:18):
seen as competition for cattleproduction.
So unless they have thatclassification or status above
livestock, then that's how wecan prioritize ensuring they can
exist, because the cattleproduction.
Those are individual cattleproducers.
These are the tribe's buffaloand so why doesn't the tribe
(22:46):
have a priority on how lands aremanaged over the individual?
AJ (22:52):
And so it's that paradigm shift.
Yeah, did your dad consider itwas a bridge too far to deal
with the buffalo back then?
Jason (23:01):
No, he tried Really.
Yeah, towards the tail end ofhis career he did a habitat
assessment of the entirereservation which basically
showed this reservation has morehabitat for buffalo than
Yellowstone does Really.
Basically, animals bison in thelate 1800s were forced into
Yellowstone and they were soisolated that they were hard to
(23:21):
get to.
That's why that population grewthere Out here they were
millions of them but they werewiped out.
So towards the tail end of hiscareer he worked on that.
But for him and during thatperiod of time the elected
leaders of the two tribes werecomprised of cattlemen who
(23:44):
directly benefited from themanagement of the two tribes,
were comprised of cattlemen whodirectly benefited from the
management of the reservationbeing prioritized for cattle,
and so he had a very difficulttime convincing leaders that
buffalo were somehow importanton the reservation, even though
they were a small contingent ofthe population.
They had really say over howlands got utilized.
(24:10):
So despite the conservationsuccess stories like the very
first wilderness in the UnitedStates, the game code in the 80s
, protecting wolves and bears inthe 90s Buffalo's wildlife is
not that much different Fightingthe longest-running court
battle in the history of Wyomingover who controls water on the
(24:31):
reservation.
So we've got a long history offighting for land, water and
wildlife, if we can elect theright leaders and if we can
navigate the federal trustresponsibility part.
AJ (24:43):
Yeah, how's that going now?
Oh dude, yeah, how's that goingnow?
Jason (24:46):
Oh dude, yeah, not very good Really.
We got a meeting.
I'm on the board of theIntertribal Buffalo Council as
well.
We got 87 tribes across thecountry.
So we've been working on somelegislation that would help
codify the trust responsibilitythe Indian Buffalo Management
(25:08):
Act.
We were very close in the lastCongress, but the new house
rules and the people in thatadministration make it difficult
.
But we got a trip over there intwo weeks to meet with the
acting assistant secretary ofDepartment of Interior, which is
(25:30):
a meeting that we've beentrying to get for a while.
So we'll see.
Okay, I don't know how, I don'tknow if we have to just ride
this out or something happens.
It seems like something's gotto break, you know, yeah.
I think it did yesterday withthe largest protest against
(25:52):
Trump in the history of thenation today yesterday.
Largest mass protest in thehistory of the country was
yesterday.
AJ (26:01):
It does feel that this isn't a country that would roll over
no, so we'll see what happens, Ithink, the I think the good
will prevail so you know, what Ifound really interesting is
listening to the people whovoted for him, at least the ones
who, but these haven't beenhard to find who are thoughtful,
(26:21):
and some have even said thingslike I, I feel and this is going
back a bit right, it's goingback to around the election
maybe and then up to 100 days,in the first 100 days thing they
were still saying reallythoughtful things like including
empathetic, like I hate thethought that my countryman,
fellow countryman would be,would think I've unleashed
something.
That scares them.
You know things like that.
(26:42):
So I've been really interested.
That scares them.
You know things like that.
So I've been really interestedin listening to them and to hear
how they might change as thingsroll out.
I haven't heard much of it yet.
I mean, these poles are diving,so they've got to be out there.
But it does make me wonder.
In your experience and thengrowing up with your old man, it
seems like it's been part ofyour life too that you've found
(27:04):
yourselves in situations thatare politically tough and you've
had to find ways to navigatethat deftly.
It makes me wonder.
I mean, arguably that's theskill we need most right now in
the world is how do we deal witheach other without ripping each
other's throats out when thingsget tense or when we're
(27:26):
confronted by something?
What have you internalized inthat?
I mean even to get a 97 votelike how was that achieved in
bringing people together likethat?
Jason (27:53):
Well, most Shoshone people know that how important
Buffalo was for our grandmas andgrandpas.
You know, we went through theboarding school era.
We went through the reservationera.
We went through the reservationera.
We've gone through multipleeras of history with the United
States government and personallyI've kind of invested in
(28:13):
understanding a lot of thathistory and was fortunate
because through my dad's work Ihad to familiarize myself with
why things were the way theywere for him.
So I've been a bit of a studentof history and trying to
understand that.
And on the surface it's easyfor Shoshone people to know that
(28:37):
buffalo were important to us.
But most of us are not ranchers.
Most of us have been subject tothe Bureau of Indian Affairs,
subject to corrupt leadership,subject to these things.
But foundationally it's nosecret that buffalo were that
important.
The 90 to seven vote it wassurprising, but not unexpected
(29:04):
Like I knew.
It was there and we just neededpeople to show up, the right
people to show up and, as it is,be the same way for the
Northern Arapaho tribe too.
AJ (29:15):
I was going to ask.
Jason (29:16):
Yeah, we come from Buffalo people.
Most tribes did, and so if westill have the songs, if we
still have the ceremonies,that's the foundation for it,
and most of our peopleparticipate and still practice
those ceremonial belief systems.
The ranchers don't, and so thisbuffalo is providing a voice to
(29:43):
a demographic of our tribalmembers who've never had a voice
.
It's big, isn't?
AJ (29:49):
it.
Yeah, you know, I've oftenobserved and I'm talking a whole
decades long journey of my own,but even just this decade, with
the podcast going aroundAustralia and now here and
beaming in occasionally otherparts of the world is that it's
not felt trite to say that thewind's at your back when you're
(30:12):
doing stuff like this, partlybecause of what you're saying
before, like the buffalo, do thework, just let them.
But also there seems to be abigger thing at play where that
and you're talking about here, Ithink, with ceremony and songs
that are remembered that thereare bigger forces.
(30:33):
You could even say power,powerful forces.
That well, you know, we'll justtake that 90 to 7 vote as a as
a touchstone for this, but couldtalk about a range of ways it
manifests.
But that where the ways thatpeople can be reached in really
powerful ways that theythemselves feel and don't need
(30:55):
to be coerced or convinced orwhatever, that when you're
tapping that, well, arguablythat's the key to tap that
domain.
I wonder what you think aboutthat.
That if you are just fightingon that, I don't know more
rational, superficial level,there's an inevitable war.
But if you can get under it tohuman instinct, buffalo instinct
(31:18):
, where they connect thatthere's more on offer.
Jason (31:23):
We call it the great mystery, the power of the
unknown, the power of creator,the spirits however you want to
call it that there is energy inthe cosmos and our ways of
knowing and our belief systems.
(31:45):
It's all in those ceremonies.
It's in what those ceremonialleaders say, it's in the way
that they've been told to carryon specific protocols.
All of our ceremonies have somelevel of suffering that you
(32:05):
have to endure in order toachieve and it's that reciprocal
relationship.
You don't take without giving.
It's why we pray before we takea buffalo, or it's why you put
tobacco down when you take aplant, or if you're going to go
and ask somebody for a favor,you give something.
(32:27):
This idea of relationality andreciprocal relationship is
evident in what we are taught inthose ceremonies.
You know, for me I had to digdown very deep to find my own
(32:49):
level of healing and I looked toceremonies to find my pathway
through that and I've come tounderstand a bit more about
meeting your prayer halfway.
And you know also be carefulwhat you ask for.
And you know also be carefulwhat you ask for, because I
(33:10):
prayed very hard for my ownhealing.
I suffered for several yearsthrough fasting and finding my
pathway through those protocols.
So for me, this is grounded inceremony, but I had to be
willing to meet my prayerhalfway first in what I've
(33:33):
learned about how everythingties together.
And so for my foundation, for mybelief systems, my values, what
I'm trying to put forth, it'sgrounded in ceremony, it's
(33:56):
grounded in prayer and theimportance of our belief systems
and values and language andsongs and ceremony.
It isn't monetary, it isn'tsuperficial.
For me, it goes something muchdeeper and that, I think, is
what they provide.
Everything we have here isbecause of them and what they've
(34:17):
done.
And I don't know if they cameto help me in a dream or came to
help my uncles or my grandmasor my grandpas in dreams, but
this is a result of prayers thathave been cast well, well
before we ever got started, andthat is that reciprocal
(34:39):
relationality of our connectionto the cosmos through ceremonies
.
People very, very long, longtime ago prayed for this and
somehow it works itself out.
AJ (34:52):
I'm curious then did you, was there a time in your life
where you really got that, Isuppose.
Jason (34:59):
So I think I was, uh, probably about rock bottom and
alcoholism and drowning, myshame and sorrow and guilt or
whatever it was I was carryingaround by the bottle and, you
know, sitting in the back of acop car, you know, getting
thrown in the slammer.
Yeah, this, a lot of all ofthis, was really close to never
(35:24):
happening because of my ownchoices in drinking and alcohol
and that pathway.
So, yeah, all of this wasreally close to never happening
and I thought to myself you know, I'm in a very lucky, fortunate
(35:46):
position to be able to work onbuffalo restoration.
Yeah, I worked very hard for itthrough academia.
But here I am talking about howbuffalo are healing and how
much we need it, and I'm notwilling to accept that myself.
So I had to dig down real deepand do what I needed to do and
(36:09):
find the help that I needed.
That was about eight years agonow, so it was right around the
time we brought the first ten.
AJ (36:19):
I was struggling with my own stuff.
Jason (36:23):
They were bringing the medicine and I was confronted
with some pretty tough decisions.
But I was able to find the helpthrough ceremony to get myself
where I needed to be, insobriety and recovery.
And then the blessings just keepcoming yeah, there you go and
here we are 140 buffalo grownfrom 300 acres to 2,000, but
(36:50):
actually adding 17,000 acrossthe river over there.
So you know 300 acres to 20,000acres and over 250 collective
buffalo.
Now the two tribes, with adecision by general council to
move towards wildlife,continuing to raise funding to
(37:10):
buy fee lands back so they cango back to tribal ownership.
Yeah, we've come a long way innine years yeah, we're there.
AJ (37:20):
I really want to talk more about those, all those bits and
pieces too.
But were there when you came toceremony like that and made
that choice?
Were there people around youthat you could turn to, that
guided you through?
Jason (37:35):
Yeah, there's a gentleman who was an elder and he had
been passed down the bundles ofmedicines from the old timers
that carry with them theprotocol and the knowledge and
(37:56):
songs and things that he's ahealer.
So I went to him and told him Ineeded help and him and his son
who's since been passed thatway the old-timer he passed away
a couple years ago.
But yeah, I went to that familyand to that father and son for
(38:20):
help and I go to ceremoniesthere at least once a week now
sometimes twice a week.
I help now in part of thoseceremonies.
I know the songs.
So because I've gone throughsome of those protocols, then
(38:41):
some things will be passed to me.
But that's really not.
It was never my intent.
I just needed help and whathappens is when you seek help,
you eventually become the helperand I never knew that wasn't my
goal or intention at all.
(39:01):
But now others need thatsimilar type of help.
You know Someone's trying toget you right.
Oh yeah, my phone's beenblowing up all this while the
ceremonies.
There's a Sundance gettingready to happen down there, so
everybody's looking for buffalomeat.
AJ (39:19):
There we go.
Yeah, that trip you did toAfrica then that was as a late
teen.
Yeah, it was in between being ayoung that was as a late teen.
Yeah, it was in between being ayoung kid and this moment in
time that we're talking aboutnow.
Jason (39:31):
Yeah, I was 18.
AJ (39:34):
You were 18.
Jason (39:34):
So your dad had work over there or something.
Huh, he's a photographer.
He really liked to photographthe wildlife and he had as a
biologist.
He kind of gained some alliesfighting for water rights here.
He joined the board of theNational Wildlife Federation.
He was one of the longestserving members of the national
(39:55):
board members of NationalWildlife Federation and actually
the first tribal member, and sonow I think there's five tribal
members on the board ofNational Wildlife Federation.
Now I think there's five tribalmembers on the board of
National Wildlife Federation.
So he made good connections andgood friends and contacts.
So he'd been there severaltimes.
(40:21):
And then when I was 18, you knowI liked to do art and I played
football and liked to dowoodworking and auto shop I
didn't have any intention ofgoing to college.
When I was in high school Iactually had the afternoons off
but we played in three statechampionships in football.
So I thought I was a goodfootball player and was a good
artist.
But I didn't have any intent togo to college, especially not
(40:44):
for science.
I understood the importance ofit because growing up with my
dad, I knew he was a biologistand was always hunting, fishing
and knew things about the rocksand the landscape and that was
always an interest to me.
But it wasn't until.
(41:04):
We got over there, traveledaround a bit together in Kenya
and Tanzania witnessing thewildebeest.
It was the light bulb moment.
It was kind of my life'sepiphany probably.
Yeah, wow, realizing that wecould travel that far in amongst
this herd of wildebeest andthat was less than 5% of what
(41:28):
the bison was here.
That blew me away.
Oh, it blows me away, becausewe drove for over 100 miles and
as far as you can see in everydirection is wildebeest.
Yeah, that seems like a lot.
But for that to be less than 5%of what the bison was here, for
it to be so systematicallyexterminated from 30 to 60
(41:50):
million to less than 1,000 onthe continent in less than 100
years, that is disgraceful, thatis awful.
And when I can look at thesebuffalo right now and I can have
a relationship with them, I canraise one up and integrate it
back into the herd and for thatto have been purposely destroyed
(42:10):
, that's what gives me the fuel,that's what gives me the fire
to keep going.
And because that's anincredible thing to have a
relationship with an animal likethis, that sheds light on the
millennia-old relationship thatwe had living alongside this
(42:30):
animal and for it to be nearlyannihilated as a means to take
our lands.
That makes me sick, and so, inorder to take that energy and
turn it into something good, wehave to continue this.
We have to continue to show ouryoung people what that means.
Continue to createopportunities for more of our
(42:53):
tribal students that are goinginto academia.
Make sure that our ceremonialleaders have access to this
animal for conducting thoseceremonies.
That we get it into our dietagain to help curve the rates of
diabetes and other diet relatedissues that plague our
communities.
It's like this is the solutionfor all of our problems.
AJ (43:15):
It's another symptom of call it war, where rations were the
order of the day in Australiatoo, right.
Yeah yeah, and just crap,essentially to survive on, to
find a way to survive on Flourand sugar and salt.
Yeah, so the layers of it sopowerful and with that ceremony
aspect, right, you've got amobile processing unit too, yeah
(43:37):
it allows us to be able toculturally field harvest.
Jason (43:41):
You know when we're going to take an animal.
We come out here and take itlike right here.
We don't round them up into acorral and put them on a trailer
and ship them off to I mean,imagine how stressful that would
be.
So the cultural field harvesttrailer allows us to bring it
out.
We have our prayer, we have ourceremony right here.
Generally a buffalo willpresent himself.
(44:02):
That's the one we take and thenthat allows us to to process
that buffalo right there in thegrass, with grass still in his
mouth, no stress.
One bullet, one kill and thenin when it's hot.
You know they're so big thatyou got to get that hide off and
you got to get them into acooler and cooled down.
So that cultural field harvesttrailer makes that possible.
(44:26):
And for tribes, that's how wewant to be able to have.
That reverence and respect forthat animal is to take it right
there with its grass in itsmouth, with no stress and with
its family.
You know that's the way itshould be.
And they don't.
You know it's not a hunt, it'sa harvest.
(44:48):
We want to come out and takeone.
We pray for it, we take it.
They don't run after.
That's what I was curious about.
AJ (44:54):
They don't run off it's not like you break the trust.
Jason (44:56):
No, yeah they don't have a reason to run off.
They actually mourn and, likeelephants, they have a ceremony
of their own to honor that onethat passed.
They're trying to help it up.
They have compassion, empathyand love for one another that we
sure as heck could emulate, andthat's how we used to do it,
(45:20):
and that's why our societieswere matriarchal after the
buffalo.
That's why we gathered inAugust so that our babies would
be born in May.
That's why we have the storiesand the songs and the teachings
that you can see and witnessright here in front of you now,
(45:42):
that we haven't been able to forwell over 100 years, unless we
went to Yellowstone.
It's not like this.
So, yeah, we have to relearn alot of that, yeah, and we've got
to see it and witness it andbring the kids out and show them
(46:05):
how we use the hair, the hoovesor the horns and understand
their matriarchy and how theyraise up these little ones and
how the bulls are protectors.
It's like the circles of life,and there's a whole lot of
metaphor we can put into that,but it's like the little calves
(46:27):
are in the center of the circle,and then it's the mothers, and
then it's the elders, and thenthe outside circle is the bulls.
And if you think about that interms of our own societies, how
the boarding school era, how ourbulls, our men, were taken away
(46:50):
and then the children weretaken away, it was like the, and
then they were brought back butdidn't know.
It's like our elders and ourchildren are barely making it
together and our parents and ourmen are gone and so those
(47:10):
circles have been broken andthat's why we see, you know, the
high suicide rates, the highhigh school dropout rates, low
life expectancy, the chemicaldependency, the emotional
spiritual damage, the emotionalspiritual damage, those circles
are broken.
So, this buffalo, as we bringthem back and we come to
(47:32):
understand and learn andreintegrate, we're putting those
circles back and we're buildingour men up and we're trying to
bring our young women, to bringthose life givers back, protect
our elders and bring our menback to be warriors and that
(47:54):
they're the providers and theprotectors of our people and not
these Hollywood notions of BSthat is out there providers,
protectors, and it's like them,buffalo, bulls.
So we have lots to learn abouthow we reintegrate those things
and ideologies again.
AJ (48:12):
I'm really tuning into that.
That's a really powerful way toput it, I think.
How have you observed thatthat's going to the next
generations?
In that context of difficulty,can I feel it too?
Jason (48:26):
On a case-by-case basis.
We have to create more of anopportunity to do that and
there's this nonprofit over onthe Menominee Nation in
Wisconsin and they're calledMedicine Fish and we helped get
Medicine Fish some buffalo andthey've started a herd there and
then they are also working totake down dams and restore the
(48:49):
sturgeon.
And part of the way that theyare helping these young young
men heal is by connecting themwith song, ceremony, culture,
spirituality, but it's throughfly fishing and so they're
connecting these young men andhelping them become leaders.
And many of these young menhave had the hardest stories and
(49:13):
backgrounds that you can comefrom.
But because they've been givenopportunity and shown love and
shown appreciation and respect,they've really created a way to
heal these young men.
So we've been partnering withMedicine Fish for a couple of
years and want to be able tointegrate more of what they're
(49:35):
doing here and perhaps more ofwhat we're doing here and there,
and share and build.
We're trying to heal ourcommunities.
We're trying to heal our youngmen.
We're trying to heal our youngwomen.
We're trying to heal ourcommunities.
We're trying to heal our youngmen.
We're trying to heal our youngwomen, and what they're doing
(49:55):
there we're trying to implementhere.
So we've got a couple differentyouth opportunities youth camps,
youth leadership, where webring our ethnobotanists and our
scientists and our hydrologistsand give students an
opportunity to understand whatthose things are.
We had a culture climate youthcamp the last couple of years
(50:19):
where it's a three-day event.
You have elementary and middleand high school that come out
and then in a couple of coupleweeks we're doing another camp
with ronan donovan, who's a natgeo explorer and he's a
photographer and he's for thecouple last years he's worked
(50:39):
with some of our tribal youthand getting them engaged with
photography and then culture.
So we're bringing medicine fish.
Ronan donovan is coordinating ayouth photo camp and and we're
going to utilize our, our groundup in the mountains to give,
give those those young guys,kind of a triple approach type
(51:02):
of an opportunity to just getbetter, see more of what we have
out there.
For me, I got the opportunity togrow up with my dad and as a
biologist he spent a lot of timein our wilderness area
understanding the lakes andrivers and streams, so I got to
(51:26):
be up there a lot of the time onhorseback and so part of the
nonprofit here I've been tryingto build a horse program so that
we could take our young leadersinto the wilderness for week
long pack trips on horse,because horse culture goes hand
in hand with Buffalo culture andif we're trying to heal with
(51:47):
relationship in in buffalo, wecan also integrate horse, horse,
uh culture into that.
And being able to take kidsinto the wilderness and have
experiences like I did mighthelp formulate some more ideas
and opportunities for them,which is why I do what I do, and
(52:14):
so I think that's an importantaspect of having a non-profit
that is doing work like this isthat we can bring a unique
perspective and opportunities toour communities that really
wouldn't happen otherwise.
AJ (52:26):
Yeah, and the non-profit is only what?
A couple of years Opportunitiesto our communities that really
wouldn't happen otherwise.
Yeah, and that's the non-profitis only what.
Jason (52:31):
A couple of years, yeah, February of 23,.
So, yeah, very young.
Yeah, and yet so much hashappened just in that period of
time I was fortunate to havethat platform with National
Wildlife Federation and thenbuilt out a network of a support
base that could bring resourcespretty quickly for land
acquisition, because NWF can'town land, and so it was
(52:56):
necessary to not only start anonprofit that could, but also
it needed to be tribal-led.
You know, national WildlifeFederation is a predominantly
white large conservationorganization.
The Nalai Federation is apredominantly white large
conservation organization.
This is the showcase for howNWF can work with and engage
tribes on conservation.
So this is a keystone projectfor NWF.
(53:19):
But what that did was allow meto tap into some resources that
otherwise wouldn't have beenthere to get it up and off the
ground.
And then key folks like Xavierand Taylor and Pamela and Albert
and our team, once we kind ofgot off the ground, we were
ready to hit the ground running.
(53:41):
We've got a lot of fundraisingto do for land acquisition and
now keeping uh, somesustainability and longevity
into to what we're building.
So there's, there's, uh, thework's just beginning yeah,
we're just getting we're justgetting started talking about
the land acquisition.
AJ (54:00):
It's a great story in itself in many ways, but I think I
even heard you say it once thatit's land that was stolen that
you're having to buy back.
So there's still that.
There's still that thing aboutit isn't there.
And I have seen back home and Iknow this happened over east
here a bit as well in thiscountry where land has just been
(54:21):
given back, bequeathed ordonated even ahead of dying,
just given back, and that themovement of that in in australia
is people have spoken aboutthat like we all die, like
what's your life gonna havestood for?
Yeah, and so they set upstructures where they could
still have access themselves,but they're given that ownership
(54:42):
for want of a better word thattenure, tenure back.
Is that an option here?
Have you seen that?
Could it be the people you'veworked with?
Can that be broached?
Jason (54:54):
Not.
Well, I'm an optimist so Iwon't say no, but I think that
there are levels of difficulty.
You can come across anindividual landowner who loves
your idea, knows that he's goingto be passing on and he wants
(55:18):
to do something meaningful withhis land.
I've had several people likethat want to have a conversation
about it, and actually a few Ineed to follow up on even.
But they're not contiguousground and out here these like
priority is contiguous ground,so you can have a neighbor who's
(55:40):
very supportive or you can havea neighbor who could give a
crap about what you're doing,and so there's obviously that
spectrum.
Then you get to the localgovernment and agency level and
here that's like Fremont County,the commissioners, or you got
Riverton City Council or you gotthe Bureau of Reclamation,
(56:03):
which is a federal agency buthas no track record of really
working with the tribes.
Bureau Reclamation could changea lot of the problems that we're
having right now with a strokeof a pen, but they won't because
of the non-native influence atthe legislative level.
(56:23):
You know, you can kind of takea picture like this and you go
all the way towards Riverton andyou got Pavilion and Kinnear
and these are the white farmersand ranchers that are out here.
They don't consider themselvespart of the reservation, even
though they are within theexterior boundaries of the
reservation.
So even this land right herethat we're on was one of those
(56:47):
pieces that was privatized andopened up to homesteading in
1902.
So everybody out here wouldargue that the tribes have no
stake in it.
Now you go over there 20 milesthat way to our tribal
communities and thatconversation is flip-flopped
where tribes are like that'sstolen ground and you're selling
(57:12):
it.
So these lands go for about$55,000 to $7,000 per acre and
they're 160, 300-acre parcelsand so that makes it pretty
expensive when you're trying topiece back a few hundred acres.
I mean that's a pretty goodprice tag.
Tribes don't have the money tobuy that, and so this was the
(57:38):
mechanism that I found to getland back, because buffalo
restoration is land rematriation, which is a form of
reconciliation.
People can literally buy intothis.
Now, they're not going to wantto buy land and just give it
away to the tribe.
They want to give land tobuffalo and they want to see
(58:03):
Buffalo restored for itsimportance to the people and the
land, and that brings much morecredibility and their ownership
into wanting to supportsomething like this, and so I
think that that's part of thereason why we're generating
(58:25):
revenue is that, and support isbecause it's not just about the
buffalo, it's about the land andit's also about the people.
AJ (58:35):
Yeah, fascinating.
I remember in one of the shortdocumentaries that's been made
here there was an old white guyis his name tom doherty, maybe
tom doherty, yeah?
And he said something like thathe basically learned through
this work what it was to be withthe tribes and to see it from
(58:56):
that lens.
So he, he got it.
Jason (58:58):
Yeah, at the other end of it, he was one of the only guys
who did see it Really Early on.
When my dad was fighting thestate and the feds on the
management of the river duringthe water rights case, he was
looking for help out there withother NGOs, other organizations,
(59:20):
other states.
Nobody would help him.
Tom Doherty was the guy whostepped up and he was the
president of the WyomingWildlife Federation at the time,
which is an affiliate of theNational Wildlife Federation,
and that's how my dad was ableto get connected to more support
and that was because of TomDoherty, and Tom is probably my
(59:42):
dad's closest friend even todayJust goes to show.
AJ (59:47):
hey, like not to get too down on the knockbacks, because
you'll find a connection and somuch can come of it.
Jason (59:57):
Yeah, I mean, you just have to be willing to take that
step and Tom Doherty was willingto take a step when no one else
would.
Those two and many others whowere supportive of tribes and
sovereignty andself-determination and in-stream
(01:00:18):
flow to protect fisheries orthe wilderness, or wolves and
bears or buffalo as wildlife.
Those are big concepts, thoseare big challenges and we still
got a lot of battles to fight.
And buffalo as wildlife is likeone step closer to helping us
(01:00:42):
undo a little bit of thatmanifest destiny that was thrown
at us.
Like you, play a big step.
Allows us to take some fencesdown.
AJ (01:00:53):
And, you know, in an Australian context this lands
big time right now.
From a very interesting angle,right now in Australia what's
become a really big story is astation, as we call them, a
ranch, in the north of WesternAustralia, 200,000 acres.
It's interesting too, right onmultiple levels, because this is
(01:01:14):
a guy whose literally had toflee family, had to flee now
Zimbabwe, old Rhodesia, whenthere was the revolution
happening there.
So he finds his way to theKimberley, the region we call
north of Western Australia, andends up on this station.
What's interesting frommultiple levels is that he was
(01:01:35):
part of the Savory School.
He really latched onto AlanSavory, whose epiphany came from
watching the wildebeest.
So it's interesting thatwhitefellas, as they get called
in Australia, whitefellas andIndigenous folk coming back to
the same source, through thesource, through actually
observation of these animals.
(01:01:56):
And then what's happening inthis place is that he's gone.
Okay, the old megafauna inAustralia is gone.
Yeah, he's managing some cattleout there.
Sure, he's gone.
That's not enough.
And then we'd see there are allthese wild herds of animals that
were domesticated, brought toaustralia, domesticated, but
(01:02:16):
then let go when we developedthe train and the car or
whatever.
So I'm talking donkeys, forexample.
Yeah, but there are camels andthere's tons of others too, so
the meaning of this has hasmassive reverberations.
So what he's managed to do isget back in relationship,
trusted relationship, with thesedonkeys.
(01:02:37):
So they're not domesticated,they're not fenced, but they're
doing the work of grazing theupper ranges so that fire
doesn't get them, and all theland benefits to that.
They're re-socializing intoherd, so all the benefits for
them, yeah, and the wholething's working really
beautifully.
Except the donkeys are stilldesignated as feral pests that
(01:03:02):
have to be shot and it's thestation's responsibility to do
it if it's on their land.
So this has now been goingthrough a state mediation
process for years and itcontinues.
It keeps sort of coming up toJudgment Day, but adjourns and
adjourns, and adjourns.
And I think because it's such aparadigm shift, because what if
(01:03:22):
you can work with wild animals?
You don't have to make themdomesticated, right, but they're
managed in some kind of way.
So whatever language you wantto put on it, they're still free
to be what they are and they'redoing amazing things for the
whole community, including thehumans in the space.
(01:03:43):
So when I saw that you'd donethis, this designation as wild,
I thought, wow, theramifications of coming up
against that paradigm change?
Basically isn't it?
But I'm so curious then howit's.
Well, a then we've heard a bitabout how it's come about and
happened here, happened here,but what's the practicality for
(01:04:06):
you then on the ground in havingthat happen, in bringing down
fences and in negotiating theperceived threats in others?
Jason (01:04:12):
Well for me.
I'm a member of the Shoshonetribe and getting that
designation through the Shoshonetribe was easier for me.
It's harder for me to make thatkind of influence on the
Arapaho tribe, so I need alliesin the tribe that can be
advocates at leadership level,and what that means is that once
(01:04:34):
we have that 17,000 acres outthere fenced off, that we could
essentially let out familygroups from the Shoshone tribe,
from the Arapaho tribe and growa population out there that has
a distinction as wildlife.
Arapaho tribe hasn't made thatdecision yet, and part of the
(01:04:54):
reason why we need that wildlifedesignation is not only for the
purposes of trying to keep themas wildlife, but it also has
practical reasons in that theseare the tribe's buffalo, not an
individual's, and right nowpeople see them as they're
somehow mine or theorganization's, or this is
(01:05:16):
somehow my personal project orsomething.
These are the tribe's buffaloproject or something, and these
are the tribes buffalo.
So we're caretaking the theseanimals so that they can be come
the seed population for thewildlife that will essentially
become the reservations Buffalo.
So if they didn't have thatdistinction as wildlife, they
(01:05:41):
would be seen as competition forindividual cattle producers and
they may also be subject to apermit system under Bureau of
Indian Affairs because theywould have livestock status.
It doesn't make any sense forthe tribe to pay Bureau of
Indian Affairs to graze its ownbuffalo on our own tribal land,
(01:06:02):
to graze its own buffalo on ourown tribal land.
So having that distinction anddesignation means that BIA can't
impose some kind of permit onthe tribe Interesting and
working with the Arapaho, thenhow's that going?
AJ (01:06:19):
Is there interest?
Jason (01:06:20):
Yeah, but there's a couple of cattle producers that
are on leadership and they kindof undermine or question the
legitimacy of some of our asksbecause they see buffalo as a
threat or don't understand orhave misconceptions or are just
not supportive.
You worked in the past Tuhatewith some water rights stuff,
(01:06:41):
misconceptions or are just notsupportive.
AJ (01:06:43):
You worked in the past Touhei with some water rights
stuff, with the Arapaho and youwere in some kind of position
where you were trying to reachthat common ground Wind River.
Jason (01:06:53):
Alliance?
Yeah, we had, and my dad wasinvolved with that too.
Yeah, we've always thought weneed to challenge the whole
court, the whole legality ofthat court case and what.
Just how wrong it is you knowwe're talking about.
This is right.
That whole water case is wrong.
(01:07:14):
Like there's holes all overthat damn thing.
That it makes no sense, andmakes no sense to people who are
even on the other side, oncethey understand it.
AJ (01:07:27):
It's, it's just a bad, bad court case, and this is still
ongoing yeah, the river stillgets diverted um.
Jason (01:07:35):
They dewater the entire wind river there's.
There's places you can walkacross it, not get your feet wet
really geez, this echoes aust,echoes Australia's situation
with our main.
AJ (01:07:46):
So they take all.
Jason (01:07:47):
Non-Indians take all of the water for high-water-use
crops like alfalfa and sugarbeet, almost out of spite,
because the state says all waterin the state is for ag.
And the tribes are like, well,wait, what about all the other
uses is for ag?
And the tribes are like, well,wait about what about all the
other uses?
And yeah, it's a just a just aridiculous, ridiculous case.
(01:08:09):
That should have never went theway it did.
When was that?
The state of Wyoming filed suitagainst the tribes in 77.
And then a case was essentiallydecided and there was kind of a
couple it was Bighorn,adjudication 1, and there was
Adjudication 2.
Essentially, 92 was the finaldecision.
(01:08:31):
Right, yeah, that's a wholeother can of worms.
Yeah, but the land that we'rebuying back is within an area
below the diversion dam whichwas put in by Bureau Rec in the
30s, or in the MidvaleIrrigation District.
So we could essentially beginto question water rights and use
(01:08:55):
by Midvale Irrigation Districtin the BOR once these lands can
be restored to tribal status,and so Buffalo are going to make
it possible BOR, once theselands can be restored to tribal
status, and so we're Buffalo aregonna make it possible for us
to take on the water rights caseat some point.
I don't know how and I don'tknow when, but it's inevitable.
AJ (01:09:15):
Yeah, it's interesting.
They should lead back to that.
Yeah, but sort of obvious whenyou think about it.
Jason (01:09:23):
It's just to us.
AJ (01:09:24):
Yes.
Jason (01:09:26):
You guys.
Good, are we in a tight frame.
AJ (01:09:28):
I don't think so.
Jason (01:09:29):
You guys are looking at me like we got somewhere to be.
No, we can do the loop aroundif you want.
Oh, yeah, I want to go checkout the rest of the ground.
Yeah, I probably may have tofeed the two knuckleheads, but
Okay, the little ones.
AJ (01:09:41):
Yeah, knuckleheads, but the little ones.
Jason (01:09:42):
Yeah, we'll come for that , you guys want you got time for
that yeah, I think we do too.
All right, let's go do that,yeah.
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