For The Wild

Bringing us to the Wind River Reservation, this week’s guest, Jason Baldes, shares his work to bring back wild Buffalo to Wind River and to rematriate land to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. Jason offers his deep wisdom about the ecological, spiritual, and cultural importance of Buffalo.Jason’s work with the Wind River Tribal Buffalo initiative has already had an immense effect. The physical and cultural landscape of the so-called United States is steeped in a colonial worldview, but work like Jason’s is changing the tides and aligning conservation with long-standing Indigenous values. This healing work honors those ancestors who had Buffalo, land, and ritual stolen from them by the United States government. Jason, an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Land Resources & Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, where he focused on the restoration of Buffalo/bison to Tribal lands. In 2016 he spearheaded