Blackfeet working toward climate resiliency

For Termaine Edmo, Climate Change Coordinator for the Blackfeet Nation, the very name of her tribe harkens back to the buffalo.

“The colonizers saw us doing a thousand-year-old practice, following the drainages and moving the buffalo to where we needed them. We did that with fire. We left everything better than we found it,” Edmo said. The prairie dirt and soot accumulated on the people’s moccasins as they moved, giving them their name.

Now, the Blackfeet Nation is creating policies and partnerships that will rekindle the traditional ecological knowledge that once helped manage their land. In 2018, the Blackfeet Climate Change Adaptation Plan was launched, the first tribal climate framework for providing both land regeneration and the rebuilding of culture, she explained during a recent talk at the annual Waterton-Glacier Science and History Week.

“With that, I really dedicated my time into teaching and into bringing well-being and healing back into our large landscape recovery,” Edmo said. “How we’re doing that is by telling our stories. By telling our stories we are transcribing ceremonies, we’re transcribing songs into natural practices.”

The overall goal of the Climate Change Adaptation Plan is to target agriculture, culture, forestry, land, range, human health and water. The Blackfeet Nation has incorporated snow fencing, regenerative grazing, traditional harvesting and prescribed burning into its practices to meet those aims. Beaver mimicry, meant to improve the Blackfeet’s water, was the first project implemented.

Beaver mimicry, the process of rewilding waterways with small dams to retain water and rebuild streamside habitat, has been utilized in northwest Montana for decades. The Blackfeet implementation gave it a Native spin – incorporating culture and honor into the project so that it intertwines people and the landscape. Blackfeet elders taught the younger generations through stories and experiences about the importance of the beaver to the landscape

“[The beaver mimicry project] was huge, with that we really kept the momentum of traditional ecological knowledge and knew the benefits of the restoration techniques we were using,” Edmo said.

With this summer’s release of free-roaming bison onto tribal rangeland around Chief Mountain, the Blackfeet Nation hopes the land and the herd will be healed. As native grazers, bison are expected to help naturally till the soil through their movements and encourage the growth of native plants.

There are challenges – drought has reduced the vegetation available for the herd to eat, and they are expected to wander in search of food. Since they are free range, where will they go?

“We know that they weren’t going to stay up there, and what food is there they have to fight for with the feral horses,” Edmo said. “So we really did push a lot of our leasing to outside cattle ranchers just to help regenerate, help our area rest, and we also put the buffalo into a secured guardianship area.”

The international guardianship agreement between Waterton Parks and Glacier National Park, as well as the Blackfoot Confederacy, allows bison wandering into the parks to remain under the tribe’s management.

Edmo explained that traditionally, bison have been teachers of patience, humbleness, grievance and community. “They really taught us how to be as human beings,” she said.

The Blackfeet Nation hopes to reestablish that relationship with the bison and the land, as well as their neighbors. Non-tribal members may still participate in programs offered teaching land stewardship, regenerative grazing and beaver mimicry, with more information available at www.blackfeetckimatechange.com or by contacting the Blackfeet Environmental Office.