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  • everything that is in this creation is put here for a specific purpose.

  • All the things that fly, all of the things that swim, all of the things that crawl They all have a special place in our culture.

  • All right.

  • It is our responsibility as the two legs to try toe foster good relationships with Earth.

  • It's beginning now.

  • I've taught for 17 years here of the high school and also in the grade school and teach community language classes and a firm believer in our Indian way of life.

  • We've been working diligently to try toe, revitalize our language and re introduce it to our Children.

  • Hey, Dad's how goes it, my man?

  • Good new info here, son.

  • My ancestors were the Naco Tha people of the prairie.

  • Come on.

  • From the great Rockies to the Great Lakes, we consider this area in between to be the land that was meant for our people.

  • Where you been All my life is just Now wake up.

  • Yeah, well, we thrived in the country that we lived in.

  • So remember that all of these things so far in the story they're all in reference Had how how it is in heaven, where the June Berries are heavy and the buffalo are fast on.

  • The grass is tall, tricks running and Teepees are white and everything's good people with young looks like you guys.

  • This is all in reference to In in Heaven, the Buffalo.

  • He was the image, a symbol of God to our people because everything we knew come from the buffalo.

  • When the Western people came, they took away the buffalo from our people.

  • They brought in the cattle.

  • They brought in the farming, the mining, fishing, logging, all of these kind of things.

  • Ast faras The American Prairie Reserve goes in my mind.

  • What they're attempting to do is one of the more impressive things that's happened in this country.

  • I grew up in Great Falls, Montana.

  • My parents used to bring me out and we would camp right on the prairie, and seeing this landscape was very exciting and wide open with possibilities.

  • It's not hard to put together in your imagination what could be here again.

  • The idea of the mission had American Perry Reserve is to create the largest wildlife reserve so far ever created in the lower 48 states.

  • Open it up to the public.

  • Save it for future generations.

  • We're creating the reserve out of existing intact native prairie.

  • It's very little of this left around the world where you could reassemble something like we're talking about here.

  • The best thing about this is we don't have to buy it all.

  • Much of the land that we are pulling together to be a part of this model already belongs to the public.

  • What we're doing is glowing these parcels together with pieces of private land, taking down the fences, bringing all the wildlife back.

  • So we have intact prairie that looks like it has for thousands of years.

  • People are excited about the heritage of wildlife that they have read about, and they want to be a part of saving that as a part of American history.

  • But some people in the local area, I think that this may not be the best use of land out here, that perhaps this land should only be used for food production.

  • So we wanted to start something that benefits local people in the work that they're choosing to dio Branching has been in my family, probably about 100 years.

  • I'm the fifth generation rancher here.

  • You always hear the term that stuff gets in your DNA, I guess, and that's probably what it is.

  • It's just in my It's in my blood.

  • My dad, he bought this when he was a young man in his twenties.

  • We've scattered his ashes here.

  • I'll probably get scattered here, too, I suppose.

  • I had essentially grew up about an hour north of here and move back here and doing our thing.

  • I told her, Move back here and live a nice quiet Leave your country life, she told me.

  • I get bored easy, so I'm trying not to let her get bored.

  • I'm not bored.

  • Way joke sometimes, and we're having coffee on our front porch that people pay to go on vacation to live the lifestyle we live.

  • You know, they're days that it's hard, but they're more days that it's really nice.

  • I think there's constantly threats facing ranchers.

  • They're afraid of getting diseases from the buffalo.

  • They're afraid of predators or land ground.

  • It just seems like every time you turn around, the deck is stacked against you.

  • So when I heard about American Prayer Reserve, my first opinion were very negative was very much, very much against them.

  • It's like Go away, leave us alone.

  • It's not how we live here.

  • But as I started educating myself, I got involved with Wild Sky Ranch, in which is the branch of the A.

  • P.

  • R.

  • Saw it as an opportunity to make a few bucks to utilize these conservation practices, whether it be wildlife friendly fencing or camera trout's one guy sets up cameras, and then you get a picture of a mountain lion or a bear.

  • You get a couple 100 bucks, and that adds up over the course of the year.

  • That helps by hey or part of a vet building definitely helps my bottom line.

  • And so far the camera traps have caught bears, mountain lions.

  • And to my knowledge, I have not lost a single calf.

  • Man, it's great what you're gonna make me.

  • Really?

  • Yeah.

  • So I think we are living in harmony.

  • Living in balance and Wildlife is is thriving, and they're doing well.

  • Yeah, I'm gonna have to go get more clothes on.

  • And when did that bite Thio?

  • To leave this land as a legacy is extremely important.

  • Ranching is evolving, and it has to evolve.

  • And I think if we're not very mindful of the connection that our society has toe have with nature, it'll be too late.

  • It's funny how much green is too out there.

  • Haehnel.

  • That's the other reason we're having problems catching license to me.

  • Bison are really interesting in that they fit so well in this place.

  • Got you got mud on the truck?

  • Uh huh.

  • What?

  • Their main brought back simply to fulfill their ecological role, their ecological niche in that landscape.

  • What we're gonna do today is we're gonna sort the cows from the bulls.

  • Number one priority is for everyone to leave here safe.

  • We're relocating bison to Fort Belknap.

  • For Belknap is a great receiving site because of the social and cultural values.

  • And Native American tribes have four bison so kind of how it's gonna work.

  • Essentially, we're sorting out four cows out of here.

  • We want to get them separated from the bulls.

  • Eso We will be running some animals into this pen when bison need to be relocated to another property or conservation organization or tribe, but starts with capturing the bison off of large pastures and then sorting them into different pens, depending on their destination age and sex.

  • Yeah.

  • Closer.

  • Get closer.

  • Get country.

  • Course I drove my rope.

  • I'm gonna have to tie that thing in your hand.

  • Uh huh.

  • Hi.

  • No.

  • Once they're sorted, they will be shipped and loaded onto a truck and hauled to their destination where they will be released and able to be bison again.

  • Yeah.

  • Did you?

  • So this is a beautiful dream school.

  • They're not, too.

  • Hmm.

  • There's some things that there's just really no words for at times to see him back here.

  • You know, places where their ancestors roamed long ago, you know, And to see him in places pretty, pretty cool.

  • There are more and more buffalo that are coming back to the places that they belong.

  • It does my heart good.

  • It does my mind.

  • Good, because, Aziz, the buffalo grow stronger, my people grow stronger.

  • We're living in this time to see ah, lot of those things come to pass.

  • Where people are going thio find themselves and become a vibrant, thriving people.

  • Again, I think a person is foolish to think that they could ever own the land.

  • And those are things that our people have said from the beginning of time.

  • Thank you.

  • There's an old song among our people.

  • It says my relatives don't be foolish.

  • Death is a hard thing.

  • But the earth is the only thing that lives forever.

  • Mhm, Kona Bean, A Dhaka Cobby New Jana.

  • Take a fake A No, my co Ginetta.

  • Ha!

  • Gay.

  • No!

  • Hey.

  • Yeah.

everything that is in this creation is put here for a specific purpose.

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