Brad Parry, Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation
Episode Description
The Northwestern Shoshone have called Great Salt Lake and the Bear River home for time immemorial. In 2018, the tribe bought back their land at the Bear River Massacre Site, where the U.S. Military murdered an estimated 500 Shoshone people in 1863. Now, the tribe is reclaiming their land and leading a massive restoration effort, including repairing the waterways and planting thousands of native plants. The tribe estimates that these efforts will return 13,000 acre-feet of water annually to Great Salt Lake — with hopes of increasing that number.
In this episode, host Olivia Juarez talks with Brad Parry, Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, about the Wuda Ogwa project and the importance of Great Salt Lake and the Bear River to the Shoshone people.
Resources and references:
"You Can't Erase Us": Shoshone and Ute Connections to Great Salt Lake [Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories Episode 3]
Below is a transcript for Episode 9 of Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories. Listen to the episode on our Podcast page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your podcasts
Episode Transcript
Brad Parry: To get the land back, I mean, that's probably one of the most significant things that's ever happened to us as a tribe. That's the first land we've ever purchased. And to have that back, to have our site back, I mean, it's hard to put into words, it's hard to really measure, but that was probably the most important thing to us to protect that site.
Olivia Juarez: That was Brad Parry, Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. He was talking about his tribe’s purchase of roughly 350 acres of their ancestral lands along Wuda Ogwa, also known as the Bear River.
At this site, on January 29,1863, the U.S. army murdered an estimated 500 Shoshone people in the Bear River Massacre — one of the deadliest massacres of Native people in U.S. history.
Today, the tribe is reclaiming and restoring their land and telling their story on their own terms. Long before the area was a massacre site, it was a place where the Shoshone gathered, danced and camped. Now, the tribe aims to make it a place of celebration and healing once again.
BP: For thousands of years, this wasn't a massacre site. It was a place we came and camped.
OJ: This is the Vice Chairman speaking at a tree planting event at Wuda Ogwa last fall.
BP: We found artifacts dating back three thousand years ago here recently. And so we know that we were here. We would be here to perform the warm dance. That was more than just the dance. It was, I call it a time for gossip, gambling and games. You know, you'd have other Shoshone tribes come in and meet with the North Westerns and everybody would get caught up, you could find your spouse there. Obviously, obviously, we got stick games, Indians love gambling, foot races, horse races, they would do that here. They also come here and do that sort of thing in the summer. And, you know, that sounds like a big, you know, lack of a better term nice pow wow or gathering, and how cool it must have been because that's when you saw your friends and got to catch up. So this was an exciting place. And by inviting you all out and doing this, we want to recapture that. We want to make this place a place to come again.
OJ: In this episode of Stay Salty, we talk with the Vice Chairman about this restoration effort along Great Salt Lake’s largest tributary, the Bear River, about his own connection to Great Salt Lake, and what the watershed means to the Northwestern Shoshone. If you’re eager to learn more after listening, return to episode 3 where we talk with the Northwestern Shoshone’s cultural and history advisor Rios Pacheco.
I’m your host Olivia Juarez, and you’re listening to Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories.
THEME MUSIC
BP: My name is Brad Parry. I currently live in Salt Lake City. I currently serve as the Vice Chairman for the Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation. I also am employed there as the Natural Resources Officer.
OJ: How would you describe your personal relationship to Great Salt Lake?
BP: I grew up in Syracuse, Utah. So I grew up, you know, kind of what we call the Salt Lake bottoms at the time. So I grew up literally watching the lake. I remember the floods of ‘83; I remember Bangerter's pumps, you know, and then the droughts that came in. So I've always been around Great Salt Lake. To me, it just means home.
BP: That's where my people are from. My family, my dad, and all of us, you know, used to take us hunting, just like our ancestors did, in those wetlands, for ducks, and different things growing up as a kid. And so, you know, being able to do the same things my ancestors did in the same same type of area, it always meant a lot when I got to do things like that. And so, my personal recollections of the Great Salt Lake, that's what it is
And the other thing is, it was always full. I remember the drought, going through that. But, you know, as a teenager, it just was always full; the causeway was still flooded out, you couldn't get to Antelope Island. And so that's what I remember. That's my personal connection. Just, it's right there. And we did the same things that our ancestors did.
OJ: So I've never been hunting and definitely not at Great Salt Lake, can you describe to me a little bit of like, what it's like what you're feeling as you're preparing?
BP: For me, it was more, you know, hunting was more cultural and spiritual. You're there with your dad and your uncle and your cousins, and it's a family thing. We didn't shoot a lot of stuff, because I don't think we were very good shots. But just the camaraderie and being out there in those wetlands, you know, waiting for ducks and moving around, and just, I honestly don't remember too many people actually shooting stuff, but I remember the family time together. I remember talking, old Indian stories, and that's what you got out of hunting: it was really more of a communal, spiritual, you got together, more than you wanted to actually kill something. Now, our people back then would have starved if they would have shot like we did. So, you know, they had a real purpose. So we were just trying to enjoy each other and continue on a tradition that was time immemorial.
OJ: What is the significance of Great Salt Lake to the Northwestern Shoshone?
BP: It was a designated spot on the map. I mean, the tributaries and different things that run into the lake, you know, the Bear River, Jordan River, the Weber, all of those things we used for life. We would walk, you moved water to water, freshwater to freshwater. The swamps that it created created hunting opportunities. Up in the freshwater areas, you had deer and fish and you had drinking water. And really, we looked at it for what it would provide. One of the biggest problems with looking at the lake receding is the loss of wetlands. You know, those are extremely important. They're important to us because that meant food. We were a wander gatherer tribe. We needed the salt, and so that was something we would use for trade, that was something we would use to cure meat. And so the lake was an important resource to us. I mean, very valuable. And we were able to use it to sustain our life. And so having that be gone, I don't know if our lifestyle would have been the same. It may have been, but, you know, the things that it provided allowed us to be the So-so-goi, or the people who wander by foot.
OJ: And how would you compare with the Shoshone people's relationship with the lake historically, versus what the relationship looks like today?
BP: This is still in our Aboriginal territory. So we care about the resources and, and the diminishing resources. A lot of our traditions changed when the settlers came in; we didn't travel, we didn't wander like we used to. You know, we used it for points. I mean, in the very north end, where the Spiral Jetty is now today, our people used to gather there for the rabbit hunt. My great, great, great grandfather, Chief Sagwitch, organized those hunts there. His son, Yeager was my grandmother's grandfather, and he told her yeah, we camped right up on the banks of the lake, and went rabbit hunting with all the other Shoshone people that would come in. And that's really what the leader's job was, was to organize these sorts of hunts. And so I mean, just really interesting that we camped on the banks of the north part of the Great Salt Lake. And so they really used it, you know, as a point of reference, as a map point. I don't think we use it like that anymore. Now, it's more of remembering, or for learning more about what our people did there. And so that's why it's important to us, because we're trying to remember and trying to learn those things: Where did our people live and camp, and finding out these stories is really what's important to us. And so that's how the lake is important to us, is because it helps us define our history and the story we can tell.
OJ: And a part of that story, and the waypoint and the way of life is the whole watershed, right? And so I want to ask if you could talk a little bit about the importance of the Bear River to the Shoshone people.
BP: Yeah, that was probably one of the, if not the most important, waterway for the Shoshone. One of the top three or four. You know, we camped all along the Bear River, you know, where the Bear River Massacre site is, you know, that's right on the Bear River. You would walk the Bear River down, and we would camp in Corinne and we would camp in Brigham City, you know, the Horseshoe Bend there. So the Bear River, when we talk about stories and places we camped, the Bear River was always, always there. It had fish, it had game. I mean, it was just, it provided water to the fields, where we could pick seeds and berries, chokecherries, serviceberries. And at that time, you know, it was probably really cold, clear, clean waters. You know, a lot of trout, if you have a lot of trout, you have a lot of eagles, you know, that's important to the tribe. You have those sorts of things, you have deer, you have drinking water, you can move from place to place. And so the entire watershed of the Bear River is where we lived. That's basically our, most of our Aboriginal territory is that watershed and so, to try and define the importance of the Bear River, I mean, I don't know if it can actually be stated just because we don't survive without it.
OJ: How do you think colonization has impacted the northwestern Shoshone’s relationship to Great Salt Lake, the Bear River and the whole ecology surrounding?
BP: Our lifestyle ceased. At a certain point it wasn't wandering and gathering. The channelization of the watershed with irrigation ditches and streams, you know, the pioneers they had to make a living, they had to eat to deal with sorts of things, and so they created channelized systems. I don't know if they understood exactly what that would mean for the future: Degraded water quality, a lot of water loss, and we're seeing that today. The Bear River used to hold what was called Bonneville cutthroat trout, and it just can't because of the water quality. There's certainly a lot less water quantity. We see less and less wetlands; we see less and less waterfowl; we see less riparian birds; we see less deer and those sorts of things. And so it's really impacted those aspects that are important to us. And then, you know, we would gather chokecherries, like I said, serviceberries, and we just, we don't do a lot of that anymore. And so we had to become farmers to survive. And that lifestyle, it’s led to you know, to most of our people during World War II living in Clearfield and Sunset and Brigham City to work for the war machine, the War Department. And so we got away from our lifestyle. We've never had a reservation; we had a little townsite in Washakie that we lived in. But that's no more and so our people literally had to assimilate into society. And we weren't gathered together on a reservation, and so a lot of our language and customs and things got lost. There was so much colonization, we just didn't have a place to go. And so we went into society, as members, and in some ways, that's really good. But culturally, it's hard to hold on to those things. If you're not together, you know, in that sort of community, holding your community events, having your schools, having your churches. When you're spread out, you know, it's hard to gather back in because people get busy. And so I think that's probably the biggest impact is, it's been really hard to maintain that sort of culture and all sorts of stories for our kids. And we're trying to regain that now.
OJ: Can you talk a little bit about, like, the history of why the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation doesn't have a reservation?
BP: it goes back to the site. You know, the Bear River massacre site. It's north of Preston, a few miles, Preston, Idaho. At the time, it was basically Utah territory, Cache Valley, in 1863. We would camp there every winter. That was one of our major camping sites in the wintertime and other people would come in. And so the Bear River Massacre on January 29, 1863, really demolished our, the Northwestern Band. Our little band lost about 500 people that day. And moving forward from there, we started entering into treaties. The peace treaty 1863 of Box Elder, 1868 of Fort Bridger Treaty, which ceded our lands to the United States. In the treaty, it was promised the tribes would receive reservations. The Eastern Shoshone and Arapaho were put in Wind River; the Bannock and Northern Shoshone were put up at Fort Hall; the Goshutes, you know, at Skull Valley and Ivanpah. The Northwestern Band, just never… you know, up there in that area, we weren't from Fort Hall, we weren't from the Easterns. You know, everybody else, you know, those bands got reservations in their territory, which we said we want Cache Valley, but Cache Valley was way too important to the settlers and to everybody, because that's literally the best place to, you know, raise cattle and grow things. And so we were never going to get that. And so we just wandered.
And the government basically just forgot. I mean, there was a couple of executive orders that gave us a reservation, one was in Karlin farms in Nevada, about 500 acres, but they deemed it unlivable. And so the executive order was rescinded. And that's really the only time that someone has approached that. And so we just never had that placement.
Like I said, that's in some ways good, in some ways not so good. We were to the point of like starvation and wandering and no place to go. And you know, Brigham Young and the Mormon Church said, well, here's 16,000 acres. You guys can go live there, be farmers. You know, by that time, most of our members had joined the Mormon church. And so they lived there at a town site. To them, that was the reservation, but they didn't have the restrictions. You know, we had our own school where our own people taught. We had our own church, we had those sorts of things. And so I can think that that was a really good time. But you know, that went away. Like I said, when the war hit, our people kept those homes as second homes, and would still go beet gathering, chokecherry, we did all those same sorts of things, and those around that didn't understand what we were doing, thought they had been abandoned. So the land had been sold and the homes were burned in the 1970s. And so a lot of our people, even some who are living today, remember their home up in flames, watching it. And, you know, that was another place we lost. And from there, we just don't have a reservation, and so we were likely mostly forgotten from the federal government because I think they just figured, “Well they're under the control of the Mormon church.” But it leads us to today where we're bringing it back up saying, we've been forgotten for 160-170 years. Let's start getting back on the same page.
MUSIC BREAK
OJ: A few years ago, your tribe was able to buy land back at the Bear River Massacre site, and now there's a massive restoration effort underway. The project is called Wuda Ogwa. So first, what does Wuda Ogwa mean? And what does it mean to you and your tribe to have your land back at Wuda Ogwa?
BP: Yeah, so Wuda Ogwa is just a literal translation of Bear River: Wuda is bear, Ogwa is river. It's often referred to as Bio Ogwa, or big river. But we also refer to the Jordan River as Boa Ogwa, the Snake River as Bio Ogwa. I mean, we didn't get super creative with the names. It's more about place. And so you will also see it listed as Boa Ogoi, which is more of a spiritual term of gathering in that specific place. And so, that term to our people is not proper to use for the marketing and the applying of grants and stuff like that. So, we just decided everybody's called it the Bear River Massacre. Let's just call the site and the project Wuda Ogwa, Bear River.
And that was important to our people. To get the land back, I mean, that's probably one of the most significant things that's ever happened to us as a tribe. That's the first land we've ever purchased. And to have that back to have our site back, I mean, it's hard to put into words, it's hard to really measure, but that was probably the most important thing to us is to protect that site. And so that's what it means to the tribe and to the tribal people is that's a place that we can now reclaim. We can now do a reclamation project on that and retell its story in the most original terms. That's what it means to us is, that's showing our culture, that’s showing who we are by buying that. We've been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting all these years to do it. And we finally were able to do that.
OJ: Is the LDS church involved at all in Wuda Ogwa’s restoration?
BP: Yeah they are actually, they've donated over a million dollars in funding. Their historical department is working with us on finding names of survivors, because of the impeccable records that they kept from the Washakie Ward. And so they've donated a lot of time and material and funding.
OJ: What has the restoration work at Wuda Ogwa entailed?
BP: We bought it in 2018. My cousin Darren Parry was chairman at the time, and he did a really great job of being able to get the land and cultivate those things. He had said, you know, what can we do here, and we looked at it ecologically. The first thing that people had talked about when we bought the land was a building, an interpretive center. And we thought, “Yeah, that's nice. That's nice.” But that's, you know, when you're talking to a tribe, it's more about, well, we can teach our culture better off the land than inside of a building. And so our focus kind of turned to, okay, how do we heal this land? Because it's totally different than when our ancestors lived here, completely different. So the first thing we saw were thousands and thousands and thousands of Russian olive trees. And so that's the first thing that we started, was to remove the invasive species: Russian olive, crack willow, thistle, things like that that shouldn't be there, that weren't there when our people were there. And then revegetate them with things that would have been there: cottonwood, willows, milkweed, cattails, chokecherries, you know, sumac. Things that we were able to use, to live off of.
And that was really the first part of it.
As we started doing that, we started seeing other opportunities as we were clearing away these massive trees, and realized that we could take the old Battle Creek where the massacre occurred. At the time it was called Beaver Creek, given the name by the fur trappers that would come and stay with us there and the cache of beaver that used to be in there. After the massacre it was called Battle Creek. But that creek used to run naturally and meander over what is now Wuda Ogwa. That has all been channelized and run so they could flood irrigate from certain positions and have enough land to raise their crops for, I think it was always used as grazing land for cattle and horses. And so that was the next thing we said, well, let's tackle this, let's move the channel back into its original spots to run and let it work itself out. Let mother nature decide what the best route is from here to there because she had done that before. And apparently really well, because you know, that was a popular camping spot not only for us, but fur trappers and, and many other people. There was a reason people wanted our land. And so that's been our next piece is to just release the water back into the system naturally, and clean up the area.
Where we are in the Bear River watershed, Battle Creek is the largest non-source point sediment loader to the entire Bear River watershed. So we have the dirtiest water in the entire watershed. And so doing this will hopefully clean up some of the water. You know, we need to work with our neighbors north, but that's what we've been doing. You know, we're really trying to find ways to conserve water.
But, you know, just being able to bring back medicine plants is another thing, we'll set aside certain acreage as little little farms for Indian tobacco, spearmint, Cedar, just things that we use in ceremony, sage, and teach our kids, this is what we use this for, this is what this plant was used for. And have our own nursery to replenish what we would have. And so that's something important. But that's really what it is, to go back in time, basically that's what our goal is, is to show people what it could have looked like, you know, prior to colonization, here's what our people mostly would have seen with the river in the water. And that really gives you a sense of how people and why people camped there. But just to try and be as natural as possible is our goal, and taking it back in time is really our thought.
OJ: Can you talk about how restoring native species in lieu of these invasive or introduced species is going to lead to the cleaner water and more water getting down the river?
BP: Yeah, so a Russian olive tree, if you Google or ask a biologist, it takes away 75 gallons of water a day from the system that just never gets put back. It holds on to that water. So it can't be used. It kills the oxygen for fish. It grows rapidly. It's in the way. It really pollutes your water, and it drops its seeds, and they go downstream. And so if you think we have a couple 100,000 Russian olive trees, because they grow in the riparian zone, we take those out, that's 75 gallons of water a day from each tree that's going to go back into the Bear River. And it'll be cleaner because we'll replace it with, you know, the cottonwoods and a lot of willows and cattails and those sorts of things and those things help clean the water, those things help promote fish and promote birds. And they use the water more effectively, you know, there's not the water loss.
The Russian olive and the invasive species add to bank erosion. And so the banks are eroding, you know, people are running cattle up and down and so all this sediment that's coming down the system doesn't have a place to settle out it just goes in a straight channel. And so we, on our property, are gonna run meanders. We're trying to reintroduce a bunch of beaver back into that system because beaver dams clean water. It’s a filter.
And so the water becomes cleaner, and more plentiful. We're using it in a different way, we're not going to lose as much as we are, we figure we're losing about 50 to 60% of our water that's not getting to the Bear River, before it even gets to our land. And so creating these sorts of things will allow us to cut down on water loss.
OJ: So, all of these restorations are connected to Great Salt Lake because it's the same watershed. Right? So how much water do you think the tribe will return to the Bear River and thus Great Salt Lake?
BP: That's a good question. You know, when we started the project, it was for us. We knew that it would have positive benefits downstream, but the excitement over trying to restore the Great Salt Lake hadn't quite hit yet. And when it did, that's when some of our plans were like, let's go bigger, you know, let's, let's do more, let's try to get more funding. Let's talk to more people. Because if we can do that, then we'll support the Great Salt Lake, and that became very important to us really quickly.
We've been the beneficiary of grants from the Bureau of Reclamation, from the US Department of Agriculture, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Utah Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited. You know, just a lot of different organizations that are donating time and money. Sageland Collaborative here in Salt Lake that's going to come out and do our beaver dams, but has also helped us write grants. And Proctor and Gamble is one that has also donated money and entered into grants with us, and they sent their scientists out from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation with our plans of what I just told you, of everything that we're doing, and they calculated that the savings that we would be able to send to the Great Salt Lake would be about 13,000 acre feet per year of water. And so it's the largest independent ecological restoration project in the Bear River watershed.
Funny story, when we first applied for our USDA grant, I did get a call from some of the head departments that were deciding on whether we could have this grant or not. And they're like, “Hey, you've been picked, but we just have a few questions.” So they just said, “Do you know what you're doing?” I said, “Excuse me?” They're like, “Do you realize what you're doing?” I said, “Leveraging water and land to create a better ecosystem. Yeah I know what I'm doing.” And they said, “Okay.” And I said, “Why do you ask?” And he says, “We don't have people that do projects like this. It's all about their farm and upgrading, and you guys are actually taking grazing land and turning it back into restoration. That's what we want. I just wanted to make sure.” And I said, “Listen, I worked for the Bureau of Reclamation for 20 years, I understand exactly what we're doing. Yeah, no farming community would do this,” I said, “but we're an Indian tribe.”
And we don't cultivate cattle and grass and those sorts of things. And so it's either let the land sit and our people are just there, or it's let’s do something about it. And now there's bigger reasons to do something about it. And it's becoming more and more urgent.
We'll be donating more water, leasing more water to the Great Salt Lake than any other for lack of a better term, irrigation company, because we can. And that's not to say that, because other irrigation companies and things like that can't do what we have, because that's their livelihood. You know, they need that ground, they need to use water. But we have an opportunity to try and make up for some of those things. You know, hey, let us take this on, you know, let us improve our lands so you don't have to. And so that's really important to us. And now that's, you know, one of our goals: Is how much can we conserve, to enter into the Bear River? We're unique in that we're the last user on our system. And our water runs straight into the Bear River. And so we'll know exactly how much we're sending. But from those previous calculations, like I said, it was about 13,000 acre feet of water per year that could go to the Great Salt Lake.
OJ: And how long in the future do you expect that the 13,000 acre feet will be let back into Salt Lake?
BP: Hopefully our plan is to increase that number. This is just for stuff we're doing on our property. We're trying to speak with landowners that are north of us and trying to collaborate with them and saying, listen, you know, this riparian corridor, you know, these banks, they're eroding, you don't really use them. And we're trying to form relationships where we come in and say, we'll come in and remove the Russian olives, we'll plant native plants here so it's better land. And if you let us put in these meanders, it's going to help everybody downstream. And so hopefully, that number goes up is our goal, and that water becomes cleaner and cleaner.
The project has to last 50 years, according to the federal grant standards, you have to build it to last 50 years. And so hopefully, it lasts that long. And we just have to do minor updates on our own property. But if we're allowed, if we have enough people that want to coordinate with us, and just let us come out, and just give us access to the property to do what we're doing. But along the Battle Creek corridor, we can really improve the water quality and water quantity because there won't be as much loss, and so hopefully, in the future, we can look at and say well, now this section of the watershed is sending 17,000 acre feet, 20,000 acre feet. So that's really our ultimate goal. We're looking in the future.
MUSIC BREAK
BP: We look at it as we want to be good neighbors, we want to be good residents. We understand that this is a problem for everybody. And like I said, we didn't start out with that goal of hey, let's try to save the Great Salt Lake, it was really we had a piece of land, and how do we honor our ancestors the best. And it was, well, let's improve, let's improve the land, you know, give them you know, lack of a better term, a nicer cemetery to be at, and honor them that way. But everything has a cause and effect. And ours were all positive going downstream.
And we were grateful for our neighbors downstream and for the state of Utah, to say, Hey, if you guys kind of did this, this would really help out. What do you think? And that's when we said, let's just go bigger, you know, let's do as much as we can, because it became a problem for us. And we're concerned about the community. You know, we're concerned about our neighbors. We live amongst these people, you know, it's not like we have our little spot where we go and reside. I mean, our people are within the community. And so we see our community, neighbors and friends and say, hey, how can we help you? What can we do? And so because we know that we can we feel like we have an obligation to do that, to help out. Because, you know, it's just not white people that have to leave if the Great Salt Lake goes away, I mean, it's us too. And so, people talk about Native Voices, and, you know, Native this and then it turns into a whole land back, and really what it is, is about people helping other people, cultures coming together. And so, we just want to help out the community any way we can and be seen as helpers.
You know, a lot of talk about land acknowledgment. Really, this is the Northwestern Band of Shoshone territory. It's our responsibility. Yeah, other tribes, you know, have lived and come through here, and they're acknowledged, but this is our home. And it means more to us to take on that responsibility, because it's within our Aboriginal territory. And so any way we can help is really what we're looking at. It's not really, you should adopt a Native view, or you should, you know, listen to the Natives. It's, you know, we should all be listening to the best ideas, we should all be listening to what can help and what's going to benefit. And so far we've seen nobody say that we're going to be, you know, taking away from the Great Salt Lake and so as long as we continue to do the right things, hopefully we can keep that sort of community momentum going. I mean, I've been invited to be on watershed councils, watershed boards. You know, I've met with irrigation companies, and that's just normally not the practice to involve the Native community. But they're doing it. And it's wonderful to be able to collaborate.
My group of guys is probably some of the best contractors west of the Mississippi. These guys have worked all over and have done projects like this. And so when people see us and you know, “How come you guys are so successful?” It's like, well, first of all, we put together a group that could think this out, and we want to donate that back. So if other irrigation companies, they're like, “Well, how do we do this?” We're happy to donate our time to help them create a project that would be helpful for the Great Salt Lake. And that's really our goal is just to be stewards. And to assist and to listen, you know. It's not Indian tribes versus farmers. It's not the state versus the farmer. It really should be, what's the best? What's the best way to do this? What can we do?
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OJ: Before Brad was overseeing the restoration work at Wuda Ogwa, he worked on water projects throughout the Colorado River Basin with the Bureau of Reclamation. We chatted a bit about how this experience prepared him for the current work he’s doing with his tribe.
OJ: How did your work at the Bureau of Reclamation inform what's going on at Wuda Ogwa?
BP: Because I knew who to call, what to do. My last decade that I worked with the Bureau of Reclamation, I was in the Colorado River Salinity Control Program, which includes the seven basin states in the area that are all within the Colorado River watershed. And, you know, there's all sorts of issues on the Colorado River. I had seen Russian olive issues, I'd seen water quality issues, water loss issues. And so I actually assisted in a grant program where, you know, I would write the funding opportunity announcement for people to apply and come in and was able to grade and be on those things to select projects. And so I knew how that worked. And I knew what could be done with land and with water.
We would encourage people to get together and create one large bank of mitigation: remove Russian olives, plant natives, you know, improve your springs, have water features, create bird habitat. And that's exactly what we're doing. And so I'd seen it done before. And I was able to work with those archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists. And that's how I met my engineer that works for us, Brian Andrews. He was an engineer on some of those projects that I ran. And I just always told myself, if I ever leave, that's the engineer I want, is honest, just hardworking, knows what we're doing. And so I call on him and he says, “Well I got a biology firm, you know at bio West.” And I met a couple guys, Darren Olson and Bob Thomas from Bio West incorporated out of Logan.
The week, I left my job to come work for the tribe. I mean, I mean, I was giving up a federal career. So I was pretty nervous. And we're standing out there on the site, the four of us together, looking over it kind of just charting out, hey, what, you know, we're all kind of new to each other. And we didn't really know each other. But there was a bond that does kind of that kind of said, Hey, let's let's try to tackle this. And within a week, we had written our first grant. And we almost got it, you know, they came back and they're like, “Uhhh”. And I’m like “ We get it, we're new.” But it gave us a year to improve. And we've received several grants that since then, with the same crew and Tyler Alred from Alred Restoration is really our fifth guy. And he's one of the best river restoration people in the country. I mean, he's, you fight for his time. And he was willing to jump in. And they've all worked on reclamation projects before and knew what to do. And so they know the rules and the advantages.
And that's one advantage that we have is, I was able to work there. I know the people, I know the processes, and I know what can be done and I have an understanding of what to do. But we still need those experts to help guide us. And we’re just grateful. We have guys that are honest and open and have experience. It would have been hard to do if the tribe was just trying to do it by itself; we couldn't do it.
OJ: The Vice Chairman told me about numerous partners and leaders that came together for this restoration effort that the Northwestern Shoshone are leading: federal and state agencies, contractors, university students. The list goes on and on!
BP: Secretary Haaland is amazing. You know, we know the assistant secretary Brian, doing really well. And Secretary Vilsack, for the U.S. Department of Ag is so Indigenous, driven. Like he wants indigenous projects, and it's just been great.
The collaboration, you know, everybody wants to be involved. When you have out there, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Reclamation, Ag, all together at the same thing, working for the same goal, that's cool. To the point where the US Geological Survey has called us and like, how do we get in on this? You know, BLM, “How do we assist?” I mean, people are calling us now instead of us calling them which is kind of unprecedented. And then the work with the states, I mean, the Bear River Commission has come out and toured our site. And that's made up of three states. We're able to work with Joel ferry, we're able to work with Jay Shirley. Utah DNR has become a really good friend.
I never saw this as a federal employee where a state, a tribe, and the federal government, were all on the same page on a water project. You know, somebody usually had some sort of heartburn over what was going to happen, but we all collaborate really well together. And that's what's unique. And that's what's important. When I walk away from this thing, and look back, I'm gonna look back and like, man, everybody came together, which is fabulous.
So a lot of questions I used to get were, “are you guys finding any resistance to your project?” No, we're not. We're actually trying to tell people, “Hey, that's, that's a little much for us right now. If you can be patient, we'll get back to you, we'll get back to your organization.” And that's a great problem to have.
OJ: This deep and broad collaboration is new for the Northwestern Shoshone. It’s created jobs for tribal members and the larger community, as well as opportunities for students and volunteers.
BP: It's caused our office to grow, it has caused, you know, to create more jobs within our office. it's created more exposure to the tribe.
But yeah, we've never seen this level, it's a little overwhelming at times, because how do you handle this? With all these people trying to help? You know, I mean, usually it's the opposite. Why won't anybody help us? And now it's like, man everybody's trying to help, who do we let in first? You have to try and manage that. And the longer these sorts of projects go on, the larger the tribe is going to grow and the tribal operations are going to grow. We're in a position we've never been in, and so hopefully we're handling it fairly well.
For the local economy, we've been using local contractors, local cement, concrete people for the diversion, pretty much local everything. The other thing is we've been able to work with Utah State and University of Utah, get the schools involved and their kids are coming out and having class right on the site. I mean, it's a living classroom. And we're happy to have that because they give us these sorts of things. And hopefully that will help them in their careers and in their futures.
As we start to do more work, yeah, it will, it will create more jobs and more opportunities to maintain and sustain those sorts of things. And yeah, it's a lot. It took three years of hard work. And now we're to the point where like, oh, man, we actually get to start to see fruits of our labor. And yeah, we've been able to have the community engagement, community involvement people around and be able to work on it. People volunteering time, it just really is more of a communal, hey, we can't do this without all you, and hopefully it's had a positive effect on the community as a whole.
OJ: Volunteer time put thousands of seedlings into the ground in November, right?
BP: Yeah we planted about 10,000 native trees last year. About 1500 with an Eagle Scout project that went on during the summer. And then we had taken cuttings and grown our own cuttings at a nursery and had about 8500 native plants put in in one day, with about between 300-350 volunteers. We're looking at planting an additional 290,000 native plants! And so our volunteer efforts, we're glad that people want to do it. But we're going to really try and start to ramp those things up. Because we have so much to do, and so many things to plant.
OJ: The Northwestern Band will host planting days at Wuda Ogwa again on November 1 and 2, from 10 am-2 pm each day. We’ll put a link to the RSVP form and the Northwestern Band’s website in our show notes.
MUSIC BREAK
OJ: What do you hope people learn from your tribe and the work at Wuda Ogwa?
BP: One that we're still here. We're still a tribe. We're still among you. We're still operating. We haven't gone away. That's the first thing, is to recognize that our people are still here. To recognize that we continue our culture, we still have these cultural beliefs, we still want to teach about land use and about plant use, and about animal use, and respecting that, and not taking it for granted. And that we are part of the community, that we don't want to be an Indian tribe versus everybody else; we want to be, like I said, good residents, good neighbors, and we want people to recognize that. And we want to be able to offer help, and we want to be able to accept help. And really, that's the best way to teach our culture, is by doing those things, is having people come out and volunteer with us, having people come out and learn about the project. If you learn about that, you learn about our history, and you learn about who we are and who we've been and who we're still trying to be.
We're planning a trails project out there. So the general public can come and walk the site, and read about these plants and animals and rocks, and that it was a former beach head of the Lake Bonneville, where the massacre happened, but really just learn about us in a four mile walk. You know, that's really what we want to take away from that is that, “Hey, we're still here in your community, we want to be a positive influence on the community.”
And we want people just to learn about our history, learn about where you're from, that always kind of helps. You know, when people ask me about the Great Salt Lake, like, “What's your connection?” I grew up, get up in the morning, look outside, and there was a Great Salt Lake. I have that connection, because I literally grew up there. And so it's easy for me to understand what we need to do to help the lake in, you know, surviving. Even if I wasn't a member of the tribe and had Native beliefs that were shown to me about land and land use, I would still be trying to be part of this whole movement because it’s the time and place for me. And so if people can just recognize that we want to help, we want to help this land too. But just learning about who we are, I think is really the most wonderful thing that other people can take away from this.
THEME MUSIC FADE IN
Meisei Gonzalez: If you like what you’re hearing, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories is an “Of Salt and Sand” production. We explore what it means to stay in Utah through economic transition and climate crisis by producing multimedia projects with, by, and for impacted communities.
OJ: The Producers are Maria Archibald, Amelia Diehl, and Brooke Larsen. Podcast cover art is by Frances Ngo. Our Visual Director is Jeri Gravlin. Ashley Finley and Katherine Quaid are our Event Curators. Music is by Amelia Diehl. We’re your hosts Olivia Juarez
MG: and Meisei Gonzalez.
OJ: This project is funded by grants and foundations which you can find on our website. Today we thank two donors: Jayd O’Neal, Robert Padilla. Gracias! Please join them in supporting our work by donating at lakefacing.org. You can learn more about the podcast on our website and on instagram @OfSaltAndSand. Until next time…
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