The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
The Piikani Lodge Story (Part 2 with Kim Paul): Founding Piikani Lodge, big shifts & an invitation
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. Part one was released earlier this week. And part two here extends from the big shifts Kim sees happening, through to the serendipitous and unlikely story of how Piikani Lodge came to be, along with an invitation to all.
Weaved through all that is a brilliant new program for youth, the place of animals, hunting meat in their culture, the huge Powwow, hopes for co-management of Glacier National Park, recovering Piikani names, more transformational tales, including a pivotal workshop with Robin Wall Kimmerer, the drive for the next infrastructure to leverage positive change, culture as (preventative) medicine, and visits to some of the places Kim holds most dear, here on spectacular Blackfeet Country 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 thanks for listening.
Recorded 10 July 2025.
See some photos on the full episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.
More on the campaign Mika Matters.
Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
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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:Really?
Kim:Yes. Awesome.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim:Isn't that where we go swimming? Yes. Or now.
AJ:Well, it's summertime, yes.
Kim:Like yesterday when it was so hot, like then. Those are the days we go. And maybe tomorrow will be like that. Yeah. What's the big pike there? Cinepaw. 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, 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. 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:But it's the way you said it, it's the reverence that it's held in, isn't it? The love that it's held in, even in the kill. It's a totally different frame of action.
Kim: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 E-Ne, 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: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. What we would say. Yeah. Does that like the freeze?
Kim: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: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.
Kim:Yeah. They are.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim: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. Yeah. 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 I was just gonna say, I feel that.
AJ: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: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:I've been waiting for a grizz.
Kim: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:Is there at least some kind of move to co-manage a place like this, the national park?
Kim: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 Xs 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've 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 tell me you're a traveler. I am. Oh yeah. You're good to go. Okay, thank you. It's so pretty.
AJ: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:Yes.
AJ:You both.
Kim: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?
AJ:Waterfall?
Kim:Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You saw a blue jay. Hey, look, there's a parking place.
AJ:Thank you very much. Thank you very much. See, you're talking about like you pull out music references. Running Eagle Falls. It still has all these big names, huh?
Kim:Even though it's not a big thing. This was one of the first. This was one of the first. It was Trick Falls Forever.
AJ:Oh, really?
Kim: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:Late 19th century? Or mid-betunent century?
Kim:Yeah. So um at the late 19th, early 20th, yes.
AJ:Yes, yes.
Kim: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. Wow. What tree is that? This was just the sap from that pine tree back there. Yeah.
AJ:It's very piney.
Kim:It's very sticky.
AJ:It's very pine. Oh, it smells delicious. Isn't that wonderful? You can have the sticky stuff on this. Oh my lord, look at that waterfall.
Kim:Boy. Oh. Oh, they've already gone down, okay.
AJ:It's all sticky too. Oh, it's just gorgeous, isn't it? Beautiful. So I instantly feel shifted Kimberly to water like this. You feel that too, huh? Yeah. Absolutely.
Kim:They finally fixed the bridge.
AJ:Oh, the colours of the rocks. Yeah. Absolutely amazing.
Kim: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, and uh, she's pretty charging woman. And then uh my other son wanted his daughter, his firstborn daughter, uh long, um, long time charging on the same as me. So it was beautiful. I think we were just having kind of uh a to that conversation. Um before it was very anger inspiring, and because we were treated so poorly in the park, you know, even um 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 so 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 Atabah 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, and my cousin grabbed me, what the fuck? 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, learned anything. Yeah. But how I think of how awe-inspiring and how beautiful it is to go other places. And so you've flipped 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. 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.
AJ:This is the holy berry. Yeah, why?
Kim: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 and our for the ceremony. Or like me, you have them in the freezer.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim:So this is the main berry, our whole main, that and the buffalo, the Eni. Yeah.
AJ:It's brought to mind Robin Wall Kimmer's book on the service berry.
Kim:Oh, yeah. 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 Mountain, 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 the 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 Raiding Sweetgrass on uh audio. Yeah, I haven't read it.
AJ:We listened to it coming across the book.
Kim: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:Yeah. She's certainly moved. Non-Indian folk, you know. She's really reached in powerful ways, I think.
Kim:Oh, good. Yeah. 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. Arias 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 it wounded me. 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 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 them. 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:It takes because yeah, the the temptation, and many would take it to paint yourself as the author in the best possible light.
Kim:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes to own that. Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, it is.
AJ:But but for the better. Like for the better. Yeah, for the better. If you can own your stuff.
Kim: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 look forward to 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 um 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.
AJ:So just trying to inspire. 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:Yeah, I'll show you proton.
AJ:But 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 clamour these days. Like there are places like the ones you're envisioning on that land, they Government numbers.
Kim: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 that we had a crew working on our marketing, you know, our feasibility study for the processing plant, and he is 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 or 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. Like 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 the you know, the best kept secrets left under the road kind of policy of um interaction with native people, our mentality is 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 come 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 are 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:Yeah, I 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:Yeah, it's massive. 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'll 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: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. Well you could do it. There was an old cemetery, sort of almost, I think almost, if not disused, in a in a rural area. Uh we could just go and do it. In a simple pine box. Yeah.
Kim: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 it. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, but please, no hurts and no, you know, all of the expense and more expense and more expense. Yeah.
AJ: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 to a chap.
Kim:Give me a his funeral.
AJ:Yeah. But you can't do that's illegal. Yeah.
Kim:Yeah. You just don't tell anybody, right? You just you just do it. So this is Cinepah. Right here is Cinepaw. This was my grandmother's favorite place as well.
AJ:Really?
Kim:So when she passed, I came and brought her 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 uh 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:Amazing little storms on the snow, right?
Kim:Yeah. And over there just those old ones watching over us. Yeah. Come on, goats. Come on, greasy. 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 a 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.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim: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 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, duh. 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 crickets and the runoff and the beaver dams and the housewater, 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 GMass 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. 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:It's pretty funny how we it's classic reductionism, isn't it? Yeah. But there's a clear pattern and a devastating one.
Kim:Right.
AJ:It's like, ah no, it doesn't quite do it.
Kim:Right. 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:I thought so. Yeah. Take it from here. Oh and of course, where would they propose to put it? Right. Aboriginal community.
Kim: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:Yeah.
Kim: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, it might be one my uh I might be going the wrong way. So your podcasts are what is the name? Is it like your regeneration?
AJ:Oh stories of things that work.
Kim:Mine's all been so negative.
AJ:Let's talk about the good stuff. Yeah, no, we've been talking about good stuff. Don't worry about that. It's been there's been some gold. It's like, oh yeah, this is why you record. Oh 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: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 mansion, right, John? I can't wait to explore.
AJ:Thanks, Kim. Thanks for being interested. Yeah, definitely. 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 the chief said down there.
Kim:What was his name?
AJ:Uh Standing Bear, Chief uh Jeffrey Standing Bear. Yeah, really interesting guy. Doing some great stuff too. Now he's 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 too. Oh, beautiful. And uh they have the heat. They got the heat, and they had the pineapples, would you believe, from Leonardo DiCaprio with 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, um mobile harvesting facility. Yes, you know, all these sorts of things.
Kim: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'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'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 she'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 store, you know, to go to Kalisbell 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. Really? 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:Totally.
Kim: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. 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, or you had to have a good four-wheel vehicle. And so then we started skiing right in little neighborhoods. Really? Yeah, grooming, you know, just going and grooming a little track and skiing right next to the small neighborhoods so kids could just come.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim: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. Mary Bab, 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.
AJ:Yeah, but you already come to that.
Kim: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 grade. 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:How many degrees you got?
Kim: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 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 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: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:Yeah. So then you found the path.
AJ: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. Exactly.
Kim:Whoa. Yeah. So these are 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:Yeah, it looks like the one at Grand Canyon. Yeah, as well. Yeah, they're all the national parking system.
Kim: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:Yeah.
Kim:Yeah. So this is the first CR flag. The first business we've ever been able to reclaim here.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim: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:It doesn't look like that. We can't eat pizza.
Kim: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:Man.
Kim:Yeah. But hopefully we regroup that money.
AJ:Yeah.
Kim: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. 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:Wow. It's a beautiful.
Kim: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. No, that's right.
AJ:But I did it at the festival. Worst drought in 50 years wasn't.
Kim: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:You were going to get on to the start of the Pikachu. Sorry. I distracted.
Kim: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 Blyfeet 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 and was 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, 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 handing it over to my administrative assistant who still has it running to this day, and I focused on the Cunny 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. Yeah, thank you. 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 Oz 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 uh 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, Kim, and 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 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, you always played 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:That is beautiful. Thanks so much for that, Kim. You guys are welcome. That was Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul, founder and ED of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute on Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet Nation, with grandson Traeson 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 Hamersley 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've 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 honoring 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.
