Ayana Young  Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we're speaking with Jason Baldes.

Jason Baldes  Buffalo existed from the West Coast nearly all the way to the east coast to Florida, from Mexico to the Arctic, from sea level to 13,000 feet in elevation. And so there really is not a place on this continent where buffalo doesn't belong. And if we can continue to restore buffalo to its rightful places, those places are also going to heal.

Ayana Young  Jason, an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Land Resources & Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, where he focused on the restoration of buffalo/bison to Tribal lands. In 2016 he spearheaded the successful effort to relocate a herd to the Wind River Indian Reservation and works with both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes in buffalo management and expansion. He is an advocate, educator and speaker on Indigenous cultural revitalization and ecological restoration who has also served as director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, where he was instrumental in the passing of the Wyoming Indian Education for All Act. He currently splits time as executive director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, and Tribal Buffalo Program Senior Manager for the National Wildlife Federation's Tribal Partnerships Program. Jason sits on the board of directors of the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the board of trustees for the Conservation Lands Foundation. 

Well, hello, Jason, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jason Baldes  Yeah, thank you for having me.. Gosh, there is so much to talk about and I'm really excited to get the chance to talk to you. But as we start, I want to get a bit of background about your journey towards working with buffalo restoration. And so maybe we could start off with what led you down this path and what has continually affirmed your commitment to the buffalo?

Well, growing up on the Wind River Reservation, I was part of a family who hunted and fished and camped. My dad is a retired fish and wildlife biologist. And so as a young person, I got to witness a lot of his work firsthand, in protecting fisheries, fighting for water rights, upholding the sovereignty and self determination of the tribes to restore species that were exterminated, like the pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep. 

So I was a kid when I witnessed the reintroduction of those species. And then I had the opportunity when I was 18 to travel with my dad to East Africa and witnessed the wildebeest migration along with seeing many of the other wildlife species there in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. And the wildebeest was kind of an epiphany for me, realizing that that's less than 5% of what the bison was here on this continent less than 500 years ago, actually less than 200 years ago. And so I had a newfound appreciation for my home and my community. And so when I returned home from Africa, I decided to pursue an education that would give me the academic credentials to move forward in bison restoration on the Wind River Indian Reservation here in Wyoming working closely with the Eastern Shoshone, my own tribe, as well as the Northern Arapaho who we share this reservation with. We both come from Buffalo people. It was very important, critical, for my grandmas and grandpas. And so kind of taking the lead from my father stepped into a role where I could help the four-leggeds, the buffalo, as well as the other species that benefit from their presence. 

And so once I finished with my education, I moved into a professional role with the National Wildlife Federation and then a position with the Intertribal Buffalo Council as the representative for the Shoshone Tribe. And then starting a nonprofit to work closely with the two Tribes here to further buffalo expansion on the reservation.

Ayana Young  Thank you so much for that work. I would just love to continue hearing more about the specific projects you're working on right now and what are some new developments in the space?

Jason Baldes  Well, the reservation was opened up for homesteading way back in 1906 and this privatized many of our reservation lands, they're no longer really considered part of the reservation. They're considered fee lands or allotted lands. And so been able to raise some dollars to reacquire or purchase those properties for buffalo habitat. And so that's kind of what I've been saying is rematriation, that we're getting these lands restored to the tribes. We're no longer trespassers on these lands and they will for now in perpetuity belong to buffalo, and ensuring that buffalo have a place here. So buffalo restoration is land rematriation, which is a form of reconciliation that people can literally buy into. Help us buy these fee lands back for buffalo habitat that can be returned to the reservation or trust status and that creates a new future for for our people--a reconnection to Buffalo, but also return of some of these lands that were illegitimately taken from our grandmas and grandpas way back in 1906, or even before with the Homestead Act or the General Allotment Act that opened up reservations for homesteading. 

The tribes also recently dedicated a range unit. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is the land managing agency. It's a federal agency that oversees things on reservations and BIA manages our lands, and they've divided it into 92 range units that have had a priority in cattle production despite our successes in conservation, like the very first wilderness area, protection of game or species with the game code, reintroduction of pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep, and even in the 90s protection of wolves and bears, predators on the reservation. So there's a history of conservation success stories. And despite all that, the Bureau of Indian Affairs continues to promote cattle production on these range units. And so we've been able to change the priority on a couple of those range units to prioritize buffalo. Those are now buffalo habitat. And so raising the dollars through the nonprofit Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative to pay for the infrastructure needs of expansion to a larger land base. 

So there's community, there's leadership support from both tribes to continue building our buffalo programs. That's very important for the ecological role of this keystone species being restored to the landscape that increases plant and animal biodiversity. It's important in carbon storage and climate resiliency. 

For the people here though, it's very important culturally and spiritually. This was the first year in 139 years that the Shoshone Tribe's been able to take our own animals from our own lands for our annual Sundance ceremonies. That's very, very important. Last year was the first time for the Arapaho. And so you know, integrating that buffalo back into the ceremonies of our peoples here is very important in our healing. What's also important in our healing is being able to eat buffalo again, the nutritional benefits of this animal highest in protein, minerals and vitamins and lowest in fat and cholesterol than nearly every other meat. So nutritionally, it's very important to integrate buffalo back into our diet, into our elder programs, into our school lunch programs. We know that if we feed our children buffalo, because it's in our DNA, that this heals us from the inside out. And we have some studies to show that native children eating buffalo will improve test scores and cognitive ability. And so it really is about healing the land as well as healing ourselves from you know, this effort to exterminate buffalo. You know, we can restore that cultural, spiritual, educational and academic and nutritional reconnection. That's so important in our communities today.

Ayana Young  Yeah, thank you so much for taking us through some of those points. And I would like to talk a bit more about the complexities of conservation and land rematriation and fee title and maybe even in your response, you could speak to how people can support that effort.

Jason Baldes  Sure, we have to think pretty deliberately about what was imposed on Native people. You know, for the tribes, not only the two here on the Wind River Reservation, but others regionally and across the country, there's a foundational understanding and interconnectedness and interrelatedness. The importance of wolves and bears, for instance, is a demonstration of the tribes working to protect that animal is because we understand that they have an important role to play. That's a holistic or an ecological worldview. And what was imposed upon us was really this model of exploitation or progress that's based in the idea of Manifest Destiny. You know, that this, these things that are here are for the benefit of man. And for much of the country, which has been plowed up or paved over, fenced in, fenced out. It's disrupted the interconnectedness in the interrelatedness of many species. The corridors, the populations of wildlife, the the wildland urban interface, even how fire is used, all have come from this colonial worldview. And so this colonial worldview where we base agriculture, how we have created policies like the Prior Appropriation Doctrine about how water is used--the use it or lose it philosophy. That's not a very holistic model. It's about exploitation of the resource, too, for the benefit and monetary gain or commodification for men. 

If we think about how we bridge Western science and Indigenous science, it brings in these ideas of interconnectedness and interrelatedness. And that's why oftentimes, conservation is aligned with Indigenous values and belief systems because it's really to restore the ecological balance that was here prior to lands and communities being colonized. So we're in an era today where we can focus on cultural revitalization, language preservation, and we can think differently about how lands are utilized, the importance of Buffalo and or bison reintegrated into the communities  for the healing that needs to take place. This is going to create a better future for our young people. 

And if we look at reservations, because of that General Allotment Act, many of our reservations are checkerboarded with jurisdiction from the fee title land to the allotted lands to tribal land, even states that are assuming jurisdiction on many of those fee lands on reservations. Our reservations were created to maintain a way of life and that way of life was disrupted with the extermination of the buffalo when we became reliant upon the federal government for rations. And then there was a boarding school era where grandmas and grandpas were forced from their homes to go to schools, where colonization and even indoctrination was very influential on our people. So that's part of the intergenerational trauma that we're trying to heal and as we bring buffalo back and get them into ceremonies, and we get them back into the diet. That's all part of our healing, which is very important. 

And so the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative was set up to help facilitate that. You can go to the website, www.windriverbuffalo.org. We have a donate button on that webpage, but you can also learn about the effort, learn about the history of the two tribes here on this reservation, as well as see some videos and and some articles concerning or related to buffalo restoration.

The Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative was established so that we could not only raise money to acquire more land but also facilitate the cultural, educational, nutritional, reconnection of youth and community to buffalo. So for instance, next week, we have a three day youth camp taking place out here at the buffalo so that our elementary and middle school and high schoolers are learning about our efforts to protect fisheries and water, our wildlife and Buffalo and ensuring that our young people are very knowledgeable and grounded in those relationships so that we are are creating better leaders for the future. 

Ayana Young  Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about the differences between buffalo and cattle because I think a lot of people associate buffalo with cattle thinking that they take up the same role in an ecosystem, but as you know, they're actually quite different. So could you explain the varying roles that they have?

Jason Baldes  Yeah, well, first off, cattle came from Europe and cattle brought a lot of diseases that infected the wildlife. You hear a lot about brucellosis, we hear less about malignant catarrhal fever and Mycoplasma bovis. These are livestock diseases that are fatal to buffalo but more often than not we hear about this brucellosis argument and it is really unfounded. We've been able to mitigate that disease to ensure that animals can be certified as disease-free and ensure that those genetics are supplementing some of our herds. And so, disease often is one that you hear about between cattle and buffalo, but just to make that clarification is important. 

Buffalo-bison, I use that term interchangeably. Buffalo is a common term amongst tribal communities. Of course, the scientists argue that bison is the correct term, but the correct term for us is the name in our languages. And so, you know, there's 300 +plus, 330 + languages indigenous to this continent. And so buffalo-bison, they cannot be replaced on the landscape by cattle. Buffalo have unique grazing characteristics. Their physiological-behavioral adaptations make them beneficial to the landscape. They will do patchwork grazing where they graze heavily in certain areas and leave adjacent patches of grass completely left alone. This creates micro habitats for other organisms, but it also keeps the soils from drying out. The same area that cattle would use, they would graze it down and expose the soil and dry it out. And buffalo will also graze on the grasses. They're primarily graminoid feeders. And that's why you have an increase in biodiversity of plants is because they focus on the grasses and leave the forbs. They have the ability to control their metabolism to slow it down so they can rely on less favorable forage when needed. Buffalo are also drought-tolerant; they need less water than cattle. And buffalo won't congregate in riparian areas, they will go down and take a drink and thenthey'll move. They actually move about three miles per day if they have the landscape available to them. 

A buffalo has 22,000 hairs per square inch compared to about 7,000 hairs for a cow, so a buffalo can withstand extreme temperatures, cold temperatures, because of the hair and the fur that they put on. In the springtime when they lose that hair, it becomes available to many other organisms that need it for their nests. Certain birds need buffalo hair for their eggs to reach the right incubation temperature. You don't get that with cattle. That hair gets carried down into the ground by mammals. It changes the soil chemistry. 

Buffalo also have this unique behavior where they wallow creating these depressions on the landscape that's important for seed dispersal, but also water accumulation, and groundwater recharge. These wallows become micro habitats to reptiles, amphibians, insects. And so as it rains and snows these wallows fill with water and so that's, that's important for the animals, but it also important for the soils. 

You know, they just have a whole host of things that make them beneficial on the land. Cattle cannot replace the hair, cannot replace their grazing style on landscape, and so you know that that argument really doesn't hold up anymore because we know and can see and witness the the influence that bison or buffalo have on the landscape that you just don't you just don't see it with cattle actually. With cattle you have a decrease in plant and animal biodiversity because they don't provide those things that I've just mentioned.

Ayana Young  Yeah, I really enjoy hearing the specific examples of how they work as ecosystem engineers. It's really incredible. 

And there's a quote from migrating bison engineer on the green wave from the National Academy of Science where scientists explain that quote, "Prior to European settlement, 20-30 million Plains bison roamed North America, migrating vast groups across immense latitudinal and elevational gradients. Over hunting virtually eliminated North American bison such that by 1900, only a few 100 remained... Today bison occupies less than 1% of their historic range. A remnant population of up to 5500 animals in Yellowstone National Park, which still migrate up to 100 kilometers is the last truly migratory herd," end quote. Yeah, so I'm wondering how does the current American landscape reflect the deep influence of buffalo in the past and what are we losing in their absence?

Jason Baldes  You know, I focus my I undergraduate and graduate degrees around tribal buffalo restoration and for my thesis, it took me some time to come up with but I recall seeing, you know, my dad pointing out these relic wallows growing up as a kid when we were hunting in northern boundary of our reservation--hunting elk and deer and antelope--but he would point out these depressions that were on the land that they were made by buffalo. Even though buffalo haven't been there for over 140 years, there's still these depressions that these buffalo created. And so digging in the literature, I found some articles about cultural plants, foods, tools, and medicines that were associated with relic wallows in the tallgrass prairie further east. And there was very little in the literature about high elevation, desert plants, cultural plants, that were associated with wallows. And so that kind of became my my research project was going out on the, in the northern boundary, the reservation and measuring cultural plant biodiversity within these relic wallows and comparing that to the plant biodiversity outside of the relic wallows, suggesting that, you know, maybe these relic wallows still serve a purpose in in the abundance of these plants. 

And so I measured plant biodiversity on 75 wallows, randomly sampled from over 100, to measure that. And so the data suggested that there are several plants that still benefit from the presence of these wallows as opposed to them not being suggesting that these relic walls do serve a purpose in cultural plant biodiversity in a high elevation desert ecosystem, like we have here. 

And you get up in the air on an airplane and you fly East and you look down on the ground, it's carved up into squares and circles, that is evidence of, you know, that idea of progress or manifest destiny that all of the land is here for man's benefit. There are few places where there's still intact migratory pathways for ungulates to utilize water bodies, you know, the migrating birds can use. We see a decrease in biodiversity of birds and amphibians across the world. 

You know, when there were 28-30 million, that's actually a conservative estimate, we think that there could have likely been 60 million buffalo across the continent, that if there were, you know, millions of buffalo that there would have been equally millions of these wallows. And that would have been very important for the water accumulation, for the micro habitats, for what the buffalo did for biodiversity. Now being, you know, 1%, or less than 1%, on their former range, we obviously lack those wallows. 

Globalization has really influenced the animal kingdom. And you know, when you have millions of buffalo, you would have also had a 10% die off rate that would have really been important for the soil. As these buffalo died, were predated upon or other species utilized as carryion, you know, these buffalo bodies would have disintegrated and provided extensive nutrients to the soil. Most of these lands now are being turned into monocultures. They're also inoculated or fertilized with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and insecticides. 

And so there's just a, you know, a lot of people don't think about the dust bowl as also being a result of the extermination of the buffalo because the buffalo was gone, then it made way for these people coming in, to utilize those lands for agriculture. These were grasslands that were millions of years old and had been formed over that period of time from the presence of buffalo and that was all, you know, drastically disrupted with westward expansion and colonization. 

So, you know, the landscape is obviously much different today than it was prior to European arrival. And so we're not going to see 30-60 million buffalo in our lifetime. But there is plenty of opportunity to restore buffalo to specific landscapes where they can exist and effectively create ecological change that we need to see, but we have to reprioritize or question what our motive is as a society. Most of it again is based on exploitation or commodification or what you can gain monetarily. For us, as tribes it's much more about the interconnectedness and the interrelatedness, the holistic, reciprocal relationship that we have with our food and our water, and our land. 

And so, you know, the hope is that what we do here on on the Wind River Reservation for buffalo restoration, that there's can be some lesson learned there that we can apply to other areas, other public lands that belong to all Americans, where we can think differently about what we want to see for our future, what we want to put back that was taken from us, and do some restorative justice for the buffalo \but also the people that depended upon them. 

And also now that it's widely recognized, you know, with media, like the Ken Burns American Buffalo film with some of the issues around Yellowstone that the American people are gaining access to a little bit more knowledge and taking that energy and supporting efforts like what we're doing here at Wind River to reacquire land for buffalo habitat, but also restore this buffalo protected as a wildlife species. And that's going to be able to maybe give us a little bit of hope, or give hope for our young people for the future that is not as colonial as it once was. And that we can actually exercise our sovereignty and self determination to create the change that we want to see. 

Ayana Young  Yeah, I'm really grateful for all your work and excited to see the shift. And really, kind of sitting with the complicated place that buffalo has lived within the, quote American imaginations, you know, because they have represented both this odd colonial idea of freedom, you know, thinking of the wide open plains and the land where the buffalo roam, but also something to be controlled. So I'm just holding that complexity of the belief system around buffalo, and who gets control of them and why but also maintaining this idea of Manifest Destiny and the open lands of the American West. And I can only imagine that these ideologies continue to try and control and manipulate the way that bison get reintroduced. And yeah, who gets to control the fate and the future of them.

Jason Baldes  Yeah, the Western paradigm is, like you say, much about control. And you can look at cattle as an example of that. I believe that any intelligence that cattle once had was bred out of them, so that they could be easier to handle by human beings. They became reliant upon human beings for feeding themselves, for even calving. A buffalo doesn't need our help. The buffalo does just fine on its own if it has food and water and each other as a herd animal. And so you know, I think, actually, buffalo are easier than cattle because they don't need as much care. Not that we're trying to ranch buffalo, but we had to start small in order to grow for them to exist and so there is a relationship there. I go out and I see the buffalo every day there. They’re used to seeing me on the side-by-side but they are not in any way domesticated. These animals can exist without me being there or checking up on them or doing anything because they are very intelligent. You know, they're just conscious of their surroundings. They know what's going on. There's a millennia old relationship there that native people had. It's in our DNA that the buffalo have, it's in their DNA. And that's that reciprocal relationship. We aren't trying to domesticate buffalo, but they are well used to seeing me and others. They're visiting them. They know what's going on, but it's not like it's not like they're a pet, or it's not like they're domesticated. 

This is a seed population of various genetics… our herd comes from six different sources of conservation genetics. And once they have a large enough land base to roam around on, they will distance themselves from human beings like any other animal would. And so I think people get confused a bit, because buffalo exist in the world as livestock, but it also exists in the world as wildlife. And it's really up to us as human beings to kind of dictate what kind of scenario we want to see with buffalo and that makes them unique in that, you know, we don't do that with elk or deer or moose or bighorn sheep or pronghorn antelope. Those are wildlife. Buffalo has this interesting way about itself that allows that relationship. And I really, truly believe that's because of the genetic memory between buffalo and the native people. 

And I think that's why people get into bison ranching is because the buffalo is this iconic species, this magnificent being, his great beast of an animal. But it really is up to us as human beings to take care of that buffalo the way that it used to take care of us. And that's why I'm very focused on ensuring that they can be protected as wildlife and exist as such on this reservation, because growing up with that my biologist father, you know, he helped to instill the way buffalo should be treated and that is like those other species. And so it's very important that we continue to move in that direction in that paradigm shift.

Ayana Young  Yeah. And going back to some of what you were speaking to around the restoration, and even comparing the domestication of cattle and buffalo, I'm wondering when we allow buffalo to roam freely rather than keeping them contained, how does their migration impact the environment? 

Jason Baldes Well, like you mentioned, that green wave, you know, buffalo would follow that and enhance it as the seasonal vegetation cover changes throughout the growing season. Buffalo will move about three miles a day. They do their wallowing, they don't have to go to water sources as often as cattle do. They will have birds following them. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the ferruginous hawk, the mountain plover, and the burrowing owl as species of concern, and we noticed that those species come back along with many others when buffalo are restored. And so you know, as we put buffalo back on the landscape and they can grow in population, we can anticipate seeing an increase in birds, insects, even mammals over time. And the plant community change over time. Because of their selective grazing, they're pollinating when they walk with their beards; they spread seed when they wallow. And so you would see the formation of these wallows, even in trail systems. 

You know, buffalo doesn't know where to go until it learns that, you know, Buffalo doesn't just instinctively have an urge to get out and go to Yellowstone, which I've actually heard before. They have to learn what's available to them, and then they utilize that and that's why when we started on 300 acres, you know, those animals learned that 300 acres. We've now grown to 2000 acres, the buffalo I've learned where they can go and get water and eat specific plants in that 2000 acres. It's no different when we expand their habitat, they're going to go and they're going to find out what the perimeter is. And they're going to learn what's available to them. They have a homing instinct. And so there's been over 40 calves born on this ground where we started and so this is going to always be a place that those buffalo will return to. And that's something that I've come to learn and understand as I spend more time with buffalo is that they have those behavioral characteristics that are innate and once they learn what they know, and what they can have access to, that's what they use. And so just learning from them and watching has been really beneficial. And it's been a part of my healing as well, to be able to spend time with buffalo and get them into the ceremonies and being able to eat buffalo more regularly. It's certainly part of my healing, my family, and community members that now have access to buffalo in the diet. And that's only going to increase as we build our population and ensure that these animals can exist here protected as wildlife.

Ayana Young  Yeah, thank you for sharing about that. And I was reading on the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative and it says, quote, "Buffalo back on the Wind River Reservation signifies change, a return to the beliefs and values held by our grandmas and grandpas. We are helping them so they can once again help us. They are here, once again, for our nutrition, ceremony, and tradition. The buffalo have been absent from our lives for over 130 years, but the teachings are not forgotten," end quote. And I would just love to hear more about how does connection to these modern buffalo also bring about connection to past generations?

Jason Baldes  It certainly does. You know, our ceremonies were outlawed up until 1978 with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Fortunately for our tribes here, we were able to keep secret the songs, the ceremonies, the rituals, the protocols, the practices, despite it being illegal for many decades. And so, not all tribes can lay claim to that. Many tribes lost their languages. Many tribes lost their ceremonies. Many tribes lost semblance of who they were. Fortunately, for many of the tribes out west, because of the period of time, we were able to hold on to these things. And so as we restore that buffalo to ceremonies, as we provide it again, a relationship again, there is the feeling that our ancestors' prayers are being answered. There were our grandmas and grandpas who were praying for what we're seeing happen now. And so we feel their presence. We don't believe that they're gone. We believe that our ancestors are still here with us. And so that part of the healing, the songs that can be sung again in ceremony–that is the result, I think, of many, many people's prayers before us coming to fruition in front of our eyes today. So I certainly do believe that our grandmas and grandpas are still with us. And it's the spirit of the buffalo. It's the spirit of our people before us that are helping to ensure that this relationship, this identity of our people, can remain. 

Ayana Young  Another thing from the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, which writes quotes, "We need healing. The evidence of loss of connection manifests as addiction, trauma and unhealthy behaviors that are not of our traditional belief systems. There's potential for healing and recovery from addiction or trauma and finding inspiration from buffalo and our reconnection to Mother Earth and our relatives found in nature." And I've read you say, quote, "We offer visits to the buffalo herds for individuals and groups in recovery." And I'd love to hear if you have any stories to share about these programs that you support or anything that brings you the hope that you've seen.

Jason Baldes  You know, we have the social dilemma of our circumstances in our communities is challenging. ze We have, I think, a 12 year lower life expectancy than the national average. We have high suicide rates, high highschool dropout rates, and other problems that is directly attributable to the intergenerational trauma. A lot of people turn to alcohol, substance abuse, even gambling as a coping mechanism to deal with that trauma. And that isn't healthy for us. It's not good for us. It's not ensuring that our people have a foundation to grow from. And even my own struggles with alcohol–I've got over five years of sobriety now–that I found my help in buffalo. I found my help in returning to ceremony and really submersing myself in this work to help the buffalo, to help myself, to help my family, my community from many of these issues that that we all face, that touch all of our families in some way or another. 

And if we look across the country at other tribes and the things that they're doing, for instance, the Intertribal Buffalo Council now has a membership of 82-83 tribes, restoring buffalo for their cultural and spiritual importance. It's very similar. It's also restoring ancestral foods, eating healthier, thinking more holistically about how we treat our bodies, what we're ingesting, how we treat each other–a holistic medicine wheel approach to thinking about our growth and development as human beings. 

That medicine wheel philosophy is integrated into everything that we do and it's a very big part of our healing. And buffalo are really foundational to that. And I don't really know how to describe it, other than it's in our ceremonies. It's in the lessons that we learn as we transcend the four hills of life from baby, to youth, to adult, to elder. It's in the balance that we find measured mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. That medicine wheel is kind of the paradigm is the worldview that our grandmas and grandpas had. And that's what we're trying to help our people with in finding their own healing. And when you find balance, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and you can integrate that medicine wheel thinking and belief system, into your everyday life, well that is part of of restoring what was taken from us and that's foundational to our healing, whether it's moving away from alcohol, or substance abuse, or any kind of addiction that we may have or carry. 

And so, you know, healing myself and finding sobriety and recovery was because of buffalo, because of the work or the platform that it allowed me to work from. And I wanted to be able to share that with anyone else that can relate–tribal or even non tribal. But because we, as Native people, carry around this intergenerational trauma, it's very important to include those that are in recovery. And that's why the people that are in recovery, those recovery programs you mentioned, continue to come out to the buffalo. It's not to learn from me, but it's to learn from the buffalo, to go sit with a buffalo, and find that healing that we all need. And, and so it's just an important way to provide that place. And sitting with the buffalo can remind people about a part of themselves that they never know was there.

Ayana Young  Beautiful. Along with buffalo, I also wanted to take a moment and think about the beauty of the prairie. You know, there's, there's so much and a prairie that I think gets overlooked. And there's so much vitality that also potentially gets overlooked. And so just wondering if you could speak to the beauty you find in the prairie and the power there.

Jason Baldes  Yeah, I think not only about the prairie, but I think about the rivers, the river bottoms, the mountains, the high mountain meadows. Buffalo existed from the West Coast nearly all the way to the east coast to Florida from Mexico to the Arctic from sea level to 13,000 feet in elevation. And so there really is not a place on this continent where buffalo doesn't belong. And I truly believe that if we can continue to restore buffalo to its rightful places, that those places are also going to heal. And it's the plants, it's the birds, it's the insects, it's the other four legged animals that are out there. It's even the microbiology, the soils and the microbes that will all benefit from buffalo. And I hope to see it in my lifetime where buffalo exist on hundreds of 1000s of acres and populations greater than 1000. Thousands of buffalo on hundreds of 1000s of acres. I think that's foreseeable in our lifetime. And, for me personally, a lot of this work is so that one day, I can hunt buffalo with my kids and grandkids and hopefully my dad. A lot of this work that I'm involved in, wouldn't have been possible without the effort of many who have come before and for me, my dad is my hero for the work that that he that he did to buck the system to fight against what he didn't believe in, and to be an advocate for the fish in the wildlife and those that don't have a voice. 

And so, you know, there's a whole lot of work that goes into getting to that point where buffalo actually exist on large landscapes. That's still a lofty goal in this day and age. I think it's achievable. But we have still a lot of challenges ahead to get to that, to challenge the paradigm, to change the status quo, to challenge others belief systems, to call out Manifest Destiny and the notion of progress when needed. Those are challenges that I think are becoming a bit more achievable as people want to see and support a different way of doing things that is exploitative, but is more holistic, and ecological in nature. So I hope someday that I will be able to hunt a buffalo with my kids and grandkids or, even more importantly, to do that with my dad would be one of the greatest rewards that there could ever be.

Ayana Young  Yeah, I feel that, Jason, for those of us who want to get more involved in supporting this effort, what are ways that the everyday individual can support? And maybe for those listening who have a bit more ability to give or support, what are ways that that can happen?

Jason Baldes  Yeah, a lot of our expenses are for land acquisition and even though our lands were bought and sold for pennies per acre back in 1906, they're now worth about $6,000 per acre. If we had $20 million, right now, for instance, we could lock up 10,000 acres of fee land on the reservation that could be put into the land trust process. It would be turned into buffalo habitat. And so that's an extensive request. However, we also need funding for providing more jobs, you know, to ensure that we can engage young people and community members, to pay for infrastructure as we expand habitat. And so the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative was really set up as a nonprofit to bring in resources from outside of the reservation so that we don't have to rely upon either tribe who have limited resources and definitely don't have money for land acquisition. 

And so ensuring that the tribes can continue to build our buffalo program, the Tribal Buffalo Initiative was set up so that we could facilitate that land acquisition to support the tribes in getting more habitat and integrated into the diet and into the lives of our community members. Again, for people that want to support this work, please go to the website windriverbuffalo.org. Navigate through there to the donate page and provide as much as you can $5, $10, or more. It's all going to support the efforts of the Tribal Buffalo Initiative. And we're just appreciative of all of the support that continues to grow and build from not only the people here on the reservation, obviously, but also people in the state of Wyoming and also nationwide, as well as worldwide. 

There's interest from other countries. And we've had visitors from India, from Switzerland, from other countries in Africa. There's... people are conscious of history and people realize some of the atrocities that happen, and supporting the Tribal Buffalo Initiative and getting not only buffalo restored, but getting land back is a real form of reconciliation that people can literally buy into. Help us get these lands restored for buffalo, and support the efforts of the Tribal Buffalo Initiative to get this animal integrated back into our lives again.

Ayana Young  Jason, thank you so much for your time and for sharing these thoughts and stories and hopes with us. I'm really moved and feel like I want to continue learning more.

Jason Baldes  While I appreciate the invitation to join you on the conversation today, I think it's really important that people learn about this history and understand how we can actually effectively create the change we want to see today.

Evan Tenenbaum Thank you for listening to this episode of For The Wild. The music you heard today was by Jayme Stone and A. R. Wilson. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Kroopf, Jose Alejandro Rivera, and Evan Tenenbaum.