Receiving Thunder (Part 1 with Kim Paul): Reclaiming land, health & culture

Last week's episode featured a special on-location recording with Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet elder, and founder of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute, Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul. Again, given it was two and a half hours in length, I also wanted to offer it in distinct parts, for those of you who prefer to listen to it that way. 

In this case, two parts presented themselves neatly. In fact, when producing the full episode, I had to stop after an hour and a bit to absorb all that had been shared to that point, especially the last 15 minutes of gripping story there (from which the title to part one here is drawn).

So, part one here extends from my intro (with music Into Thin Air by Hans Johnson), through to that story. Including breaking news of their latest reacquired land and the big vision unfolding there, the extraordinary regenerative agriculture resurgence across the Nation (including the return of the buffalo), broader food sovereignty and enterprise moves, compelling traditional diet research, Kim’s personal stories of her tribal naming and mysterious encounters, a bigger lens to bring to the troubles of today, and of course along the way, we were treated to the spectacular vistas and stories of this breathtaking part of the world in current day northern Montana.

If you’d prefer to listen to the whole episode straight, head to ‘Culture as Medicine: Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul at Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation’.

Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this, and stay tuned in a few days for part two.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 10 July 2025.

Title image: Kim sharing the gripping story towards the end of part one that gives it its title (pic: Olivia Cheng). (Yes, this was all so impromptu, the phone was the unintended recorder - though I did have my wireless lapel mic's to plug in when outside in the wind thankfully.)

See more photos on the full episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

More on the campaign Mika Matters.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting the Stakes: Shifts and Violence
• 0:30 Host Intro and Journey Context
• 2:35 Meeting Elder Kim Paul
• 3:07 Reacquired Lands and Vision
• 3:28 Language Loss and Renewal
• 4:28 Community Kitchen and Indigenous Enterprise
• 5:09 Inclusion in Glacier: Rights and Presence
• 6:00 Walking Path, Lodges, and Pride
• 7:02 Biodiversity, Birds, and Stewardship
• 8:39 Ceremony, Bundle, and Blessing the Land
• 9:51 Allotment, Dawes Act, and Fractionation
• 12:10 20,000 Years on the Land
• 13:35 Youth Access, Horses, and Skills
• 16:30 Wildlife Encounters and Respect
• 18:10 Facilities, Arena, and Community Health
• 19:40 Vows, Prayer, and Continuity
• 21:00 Funding Cuts and Regenerative Pivot
• 21:40 100,000 Acres in Regenerative Practice
• 22:50 Springs, Greenhouses, and Wind
• 24:10 The New Golden Triangle Vision
• 25:40 Traditional Diet Study and Biomarkers
• 27:25 Healing Reports and Ongoing Change
• 29:15 IRB, Research Ethics, and Sovereignty
• 31:20 Geothermal Greenhouses and Learning
• 32:25 Headwaters, Water Rights, and Canals
• 35:10 Names, Identity, and Language Truths
• 36:50 Sovereign Nations, Not Reservations
• 38:15 Systemic Underfunding and Myths
• 41:05 Love, Truth, and Survival Stories
• 44:02 MMIW/MMIP and Demands for Justice
• 47:30 Sky Burials and Cultural Revival
• 49:30 Tourism, Rail, and Ownership
• 52:05 Control, Permits, and Memory
• 54:20 First Fast, Names, and Protection
• 58:20 Thunder Beings and the Wind Stilled
• 1:02:30 Meaning, Protection, and Responsibility
• 1:04:15 Looking Glass Road and Welcome to Her Home

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, Ronnie. 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 Seeyeh 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 Traeson 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 blackfeet. 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 blackfeet 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 winner 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 um 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 Anzik, 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 heenee, 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.

AJ: 13:17

Uh huh.

Kim: 13:18

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.

Kim: 13:49

Yeah. Beautiful. 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. 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. Whoa. So I heard them yelling, but we're like, 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: 16:54

Um 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 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. Oh, yeah, 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 Umscope 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 Savisberry 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 Savisberry 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.

Kim: 22:12

Oh my god, 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 pole, 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, 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 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, uh 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 yeah anyway. 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'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 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, naku eat to peaks, two 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 the 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 is 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 30 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 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: northeast, 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 conversation.

AJ: 39:27

Yeah.

Kim: 39:30

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 I'm 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, it's 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 M M IP 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. Okay, yeah. 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, 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 from 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, 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 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 as 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.

Kim: 52:28

We're 38 miles away from Canada. 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. Big Munch tonight. Yeah, big one tonight, his first one. So his name is uh is uh Strong Mountain. He's a strong 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 crocked 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. Isn't this beautiful? But this is a common thing I hear too, huh? I think even Latrice said it. She 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. Um that I read in the book Healing Ground and then or in 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. And so they knew who I was going to be. Right? And yeah. And how do you say me some safe? That's such a beautiful language to have a lot of fun. 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 Kicking 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. But 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 at all. Maybe 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 um, the second day got up and wanted to get up here 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. 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 man 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 stanking 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've 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-coned 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 f 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 need 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 thunder beings, and that's what that saddle means to me up there with that one bristle cone pine. Yeah. 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. Right. 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, a 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 gonk 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 Goombeek Sea Thunderbird story. And who could have you don't imagine the I mean maybe people with great imagination imagined 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 to 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 keep 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.

AJ: 1:09:38

Oh my god, this is crazy.

Kim: 1:09:46

It's a good day, huh?

AJ: 1:09:48

It's clear and dramatic skies. Welcome to Blackfeet Country. Welcome to Kitani Country. Wow.