We stand in a circle on the dusty ground of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative. I am already sweating, even though it is only little after 8 am. After a short while, Jason disappears and his wife Patti, also known as Buffalo Medicine Woman, takes us on a tour of their lands. In the less than three hours that Patti dedicates to us, I learn about buffalos, how much land they need, how they used to be the primary food source for the natives of the area but also role models to follow. I learn about the abundance of medicinal and food plants in a region that so far looked fairly barren to my eyes.
And I learn that being a good leader includes sharing love for the land, the Creator and ancestral knowledge. During two spontaneous encounters between them and a Shoshone and Arapaho elder respectively, there was an almost instant connection, a common understanding. Even though they live thousands of miles apart and in geographically very distinct environments, they share the same knowledge and, sadly, very similar histories.
Be it their experiences in colegios or boarding schools, or their ancestral knowledge, cultural practices and the connection to the land that have been vastly eradicated in both places. Parents in the Amazon as well as in the Great Plains have scolded their children for speaking their language because they wanted them to have a better future than they themselves experienced.
At the same time, getting to know Yellowstone with an Amazonian healer, I learned that knowledge about spirits works similarly in all places. Be it tobacco in Ecuador or cedar in the USA, the plants are teachers and media to communicate with ancestors, as well as an ever-existing possibility to regain and recover lost knowledge and relations.
Predators provide ecological balance and wellbeing. They are part of the great Web of Life - an important part. According to some ecologists, they could even be considered a keystone species, meaning those species that have a disproportionately large impact on their ecosystem relative to their abundance in nature Paine, The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park sparked an awareness of the importance of large carnivores for the balance of ecosystems worldwide — something that indigenous people around the world have known for a long time.
