Culture as Medicine: Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul at Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation

Today, an extremely special episode. After we left the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative in Wyoming, but before we reached Paul Hawken back in California, there was one more stop we had to make. Or so we thought. For having made it to the Old Salt Festival (podcast about back in Montana last year), we met a special guest speaker there, Miisami Sapai yi Aki / Long Time Charging Woman, Kim Paul, an elder of Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation.

Kim is founder and ED of Piikani Lodge Health Institute. I already knew about some of its brilliant work, having read Liz Carlisle’s profound book Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. And then I’d seen the impressive Latrice Tatsey (who featured in Liz’s book) present at the Regenerate Conference in Denver last November, which was also where the extraordinary documentary film Bring Them Home, on the Blackfeet buffalo restoration, was screened. 

Those resurgent Blackfeet stories had felt like they were constant accompaniment on our journey. So I’d lightly wondered if we might end up visiting them and their spectacular country in the far north of Montana (historically and essentially still including current day Glacier National Park). Alas, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. But then, Kim - this high school drop-out, now with multiple degrees, who carries the Siyeh Ksisk Staki creation bundle and pipes, and was transferred the rights to wear the traditional stand up warbonnet. We met after her presentation at the festival, and she warmly invited us to visit as they approached their Powwow in July.

We pick up our time together with Kim at the Nation’s latest reacquired land, where Piikani Lodge has a big dream unfolding.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 10 July 2025.

For more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Mika Matters.

Music:

Into Thin Air, by Hans Johnson (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Journey’s Stage
• 3:05 Welcome to newly reclaimed Amskapi Piikani land
• 8:05 Some Piikani Blackfeet backstory
• 11:35 The Piikani Lodge vision on the land
• 14:30 Grizzly bear sensing
• 16:35 Ceremony Ground
• 19:35 Leading a regenerative agriculture resurgence
• 22:20 The New Golden triangle (protecting tribal water & food systems)
• 25:00 100-day traditional diet outcomes amazed
• 30:30 Olivia asks what foods constituted the diet
• 36:05 The Triple Divide headwaters & the water story here (heading to Upper Two Medicine)
• 39:20 Reclaiming tribal names including that of the Blackfeet
• 43:55 To love (the story of Mika Matters)
• 47:05 Our first reclaimed buffalo & last tree burial
• 49:40 Buying businesses up now (from non-native businesses trading off their land)
• 51:55 Great Grandmother taken at night and sent to infamous Carlisle PA
• 52:35 How Kim received her Indian name
• 59:00 Receiving Thunder (while riding the mountains to fast)
• 1:07:40 A bigger lens transcending the wrongs
• 1:10:58 Starting a ‘winter on the land’ program for youth
• 1:14:05 The place of animals, hunting and meat in culture
• 1:16:23 There are so many big shifts happening (turning the light on)
• 1:19:48 The Powwow Begins
• 1:21:13 A proud moment & hopes for co-management of Glacier NP
• 1:25:43 Recovering Piikani names
• 1:27:08 Running Eagle Falls - I don’t believe she was the only female warrior
• 1:29:14 Grandchildren named in variations of her name
• 1:30:13 How the feeling has changed towards visitors to Glacier NP
• 1:32:40 The Holy Sarvisberry (or Serviceberry)
• 1:35:30 The transformative tale of Neither Wolf Nor Dog
• 1:38:02 The pain of being excluded from the industry & profit of Glacier NP - & the response
• 1:39:33 Do people want to come, connect and be part of the change?
• 1:42:09 Transformative funeral experiences that last days
• 1:45:33 Grandmother’s favourite place
• 1:47:00 Melting glaciers, colouring bear grass & the old ones watching over us
• 1:48:33 Don’t pick on the Divide (investigating a secret nuclear dump & cancer cluster)
• 1:59:10 The Osage Nation episodes
• 2:01:05 On the hunt for a multi-species processing plant
• 2:03:15 A local Montanan with an innovative processing model
• 2:04:55 The COVID prepper road trains that emptied local food supplies
• 2:07:15 Taking the ‘winter on the land’ trips to communities
• 2:08:35 Founding Piikani Lodge (on return from the Himalaya)
• 2:11:25 Piikani Pizza! The first business Piikani were able to reclaim
• 2:14:00 Back to starting Piikani Lodge
• 2:19:00 The pivotal Strengthening the Circle meeting with Robin Wall Kimmerer
• 2:19:55 A big dream (guiding through epigenetic transformations)
• 2:21:05 Culture as (Preventative) Medicine
• 2:23:00 Piikani Lodge’s extraordinary COVID pivot
• 2:25:05 The unexpected first sizeable donation
• 2:28:19 Full circle to the original vision with recently re-acquired land

Transcript

AJ: 0:00

Yeah, for all the things that aren't changing, huh? These things feel like big shifts. Yeah.

Kim: 0:06

They are. Yeah. There are so many big shifts happening, which is what I was referring to early, that earlier that dichotomy of there's still this evil happening. You know, the killing of our children and our youth without any recompense. But but there are these big shifts where this is not going to be uh happening much longer. And I think that's the huge fear.

AJ: 0:30

G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, your ad-free, freely available, listener-supported podcast, exploring how people are regenerating the systems and stories we live by. Today, an extremely special episode. After we left the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative in current-day Wyoming, but before we reached Paul Hawken back in California, there was one more stop we had to make. Or so we thought. For having made it to the old salt festival that we podcast about back in Montana last year, we met a special guest speaker there, Miisami Sapai yi Aki. I hope I pronounced that right. Long Time Charging Woman, Kim Paul, an elder of Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation. Kim is founder and executive director of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute. I already knew about some of its brilliant work, having read Liz Carlisle's profound book, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. That was thanks to a tip from a listener. Cheers, Roni. And then I'd seen the impressive Latrice Tatsey, who featured in Liz's book, present at the Regenerate Conference in Denver last November. Which was also where the extraordinary documentary film Bring Them Home on the Blackfeet Buffalo Restoration was screened. Those resurgent Blackfeet stories had felt like they were constant accompaniment on our journey, so I'd lightly wondered if we might end up visiting them in their spectacular country in the far north of Montana, historically and essentially still including current-day Glacier National Park. Alas, it looked like it wasn't gonna happen. But then, Kim, this high school dropout, now with multiple degrees, who carries the Siyeh Ksisk Staki Creation Bundle and Pipes, again, I hope I did okay on the pronunciation, and was transferred the rights to wear the traditional stand-up war bonnet. We met after her presentation at the festival, and she warmly invited us to visit as they approached their powwow in July. Right now then, we're in the car with Kim's grandson Trayson and my family along for the ride as Kim guides us through some of her wonderful country and culture. Starting at the nation's latest reacquired lands, where Piikani Lodge has a big dream unfolding. Later, we're into Glacier. So climb aboard. Here's Kim.

Kim: 3:07

So in this beautiful area, we have the five acres here to the east, which will be the we don't have a name for it yet, but where we come together. In our language, everything is very descriptive. This is the place where we come together would be the name of it, kind of like that.

AJ: 3:23

And in language, what would it actually call it?

Kim: 3:25

I don't know how to say it all. Yeah, so between the generations of boarding school, um, we have three generations in my family. The language was um, you know, you were you were beaten, you were hit with ruler, you were you couldn't speak the language. Even when my grandmother came and had her little ladies that visited from, you know, the mission, spent time in the mission from the time she was six to sixteen, breaking all the ties to family in the land. And, you know, just down the road, you were never allowed to go home, even if your mother died. Or anyway, um, they were very severely punished if they spoke any black feet. And so um when she got out, she would go in the bedroom, and if we uh the granddaughters had to bring her tea, her and her uh friends would even still be speaking black feet behind their hands. And they they felt they were protecting us, I think, by not teaching us the language. So But we're learning, learning, learning. Um I've even still taken two years of language, and I can't speak that sentence, the place where we gather. But there will be a commercial kitchen on the bottom for everyone to do uh small, like they call it cottage business, but it's a business incubator, right? For people to come and make um our traditional teas, our traditional medicines, our um uh Savasbury or choke cherry, our jams and jellies and syrups, and then we'll promote, um, you know, teach basic business principles uh to folks that want to do that, and we will do the pushing, the marketing into the park because with you know, upwards of four million visitors a year, um, they're not supporting our community and our people, even though they're on our land, which is now called Glacier National Park, um, in any way, shape, or form. They're beginning to um the last superintendent was very uh well um ensconced in our our um um way of life and ceremony and and wanted to be a part of that, but he recently retired and we're making really great strides with him, and so now there's a new superintendent of the park who we um hope to help him understand the importance of um you know hope and empowerment um and the inclusion of the people of this land within that landscape as well, because for 20,000 years that was you know, and I hate saying our because we weren't our type of people, we were collective and self and you know, sufficient or sustainable and you know um more we're more concerned of uh the wellness of the collective as opposed to individuals. But anyway, well so this will be the training center here, and then if you can envision as we go through the gate on this side and this side, Metal Lodges teepees, um, where it would be like the welcome as you come through, welcome into this reclaimed um scopi bikani homeland. Um we're going to have a walking path which will or running, whatever you choose. Grandma will walk, the kids can run, but it'll it'll be about five miles long. And uh we've um uh been blessed to be a part of the walking path that was created at uh Blackfeet Community College, our local tribal community college. And so we've had um uh good experience um on how to be proud of our history and and learn more. And so there'll be a walking path that goes the whole perimeter of this. So this 628 acres and then five acres here. It's just a clean landscape, it's um such an intact biosystem with so many the the plant diversity. And we had Audubon come out and do a bird survey here a few weeks ago, and the the yeah, there's just so much here that's been protected and not um overrun, but uh mainly because it was inherited land by the people who basically were kind of carpet baggers, and um we would get our groceries from in trade for our land. So to give this land back is very important to us. It's a coup. We call it a coup.

AJ: 7:32

You were just having you you said it old salt, you just had the ceremony for it a few days prior to the festival. So it's very recent.

Kim: 7:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had uh a beautiful blessing of the land and the work of our hands and the stewardship and the good works that will come out, you know, just asking um uh creator, one of our uh elders in the creation bundle, the beaver bundle, came down and um and smoked pipe and just you know did the prayers of of everyone's prayers that was in attendance uh for what will take place on this land and with the land and for it to be open to community and we have this vision of folks who have been fractionated off of their land because the government back um in the day of making well it still is the same, making laws that controlled us as far away as the moon in a place called Washington DC in a language that we didn't understand, so it's kind of the same thing, but now we speak English. Um, anyway, they created this uh systematic way to take more land, take more land, take more land. Beyond the Homestead Act came the Dawes Act, and it was um the ability to uh we were rounded up before that with um an ability to hunt for our children and feed our families, and there was a huge starvation winter where you know, by their count, 200 um expired. By our count, you know, close to 900 people starved to death in a valley watching the elk walk by and the moose and the deer knowing what was out there and and still starving to death. So, anyway, with these allotments um came the fractionation of our land and then their ability to only uh create this reservation system that you know only encompassed this small amount of land where the Blackfeet, the Blackfoot Confederacy, ranged from the North Saskatchewan River to the Yellowstone. And um by the finding of a young child down by Helena by an archaeology professor named Anzig, so they named him the Anzik Child. He's carbon dated at 13,400 to 13,800 years old, and he's wrapped with um his his belongings like his rattle, his little hand drum, uh the iniscum, which is a buffalo stone, and is used in our ceremonies and is a huge part of our life, but they were still painted with red holy paint. So we know we've been on you know this landscape for close to 20,000 years by other archaeological finds, but you know, beyond beyond um what Western science says our oral traditions uh date us back to the time of the dinosaurs and to the um the time of the the bigger bigger giants in the megaphona. Yeah, so we've been here for a long time. So it's so nice to have this little piece back, and for people who've been fractionated off of those um small allotments that were given, air quotes, given to us. Um you know, if a family of four or five had 180 acres, and then those three children had four or five children, then it's divided again, you know, by by another um four or five fractionate, then they have children, and then all of a sudden the small piece of land is fractionated into 30, 40, 50. Like, you know, when uncle just passed away recently having 47 grandchildren and 92 or 94 great grandchildren, like you can imagine the fractionation that happens very rapidly. And so um there are a lot of people who live in town who've been fractionated off of their land and don't have the ability of other folks here at home who still have um land-based many have had people on council and and learned the ways to acquire more land that way through um through legal systems within the tribe. And so there are there are folks who hold a little more land than others, and so our hope with this land is to bring um children from town, kids who don't have the ability to get out on the land, or maybe um the transportation, or maybe parents aren't as healthy as they could be in the future, and so to give these youths and young adults a place to be where they can four or five of them raise a 4-H deer or a pig or a chicken or come and learn how to cut dry meat or how to break a colt, how to, you know, we were the people of the horse. Um, prior to the horse, we ran the heene, the buffalo inn by by gathering them and and having them go off these buffalo jumps. This uh fishkin, but um right now uh we are the people of the horse, but that I can see in my lifetime has diminished so rapidly. And so we're going to have some horses that that the children can you know connect with as far as what might be termed equine therapy for us, you know, to build that relationship with an animal to be responsible for feeding and watering. And this is only you know so close to town, 1.08 miles. There's a walking trail to the high school here, and that's just a quarter mile from this land base. So you see, this is the creek. Oh, yeah. There are five active, large, large beaver dams and beaver families that live in this creek that runs year-round. You can see one there, one large one here. There's blue heron, there are cranes, there was a um a pelican even here the other day. And when we came for the pipe ceremony, there was a huge eagle sitting on the fence post there, and it wouldn't leave. No matter how many vehicles kept coming and coming and coming, and the eagle stayed there. It was pretty beautiful. Yeah. And then there's a hawk family that lives down. When you see the old cabin, there's some brush next to it, and the hawk family lives in that. There's a big nest in that brush.

AJ: 13:43

Wow. Yeah, it looks beautiful because it's sort of got that wetland. Look, it's not just the creek, it's like the whole area around it. Yeah. Beautiful.

Kim: 13:53

I know the young man from Audubon was quite thrilled. He I think there were three maybe species that they don't find anywhere else in Montana. No way. Yeah, yeah, and the same with the botanist who came. We um like to bring people up for the Western science side to attach to our interns so that their world is expanded, that they learn that they can go to school for something um, you know, that might uh resonate with their core or with their spirit. And so um even the botanist said that I think she found seven different species that she hasn't seen anywhere else. So we're pretty excited about it. So this goes all the way to the see the ridge there with the timber? Yeah, yeah, right to there.

AJ: 14:40

This piece. Awesome. And is that the park at the timber?

Kim: 14:43

Um, no, the park is about 1200 acres, I think, on the other side. Okay. There's a uh um one ranch past that, which is, and this is all very much grizz country, grizzly bear.

AJ: 14:56

Um I bought the spray. Was that a good idea?

Kim: 14:59

Um, you know, I've never had that close of an encounter. I've had a few encounters, but we had chainsaws in our hands and we were giving wood, and so um so my children's dad turned around with the chainsaw and was doing this. Then another time we were walking in a friend of mine, um, I kept telling him, I just don't want to be here. I'm such a bear magnet. I think I'm gonna go back up on the trail and go back to the vehicle. He's like, Oh no, it's okay, it's okay. And just when we turned, I kept hearing bear, bear. And um, I told him, Do you hear that? And he said, No, I don't hear anything. And I said, No, it's I can hear it, I can hear it. It's it's like, I don't know, maybe somebody's whispering, it's like somebody whispering in my ear. I looked all around, I didn't see anybody. He's like, Oh my gosh, you're such a freighty cat, right? Like, never mind, it's okay. And right then we turned around and there was three grizz, two big grizz. One stood up, and the other was a small um cub of hers. And then just when she started to at us, the other one stood up. And my friend pushed me aside, go, go, you know, but don't run. And I was walking very fastly up to the trail, and then I'm like, what am I doing? I can't leave my friend here. So I turned around to go back, and he said, No, go, go, and so I went up to the trail and I was watching, and he was yelling at them in black feet, and they just dropped back down and went away. But it could have been very ugly. Oh, yeah. I was so mad at him when he got back up on the trail, and just as we he got back up there, some folks came, um, tourists, and they said, We were yelling, we were trying to tell you. Wow. So I heard them yelling, but we're looking at it was too funny. Yeah, so this is a four-bedroom, full basement house that we're going to renew.

AJ: 16:50

Cool.

Kim: 16:50

Yeah, yeah, and this is where we had our ceremony here.

AJ: 16:55

An old corral boat, huh?

Kim: 16:56

Yeah, round corral. So this is for breaking the colts, and then there's another round corral basket back there. And it's our hope to put up an arena. We have a um very rodeo-based community, and so the hope is to build an indoor arena and have some steers because we have these world champion amazing ropers, and you know, just these amazing cowboys that live in this country, nothing like an Indian cowboy. And so uh to put up a small arena where they can come out and rope, and maybe they pay us to rope on Monday and Wednesday, and on Tuesday we they rope for free, but then that money would go to feed the um the youth and the young adults for H animals and for other programming, and because we have such avid team rope or calf rope or like people love to um be moving in that rodeo life and to give them an indoor arena, a place where they can do this through the winter, yeah. You know, probably build it up on top. But we'd like to put a small round corral on the inside of that arena as well with just a few benches, grandstands around the round corral so parents can come and see their children and become everyone become healthy and strong and well together. This was where the lodge was. We opened the bundle here. The our holy bundles um are opened in the spring and opened in the fall, and all the vows from the entire year or the winter people have come and been painted and make a vow, like for their mother who has cancer, or the brother who's struggling with you know something. And um, so they'll come and we pray they're prayed for throughout the entire time, from the time they make their vow till the time we open the bundle, and they come and maybe they dance with an item within the bundle to not only humble themselves before man but also creator and asking for this thing. And um, you know, they've been in prayer about it, we've been in prayer about it, whatever the vows that come. They're continually prayed for in the morning, in the evening, every day without fail, except like now when we've lost a very close loved one, the bundle's covered, and yeah, we're kind of in a hiatus until we're cleansed and then the bundle is and then we're back into our routine of of prayer. And it's such a beautiful thing for people to come. So we were able to open the bundle right here. We put the lodges up and open the bundle here um just a few months ago, the springtime opening here on the land. So that was a huge blessing to this land.

AJ: 19:26

Oh yeah.

Kim: 19:27

The creek goes up here. We're looking to um build a bridge. So with having our throats cut by this current administration and the four and five-year contracts that we had um for developing these regenerative ag principles and experimental stations so that people can come and see um instead of us going out to each of the producers' landscape, which we would do anyway, to do the analysis and you know help them to make a plan. But currently we have 97 producers and a hundred thousand acres in regenerative ag um production. That's amazing. I know in just a few short years. Is that Montana alone? No, right here within the Blackfeet Nation. Is that right? Yeah, we have close to two million acres reclaimed now that is in uh uh in possession of um the Muscobi Becani people. And with I think we have a little over 200 producers, beef and bison producers within those close to two million acres, and currently we have a hundred thousand acres in regenerative ag practices just in a few short years from Pecani Lodge with our outreach and work. I mean, obviously not just us, because we have a whole community here that's um uh determined to find better ways and um help support our people in a better way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, but yeah, such beautiful. There's two natural springs up. You can see the two green, there's a large green leafed-out area there, and then one above it. Yeah, those are two natural springs that need to be um promoted, or I don't know the correct word for that, but but built up so that we have that intact water system. Clean slates. So across this hill and there will all be Savusbury bushes and trees, um, so it has access to the water, but they like those the hillsides and not too marshy, and so this will all be Savusbury here. We're hoping to put our greenhouses here. So this is all growing beautifully, and but we have to be careful about where it might flood with the springtime. So we came out and took pictures in the spring, and we're just kind of tracking what the land does and um within each season before uh making any decision there. We can also put them, you know, a little drier ground over here, I think under this hillside. We're looking for exposure and sun as well. My cousin wants to build geodesic domes out here um with uh to withstand the wind, right? Like this is such a light, gentle breeze, but we get some pretty ferocious.

AJ: 22:10

It feels like a wind to me. Oh my god.

Kim: 22:13

We get ferocious winds, you know, 60, 70, 80 miles an hour.

AJ: 22:17

So yeah. Wow.

Kim: 22:18

Yeah, so welcome to our home.

AJ: 22:20

Amazing.

Kim: 22:22

We had six years of work ahead of us in community doing, you know, so much for so many. The FSA um job that we got was uh so exciting. It was to um to develop relations. So back in the day, well, even still, there's um something called the Golden Triangle throughout this whole area of Montana, but it was never it never included Blackfeet. It was it never included any tribal nations, it was only non-tribal people who were farmers and producers who have um much more ready access to government funding because we have we're wards of the government. I could have my enrollment number here on my wrist, which is not anything against Holocaust survivors, but we are survivors, and and so I'm a ward of the government. They manage any land that is in my name. Um, they lease it out to people whoever they choose to lease it out to. We receive this marginal maybe 7% of the the lease funding because the rest is for administrative fees, right? Right as wards of the government. Um, if I were to shoot out, my nephew did this, uh light on a poll, he went to federal prison, not state prison. Just turned 18. Federal prison, because we're wards of the government, so we're only uh federal, you know, to these federal institutions, federal law, I don't know what institutional is horrible. It was a horrible situation, and and many of these things occur. People can come here and murder us and never be charged because they're not tribal members. They don't have to abide by our laws. Yeah. Paul Harvey, he was this old radio commentator, and he uh said, if you ever want to get away with murder, go to Browning, Montana. Yeah, I know it was horrible, but it was true. Yeah. So anyway, the um the FSA contract that we had was to create a new golden triangle. And so within this new golden triangle came um the protection of food systems. That's how we were going to build um the large greenhouses to incorporate traditional foods into our diets. And then we did, um I created this hundred-day study with the biomarkers IgG, IgA, IgM, cortisol, C reactive protein, of course, uh um A1C for glucose, and then the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6 because beef is very high in 6, the bad fat. And ENI, bison, is very high in omega-3. So we created this research project of a 100-day diet, and it just the analysis was fantastic, the the end results were fantastic from baseline to the end of the hundred days, and and so we knew that we were on that, well, we knew we were on the right track anyway, because um we have the health disparities are so high. The the chronic disease from diabetes to obesity to cancer to heart disease to um just anything, liver any major organ system, we're you know, sometimes 500% higher than non-native communities just 30 miles away. You can stand on one side of the river between at the end of on the eastern end between you know Blackfeet Country on one side of the river to the other side of the river, they live 20 to 27 years longer than us on average. Is it isn't that ridiculous? 20 to 27, yeah, the inequity, you know, the lack of infrastructure, the everyone thinks that Native people are you know standing with our hands out and get a check every month, or the what is this elusive check you get every month? Where, you know, by treaty gave away the state, or we didn't give it away, it was taken the state of Montana, what looks like the state of Montana now. And it was for health care and education and housing, and and you know, like we were discussing that hypothetical dollar scale where God bless our veteran population, say they get a dollar twenty-seven, and God bless the federal inmate population who gets a dollar for health care, we get like 24 cents on this hypothetical dollar scale. So there's no big handout happening here, I can guarantee. So to have this uh contract that we had with the government for um four years to create this new Golden Triangle to be inclusive of the tribes along the High Line, too. We had three locations. Oh yeah, aren't they beautiful? We had three locations in the Bozeman area here and then uh in the tribes of uh South Dakota, Minnesota. We were going to reach out to them to create our own new Golden Triangle system, and it included uh this very popular um James Beard chef called the Sioux Chef, which their name is really Oyate, the Oyate chef, and his beautiful promotion of indigenous foods, and he's just uh such a um a good um person to be a part of that triangle because then that encompasses his homelands, you know, towards Minnesota, and then down into Bozeman, all the tribal nations, you know, we have eight federally recognized, whether we needed federal recognition or not is is beyond my you know capacity of understanding. But but anyway, um we're creating this new golden triangle, the look of indigenous foods and the safety and protection of our food systems, which we've proven within Western science, you know, binge science, that this diet and this way of life is so much better for our people who epigenetically, you know, throughout the generations ate these foods and we were perfectly healthy and sustainable. And then just in the last hundred years, the you know the high in saturated fat, high in in preservative and food coloring and sugar and the things that we never had. And so we went back to this traditional diet, and within this contract that we had with the government with the FSA, which was cut upon this new administration just days after, or terminated, legal contract terminated, um, we were really going to continue to develop that food system and bring that understanding back to the people to reduce death, to reduce chronic disease. And the people who were in the study for 100 days reported this new wholeness, this new strength, this new energy and connection to their own selves and their identity and connection to um ancestor, you know, our generations past, like just this, and they're still on the diet. You know, we're 50 days past it, and the one the one girl who we were talking about who she's very thrilled because she's lost 50 pounds, but she's also thrilled because before she never wanted to get out of bed, she suffered under, you know, a new term in our society called depression, which we didn't, there's no word that we have for depression, right? So she was so thrilled about this lack of inflammation that was she was suffering under rheumatoid arthritis, etc. And just switching back for the short period to our traditional diet, she's a new person. She swears we saved her life. She's hugging me and crying. And you know, another person made me this blanket. She's like, Kim, I'm a new, new person. I'm 60 years old, and and I've learned all these, you know, our old ways of cooking this or drying or preserving that, or you know, and and now I have another life again. I was thinking I was on the downhill. But now I have so much energy. So this was a very important contract to have to create and protect that food system that has been uh exploded in any way. So we're we're here at this clean slate right now and um trying to pivot and learn new ways to still do the same work and better ways at doing um some of the old work that we were contracted to do and just trying to figure out a way to do that.

AJ: 30:30

So yeah, a different way.

Kim: 30:32

Yeah. So what was the the um diet? Uh-huh. The main foods. Um so our diet is so limited, it's just bison, right? So we we ate a lot of fat. There was no dairy, no sugar, you know, nothing processed, but you had to remain within. We added some leafy greens that had no effect on all of the biomarkers so that people could do big, huge salads and eat, you know, the bison, and we had um roasts and burger and steak and ribs and everything um possible for that was that came off of the animal along with all the organ meats, etc. But there was no dairy, no sugar, no. So I think the biggest um we had bone broth. We had someone making us bone broth. Um we ended up letting folks use a little bit of what was it? A little bit of coffee. There was one other deviation from not butter because that was dairy. I I'll have to think of it later, but but it was basically potato carrot, the root vegetable. Oh, we used um because we have wild turnip, so we use turnip. Um real basic, as much fat as we wanted. Um grains, no um, no beans, no legumes, no nothing like that because we basically were uh Buffalo economy, Buffalo subsistence. So everything was just eamy. So we butchered um initially we had this wonderful group called um Honest Bison who uh who um donated a huge amount, I can't even remember, maybe $12,000 worth of bison burger to start us out. And then we slowly gathered, um, we got a small donation from the Steel Reese Foundation, and then the Foundation for Food and Ag Research also helped support the traditional diet. So um unfortunately that was when COVID hit and the IRB, the Institutional Review Board for the Blackfeet Nation, went into moratorium. So we couldn't get institutional review approval for um individual protections. Are you familiar with IRBs, institutional review boards? So any research that takes place in any community throughout the nation has to go under an institutional review board for beneficence versus risk, and it all came out of the old Tuskegee experiments where um uh black airmen were um were uh injected with syphilis. And and the same thing with the Havasupai Indians in the Grand Canyon. Um blood was taken from them for one specific research project, but they used it for multiple mini research projects. So there were these atrocities that were committed against African American folks and Native folks, and um so the the Belmont report and the the ability to um manage and protect individuals, but it's really just for individual systems, for individual people protections. Whereas within the Blackfeet Nation, we've created an institutional review board that protects our ceremony, our song, our you know, everything from Natu E to peaks, foom eat to peaks, not to me to peaks, too eat to peaks, the underwater beings, the the water itself. And so we've broadened our broadened as a sovereign nation, we've broadened our institutional review and protections of our entire what's remaining of our homeland and and everything within it. Whether it's a bird or a tree or so that's been a beautiful work still we're still moving forward. So anyway, the the IRB went into moratorium, so our diet was placed in moratorium for a couple of years until everything opened back up and people understood COVID and we were able to meet again and be able to move forward. So we'll have our experimental regenerative this whole area up above. And then um, of course, the system is a growth as soon as we can find the funding to get our greenhouses, but they're going to be geothermal fed. So we learned so much from our local tribal college and the folks um doing so much good work there and um down within their um their workforce development. And I'm not sure what each of the programs was called, but they they built a small greenhouse and they ran PVC into the ground. I think three to five feet only, and the heat coming out of the earth the greenhouse, I think she said it 58, 60 degrees through the winter. I can't remember what the temperature was, but it was astounding considering it was dirty below outside. So this brush down here is where the Hawk family lives. And then there's a large, you can see the edge of that large beaver down with the silver willows behind it. And there are five of those systems. So now we'll take a ride up to true looking glass and up to um Upper Two Medicine, which is one of my favorite places on earth.

AJ: 36:18

Yeah, I heard I was reading a bit about that place. It sounds like it's um a real center point for the whole nation.

Kim: 36:26

Upper two Medicine? Yeah. It's certainly the headwaters of um of um you know the downflow into uh Missouri into the Mississippi.

AJ: 36:37

Right.

Kim: 36:37

And along with divide, see this triple, this peak here, the point. Yeah, that's triple divide, and so water flows from there up all the way to the Arctic Circle, also out to the Mississippi, and then over to the Columbia River, which then feeds into the Pacific. So it runs in three distinct directions: north, east, and west. And so um, that's how it got its name is Triple Divide. So all of these mountains really are the headwaters to so much uh support across the state of Montana. Um you know, very heated uh arguments come about over water rights and um, you know, headwaters water rights. Yes. Because back at the turn of the century and after the depression, they had these work crews that came and built a canal system that takes all of our water, or not all of it, but a good majority of our water that's fed um north uh up into Canada and over into the eastern part of Montana, and this has been going on for almost 100 for a century. The the now we can't get any help in here for the highest suicide rates in the nation for ethnicity, for youth and young adult suicide, and we can't get any help in here for the highest chronic disease and you know infrastructure, we don't have any um, we don't get the help that is needed or the assistance that is needed to build a stronger foundation. But the minute the the canal system broke a bit, oh my god, tens of millions of dollars of you know um construction going on just instantly to get their water over to the eastern part of the state. There's no uh canal systems that feed our waters, we don't have irrigation, we don't, you know, with all this water that's going through our homelands, there's no support to develop that infrastructure that's greatly needed for our production agriculture and just for the health of the land, huh? So yeah, and they they put in a bigger plume, a bigger, huge, huge, huge pipe to take more water for you know gallons per second.

AJ: 38:54

That'll fix it.

Kim: 38:55

Oh, that'll fix it. That'll fix it for them. Yeah. I remember the lieutenant governor came years ago. We're gonna build a bigger plume, we're gonna do all this for you people. I'm like, how is that for us people? Oh well, you'll have we'll create three jobs and for how long? Oh, about three months.

AJ: 39:16

Five minutes, yeah.

Kim: 39:16

Yeah, and then you're going to take all of our water until forever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hear they're quite a waiting list of such a clever name. John Sherman. Yeah, it's it's clever, but only if you're not zoo. Because it's not a good word. And so they've changed their name back to Oyake, which is their real name. Like us, we are Pikani, we're not blackbeat. And so as people are um beginning to become more, I don't know, I hate to overuse the word empowered, but it's true. As we're beginning to become more um in place and uh beautifully strong in our identity instead of the oppression of reservation and dirty Indons and you know all of that. Um now we're reverting back to like we are um scopi bikani as opposed to blackfeet and uh I I can't speak for the strong and vibrant and beautiful and determined Sioux nations, the Oyate nations, but it's my understanding that Oyate is the correct correct word for their tribal nations. So um even here at home, like we have our slang, and so you know, on the res or the res this or on a res grandma, or you know, all of our slang, but um in my mind and in my spirit, I keep promoting uh folks to say tribal nation because we are sovereign nations as opposed to the blackfeet reservation is the blackfeet nation, right? Because we are distinct and separate.

AJ: 41:00

So I've cottoned onto that and and and across the country too. Like we visited the Osage and the chief said that precisely. It said the same words pretty much. Yeah, we're the Osage Nation because we are a nation.

Kim: 41:13

Yes, beautiful. And so it's um, you know, we're so far behind in so many things. I was working at NIH, the National Institutes of Health, and we had someone come in who presented a you know PowerPoint slideshow on on uh um things that were happening within his ethnicity, and and uh they asked for my opinion, and I said, well, we're about a hundred feet behind that fence that you guys are looking over and 40 feet in the ground because you know it's it's very convenient to keep tribal nations out of the limelight. It's very convenient to not be called out on um treaty uh obligations. It's very convenient for people to understand that there is no legal system that really protects our people. It's very convenient, you know, for high incarceration rates of Native people because the trust responsibility then is you know diminished and diminished. It's very convenient for them to have their pedigree, uh like a dog uh pedigree system for our bloodlines because the less people who are enrolled, then the less obligation there is, even at that, you know, hypothetical dollar scale that I was mentioning, 24 cents on the dollar for every um, you know, like for healthcare or education or say, oh, but you you get educational support. Well, I think the higher education dollars um help with maybe $800 a semester for four students a year. Like it's ridiculous. It's not there's no um there's no huge amount of money flowing into our tribal nation and to our people that uh it's convenient for people to say that oh well you stand there with your hand out for a check and get all this Indian money. It's convenient because then you don't have to directly deal with um the truths of the land and the truths of the people and the truths of the underfunding and lack of infrastructure and you know health disparity and chronic disease and death and suicide rates. It just you can call call it whatever you want to so that you don't have to think about it. Better to point a finger, eh?

AJ: 43:24

Well that's it, isn't it? I just think that that resonates so deeply because the ways it's almost survival mechanisms for humans, isn't it? Is it's the stories we tell each other at times, and and that's a form of it, I think. That so much is jeopardized to be able to own that truth. I mean I'm trying to feel into it, aren't I, because it's it's just it's just so it's so horrific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you try to understand what it is that stops people just being able to to love face it and love, yeah. That's just that's just love.

Kim: 44:05

I know it's it's you know, and and we have these determined passions to do just that and build this connected and relationship-based society, and then we're marching 48 miles to beg the local law enforcement to charge a non-native woman for killing a young native lady, you know, and and oh, they how readily they charge her with child endangerment of her two non-native white children because they're in the vehicle, but never, ever, ever a charge for this young girl who was walking 20 feet off the road that she ran into, hit and killed, and fled the scene. You know, you have to go all the way to DC and bang on the senator's desk to get a special prosecutor in. And you know, people who are non-native don't have to march for 48 miles with signs and create a global movement like Micah Matters to get just just get you know the base baseline of justice. You know, let us just have some justice. And so we're we're saying, oh, let's live with love and treat each other, you know, with mutual respect and and and uh value, and then we have our children murdered or our grandchildren, and we're just you know, hands up in the air. How does this how do you even um justify not charging this, you know, woman who very obviously had our child's remains on her vehicle, but you charge her with child endangerment for her two white children in the car. But this young, beautiful ukulele playing NASA camp teaching, you know, spoke at the United Nations indigenous. Oh yeah. She was this beautiful young girl who had an entire life ahead of her, and and they won't even charge the non-native person with her death, right? Until we raised so much heck across the world that they had to, but you know, how do you it's a duality, right? Like we want to do so much, we want to love so much, and we want to respect, and isn't that beautiful those verses? But then we're continually, you know, confronted with how many MMIP murdered, missing and murdered indigenous people um to date, you know, without any we're we were the blessed and lucky ones that we had some some form of justice that we had to fight tooth and nail for, but there are tens of thousands of missing and murdered indigenous people that nothing is ever done about right here at home. You know, I can begin naming names, yeah, very, very quickly on go through all my fingers on my hands and toes, and nothing has ever been done. So there are different things that I think keep us as well from from being able to fully come together and I don't know. I'm not a big theme. Just a lot of heart. There's our mountains, there's Triple Divide, there's Mad Wolf Basin, there's Upper Tumet, Cinepaw, you'll see when we get up there. It's so gorgeous. And this is where we used to have the 40 head of buffalo that we had to go up into Canada and buy horses off the racetrack to be able to uh I hate the word manage, but yeah, to be able to keep up with just over this ridge here. And that's Red Blanket Ridge, that was our last tree burial. Um because we buried our people in the trees with their belongings. And so Red Blanket was the last, um really? Yeah, the last man that was uh that we know of by oral tradition that was buried in the trees. But when are we talking? I don't know. I don't know the how does that happen? I think it's more of a frame. You put a frame up with the buffalo robe and put the person on it and they're lifted up.

AJ: 48:08

Oh yeah. Yes.

Kim: 48:10

I'm sure then we had rawhide that we used for our robes. Yes, of course. And you know, for leverage and fulcrum pulley.

AJ: 48:17

You know, some of this the brilliant stuff and spirit that you were talking about and with here reminds me of our visit to the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. It was a woman called, well, it was the channel's daughter, Kelsey Scott. Ah that we spoke with there, and she said some of the folk there have actually started to resume the sky burials. Oh they're bringing them back. Yeah, the daughter.

Kim: 48:44

Beautiful, yeah. Wow.

AJ: 48:46

But yeah, we saw the scaffolding. They had the scaffolding out on a piece of land out there.

Kim: 48:51

Uh-huh. Um this uh reclamation of identity and homelands and our culture is just so vibrant and strong. This next generation has so been taught by us um to not, we're not going to do the other anymore. We're not going to accept that as our reality anymore. So I think that's all of the movement of passion and heart from everywhere from uh music to uh culture, you know. We even have these amazing young indigenous designers, and just there's just so much more um uh ownership and and strength and empowerment and the things that are happening now for sure. This is called Nine Mile, and of course, another place that is not native-owned all of East Glacier. You know, uh folks came in at the same time that I was talking about with the land that we've reclaimed, and because we can't get loans, we could never walk into a bank and get a loan because trust property um it's not the same as fee property, so you can't put it out for a loan, or um, it just was policy. Native people didn't, yeah, you couldn't get a loan. And so they were able to come in and start all these businesses, East Glacier, St. Mary's, and just make bank off of you know what is here for industry, tourism, because of what is now called Glacier National Park. So every business the tribe has has uh in our brilliant leadership purchased a few of the businesses that were going out of business during COVID. So we're beginning to get a very small foothold back in our own homelands in East Glacier, where you know the the history of the rail line that came through really for the annihilation of the buffalo and the creation of of uh these large hotels that were, you know, during Roosevelt, the president's time, to have a place for people to enjoy the national parks that he was creating. Yeah, maybe more elitism kind of stuff, but um you know, our people were starving to death right here with this land taken away and our ability to hunt and to legally. We couldn't even butcher our own cow. I remember my grandfather saying, My girl, I remember the year you were born. I will always remember that year. It was the first year we could butcher one of our own cows without having to write to the superintendent and ask his permission that would then be granted months in it, you know, months away. So you couldn't even kill one of your own cows. We were so systematically, you know, our spirit annihilated and controlled and oppressed. And yeah. So yeah, that was uh and that was a long time ago, right? 1959. Yeah.

AJ: 51:49

Well, that's the thing, it's not that long ago.

Kim: 51:52

Exactly. Exactly. My great-grandmother was taken away in a rail car in the middle of winter to this place is far away. Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

AJ: 52:03

Oh, she went to Carlo.

Kim: 52:04

Yeah, and never returned home until she was 21. So you can imagine when that happened, you know, to two or three members of each family or five members, and you know, being away from your home and your family for 15, 16, 20 years. See, non-native.

AJ: 52:20

Yeah, right.

Kim: 52:21

Yeah.

AJ: 52:22

Oh.

Kim: 52:23

US Canadian. Nor do they employ us.

AJ: 52:27

Really? Yeah, really. We're 38 miles away from Canada.

Kim: 52:31

Yeah, it's just right next to uh Nina, Staku, where we're gonna go, Chief Mountain. Going up through here, this is where I did my first fast. I had um, yeah, just gotten my Indian name, Mesam Saipiaki, which is uh it means long time charging woman. And I had been at my friend had lost her son, her and her husband. Um, he was the baby, and they he was kind of a change of life baby, and so he managed everything, all the winter feeding of the bee, the cattle, and just he took care of so much. And when he died um in an automobile crash, they were just so in such deep grief. We all grieve deeply for those we love. But this was a special grief that they just couldn't, you know, because he they were also losing their livelihood, their you know, plus the love of this only male child, not that not that we're a patriarchal society or anything like that, but he was the baby, so any, you know, the last born. And um, they were so broken up with grief, they called uh a medicine person down from Canada, and he came to to help them. And I was working asphalt. We paved this road, as a matter of fact. Can you imagine backing a belly dump up to the paver all the way to the top 47 times? You'll see how crooked the road is, and then from the other side to pave down that side and to pave down this side. Anyway, we were we were paving um we finally had the dirt roads were um being paved in town, and so maybe about 20 years ago. And she called me and said, Kim, can you come and help feed, help serve? Um, this man is coming to help us. And I'm like, Of course, but you know, I'll be in my work clothes because uh we're working and this is what and so she said it doesn't matter, just come, come as you are, and can you help? And so I flew out there after work and got everyone fed. It was so nice, and I looked over her and at her and she was smiling. So everything that he did there, the ceremony that he did to help them, um, it relieved the you know, some of the weight that they were carrying. And I was so excited for them, I kind of started to cry. And I didn't want her to see my tears because I didn't want her to mistake that for more grief, and so I kind of um uh secretly left the house and uh went down to the crick and I was offering some tobacco up to say thank you to Creator for for helping them, for helping them. And um, I could hear her yelling for me at the house, Kim, Kim, this man wants to know if your children have Indian names. And so I went up there and I told her that they did not, they hadn't been named yet, and he offered to name them and he named them so beautifully. My my daughter, uh Mastu Oki, uh Clear Water Woman, and he told the story of when him and his brother were up hunting in the mountains that they knew since childhood, and somehow ended up getting lost. And they were lost in their own mountains that they they didn't understand. It was like they stepped into a different river or something. And in the morning they came across some water that was just like the most refreshing and life-saving water, and so that was the name he gave her. Was that what he saw in her because she was always taking people in and giving them new life basically? My other son, who that you've met doing the uh first promotion, uh the state champion box or golden gloves boxer anyway, he's doing this promotion of um the boxing to bring kids off the streets to be able to have some kind of a focus, and and so whether we call it taekwondo or or um um protection, self-protection or boxing or whatever, he's he's doing this beautiful thing for um youths who don't really have a place to go and big tonight. Yeah, big one tonight, his first one. So his name is uh sh is uh strong mountain. He's a strong, uh strong mountain, and then the other one, his name um he didn't really like. You could see him kind of his shoulders lift up when he named him uh magpie mamiatsiki. Uh but he said, no, no, no, I can tell that you don't understand your name, but the the magpie is the smartest of birds, the best hunter, the luckiest, you know, all of these things. And it wasn't long after that that my son contracted um an Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever called uh Hontavirus, and you know, lived through being on a ventilator and uh, you know, this hemorrhagic fever. Obviously, his organs were turning to mush, etc. So he was very lucky that he lived through that. And now, um, because when he goes hunting, he gets the huge boon and crocket elk and the magic buffalo that comes across the border 20 years ago. There were no buffalo up there, and and this big huge buffalo appeared out of nowhere, and so he fed us for the entire winter on that buffalo. And so um he very much is his name. And then I was given the name long time charging woman that I didn't understand 20 years ago, but I certainly understand it.

AJ: 58:02

It seems it seems pretty apparent.

Kim: 58:07

Isn't this beautiful?

AJ: 58:09

But this is a common thing I hear too, huh? I think even Latrice said it was a bit like, I don't know, about the name I've been given Latrice had been talking about earlier out of the book that I read in the book Healing Grounds and then or in the Regenerate Conference at Timberlata has come to it.

Kim: 58:25

Yeah, grown into her now because they know like when he put his hand on my head before he named me, I felt him go away. I his hand remained on my head, his physical body was here, but I felt him go, you know, to the ancestors or to you know however you want to talk about this Holy Spirit or the grandmothers, the grandfathers to the helpers, right? Who who told him what to name me.

AJ: 58:47

And so they knew who I was going to be. Right. And yeah. And how do you say that? Me some safe. Okay.

Kim: 59:02

So this is uh we've ran cows up in here for 10 years. It was very much grizzled country, so I pulled over just in case we might see a grizzly bear. But you have to be very well mounted to ride this country. And I had the best horse ever. He was a red drone, his name was Rex. And my cousins brought him from the movies. He came out of he was a movie horse, so he reared up and he and they want they brought him home to rope on him because he was so smart and so fast. But he kept rearing up, I think, and um when they back up, you know, to get behind the barrier. And so we traded this paint, red paint stud for him. And oh, he loved me. He would just jump up and down on all in the corral when he saw me coming. He was so excited to get to go. And he was just the best horse. He would keep my legs away from the trees, you know, when we're getting. Through the brush really fast when we were trying to go in and get some cows out, and he just was so protective and go down the back side of these mountains on the shale and keep me upright, and he just was the best horse ever. So after I got my name, um, that saddle here, right up there, I went up to fast because I was just so grateful and I didn't understand things. And I had um come home from working in Arizona, and I went to our elders at the time, Georgia Molly Kickham Woman, and um they sent me to go uh sweat because they said I had all of the stuff on me that I brought home from, you know, down there. And they wanted me protected and clean cleansed and protected. So I went to sweat um for the first time in my life, and uh the elder of the sweat, the one that ran it, he told me in the second round the grandfathers, the grandmothers would come and doctor me and take all of that off of me. And you could hear all of these voices, the old speaking old black feet. And um the eagle came by me all across me and you know, just like it was really beautiful. And um, when I came out of the second round, he told me that they had left thunder for me for my protection. And his brother was like, excuse my language, but he's like, Holy shit, Kim, I've been I've been sweating for 20 years, I never got thunder for my protection. Oh no, he said, holy shit, tourist. Or I should say holy heck because I should clean up my language for this podcast. He said, Holy heck, Kim. I've been sweating for 20 years and I never got thunder for my protection. So um uh you must be either really, really, really bad or really, really, really good. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm not, I don't think I'm bad. I don't know if I'm bad, I don't know. Anyway, I didn't understand and I I didn't understand what it meant to get thunder as my protection. And so I kept wanting to come right up here because this is a spot that just was calling me that saddle right there where that peak is, where the rock is coming down. And so I told my sweetheart um each day after I was named, I have to go up there and make an offering, I have to leave some tobacco, I have to, I have to go up there and fast. And the wind was blowing more severely than I had ever, ever been in. And he said, We can't ride up there, the wind's too bad. You have to wait. So I started my fast down at the house, which is right down there at Kiowa. And on the second day, got up and wanted to get up your horseback, and he's like, No, no, no, the wind is too bad, Kim. It's like a hundred miles an hour. You can't, you just can't. And so I kept fasting. The third day, it's like I have to go up there now, whether the wind is a hundred, and so he said, I knew you were gonna say that, your horse is already saddled up. I'm like, oh, thank you. And anyway, he rode up here with me, but he stayed below the shale down there. Right. And I went up through there and back up there, and there was an old bristle cone pine, one tree that was up there. And so I was on the third day of my fast, so I was pretty weak, but um, even to get up there, the wind was blowing so hard that I had my um arm around the saddle horn, and then I had a mane hole too because it was blowing me out of the saddle, but I wouldn't give up. And I went up there with my tobacco, and I was a stinking creator, and I don't understand how things work. I know that you know I never was raised in a church and I wasn't raised with our old ways, but when um when my life was in danger and someone had a gun to my head, I cried out, Jesus, if you're real, save me, and I was saved. So I never want to walk away from from what you've already done for me, but I just want to know, can you help me? Can you help me please? Is this all the same? Did you give us our old ways, which are our current ways, and then give us, you know, your son or your sons of all of these, you know, people across the globe who came in different times to help us? Did you give us that along with our old ways? I just want to learn if it's okay if I can learn and it's all the same. Can you just give me a sign? And I'm like just really braced with this bristle cone pine. My arm is around it and I'm being buffeted like crazy. And when I say, Can you give me a sign? Everything stopped. The wind stopped. You could hear a pine needle drop like three days of this crazy, crazy, crazy wind. And he just made it all stop. And I fell, of course, because I'm leaning into the west and I'm fall- I fell to my knees and I'm sobbing, you know, like snot sobbing, you know, when the snot comes to your nose. I'm like, thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh my gosh, I I who knew, you know, I'm just so grateful, thank you so much. We get to learn it all, and it's all the same, it's just love. So I I gather myself and I get back up, and um, in some ways, uh, that people worship here is uh ohate, the sundance. Um, the the Oyate brought this to us and taught us this in a way for helping our people, also. And some people practice that. And I know that um they use uh blue cloth, you know, for thunder. And so I had all this tobacco and I put it in this blue cloth and I'm crying because he just stopped the wind. And I was there, you know, like I asked for the sign, and so I'm sobbing, I'm wiping my nose, and holding this cloth up, and I'm praying, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. I just know I I just got my Indian name, my kids got their Indian name. I'm just so grateful to be alive and to be breathing in and out, and you just stopped the wind. And and I'm like, uh, that's our word for thunder. I don't know what it means to get you as as my protection, but I'm just so grateful. I just have this pitiful little gift to say thank you. And and I had um put seven, you know, bunches of tobacco in this blue cloth, and I was holding it up and I'm praying with my eyes closed. Thank you so much. I just I'm so grateful to you. I know this is pitiful, and I really don't know what I'm doing. If you could just have pity on me, this is this is what I'm offering to say thank you, and I know that it's it's nothing, and I know I don't understand any of this, and and I'm I'm standing there with my eyes closed, and you've heard a supersonic jet, the the supersonic boom. Yeah, and I'm standing there like this, and boom, boom, boom, boom, like almost blew me off that mountain. And in the same moment that I'm praying, I'm cussing. I'm like, what the hell? Open my eyes, and I'm like, okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't mean to cuss. But there was nothing there. I thought there was jets practicing or something. There was nothing there. And it was silent again. So um I know that those thunder beings came and took my pitiful little thank you, and they showed me that they're real, and so to have that hugeness as your protection. Not that I try to jump off a mountain and test it or anything, but but it was just um, I think a teaching, um, a blessing for us to all understand that we are being protected at all times and to make good choices and to um use the gifts that we're given to help others, to let people know that that this is a reality that maybe we don't see, but it's going on all around us. Yeah. Anyway, so that's that's what it meant to have other beings, and that's what that saddle means to me up there with that one bristle cone pine.

AJ: 1:07:43

Yeah.

Kim: 1:07:44

Yeah.

AJ: 1:07:45

Oh, it just it puts a whole other lens. I mean, I'm really feeling into the questions you took up there, puts a whole other lens on everything that you have experienced and are experiencing that is so just wrong. Yeah, that there's still a bigger lens.

Kim: 1:08:05

Yeah, way beyond that.

AJ: 1:08:07

Yeah.

Kim: 1:08:08

Right? I know when I rode back down to where my sweetheart was, the horseback, and he's like, holy cow, Kim, I've I've seen you pray for people, but never stopped the win. Old cowboy, right? Old punk riding, bareback riding guy. And um, I'm like, no, no, no, Harry, that wasn't no no no, that was creator God, that wasn't me. I didn't, I just asked the question for a sign, and that's what he did. It wasn't, you know, we don't have we're humans, we're just babies in this this life, huh? So yeah. That's the Goombeeksy Thunderbird story. And who could have you don't imagine those? I mean, maybe people with great imagination imagine those things, but I could not have imagined that happening. I was shocked beyond measure. So this is uh looking glass road going up to Upper Two Medicine. Can you imagine backing a big belly dump up there? There was only a few of us that um would do it, would take take up the cross. Take up the it was really a few quit the first few days because it's very hard to back a big long huge trailer all the way up to the top, and you know, to section back up, back up, back up, and then on the other side we had to pave the other side too, but trying to save the road. I thought it was fun. Here we are. Oh my goodness. Oh my god. It's it's crazy. It's a good day, huh?

AJ: 1:09:48

It's clear and dramatic skies. It's not nice.

Kim: 1:09:52

Welcome to Blackfeet Country.

AJ: 1:09:55

Welcome to Katani Country. Wow.

Kim: 1:09:59

And I don't know, that's pretty breathtaking. Okay. Then we're going to go right up to the end of this lake right now.

AJ: 1:10:08

Really?

Kim: 1:10:08

Yes.

AJ: 1:10:09

Awesome. Yeah. Not where we go swimming. Yeah. Or now. Well, it's summertime, yes.

Kim: 1:10:15

Like yesterday when it was so hot, like that. Those are the days we go. And maybe tomorrow will be like that. Yeah. What's the big peak? Cinepah. It's just it's uh our uh fox. Cinepa. Yeah. So we gather some of our smudges up here. With uh carrying the bundle, you have a winter smudge and you have a um summer smudge. So it's the you know, some people say incense that you light to pray with, and you smudge the bundle and all of the articles that come with it. And so we gather some up here. So all of these places are very important to us. So we started a winter um, this on the land program to get youth and young adults out on the land, out of the homes, away from the phones, the all of the um gadgets. And um the vision is to have it in all four seasons. But we started with winter because my friend knew people in the Bozeman area who got us our skis for wholesale prices, and so we started this winter uh ski picani, istu ipapoki siman, which is to be out on the land in the winter in the cold. Um, and the first year we we skied 327 youth and young adults, and we skied all up in here, and um, it was such a beautiful program that the folks who gave us their wholesale price for skis, they donated a snow machine and a groomer to us. Yeah. And so we have the ski program now with a snow machine and a groomer, and we have a cargo trailer with a hundred sets of skis and boots to cross-country ski in the winter. And um, I get up at, you know, I make a stew through the night, then I get up in the early morning, make fry bread, and we have hot chocolate and coffee and and something hot to go in, you know, the bellies of the children. And some kids come without socks and without coats, and so we all started throwing in part of our paycheck to buy uh snow bibs, you know, bib coveralls and hats, touches, and gloves and socks, and so we have bins full of um winter clothing, and when they come ski with us, then they get to go home with that winter clothing clothing and keep it. And uh, oh my gosh, we have fun, huh, Trayson? Yeah, but I was so sick on oxygen, I never got to ski with them. Oh yeah, so this will be my first winter to get to go out and ski with them, and then we'll do uh summer swimming, kayaking, boating, you know, summer safety, and my son wants to do um survival skills, so fishing and all of the safety and uh um uh ability to care for oneself, you know, in each season. So we'll augment our program not only with, you know, we do traditional winter games um so that the games aren't lost as well. So then in spring and summer we'll keep our traditional games going, but also add the um survival skills uh as we pivot and learn a better way or a better system to, you know, maybe if we can just come up with the money for that indoor arena, which is just basically a big building, right? Then we can pull in the uh the cowboys to come and rope for you know ten dollars a head or twenty dollars a head, and we can start funding a few programs so that we can expand our on-the-land uh winter, summer, spring, fall instead of just winter. So I'm excited to teach, you know, um cutting dry meat and you know, how do you make raw hide out of a hide? You know, the how do you tan the buckskin so that you can make Mogson's brain tanning? So that will be our I think our fall season, you know, on the land because fall is hunting season when the babies have already been born, and so you're not killing something carrying a child. And it's a tough, tough uh, you know, like you're on the edge of something, two-edged sword because you're having to kill something. But people are hungry here. People, you know, need help providing for their families through the winter and you know the firm belief that Creator gave us ways to survive. Yeah. And this, these are our traditional ways of survival and not just surviving, but living victoriously. Yeah. A good life. When we pray, we say uh me back to peace and like live a long good life. Yeah, where we pray that for each other.

AJ: 1:15:16

But it's the way you said it, it's the reverence that it's held in, it's the the love that it's held in, even even in the kill. It's a totally different frame of action.

Kim: 1:15:29

We have a prayer song to be sung before you go out. You know, the hunter can get painted. You we paint them, we paint their rifle. There's a whole whole uh ceremony before so that it's just this respectful and we believe the animal, you know, that comes out is giving itself to us to provide for. Like when my son got that first Eni that one had come across the border, um, he immediately uh butchered this animal and took the meat to our elders. And he kept uh hindquarter for us, um, and that took care of my four children and myself for the entire winter. So very respectfully, even the guts we love. So here you are. See, there's still some glaciers, but you can look at the pictures of what's now called Glacier National Park and see how the glaciers have receded so dramatically that there's hardly anything left to be called Glacier National Park.

AJ: 1:16:40

Yeah. I saw this, I was telling the family, I saw this happening in Canada 30 years ago. Mm-hmm. And yeah, 30 years old, I've just I imagined coming in what you would say, and what we would say. Yeah. Does that light the freeze?

Kim: 1:16:58

Oh yes. It sure does. Even the creeks um freeze over, but the water will run underneath. And when the first ice forms on the edge of the creeks is when we open our bundles in the fall. Can you imagine having every way of your belief system taken away and put in a museum? Isn't that ridiculous? So this bundle that we carry is uh was in the Smithsonian for 94 years, locked away. Can you imagine when it was brought home? It probably just big, big breath. When was that? That was about eight years ago.

AJ: 1:17:43

Rematriation of the some of this stuff's happening back home too, huh? And it's like it's again, I guess I'm just trying to. I'm really feeling the time that I'm living and breathing in. In context, and these things are yeah, for all the things that aren't changing, huh? These things feel like big shifts. Yeah.

Kim: 1:18:07

They are.

AJ: 1:18:08

Yeah.

Kim: 1:18:08

There are so many big shifts happening, which is what I was referring to early, that earlier, that dichotomy of there's still this evil happening, you know, the killing of our children and our youth without any recompense. But but there are these big shifts where this is not going to be uh happening much longer. And I think that's the huge fear, right? I think that's the huge build the border wall and and get rid of all the immigrants. Never mind the white immigrants coming from South Africa, they can come all they want. But anybody with some pigment, right? I think that's the this big change that is happening. Um, and then the ugly is all fear-based, right? They don't want to give control. They don't want to give up control to the majority who's about to be majority. And it's exciting, you know, not only, you know, spiritually and physically, but it's exciting uh emotionally to think that we're going to be feeling instead of oppression, victory. You know, feeling instead of murder and and chaos that we're gonna feel be feeling love and you know, this beautiful mutual relationship strengthening, right? Across the globe is the prayer. I don't know, people say I'm just an old hippie or yeah.

AJ: 1:19:27

I was well, I was just gonna say, I feel that. Yeah, I feel that, and I I kind of feel it's important, like that it's part of it to be able to feel that. Like to turn the light on.

Kim: 1:19:40

Yeah, thank you. Turn the light on. I love it. Let it shine. Yeah. We may come across a grizz. It's kind of a nice time of day.

AJ: 1:19:53

I've been waiting for a grizz.

Kim: 1:19:55

I've been calling it. In the evening is a good time we can come up after we get through. What is today? Thursday? Thursday. Yeah. Um, so tonight is the first grand entry, and it will be small because people are coming from all over the nation to dance, to be a part of the North American Indian days, our powwow, our gathering. We call it Aku Gatson, is the big gathering of the big camp. Um, and this is a little bit different other than like the Horn Camp coming together, all the societies coming together. This is more uh regalia-based and and uh celebration of our culture in a more, you know, instead of the holy ceremony, more of a celebratory way with the powwow dancing. Yes. You know, of our double bustles and our beautiful jingle dresses, and so people come from all over and they compete. So these dances are age graded and by the different style, and then it's a competition. And so by Sunday the championships will be. Um it'll be the like the final people that are uh dancing off to become champions. Okay, are you ready for the science or young master? Here we go. I'll pull over, okay?

AJ: 1:21:13

Is there at least some kind of move to co-manage a place like this, the national park?

Kim: 1:21:21

Wow. Now that you mentioned it, we were making some strides with the last superintendent, Jeff Mao. He was wonderful. There was um, I speak from a place of no knowledge. I don't see it happening in my lifetime, but it would be beautiful if it did. But that comes from a base of ignorance. I have no, I'm not the right person to speak with about this. It is um, without a doubt, something that would be astounding if it happens in my lifetime. But I see our leadership changing into um into more um like our minds are being broadened all the time beyond the boxes of where we have been stuffed into to be able to think more broadly. And I see our leadership doing that in such a way that is so um uh hopeful and vibrant, and it would be lovely if we uh were to the point of co-management or to the point of taking our land back. You know, this uh 99-year lease for a dollar that was, you know, our people didn't even speak English when the initial lease of all this land happened, and the X's uh in agreement were all made by the same hand. You could see the X's were there, it wasn't on other documents there were X's, you know, that you could see were different X's. But for this particular lease of 99 years for a dollar, um the X's are all the same. So um I think the look at the sun as it isn't that gorgeous. Look at that, ah that's so beautiful. So I I would love to see it back in um control of our people and keep it just as pristine and beautiful as it is now. Yeah. But we've also had um people who have challenged because supposedly the treaty for this land or the agreement on the lease is that we could still hunt and gather wood and berries. Um, traditional gathering, our roots, our medicines. And so I come up and pick every year. I I want people to challenge that, and I've never the the ranger will come by and and say, okay, you know, just very nicely. But then when I come to pick or do anything, then other people who are not blackfeet start picking, you know, and it's like, no, no, no, this is a traditional treaty right that we have as Pecani. And it's hard to say those words to people because you're telling them basically, uh, I can do this, but you can't. Right? But we've already lived generations of they can do everything and we can. So anyway, um, some people did challenge that and came up and shot an elk in the park and they were put in jail, you know, as wards of the government, federal institutions for doing that. Um because we don't have the money for lawyers to fight this battle. We don't I think they spent about 90 days and they were finally let go because it was illegal for them to arrest them, but nobody really challenges it because we do want this to remain intact, you know, intact ecosystem, pristine and beautiful like it is, but there should be co-management without a doubt, and there should be co-profit. You know, if you look at the sign up here and you see how much each vehicle is paying, there goes the money to the hands, how much are they paying to come into every one of these locations at times four million? You know, there should be some per year, and it's only going to increase. You know, maybe five, six years ago it was 1.8 million, and now it's all the way to four million. Yeah, it's only going to continue to increase because people, you know, they want to breathe and they we just live through COVID, right? Like people, you know, are are changed. I I believe there's this global change in value system of family and you know being together and being out in this beauty and maybe not as much priority. I don't know. I can't speak for the world, but there's more people traveling for sure. So here's a proud moment. Hi, black feet. Good, you?

AJ: 1:25:38

Did you tell me you're a traveler?

Kim: 1:25:40

I am. Oh yeah, you're good to go. Okay, thank you. It's so pretty.

AJ: 1:25:44

Yeah, it's amazing. This is the thing that amazes me about the nation, too, that like there's this moniker that was put on you, right? The Lords of the Plains. Yeah, I believe. And yet mountain people too.

Kim: 1:25:59

Yes.

AJ: 1:26:00

You both.

Kim: 1:26:01

Absolutely, right? So the moniker needs to be changed. Lord of the mountain. Yeah, mountain and plains and prairie potholes in between. There we go. Yeah, we were the last to be put on a reservation. Yeah. Last tribe. Isn't that gorgeous? Okay, so here's a little walk up to a little fall. Would you like to go there? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You saw a blue jay. Hey, look, there's a parking place.

AJ: 1:26:35

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. See, you talk about like you pull out music references. Running Eagle Falls. It still has all these 80 names, huh?

Kim: 1:26:45

Even though it's not easy. This was one of the first. This was one of the first. It was Trick Falls Forever. Oh, really? Forever. Okay. And so I don't know when they changed it back to her name. Oh good. Yeah. But but maybe in the 70s, 80s, maybe 90s. Okay. Maybe. Maybe 2000s. I don't know. But yes, this is a step in the right direction. Yeah. I don't believe that she was the only female warrior. You know, it's nice of them to make that story, but I don't believe it. Yeah. I'm sure that we had many. But she was the la maybe the last no no notoriety. The last one who was because everything we didn't have a written language, like the Cherokee. And so everything was oral tradition, but as we were decimated, like just in seven years, we went from 60,000 to 3,800. Just in seven years of smallpox diphtheria, you know. So I think a lot was lost.

AJ: 1:27:41

Late 19th century?

Kim: 1:27:44

Yeah. So um at the late 19th, early 20th. Yes.

AJ: 1:27:50

Yes, yes.

Kim: 1:27:51

So recent. The end of the 1800s. Yeah, my grandma was alive. She was born in 1886, right? Right? So it wasn't that long ago. People want to say, oh, pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. We didn't do this to you. Well, it was a series of events that came together that culminated in what we live today, which is getting way better and better all the time. So we just have to get past the whole suicide stuff. Oh, I think I'll wipe my fingers. Oh, maybe not.

AJ: 1:28:24

Wow.

Kim: 1:28:25

What tree is that? This was just the sap from that pine tree back there. Yeah.

AJ: 1:28:32

It's very piney.

Kim: 1:28:33

It's very sticky.

AJ: 1:28:34

It's very pine. Oh, it smells delicious. Isn't that one? You can have the sticky stuff on the smell. Oh my lord, look at that waterfall.

Kim: 1:28:42

Boy. Oh. Oh, they've already gone down. Okay.

AJ: 1:28:47

It's all sticky, too. Oh, it's just gorgeous, isn't it?

Kim: 1:28:52

Beautiful.

AJ: 1:28:53

So I instantly feel shifted. You feel that too, huh? Yeah.

Kim: 1:28:57

Absolutely.

AJ: 1:28:58

They finally fixed the bridge. Oh, the colours of the rocks. Yeah. Absolutely amazing.

Kim: 1:29:14

And to think that she came and fasted up here, right? To get her, you know, strength to be able to stand up to, you know, maybe the men in the band. Because we're our our tribes were divided into bands as well. This is the mountain chief band. This is the willow burner, greenwood burners, you know, like we had different bands as well. So to be able to um continue to follow the men behind in the hunt and not give up and then come up here and fast and know that she could do it. Yeah. My granddaughter's name is uh he wanted his daughter named after me, but he wanted because of the thunder, he wanted thunder in that, so her name is Thunder Charging Woman. Yeah. And then my daughter wanted her firstborn named after me. She's a pretty charging woman. And then my other son wanted his daughter, his firstborn daughter, long, um, long time charging ones the same as me. So it was beautiful. I think we were just having kind of a tool that conversation. Um before it was very anger inspiring, and because we were treated so poorly in the park, you know, even targeted with our by our license plates. But recently, as things are changing, it's now it's like beautiful that people come so far to witness what we get to see all the time. And it's it's honoring, and you can flip it right from never being welcome into our own homeland to never, you know, and being pretty much profiled to it's still beautiful that people can come here and enjoy this. And so you can throw that other mindset away and not let those things happen or inside of you internalize it and just be so um so proud because once you travel a little, right? You're so happy to. I remember going down south and seeing an alligator for the first time, and I was so happy I jumped, we were on this non-mechanized island off of Savannah, Georgia, it's called Austabaugh Island. So it was the Environmental Protection Conservation Society. It was the first conference I'd ever gone to. 15 years old, I don't know. And I made my cousin come with me because I'd never been to a scientific conference before. And so she came and they met us and they took us on a boat across the channel to this non-mechanized island, met us with a cart and you know, a pony, and they're uh bringing us along this island, and there's a big slug or swamp or whatever you call it, and there was an alligator or crocodile, I don't know, it's as long as from this bluff here to that rock. It was huge. And I jumped out of the cart immediately to take his picture. My cousin grabbed me like what are you doing? And it's like people here they jump out if there's a bear to take a picture of the grizzly. It's like, what are you doing? You're 50 years old if you've not learned anything. Yeah. But how I think of how awe-inspiring and how beautiful it is to go other places. And so you flip that mentality, right? From not really being welcomed in the park to now just it's beautiful. But I still say what is now called. I won't give that up. Depending on well, shall we journey forward or you guys want more time here? Oh, look at the little chipmunk. This is the berry we lived off of. This is Savus Berry. So this is our whole diet here. This is the holy berry. Yeah, why? We can't start any ceremony without this berry, and we can't end any ceremony without this berry. So this is the most important berry here within the Blackfeet Nation to us. And some people call it Saskatoon or service berry, but because we had such a huge French influence, we call it Savasberry. And so this was everything to us, this berry. We dried it, pick it, dry it. So uh another month they'll be ready, and we pick them and now we have freezers, but in the days, you know, just not too long past, and even still many people still dry the berry, and then when we have our fall ceremony, you know, um, or spring, because we've come through winter, but the berries aren't growing yet. Then we had the dried berry that we make our soup in our for the ceremony. Or like me, you have them in the freezer.

AJ: 1:33:38

Yeah.

Kim: 1:33:39

So this is the main berry, our whole main, that and the buffalo, the ini. Yeah.

AJ: 1:33:45

It's brought to mind Robin Wall Kimmer's book on the service berry.

Kim: 1:33:48

Oh, yeah. So the other one was braiding sweet grass. Yeah. She's uh she's made a good existence off of that. I remember uh sharing uh strengthening the circle. It was uh this woman out of Bozeman Hopa Mount and Bonnie, Sachatello Sawyer. She started the strengthening the circle, and some people say, you know, she's living off of Indian money, you know, doing all these things to but I think she's doing good work, you know, helping people start nonprofits, helping in different ways showing up and like this strengthening the circle, creating this strengthening a circle where tying just different indigenous women um throughout Montana to each other. And she brought Robin Wall Kimmerer in to be kind of our guest, a guest, kind of a keynote for about 40 of us over a period of five days. So I thought that was pretty beautiful. I haven't read I have Brading Sweetgrass on uh audio. Yeah. I haven't read it.

AJ: 1:34:55

We listened to it coming across the East.

Kim: 1:34:58

Oh, did you? Oh, okay. And then um the the Savisberry, service berry is the name of her this next book. I knew she had a second book. Yeah. Maybe that's included in the title. Yeah, it is. It is, okay. Yeah, but I haven't read that one. Yeah. I don't know if it's out on audiobook yet.

AJ: 1:35:22

Yeah. She's certainly moved. Non-Indian folk, you know? She's really reached in powerful ways, I think.

Kim: 1:35:31

Oh, good.

AJ: 1:35:32

Yeah.

Kim: 1:35:33

Good. I know uh one for a good read that you may get a kick out of, especially after being to different Indian countries. Yeah. Areas is uh neither wolf nor dog. I was so angry at this book. It was required reading in one of my classes, the first couple of chapters, the arrogance, the entitlement of the author. But then as it moved forward, he left that in there. And he even states at the end of the book, I was going to take it out once I learned how to be a human. Um, but it also is part of the transition to this level of humanity, and so I left it in. Because I was going to give up reading it like ten times and throw it against the wall. It was so hurtful to me, the arrogance of this guy and the lack of appreciation and the lack of gratefulness, right? But as the book goes on, it's these old Indian, like at wounded knee. And uh, so this grandpa tells the granddaughter to call this guy and tell him to come because he wants him to write his book. And uh he lives in Seattle and he had written about the Red Lake, maybe the massacre or something, and the grandfather had read it and liked his style of writing so much that he instructed his granddaughter to call him. He said, Yeah, I answered the phone, and there's some some girl says, My grandpa says, come and write this book in Sioux Country and in uh wounded me. And so then it's all his arrogance for a few, three chapters. But as the book builds, it's this beautiful transition of him into understanding and uh being a better human. And it's a beautiful book. I love it. I recommend it to everyone, neither wolf nor dog. Yeah, I really feel him. Yeah, it's a good one. And these old Indian uncles really torture him. And I love it. And he becomes human, it's pretty beautiful.

AJ: 1:37:21

It takes because yeah, the the temptation, and many would take it to paint yourself as the author in the best of possible light.

Kim: 1:37:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes him to own that. Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, it is.

AJ: 1:37:35

But but for the better. Like for the better. Yeah, for the better. If you can own your stuff.

Kim: 1:37:40

Yep, exactly. And put it out there. And put it out there. You're not only owning it privately, but put it out there to the world in the form of the first chapters of this book. Neither wolf nor dog. I really don't want to be reading that. Yeah, you'll have to. I used to buy it and give it away to people that needed uh humor and understanding. Now I just tell people about it. So it is it is painful to know that that what is now called Glacier National Park is making tons of money, and they have private contractors in here with the hotels and the stores who are making tons of money, and we remain in the same situation while this occurs all around us. So that is painful. The rest, the sharing of it, the beauty and the awe and the the wonderful experiences that people have from coming all over the world to come here, that's beautiful. But the fact that we still are not included in the industry of it that would give hope, that would save lives, that would, you know, keep people from taking their own lives, which is such a such a hard thing. We've switched our internships up to um really focus on uh before we were straight uh college age and young adult. Um, and now because we had uh two, three suicides in one year in high school, um completed suicide, uh we've switched up our internships to younger youths to uh 14 and above. So uh last year we had all high school students. This year we have uh four high school and two uh first year college. So just trying to inspire.

AJ: 1:39:20

They're so capable at that age, hey. You can do it. Oh, absolutely. You don't lose anything and you gain heaps. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, look at these 11-year-olds already. I know, right?

Kim: 1:39:30

Here, I'll show you proton.

AJ: 1:39:33

You're right, Kim. It opens up opportunity, doesn't it? Being adjacent and with the new well, the reclaimed land. Yes, um, the opportunity, because it's what we see, we've seen it around the states and we see it at home too. That the changing sympathies and interest uh does mean that people clamor these days. Like there are places like the ones you're envisioning on that land, they go in numbers.

Kim: 1:40:00

Really? Yeah. So see, I have such a I'm still in my box, right? Like I might have the vision, but in addition, you know, we had 38 employees, 36 employees, and we're down to eight. And so we're I had uh the man who we had a crew working on our marketing, you know, our feasibility study for the processing plant. And he's like, Kim, you guys are small, but you're mighty, and but we can't do it all by ourselves. And if we can't, if I can't think out of if I can envision but not truly know because I don't have your experiences, your history, your exposure, I don't know that it would be interesting that people might want to. And how do you what do you call it? Do you call it ecotourism, cultural tourism, you know, do you call it agro-tourism because we're doing so many things? And how do you create the like how the old salt has its image? I mean, there was what, maybe 500 people there even in the rain? Yeah, there was so many people. Even in this pouring rain. And you know, how do you create what he's done to bring these people together to bring them together up here? Because there's also the um you know, the best kept secrets left under the road kind of policy of um interaction with native people, our mentality's changing to where people really truly want to come and be a part of this, be a part of the change. Like to to put the words together that really um capture that we're all in this together and how beautiful our culture is and how vibrant, how strong, how resilient. You know, and and oh, by the way, not only do you get to go and see some Indians, but you can see all this, right? That's really not how I want to say anything. You know, but but you can experience a lifestyle and maybe a humor and a love and a deep, deep um connection to the land and to each other that um people who come to our ceremonies or even to like one person um who met, you know, one of our relatives who passed and came to our wake, and they just were so moved by, you know, I buried my mother um last year, and we had four hours in the funeral home, and that was it. And you guys are together for four or five days cooking and and um comforting and and providing this rebar, this uh strength to the ones who are grieving the deepest, and you know, you're actually grieving and getting it out and telling the stories and laughing and you know, um, this whole experience of the wake that really does help. I've I've seen it both ways, and I can't imagine the coldness of the other way. I don't know. To me, that seems like very hard, a harder way to deal with death.

AJ: 1:42:59

Yeah, but well, I think it's it's getting increasingly uh evident that that is true. But I think particularly in these industrialized times, it's it's so transactional.

Kim: 1:43:12

Yeah, expensive. I mean, everything. Oh yeah. My uh cousin who just left the morning that you arrived, lost her son recently. And she said everything, it was so transactional, everything was money, everything was horrendous amounts of money. Money that should never have been, you know, things should never have been at that level of expense. It just was, oh, she was more horrified, so horrified with the death, um, you know, to lose your child, but then to deal with the continual horrors of people stealing from you for every little thing and you try to do right by your child and their memory and their remains. And she just was, she couldn't believe it. She said it was like he was being killed over and over and over again. This might be something that you know you say, how do you feel about this? Well, when I can't get my own parking place, I tell you how I feel. I feel like I'll just park anywhere I want. There you go. What are you gonna do? This is our land, by the way. Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? Don't tell you she'll be upset with me.

AJ: 1:44:31

I joined the family of my old friend and mentor when he died in burying him ourselves by hand. Oh the challenge for his partner was to find a place where we could do it. Where you could do it. It was an old cemetery, sort of almost, I think almost, if not disused, in a in a rural area. Uh as we could just go and do it. In a simple pine box. Yeah.

Kim: 1:44:52

That's what my kids know. You throw me in a pine box and you put me in the back of that Corvette and drive me through to I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, but please, no hearse and no, you know, all of the expense and more expense and more expense. Yeah.

AJ: 1:45:06

That's why when I saw that scaffolding up with Kelsey, I was like, I'd go that. I mean, yeah. For me, it's probably more take me out to the ocean and feed me two sharps. Yeah, but the people the the is give me an is funeral. Yeah, yeah. But you can't do that's illegal to drop drop yourself in the ocean. It's illegal around it.

Kim: 1:45:28

Yeah, you just don't tell anybody, right? Yes. You just you just do it. So this is Cinepaw. Right here is Cinepaw. What an extraordinary this was my grandmother's favorite place as well.

AJ: 1:45:40

Really?

Kim: 1:45:41

So when she passed, I came and brought her uh because she wanted to be so we're a product of the Relocation Act, one yet another uh law that was passed in DC. Um and so my grandmother's family was put in Seattle, my uncle's family was put in Chicago, and it was a it was a forcible reaction, right? And so the the thing was to break down the bloodlines, and so it really worked with my grandmother's family because they were in um high school and middle school. So within a few months of my father being placed in the Seattle area, my mother was, you know, and so then this is how I came to look like this, right? So my grandmother, um, when my grandfather passed, she immediately came home and she lived at home for I think about 10 years, and then her youngest son found out how much, because we just supported her, and so everything that she had was going into the bank. He learned about the money. He came and got her. She was already in you know stages of dementia. So oh, you must move home with me, mom. I need your help. Da da da da. She passed away in a matter of months, but she wanted to be cremated so she could be brought home. So I brought her here at four or five in the morning, and we we um, you know, this was her favorite place in the world right here. Yeah. Before the boats, before all of this stuff, really, this was her favorite place in the world, yeah. Any any of those walls where the red rock where the snow is, still that was a whole glacier. And you can look at um, you can Google Glacier National Park, Receding Glaciers, or then and now.

AJ: 1:47:17

Amazing little forms on the slope, right?

Kim: 1:47:20

Yeah.

AJ: 1:47:20

And over there just sitting up.

Kim: 1:47:23

That's those old ones watching over us. Yeah. Come on, goats. Come on, grizzlies. Come on, where are you at now? This is bear grass. See this white one? It only grows for about two weeks out of the year and only at certain elevations, and it's gone. Yeah. And so my grandmother, who was in Carlisle all her life, um, when she came when she came home, and then after we were all born and driving, she would give us her truck, 12, 13 years old, to drive up here and get her bear grass. And we would bring her bundles of bear grass and it falls apart. Very it's very delicate. And bring it home to her, and she had her mason jars. She would fill them with water and food coloring. One would be blue, one would be red, one would be orange, and she would put the bear grass in, and they would um they're like a lily, they absorb and they would absorb the color, so she would have blue, bear grass, purple bear grass. It was her thrill for oh, here's one here. And back then they didn't have nice cars and you know, to be able to go and pick this, so it was a huge thing for her. But she wouldn't let us pick bear grass on divide. And I never understood why until I was in my master's program and I had to come up with a research project. And we were always, you know, she would tell us, you don't leave your hair in a brush, you don't clip your fingernails at other people's houses because these are things that people can use against you. And we'd be like, Okay, grandma, yes, okay, grandma. All right, gram. Well then um when she would send us to get baragraphs for her, but you can't pick on divide. And it would, we would just categorize it in with the you can't you can't leave your hair in a brush or your nails anywhere. But as I got into my master's program, I started trying to figure out because she was already past, she passed when my second daughter, or my first, my only daughter, when my daughter was born, she's my third child. That was when my grandmother passed. So it was very recent history, right? And um I started looking into why couldn't we pick bear grass on divide? And then, you know, the different stories that people said there was bad things. She told us there's bad things buried up there. And so then I started looking, so this is all Sabasbury. I started looking um and trying to learn what where that history came from. Well, the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961 um made a proposal to our tribe to bury not less than one million gallons of irradiated wastewater and byproducts from the enrichment of uranium up to plutonium for the bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So there were three separate institutions across the nation: Hanford, um, Oak Ridge Laboratories, and then I think it was Love Canal. I don't know. There were three places anyway where they enriched the uranium because they didn't want the particular scientist to be responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands. So they split it up, this enrichment process, and you know, learned how fission and f versus fusion, et cetera. Well, then they had all these uh crazy amounts of uh very dangerous isotope uh embedded, you know, wastewater and product, etc. And they didn't even know themselves the danger of gamma radiation because you know their scientists even died of leukemia, you know. So it wasn't, but they did know that it wasn't good. And so they um they uh requested, they sent a proposal, the Atomic Energy Commission. I'm gonna go through here just real quickly in case there's a goat. Um mountain goats, they live all over these mountains. If you look for white spots that are moving, you will spot a goat. Um, a mountain goat. They have little black horns. Anyway, uh so I came across I found this proposal buried deep in a government depository from the Atomic Energy Commission to do this in 1961. And then I went about looking at at all the the history of council meetings and the minutes of the council meetings, and and I found this collection of council meetings of all the tribes across Montana that this um Catholic sister, nun who had come from back east, she came to Great Falls and she saw um that the people were still living in lodges along the river while while she was there uh ministering to the people and to native people. Um the people of the city burnt them out. They didn't want the Indians on their land, which was our land obviously. And so um she petitioned and petitioned different tribes to put money in to build housing developments, right? But because of this, she went to, you know, and you can imagine a 1927 Model T or however to go across the whole state of Montana. She went to all of these tribes requesting money from them to build these housing developments to house these people who were living around that city looking for jobs, and you know, they um were basically being starved out or burnt out. And when they burnt all their lodges, they moved up to the dump. So they're finding all these pieces of metal and wood, and you know what our winters are like nine months of you know they were very harsh back then, 40 below, 60 below, and they're trying to save their children living in the dump. But by this act of kindness that she was doing, she got the secretaries for each tribe to send her, you know, because they had to type it out, right? The minutes, to send her copies of the monthly meeting with the tribal um councils. So through her beauty and and her um organization and the way that she was fighting for the people, I got the minutes for the Blackfeet tribe all the way back to because we had had a a building that had um our records in it flood, so we lost a lot of our records. And so I found these records that um talked about the irony of it though was the proposal was made in July of 1961, and for like three months all the minutes were missing. But somebody, whoever took them, missed a back page of some minutes that said an old fish wolf robe walked into the council chambers and banged his staff on the floor and spoke in Pecani. Um I may not understand English well, but my grandson does, and he's explained to me this uh this attempt for the government to bury very dangerous things that could cause our mountains, you know, because they thought of earthquakes, they were thinking of of the explosion, you know, because of the enrichment up to plutonium, um, because they'd already experienced Nagasaki. So this was in the 50s. 1961, I'm sorry. So they had already experienced um the knowledge of what atomic energy could do. And so he adamantly said no. And so the proposal was turned down, but it was turned down a year later. So we thought maybe there were I thought maybe there was some cursory dumping that was taking place. Um and we had an area of land up by Divide Mountain from Divide all the way ten miles down the road from St. Mary's where every single family living on that um on the land had cancer on that that 10 mile stretch. Really? Yeah, except for one family who had moved in there just a few years before that and uh built a little campground, but they were non-native, they hadn't lived there for so man, I dug into that and I had 62 sample sites and you know, uh took water from all the cricks and the runoff and the beaver dams and the house water, you know, coming out of their faucets, their wells, everything. But you know, I was in my graduate studies, I wasn't funded, I didn't have any money. I was just trying to pay rent and pay rent up here because my you know, a couple of my uh kids had already graduated high school, so they were still living in the house and to try to not rent but pay electricity there and rent down there and I just didn't have the money to really um do the analysis on my water samples, and I didn't have the support um uh from the university to do that, and so um I would bum use of one lab's G mass spec, but for me to look for the isotopes I was looking for that were a byproduct of the enrichment of uranium up to plutonium, like cesium and strontium and and C uh and just um these different isotopes, they would have to recalibrate their machines, which then the person who calibrated had to come from Spokane or Seattle or something. It was a big thing for them to let me do that. So I only really got to run one set of samples and they were clean, but I only got to run them for two isotopes. So there could have been strontium, there could have been cesium, there could have, you know, there could have been things in there, and then so I because I couldn't come up with uh it cost five hundred dollars for like a half a gallon of this um this oh what was it called, but it would light up the isotopes. It was this particular liquid that you used in your sample. And I can't think of the name of it because the four years of mass prednisone on my brain, but anyway, um, so I couldn't find uh through uh two years of sampling in every season because I didn't have the money to really do it correctly. So I went about it a different way and I hit the EPA um with FOIA requests and I was trying to force them into designating a cancer cluster, but they would not do it, and it was so hard to get medical records, etc. And they would not do it because um when you know, just one more loophole, right? If they're gonna designate an area a cancer cluster, it has to all the primary cancer has to be the same.

AJ: 1:57:12

Oh right.

Kim: 1:57:13

But people had leukemia and they had um different forms of cancer, so the primary cancer wasn't the same. Uh non-Hodgkins lymphoma was a big one that people had. Yeah. And but because there was non-Hodgkins and leukemia, then boom, they wouldn't designate it.

AJ: 1:57:32

It's pretty funny how we it's classic reductionism, isn't it? Yeah. There's a clear pattern at a devastating one.

Kim: 1:57:39

Right. It's like, ah no, it doesn't quite losing two or three members of your family to no, no, no, no. And so uh Yeah, there were then they had to do the classic, you know, studies of other dumping sites like Fallon, Nevada, and you know, trying to We just talked about this the other day because Australia was contemplating taking nuclear waste from I think it was here, wasn't it, Poppy?

AJ: 1:58:01

I thought so. Yeah. Take it from here. Oh and of course, where would they propose to put it? Right. Aboriginal community.

Kim: 1:58:08

Oh, of course. Not in my backyard. You should you should see the document, you should see the language of this document. It is your patriotic duty.

AJ: 1:58:17

Yeah.

Kim: 1:58:17

Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, Native Americans serve at such a higher percentage in the military service than any other ethnicity in America. And it continues to this day, even with the treatment, um, because this was our land. This is our land, you know, we're proud and we're proud to defend it anyway. In these uh n faux wars that aren't even real wars anymore over rubber or oil or but anyway, um certainly that was the language they used, was it was our patriotic duty, and because at Hanford it was costing them 35 cents a gallon to store it, they would give us 22 cents or 23, they would give us, you know, this amount, which was nowhere near the amount. I don't know how to get out of here if it's one way or obviously I don't come in the park much. Yeah, my people might have I might be going the wrong way. So your podcasts are what is the name? Is it like your Regeneration with the twist of the stories of things that work? Mine's all been so negative.

AJ: 1:59:25

Let's talk about the good stuff. Yeah, no, we've been talking about good stuff. Don't remember that. It's been there's been some gold. It's like, oh yeah, this is why you record. Like so we'll have a lot of just you know, conversations like that, but then bits in between is like, oh, that was amazing.

Kim: 1:59:40

And and you're the wizard that puts it all together to make a program and gets rid of all the non good stuff. So it's not a man show. Right, John? I can't wait to explore.

AJ: 1:59:56

Thanks, Kim. Thanks for being interested. Yeah, definitely.

Kim: 2:00:00

Well that's also all those episodes you did recently for the RSA.

AJ: 2:00:04

Yeah, it came up before. When when Kim I don't know if you heard Kim was saying we're leaving that language of reservation behind Nation and that's what Chief said down there.

Kim: 2:00:15

What was his name?

AJ: 2:00:16

Uh Standing Bear, Chief uh Jeffrey Standing Bear. Um Yeah, really interesting guy. Doing some great stuff too. No, I'll have to look him up. Similar stuff too, from similar um sort of themes and and um what would you say, like sensing the moment through COVID and managed to nail a bunch of funding and got a greenhouse up, which is a big greenhouse in Oklahoma. They're growing pineapples in Oklahoma to beautiful. And uh they have the heat. They got the heat and they had the pineapples, would you believe, from Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the filming Killers of the Flower Moon. He ordered pineapples from California en masse. And so one of the dudes there said, I think we can use this to pull the heads and be growing pineapples in Oklahoma. Oh nice. But yeah, big greenhouse, multi-process multi-u-species processing facility, uh mobile harvesting facility.

Kim: 2:01:14

Yes.

AJ: 2:01:15

You know, all these sorts of things.

Kim: 2:01:16

Isn't that something? And when you hear about other tribal nations doing it, it's like, yes, yes, we can do it. We can we will find the money for it, we will do this because our producers feed nine months out of the year in this country. Like it's such an intensive cost, so costly for them. And then the middleman steps in just because he has money and buys, you know, the the calf crop. And so you just you never really make enough to even pay for the feed from the last year. So now with these regen practices, people are getting so excited because it r it's a reduction in feed bill, and then to think of us, you know, finding the money, because we all have our gifts, right? We all have our gifts of, you know, this person is a great storyteller, this one can really write. I can write way better than I can speak for sure. For some reason, I have the a beautiful gift in that area, and so for us to um to want to support their ability to maybe keep their ranch alive, keep it going after how many generations, and you know, whether it's 40 head or 400 or 4,000, we're we're just we're here to help. And so um at some point we're I know the money will come for the the processing plant because then it cuts out the middleman, and we can, you know, sell their grass-fed organic beef through, you know, through certification and you know, online to a global market, right? A global market that wants to support saving lives, that wants to support the real truth in our history and and the time for reclamation, you know, and recovery, as opposed to continuing down the same, same road. How many jobs will this, you know, processing plant uh provide? We have the whole feasibility studies and the business plan that's gonna be great. We just have to. We went down to Livingston, down by Bozeman, and there's a man down there who um, you know, he he captured this uh beautiful way of getting everyone's coal cattle. They come and donate them for a tax break for each one of their ranches. So the cattle that are going to die anyway, the dries, the you know, the ones that different ranches are calling out, and then he processes and he sells it back to into the market for the same price as um as the local butcher shop. So he makes a very good profit because he's not providing the product, right? He gets the product for free and he only has to pay the labor. But because he's also selling back to the food banks, then it it it's a beautiful circle where people are benefiting even more than just people who have the financial ability to purchase meat. Um the food banks are buying this meat at fair market price for this man. So it's kind of like there there's stores here in the States called Goodwill, where people bring in and donate. And so the for-profit business, Goodwill, brings in all this profit from donated items and they provide some labor. But because they um also provide some jobs to special needs folks, then it it makes people want to donate more and more and more and more and more. So what a beautiful business model. Yeah, right on. So we would like to protect our food system when COVID hit. We had um, it was like wagon trains coming through because we're highway two, so that goes straight across the northern um, you know, parallel to the Canadian border. And so people were coming from Chicago and from everywhere, all of these big trucks with their campers. They were fleeing the cities and they would just come through like locusts and take all of our food. My little niece came to my house and she was crying, and her baby was like six months old, and it's like Auntie, Auntie, I pulled into the to Teeples to get um diapers and some food for baby. And these people pulled up next to me in a truck, and like five people jumped out, and they each ran and got a cart, and they just started emptying our shelves of all the food, of all the diapers, of all the everything. Just because they had money, Auntie. I only had $42, and now I can't even, it's not enough gas to drive 140 miles to the next door, you know, to go to Callis Well or Great Falls. And she just sobbed in my arms and I smudged her off and painted her, and then as soon as she left, I called council. I'm like, okay, I know you guys are so busy with so much trying to save our people, but you have to understand this reality. This is what just happened. And they immediately took action and put signs up for um people external to here could not shop. They could shop before they get here, they could shop after they leave. But they were just coming through, I'm not kidding, just wagon trains of trucks and campers, and everyone was heading to this. I don't know, it was like um an area on the other side of Calisbell that a lot of the preppers knew about as like this haven't. It was like a uh Mad Max movie. I don't know. It was just like we were living in the middle of such a surreal.

AJ: 2:06:50

Really?

Kim: 2:06:50

Yeah, it was so surreal. Come and wipe out our grocery stores, and you know, who has money to drive 120 miles to get food when you're trying to stay stay isolated?

AJ: 2:07:04

Totally.

Kim: 2:07:05

You might have enough money to get there to buy food, but you don't have the money to buy food anymore because you just spin it on fuel to get there. Yeah, so so our leadership was so wonderful. Yeah. So we would bring people up here and ski for our ski pecani. And uh once we got the snow machine and the groomer, groom tracks, and then um we realized that then still only the haves and not the have nots could get to ski because you had to have healthy parents to drive you up here or you had to have a vehicle, you had to have a good four-wheel vehicle. And so then we started skiing right in little neighborhoods. Really? Yeah, also grooming, you know, just going and grooming a little track and skiing right next to the small neighborhoods so kids could just come. Yeah. They didn't have to have oversight, and they could also run home, you know, for the bathroom. So we didn't have to do the frozen porta potty thing. So that worked out really well. Yeah, that's cool. Parents knew where they were, and so we determined next year's ski season we'll be in neighbor each of the little surrounding communities, yeah, across the nation. We have Heart View, Birch Creek, Badger Creek, Two Medicine, Um, East Glacier, uh Star School, uh, Fisher Flat, Seville, St. Marybab, and I'm missing someone. Anyway, we have all of these subcommunities. Oh, Blackfoot, that's it. That's 11. And so when um I'm not sure if we got through the story of when I first created uh Picani Lodge, founded it, you had to be.

AJ: 2:08:45

You have to come to that?

Kim: 2:08:46

Yeah, so I came back from the Himalayas having seen the Mountain Shepherds, um, how they were able to provide jobs for their youth and young adults, and I determined to create that same model here for people who, you know, I have a nephew that dropped out in the sixth grade, another in the ninth. I dropped out in the ninth grade myself and went for 28 years before, you know, um going to school and now have quite a bit more education than that. Yeah.

AJ: 2:09:17

How many degrees you got?

Kim: 2:09:19

Um, so my undergrad was in pre-med and research psych. My master's was in environmental chemistry and biomedical science, and my doctorate uh was in biochemistry, biomedical science, and community and public health. So it was like creator led me through this holistic pattern of everything from the metabolic level, both environmentally and um human uh biology, all the way out to community and public health. So from the pre-med to the biochem to the biomedical science to community and public health, along with land issues management and and uh environmental chemistry. So yeah, that many. I think when you drop out in the ninth grade and work construction for 28 years to support four children, you're really hungry. Yeah. So you get a whole lot of education real quick and bring it home to be a better tool for well.

AJ: 2:10:14

Funnily enough, you know, I I partly relate to that because for me, I had 17 years of schooling from you know preschool through to a scholarship at university through to 21. But felt like I knew nothing and and much more. I mean I knew mechanics of stuff, like business at university and business systems, and and obviously yeah, everything high school teaches you, and so it tests you in. But much less did I learn stuff I was passionate about. Right. So when I when it took a while because I was uh depressed, you know, use that word that you guys don't have in your language. Um, when I was really things were dark for me at that era because nothing was turning the light on. Right. To have then found what I loved, I felt that same hunger.

Kim: 2:11:04

Yeah. So then you found the path.

AJ: 2:11:07

Yeah, well that just that hunger as well. So and it's still what's being lived out even now in this journey, right? It's uh it's just and I I still it was only the day I said to Olivia, to think of 17 years of my life getting educated. Educated. Yeah, exactly.

Kim: 2:11:27

Whoa! Yeah. So these are the in the kitchen. This is why the railroad was put through to annihilate the buffalo and build these this lodge here and at Mini Glacier for Teddy Roosevelt.

AJ: 2:11:42

Yeah, it looks like the one at Grand Canyon. Yeah, as well. Yeah, they're all the national parking system.

Kim: 2:11:46

So you can surely come up here if you'd like. I don't go in there. Um but you are more than welcome to come back because you'll see it's just such a close trek.

AJ: 2:11:56

Yeah.

Kim: 2:11:57

Yeah. So this is the first CR flag. The first business we've ever been able to reclaim here. Yeah. Homemade local favorites. There we go. I think their window dressings need to change though, because nobody ever knows they're open. Well, that's right. It doesn't look like they're open.

AJ: 2:12:17

It doesn't look like it. We can't eat pizza.

Kim: 2:12:21

That's our only one. All the rest is all non. Non, non, non, non. And then we bought this gas station, so this is thriving. Yeah, we took this back for this crazy enormous price, and the people that sold it to us probably just laughed all the way to the bank.

AJ: 2:12:39

Man.

Kim: 2:12:40

Yeah. But hopefully we regroup that money.

AJ: 2:12:44

Yeah.

Kim: 2:12:45

Yeah. And he's the one that owned the grocery store before or that little gas station. Yeah. So now he owns this whole hillside, and he's not from here. You know, he just made good money. Right? This is the two medicine river coming out of there and going down to feed all the way into the Missouri and then into the Mississippi.

AJ: 2:13:08

Wow. It's a beautiful.

Kim: 2:13:10

Yeah, and it's all the farmland east of the nation, east of the Blackfeet Nation, that really reaps the benefit of it. Because we just don't have the infrastructure to use it for irrigation. Which we I don't know how many lifetimes does one have, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to get that in place at some point to be able to use our own water? Because right now everything looks green, but in another few weeks it's going to be so parched and dry, and we're in such severe drought conditions now, although you can't tell it.

AJ: 2:13:47

No, that's right, but I did it at the festival. Worst drought in 50 years wasn't.

Kim: 2:13:52

But we just had some late recent rain, and we just keep praying for it. Which is why you see the green now, but yeah, worst drought in 50 years.

AJ: 2:14:02

You were going to get on to the start of the Picards. Sorry. I distracted.

Kim: 2:14:08

Sorry. So um coming from the Himalayas and seeing this beautiful Mountain Shepherd business model, um, and then with uh being at the university and seeing so much research because for uh doctorate in the States it has to be novel research, something new, something unpublished, and so um a lot of uh grants were being written and careers built on research within Indian communities, indigenous communities, um, but they weren't benefiting anyone in indigenous communities, and careers weren't being built here at home. And so um with being asked to be on the Blyfe Nation Institutional Review Board as well to serve on that board. Um I was seeing just beyond what I saw at one university of taking advantage of us and our people with no uh beneficence for us here at home. Um I became pretty and deeply angry. And I saw um also I walked into the grad school one afternoon, and this woman who was the director of a program at that time called Bridges to the Baccalaureate, which actually was my way to get to the university. It was a beautiful program that that supported, um I didn't have the gas money to drive across the street, much less down to the unit. I'd never even been to Missoula, you know, from just right here, four hours south. And so to go um be a part of this Bridges to Baccalaureate program in a sum in the summer that then um normalized me to Missoula and then campus and you know, navigating the systems of registering for classes and finding financial aid, etc., I don't think I would ever have gotten um as far as I have, you know, Western-based science educationally degree-wise, had it not been for that program. But one day I walked into the graduate school um because I had broken three vertebrae, I was going away to med school, Yale and Loma Linda accepted there, and then all of a sudden I broke these vertebrae and it's like, okay, what are you trying to tell me? And my first grandchild was about to be born, it was like I couldn't leave, and so I that's when I developed the contaminated waste, the research for my master's Maya. Yeah. And so um in in doing that, I had a lot of interaction with the grad school, and I walked in there one day because the director of the grad school was actually on my committee, and I went in to ask him a question, and this woman was standing there with her back to me and telling all these other researchers, research professors, if you haven't um accessed this low-hanging fruit, this Indian money, then you're all fools. You need to. Oh, it was horrible. And Sandy, the director of the grad school at the time, looked up at me. He's like, Kim, you know, he was so embarrassed, so deeply embarrassed. And um for this woman who happened to be the director of the Bridges to the Baccalaureate. Right, who I immediately got a job with so that I could change what was going on within her brain. Cool. And um, unfortunately, she was new to that program and she basically took care of herself and her accountants and changed the program up instead of where it really benefited the students and bringing students to the university system. Um, she was, I ran into her at the grocery store one day, and I was like the co-whatever, she just had me on as kind of a token. But I mean, I did the work. I obviously came out to the different tribal nations and recruited the students for the summer and you know, promised the parents that they would be safe with us. And because back then the rent was paid through the summer, and you got a food card for like $75 a week or something. But once she took it over, it was it was not being run that way. And I ran into her at the grocery store and she had this cart full of like snail shells and and I don't know, these pastes and all this stuff, two carts, her and her accountant. And I'm like, wow, looks like you guys are having a party. She's like, Oh, oh, oh, you didn't get invited. Oh, it's the bridges um party for the administrative, yeah, it was just for them, not for the students, not for, but the students no longer got the $75 a week food. So I had to quit. I like quit the next day. I was done, yeah, done with this woman. And so anyway, I had these experiences, and when I um was close to graduating with my doctorate, I think I completed my credits, completed my dissertation. I just hadn't defended. My cousin asked me to come home and help him write the ARMP, and then I had a side job writing the climate change adaptation plan with a few other authors, and um I I really didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I attended that strengthening the circle meeting that I was telling you about where Robin Walkimer was the um guest speaker. But um at that point, the woman who was the director of that program uh her and I sat down and we completed the nonprofit, you know, um application, and that's how Pecani Lodge was born. And it was really based on um creating jobs, employing these, especially young men who are hard hit with suicide here. You know, they were just left behind a hundred years ago, where women have to be aggressive and get educations to support their children. Men were hunters for 20,000 years. They hunted and they protected us, bottom line. And and so the transition epigenetically for them to, you know, uh go to school or to, you know, there's so few jobs here, right? And so it was my big dream, big vision was to um create this eco-tourism, cultural eco-tourism model after the mountain shepherds in the Himalayas and do study abroads where we're a third world country within a nation, right? Like we're a third world nation within a nation and and let um uh create curriculum so that the study abroad students from Yale or Harvard or Stanford or wherever um would come and you know have an eight-week or a five-week course with us, and and the parents would love it if they were still supporting their um children at university level because uh it would be accredited, give them credits. And so this was the model that Picani Lodge was started on. Well, um, you know, great unicorn with sparkles coming out of the nose and and other maybe the the mouth, I'll I'll leave it there. Um you can't start anything without some kind of funding. Sure, I had the Secretary of the State paperwork that, you know, Picani Lodge was a nonprofit, you know, qualified as a nonprofit, but we didn't have any jobs. We didn't have any how was I gonna start this tourism thing without you know, we didn't have a website, we didn't have anything. And so we wrote up this contract with the Foundation for Food and Ag Research and these beautiful humans back in DC, and this program caught the vision of the traditional diet. And then you could, you could the contract, the work contract was to um help strengthen food systems policy to protect local food systems, is the way we wrote it up, and then the traditional diet. So that was how Picani Lodge began. On the back of that, I had um also because of the suicide challenges here at home. Um I had spent a couple three years with this carrot hanging out in front of my face to make myself finish my doctoral studies. That um as soon as I graduated, I would get to go down into the basement of the chemistry building and write this um vision that I had called Culture and Hope, Culture as Medicine. And so I wrote that up and got it funded. Um, and I ran it under the tribe and created a department under the tribe that was um based on indigenous uh culture as medicine, as as preventative medicine. And so created that program and then, sorry, um ended up uh uh handing it over to my administrative assistant who still has it running to this day, and I focused on the honey lodge after a couple years doing that, putting up lodges, having medicine camps and just uh traditional camps where we taught cutting dry meat and made our protection bags and taught people about the different smudges, and we did all the medicinal and uh traditional plant walks for food, for medicine, for teas, for um we had our elders come in and teach us so much. So, anyway, that's how Pikani Lodge came about and the funding from the Foundation of Food and Agricultural Agricultural Research supported the diet study and back in 2018? 2018? Yeah. Yeah, but then COVID.

AJ: 2:23:15

Yeah, thank you.

Kim: 2:23:16

So everything went. Oh, that's what I wanted to tell you about. That's why we started this conversation was um because we got everyone um together. I think we had about six people employed at the time when COVID hit, and I'm like, okay guys, this is the deal. Um, this is gonna kill us. We we don't have the medical infrastructure, we don't have ventilators, we don't have, this is gonna really, this is gonna hit us hard. What can we do for it not to hit us hard? And I said, what if we start um making up uh hot meals and food boxes and take it out to the 11 outlying communities, especially to our elders and our immunosuppressed, immunocompromised people, so that they do not have to come into town to these two little grocery stores where you could con you know contract very readily uh something uh a disease that you have no acquired immunity to and it could kill you. And so um we put all our work aside. We voted to put our work aside and then people just joined us and volunteered with their cars and then the leadership um and our senior citizens um started cooking the meals and we supplied over 48,000. That's why the refrigerators and the yes, the tables, the stainless work. Um so while while the Eagle Shields um senior center here put all this work into creating all these hot meals a day. We delivered 297 hot meals a day, and um I was in the background because I was so sick on oxygen, getting sicker and sicker because COVID hit me hard as well. Um I was uh just the odds behind the curtain, they called me, and I was just writing all these little state grants that um that uh brought in 2,000 or 3,000 or anyway. Yeah, so that was really the birth of Pecani Lodge was those 48,000 meals and um the 13,800 food boxes, and I was just writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and bringing in a thousand here and five hundred there, and that's how um we met this amazing man out of California who um he called me one day and he's like, him I didn't know who he was, and he said, I have to ask you a question. This young man is down here and he said he worked for you, and you guys are doing this amazing work, and he described everything that we were doing. So this black Ford back here, he described everything that we were doing, but he said this young man, he wanted to donate money to this young man, and I'm like, I'm so sorry to tell you this young man does not work for us. He has never worked for us, and if you donate to him, it would, you know, I d I I I just want you to understand that yes, we are doing this work, but no, this person is not involved. And I'm so sorry because I don't want our people to be thought of in this way. I'm sure this young man has a good heart. I'm sure he's a wonderful human, but no, he doesn't work for us. And so then I don't know, 30 minutes he called me back and he said, Kim, um, I will support this young man in a different way, but it I can only donate to a nonprofit. And from what I've heard and gone up on your website, which was very, very, very primary and still is, um, I want to donate to what you're doing. And so this was our first um actual true donation to help us do what we were doing because people were driving their own vehicles and breaking down their front ends and their rear ends and tearing out their transmissions and you know, nine months through winter to all these outlying ranches. It was a lot of work, and just my nieces were volunteering, my children all volunteered, my grandchildren were putting together all the food bags and food boxes and taking them out locally and you know, delivering them to um to homes in some of our lower rent areas, and just very, very much uh a family and a community outreach thing. There were there were women all across town um making scarves. Uh Bonnie Satchatello out of uh Hopa Mountain um would make a $5,000 donation, we'd buy $5,000 worth of food. Then she made a $2,000, we bought $2,000 worth of material and they were making masks and it was very much a community outreach. And so um the real heart of Pecani Lodge uh was I guess um beating stronger and stronger and stronger, and then we moved from there to um once COVID was we had more understanding and how to stay safe. We I don't know how much hand sanding and gloves and masks we delivered along with foods, and then Christmas came, and so we're delivering bikes and and you know games that could be puzzles that could be Walmart always great us with that sanitizer? I do remember, I do. Oh, it was horrible, yeah. Just trying to keep everyone safe and so that was really the beginning of the heart, and then um realized that we could never really create the beautiful ecotourism model that we wanted to without trying to find some funding, and I think now that we have this land, we're going to be one step closer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AJ: 2:28:38

That is beautiful. Thanks so much for that, Kim.

Kim: 2:28:43

You guys are welcome.

AJ: 2:28:46

That was Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul, founder and ED of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute on Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation, with grandson Trayson and my fam along for the ride. That was our first day together. Our second was to come. Every bit as special with some additional prized company as we made our way to the sacred ground of Chief Mountain and beyond. With great thanks to you generous supporting listeners for making this episode possible. Special thanks this week to Bec Hammersley for keeping the touring van running for the 16 months we ended up in the Americas, as well as being a subscriber for over a year now, alongside Ru Gale and old mate James Tonson. Immense thanks to you all. If you'd like to join us, be part of this great community, get some exclusive stuff, and help keep the show going, we'd love you to. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. You'll find a few photos on the episode webpage too, with more for subscribers as always, including of the wonderful Powwow and North American Indian Days Festival generally. And those Indian relays we'd been hearing about. Wow. For more on the Mika Matters campaign, including This American Life's podcast on the story, I've included a link in the show notes for that too. In deep admiration for the legacy Mika and her family are honouring and creating. And for those wondering, as I was, that Senator was Jon Tester. Finally, Kim, I have Neither Wolf Nor Dog on order. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.