Day 11

July 17^th – Tuesday

Agenda for today:

o   Drove to kaulipel

o   Met with Ray at the Wellness Center

o   Toured  the fishery

o   Visited the caves

o   Had lunch at the powwow grounds

o   Saw the bison

o   Indian creek community forest tour and talk

o   Spoke to Jr the language teacher

o   Roamed the wellness center

o   Dinner at powwow grounds

o   Drove back to camp

The drive over was about two hours in the van. Everyone slept and visited in the car. I personal slept and snored a lot on the way over.

Ray is the Director of Natural Resources for Kaulispel tribe. He wanted to be a vet for a long portion of his life but he didn’t want the bills that came along with the vet degree. Thus he changed his major. He manages all the natural resources. 

We visited the fishery where we met with ___. They recently got a new technology that the techs really enjoyed. They had triple rainbow trout and bull trout, it was super cool. They are working with a professor to teat ways to make the fish latter more attractive to get more fish up river. There were huge tanks full of trout from the mountains and local streams. There are also little fish to adult fish.

Caves were cools but it was a high hike up there. There was an arecalogist his name was Kevin and he shared many good facts and a lot of history about the caves. After the caves we walked down to “the beach” where kevin pointed out natural plants and told us one of the tribes story.

We ate our normal everyday sandwich but at their beautiful powwow grounds.

After we ate Ray spoke to us about the Bison. A Montana tribe gave them 10 bison to start the herd. They have about 7 arces to roam in and when ot floods they have another roaming ground for them. They are beautiful creatures. Ray said that they keep the bison for the tribe and a small percentage goes to production of jerky for non member sales. Ray explained that they are phasing that out so it could just be for tribe and member benefit.

We headed up to Indian creek community forest that the tribe recently purchased through grants and tribal money. They want it to be a focused on education to serve as an outside classroom. they also have a native plants and tree nursey on sit that will be used for restoration projects.

My favorite part of the day was when Ray left the group in jr’s hands. He is the head teacher in the language. They have create curriculum to bring back the native language and now they are implementing native sign language. It was amazing he told us how he gets the language to stick and just took us through the process. They have created huge workbooks on their language. Also he gave us an invitation to share his hard work to continue the language in anyway. He was extremely passionate about the language. I loved it and he gave amazing advise about preservation and restoring.

We finished out day at the wellness center. I swam, got into the steam room, and had an amzing iced latte. It was absolutely wonderful.

Warren provided us with dinner and it was the best. Julie made us Indian Tacos and they were great.

Today was great I got a lot of information. It was short little workshops but they were packed with information.

-       Destiny