Overcoming the Legacy of White Settler Genocide By Bringing Back the Buffalo w/ Jeremy Kuzmarov

Speaker 1: You remember Din-Din-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rifle. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on them.

Henry Hakimaki: Hello and welcome to Guerrilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Hakimaki, unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussain, who of course is a historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, today as he is traveling. So I will be hosting this one solo. However, listeners, we have a terrific returning guest, although it's been about three years since this guest has been on the show. So those of you who are relatively new listeners may not know that he's been on the show before, but he has been and we'll be bringing him back on. Before I introduce the topic and our guests, though, I would like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash podcast. Gorilla History, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A, History. And you can find the show on various social media platforms, which if you just look for Gorilla History with two R's, you should find them. Although we're not super active these days because sanctions make it hard for me to log on. various social media platforms. With that being said, I am going to introduce our guests now. We have, again, returning after about a three-year absence, Jeremy Kuzmarov, who is managing editor of Covert Action magazine, author of The Russians Are Coming Again. Jeremy, last time we had you on, it was to talk about sanctions as war. It's great to see you again. How are you doing?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: It's great to be back. Yeah.

Henry Hakimaki: So, like I told you before we hit record, I have been following your work for these intervening years. And of course, I'm a fan of covert action and your work more specifically. But we're long overdue in having you back on. I had recently seen a piece that came out from covert action, which was... set to be timed to come out at the same time as so-called Thanksgiving week and to commemorate Native Heritage Month, you had a piece come out in covert action titled Blackfoot Nation Tries to Overcome Legacy of White Settler Genocide by Bringing Back the Buffalo. And this article really caught my imagination for a few ways, which I think that we'll talk about over the course of this interview. But I want to open this by having you discuss a little bit What brought this issue of bringing back the buffalo to your attention?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, this was a film I just went to. There's a repertoire theater near where I live, so they had this film being screened with the directors, so it seemed like a very interesting event. And, you know, I teach American history, so I cover that period in the late 19th century, Indian Wars, in my course. So it's a familiar history to me. I've read some books. I have Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Wrote a very good book called An Indigenous People's History of the United States. And she has some discussion of that in the larger history that she chronicles. And this film, yeah, it was a very good film. You know, it humanized the story and it showed the efforts of the Blackfeet Nation based in Montana to bring the buffalo back. And it really emphasized the significance of the buffalo to their communities, you know, historically, that it was part of their, I mean, not just a way to hunt and, you know, eat and survive, but it was part of the fabric of their community. And they kind of viewed the buffalo as part of their community and almost part of their family. That kind of comes out in the film. And of course, you know, the white settler is just so the other callousness and genocidal intent to just destroy them and their whole way of life. and you know blatant act of ecocide and i think the article on the film uh you know surveys some of the history and the article i did that some photos that i found online of these uh excuse me some you know historical websites where you see these buffalo hunters just like gleefully and they've slaughtered you know thousands of buffalo And I don't know how anyone could get any, you know, I mean, that's real perversity. I mean, but it's real dirty work. And, of course, there's a story, and I've had a lot of students who have done term projects on the Buffalo Soldier. They often sent the, you know, African-Americans to do a lot of that dirty work of just slaughtering buffalo. And they slaughtered huge, huge numbers. And that was part of the echo side and way to destroy buffalo. the native communities. So this is very significant that they're trying to bring back the buffalo and revitalize their way of life.

Henry Hakimaki: And so, Jeremy, you mentioned this film, which is called Bring Them Home. And listeners, you can find Bring Them Home on PBS's YouTube channel. The whole film is available on there. It's under the title, even though the film is titled Bring Them Home, you should search for Blackfoot Strive to reintroduce Buffalo after 100 year absence or something along those lines, because that's what they have the video titled as on YouTube. But in any case, I also watched that film and found it also quite humanizing. And of course, it talks about a lot of the statistics that I already knew with regard to the absolute genocidal intent of the buffalo. And, you know, you use the word ecocidal, but like really it is also a genocide of a creature which is native to that land. And I had remembered this number also when I was studying American history in school. And this number has stuck with me since then. So we're talking like 15 years after after the fact, which is that. At the time that the settlers started moving in, there was 30 million buffalo in the United States. By the time this program of extermination of the buffalo took place, there was less than 1,000 left. So from over 30 million to less than a thousand within one generation as a result of a planned elimination of the species. So the question for a lot of our listeners, and of course, many of our listeners to this show aren't based in the United States or Canada, so they may not be as familiar with this history, particularly those listeners may be thinking to themselves, what is the justification? What is the reason? What was the purpose of eliminating a species, a keystone species in this environment? Why did the white settlers try to wipe out the buffalo population? And of course, this is intricately tied with the efforts to exterminate the indigenous population. So Jeremy, can you talk a little bit about the intent here? What is the intent of eliminating the buffalo and what was the impact of eliminating the buffalo on the indigenous communities who, as you mentioned, were highly reliant on the buffalo, not only for food, but basically for every aspect of their lives, whether that was shelter, whether that was food, whether that was even culture.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, yeah, and the film is worth watching because it underscores that. And, you know, as far as the question of intent, I mean, the intent was clearly to destroy these societies because, you know, it was all about land and resources. You know, they inhabited the chief choice land that was beneficial to the white settlers and expanding American nation as far as taking over the, you know, building the railways. as far as the mineral wealth that was thought to be based on that land. The oil, when wells was discovered, there was oil, there was other mining that they could, and projects that they could develop, or just for farming, fruitful agricultural land. and the building of the railway to interconnect the American economy. So they had to be destroyed and weakened, devastated, and then moved from that land onto reservations and the fabric of their society destroyed because they were, I guess, a threat. And they were framed as terrorists because if they would fight back, they were branded as terrorists, fight back to their annihilation, basically. And yeah, it was an obliteration of their culture and their society. And that's why when they were moved to their reservation, they were cut off. from their culture and their heritage, and they were forced into these residential schools that further, you know, eviscerated their culture, and they were taught to, you know, basically that their own culture was, was valueless, and they were taught, you know, to integrate, you know, I mean, there was an attempt to, I guess, integrate them into white society, but often the You know, students were badly treated in those schools, almost treated as slaves, like they had to do manual labor, and they were just treated in a very racist way. But they were taught, you know, the dominant American ideals and Christian civilization. uh so um that was all part of this project um uh to subjugate you know destroy subjugate and i guess integrate some you know who were able to uh maybe integrate into society at large but and that way the threat was eviscerated their land was taken over and you have all kind of pathology that emerged in the Native community because they were totally cut off from their culture. They lost their purpose in life and they were second or third class citizens. The film does show some of the poverty and this creates hope in those reservations. It creates opportunities for youth that they can work with the buffalo again. gives them meaningful employment, meaningful way to spend their time, to reconnect with nature. And I think it's accompanied with efforts to revitalize native languages and other facets of their cultural traditions. So that is something I think that's very promising. And this film, yeah, spotlights the Blackfeet Nation, but I think this has inspired other nations to do the same. Because at the film screening I was, Uh, you know, I live in Oklahoma and there are a lot of, that was, you know, there are a lot of native groups in Oklahoma and they were, a lot of them have been displaced in the, uh, famous, uh, Indian removal and they were moved into Oklahoma. Uh, but there were a number of, uh, tribes at the screening and then they had displays after, and they were discussing their own efforts to bring back some Buffalo, like the Yuki Indian. And at the, uh, After they had the director speak and some other tribal elders, so they're representative of the Yuki Indian Nation, and they had a whole poster about, they have purchased several buffalo, and so they have land outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they have several buffalo now on their land with them that they purchased in the last year. four or five years so you get the sense that this may inspire a lot of other native groups and they were discussing their efforts to revitalize their language and the programs they've set up um and i mean they were discussing the budget cuts like the trump administration you know was cutting with all the budget cuts that's first on the chopping block Uh, but I mean, they have their, some of their own ways of financing it, but they were receiving some government support. And unfortunately that is, uh, uh, being cut quite a lot of that. Uh, but hopefully, uh, you know, when Trump leaves office, a new administration would support that in the future. Um, and you know, these efforts are still moving forward. So.

Henry Hakimaki: Certainly. And of course, relying on the federal government to ensure that indigenous culture comes back is not necessarily something that should be banked on. But I will get back to the buffalo in a little bit. And I know that the buffalo is the main focus of our conversation here. But I do want to take us on a bit of a tangent for a little while on two fronts. The first is something that I have to say. And the second is going to be something that I thought about a lot. And I'd like to pose to you as well. You mentioned about the residential schools. It's probably been a couple of years since I mentioned this on the show, but one of my university professors and mentors was, her name's Betty Kay McGowan. She is Mississippi Choctaw. And her and her twin sister, who is also a professor at my university, they were nearly abducted by the government to be put into these residential schools. So they're, as I mentioned, Mississippi Choctaw, but they, like the Choctaws, had been relocated to Oklahoma, where you are, Jeremy. And She would recount to me the stories of whenever there was federal officials that were coming into their reservation, her family had had a little dugout area in their dwelling that they would push the twin sisters in. They were very young at the time. Basically into this hole that was dug out on the inside of this dwelling and then throw blankets and things like that over the top of it so that they wouldn't be taken. to the residential schools. And many of their friends were essentially abducted to go to these residential schools. And the residential schools, as you mentioned, and listeners who are, again, not from North America may be less familiar with these, but we have talked about them on the show in the past. They were designed explicitly to destroy native culture, to destroy native language, to destroy native religion. They were operating, as you mentioned, essentially one for slave labor because they would often make these young children do work in these residential schools. But additionally, the explicit goal was to help them, quote unquote, integrate into American society. Well, what does integration into American society look like for an indigenous person from America? What that means is shedding any of your indigenous identity, all of those cultural artifacts that have been maintained for generations and putting onto you this essentially white Christian belief system, the settler belief system, so that when you get out of the residential school, You think like a settler, you feel like a settler, but you're never going to be actually accepted by the settlers because you are still an indigenous person, even though you have been forcibly shed from your indigenous heritage. Now, getting to the second point of the tangent, this is related in that Again, when we're talking about the United States and its colonial efforts, when we think about this logic of extermination, extermination of the people, extermination of the languages, extermination of the religions, extermination of culture more generally, extermination of their food sources and their cultural, the things that are important for their culture. This, of course, began with the settler colonial logic of having to eliminate the indigenous population in order to create a land for yourself, air quotes listeners, obviously. To create this land for yourself, you have to eliminate that which is indigenous to that land. However, this logic of elimination, while being pioneered in the settler colonial logic, has also been utilized within American imperial and colonial logic more widely. So in its imperialist ambitions overseas, in Latin America, in the Middle East. I know you write a lot about the Middle East, Jeremy. We'll have you back on to talk about the Middle East sometime soon as well. This logic of elimination, elimination of the people and elimination of which makes them a people, whether that's eliminating their food sources that allow them to survive or eliminating that which is culturally relevant to them, that is part of the logic of imperialism and colonialism, particularly in the American imperialist and colonialist sense. So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on to this question of how this logic of elimination has these connections between the settler colonial logic that the United States was founded on, these genocidal exterminationist logics, and how those logics have then been perpetuated through to the current day and can still be seen even today in the logic in which American both domestic and foreign policy operates.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, absolutely. I think that continuity is very significant. And yeah, I think unfortunately, like in higher education, yeah, there's a tendency to compartmentalize and say, oh, this, we're studying Native American history and this is terrible what happened. but not too related at all to the present day. And, you know, there are a few books that do that. One is that I've assigned the students, Richard Drinan. Well, this book was written in 1980, but it's called Facing West. I don't know if you've read it on the metaphysics of Indian hazing and empire building. It's a great book and it provides a biographical approach and he showed the continuity mentality of the Indian fighters and genocidal impulses through the Vietnam era. He goes through the Philippines and he's got chapters on some of the key architects of US policy on the Philippines. in the early 20th century, like this guy, Dean Worcester, who was this anthropologist and they, he like classified the Filipinos, uh, based on race and like certain, uh, category of Filipinos were deemed, you know, superior. And those were the one that the U S would kind of groom to run Philippine society, you know, cause the U S plan was not to directly rule over Philippine indefinitely, but to kind of groom a native elite, um, And then he gets into Vietnam and the kind of mentality that prevailed among U.S. Army officers and CIA in Vietnam. So it's a brilliant book in showing the continuity and ideology, mentality, the underlying racism, colonial attitudes. the quest for resources that underlies it. So that's really a great book. Another is Walter Hickson, American Settler Colonialism History or something like that, who shows the continuity as well. But I found a few works, a few historians do that because, I mean, there are a huge number of books on Native American history, but it's all kind of in the history category. And, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of U.S. foreign policy is undergird by the drive for resources, control over, you know, land and resources especially. And that's what we see in the Middle East, the drive for oil. You know, throughout the world, really, that's what underlays it. So that's the same as the Indian Wars. and people are inconvenient can be exterminated like the Gazans or manipulated, divide and conquer. I think the strategy is similar to the Indian war of divide and conquer, pitting native groups against each other because the U.S. would buy off native groups with various economic incentives And sometimes liquor. That was the approach. And that's the same thing they do now. They buy off leaders with money. Promises of fancy military gadgets. Military economic aid. And that's how they buy them off. and they get them to, you know, repress their own population. Or, yeah, in the Middle East, like, they'll play, you know, Sunni versus Shiite rivalry, just like they did. So, yeah, there are plenty of continuities one could point to, and I think underlying it is, yeah, the quest for more wealth, land, and control over mineral wealth, and a lack of regard, yeah, for other cultures. As you point out, there's this... impulse to Americanize that American culture is superior and to try and import American ideals. And that's the pathway to progress is Americanization and the add then a kind of commercial civilization like the United States. And that results in the contempt for local cultures as well as contempt for the environment where you see in the episode the buffalo war the destruction of the environment and complete disregard uh for the environment and that you know we see that undergirding a lot of u.s foreign policies uh around the world as well as domestic policy i mean they continue to want to rape the land Now, with the Trump administration, they have kind of these oil barons have been appointed to the energy. The top positions are from the oil industry, and they just want to take more and more land, drill, baby, drill. and cut down more forests and protected lands. So that mentality is the same. Just get as much short-term wealth as you can without regard for destroying the environment, destroying species, or destroying other human beings.

Henry Hakimaki: Certainly. And so when talking about the buffalo, you mentioned, again, going back to a word that you said earlier was ecocide. One of the things that I think is quite interesting and which, again, I have been reading about in various places throughout the last couple of years, but they also mentioned in this documentary, although not nearly as in-depth as I would have liked them to, I will mention, is the environmental benefit. of the buffalo being on that land. So again, we have to consider that for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, this buffalo population was self-sustaining on this land. That was the land that those buffalo belonged to. That was the land that they were adapted to. And of course, over time, that land also becomes adapted to them. And the ecosystem also evolves around them as a keystone species. The environment really is predicated on what the buffalo are able to do. And they do, again, they mentioned this in the documentary, how the buffalo wallowing creates marshlands, which allows different types of bird species to come in, which also allows, etc, etc, etc. In the wintertime, they plow through the snow, allowing the pronghorn to go through these snow drifts, etc, etc, etc. However, it doesn't go into the depth on broad environmental impacts of the buffalo being present as I have seen in some other places, but they do mention it. Now, again, listeners, we have to think from 30 million buffalo, these are large hundreds and hundreds of pound animals to less than a thousand. The population has of course expanded a little bit since then. It's obviously much larger than a thousand at this point. But that ecosystem has also fundamentally changed and fundamentally changed in a way that was beneficial to the settler, was not beneficial to other species in the area, was not beneficial to the indigenous people in the area, but was beneficial to the settler. How? grassland, grazing land for cattle. So when the extermination of the buffalo took place, it took place for one reason initially, which was to aid in the genocide of the indigenous people. But then the secondary impact was that you now had all of this grazing land that was wide open for cattle, which allowed cattle ranching in those areas. And of course, cattle ranching was something that was almost exclusively a white settler industry and a large industry at that and we then throughout this documentary and through in a bit in pieces in your article talk about these relationships between ranchers and today there's also indigenous ranchers and people who are trying to reintroduce the buffalo so can you talk a little bit about ranching the kind of industry of ranching, who's benefiting from this ranching industry, and why the attempts to reintroduce the buffalo in relatively recent years continuously would hit this hurdle that the land was enclosed for grazing for cattle. And additionally, even in areas where it wasn't mandated federally that it would be cattle grazing land, you would still have ranchers that would try to enclose the spaces and would be very, very unhappy, including shooting at the buffalo if the buffalo would encroach upon their territory.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Can you talk about that at all? Okay, well, I'm not an expert on that, but, you know, based on what I saw in the film and elsewhere, yeah, I think your point is well taken. I mean, there is a lot of resistance to the film to show that the efforts to bring the buffalo back because they could ruin some of the agriculture, you know, eat the buffalo. at some of the grass or crop they're trying to grow so there's a lot of resistance even in the present to bringing the buffalo back i mean i think eventually they were able to convince a lot of the ranchers that it could be beneficial overall and that i wouldn't destroy uh their own crops And that's why they brought in a lot of Native youth to work with the buffalo to kind of manage them. So, I mean, accommodation can be developed. But, yeah, historically, as you said, they wanted to take over the Native land for their own form of farming, cattle ranching. And that's one reason the buffalo had to be destroyed. And there was, you know, self-interest. And it was part of the obliteration, you know, of the Native culture and society.

Henry Hakimaki: And one of the other things that's related to this that I think is also quite interesting is, as I mentioned, there's also indigenous ranchers today. And what this creates is that While many listeners would think that, okay, there's this attempt to bring back the buffalo. And the reason that they're trying to bring back the buffalo is because it is part fundamentally of their culture. It is an absolutely critical central point of Blackfoot culture. And then also, of course, many other indigenous nations in the area. But this film in your article focuses on Blackfoot nation. However, there is then debate that takes place within the nation, within the tribal council. And thinking about how this debate unfolds and these kind of dynamics, I don't wanna say power dynamics, but interest the dynamics is quite interesting because many listeners might think, okay, the indigenous group wants to bring back this animal, which is central to their culture. Of course, everybody's going to be on board with that. But you end up with two things that are then shown throughout this story. One is that as we were kind of touching on in the last answer, ranchers, and in this case, indigenous ranchers are afraid of the impact on their own herds as a result of the buffalo. So despite the fact that the buffalo are central to their own cultural identity, the economic interest prevails over kind of a solidaristic group cultural dynamic here. And the second thing that then is shown in the documentary is that the initial attempts to bring back the buffalo were basically unilaterally voted on by tribal councils and And as a result of that, there wasn't much grassroots push to make it happen. This is initially, and it's why the first couple of attempts that they made to bring the buffalo back failed. Because as several of the leaders of Blackfoot Nation, as well as some of the activists within Blackfoot Nation that were trying to lead the push for reintroducing the buffalo to their original land, they were pointing out that when there was this imposition from above without a consultation, without a dialogue, and we'll get to dialogues in a little bit, but without a dialogue with just ordinary people to allow them to understand truly what the reason for it is and to make them feel like they have agency within the decision to bring them back, you ended up with one, resistance from interest groups that had other economic interests, but then two, you didn't have grassroots support to ensure that the project would succeed. So do you have any thoughts on how we should view this event where we have, again, something that you would assume the entire group would be in favor of, but almost because The decision was made without consultation, without building support on the ground, that it was essentially doomed to fail because it was something that was just decided by a nine-person tribal council. And even though that tribal council was elected and represents the will of the people who elected them, the lack of consultation made it so that it was doomed to fail. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, and there's also the fact that maybe not because so much time has passed and the film shows they've kind of cut off from their ancestry. So some of these farmers may not understand the importance of that project to bring back the buffalo. That's not purely an economic project. that there's a much broader social significance. So I think that was also an underlying theme of the film, that they've been cut off from their culture and heritage, so they don't understand that importance. So they're only thinking of short-term gain and, oh, this might negatively impact my farming business or the crops. They've been cut off. So I think that's one of the... sad thing that happened over time and that's why they're trying to rebuild the culture and even with the youth the film shows how they are developing these programs among youth to teach them to revitalize certain games they used to play like chase buffalo and have these events where they educate the youth about the importance of the buffalo and other cultural traditions because various generations have been totally cut off from that and have lost their identity. and may not have recognized the significance. That's why they had to work with them and ultimately perhaps convince them that the economic consequences wouldn't be too severe. And then again, use these youth to manage the buffalo in a way that they wouldn't destroy other farmers' crops and stuff.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah. And it reminds me at the point where the first reintroduction efforts were taking place, it had been over a century since Buffalo were interacting on that everyday basis with Blackfoot people. And they had mentioned that historically, the buffalo would work with and work for the people in the same way that the people would work with and work for the buffalo. It was a symbiotic relationship between them. But of course, over a hundred years had passed and so that idea of how that could be was lost, not only from the human side, but also from the side of the buffalo. This idea of being able to work together Neither side had that. And so when the first efforts to reintroduce the buffalo came in, who did they contact from the nation to try to figure out how to, I guess, train the buffalo to be more like the buffalo of the past that would work with people? It was the cattle ranchers. Cattle ranchers that had this interest in reintroducing the buffalo. They weren't the ones who were resistant as a result of their own cattle industry. But what they had showed is that the first couple of cattle ranchers that were kind of voted on to take lead on training these buffalo and raising these buffalo, they tried to train them and raise them in the same way that they did domesticated cattle. And those efforts didn't work. You know, they talk about how the buffalo would smash down the fences and run through the gates and get into other people's land. And there was really no way of controlling them because they're trying to raise them as if they were domesticated cattle and not as if they were buffalo who also had more than a century of separation between having that everyday working relationship with people. And so these failures then happen because there is, again, there's many reasons for the first couple of failures, but one of the interesting ones for me is that there was this divide for so long that there is this loss of understanding that it's not like training a cow, it's working with a buffalo. It's a fundamentally different relationship and that understanding of that relationship had to be relearned over the course of years. I don't know if you have any thoughts on The regaining of what would have been common knowledge to communities in the past, but has been lost as a result of this separation, forcible separation in time.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Yeah, I think you highlighted that very well. And that's a very interesting aspect of the film. And it's interesting to think about the relationship between human and animal species. And as you say, they can often function symbiotically and feed off each other. But when that connection is lost, yeah, things go awry. And, yeah, the film shows, as you say, they couldn't control them and they had to relearn that relationship that may have existed over 100 years ago and slowly bring that back and develop techniques for managing them better. And, yeah, as you say, the buffalo themselves started to acclimatize and And their own relationship changed and they became more, I guess, respectful of the humans. They developed a kind of mutual respect. It started to come back, that mutual respect, slowly, but it takes a lot of time, yeah.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, and one of the things that helped bring back that relationship is that after those first couple of failures, And it actually worked out for them. They were essentially forced to only take young calves. They weren't allowed to bring adult buffalo back from where this population was, Elk Island in Canada. They weren't allowed to... bring adult buffalo back into Montana as a result of Montana state law. They could only bring young buffalo back. But because they were bringing young buffalo back, they were essentially raising the buffalo in a day-to-day interactive way with people from the time that they were young until they grew up over the course of years. And that situation of having that day-to-day working relationship really was one of the things that allowed the later efforts to then succeed. Another small tangent, this is something that often bothers me about the way that people think, and we've talked about this on the show since one of the first episodes, there's often this view that there is the separation and I don't mean necessarily only in the left. In fact, it's primarily not in the left, but even people in the left have this view that there's this society nature divide, rather than humans being part of nature and also constructing society. So this, this divide is something that is talked about That, you know, humans are humans and nature is nature and it's about humans adapting nature to themselves and nature fighting against humans and making things difficult for them, etc., etc. But humans fundamentally are part of nature. And so this idea that there can be a symbiotic relationship between species, if we think of humans as part of nature, isn't that surprising? You know, just thinking of ravens and wolves, for example, this is something that's been documented for decades. many decades at this point, two completely different species, ravens, a bird, and wolves, a mammal. Couldn't get more different. However, they have a symbiotic relationship as well. They do it without language, but they communicate with one another. How does this work? Well, again, this has been documented for many decades is that the ravens will fly high in the sky in order to locate elk herds and especially elk herds that have weak or sick elk that are straggling along behind it. And they will fly extremely slowly in the direction of the elk herd While there's a pack of wolves watching the raven in the sky and following the raven to find the elk herd. And what happens then? Well, the raven's not strong enough to kill the elk, but the wolves are. And the wolves will then kill the sick or young or old elk that's straggling behind the rest of the group and then allow the ravens to feed alongside of them. And in this way, they have formed a symbiotic relationship with one another where the bird, which can fly high in the sky and can see very far and track the movement of the elk very efficiently, then is working with an animal which doesn't have that kind of bird's eye vision, but is strong enough in order to kill these animals. They work together. That's something which has been documented in nature, not only in that case, but in many instances, there's a lot of examples of symbiotic relationships in nature and humans are part of that as well. And that would have been part of the indigenous understanding of the world is that We are part of nature and our ability to interact with and interact in a symbiotic way with nature is what allows us to really experience that connection to the land that we otherwise wouldn't have. But when you have that forcible disconnect, it's impossible. And so that has to be relearned. Now, I also want to talk, Jeremy, for a little bit about the success that they had in bringing the buffalo back. So... As I mentioned, there was several failed efforts to bring the buffalo back that stretched back to the late 1990s. And over the course of 20 years, they had failures and failures and failures. They had government red tape that said that they couldn't do this. They couldn't locate them here. They couldn't locate them there. They couldn't bring adult buffalo. But eventually, they were able to bring a couple of herds of buffalo down to Montana. And raised them there. And eventually, again, over the course of about 20 years, they were able to find an area in which they could release the buffalo and kind of rewild them. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like and, you know, how that success was made possible?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, as you say, yeah, it took a lot of effort and a trial, you know, a trial and error. And I think they, well, just the logistics of transporting those buffalo was not very easy at all. And they had to raise a lot of money and, uh, you know have the right people who could uh manage transporting them from alberta uh to their reservation and then as as we discussed managing the buffalo you know i mean initially they were the buffalo ran wild and stuff so uh it took it took a long time yeah and there were a lot of yeah i know the resistance of uh some you know some of these ranchers they had to deal with so as as well the bureaucratic red tape so this was not an easy undertaking uh but it took years but uh you know i mean the film showed at the end that uh i think the buffalo herd is expanding because they're and then they're allowing them more the roam free like they did uh within certain areas uh like they did you know 100 plus years ago and the buffalo seem in their kind of element in their natural uh milieu and they're managing them better and they're expanding uh i guess some of the buffalo are reproducing so um it seems to be working pretty well now uh but yeah it took years to get to that stage so it's an impressive accomplishment

Henry Hakimaki: And one of the points that I forgot to re-raise is the point of these buffalo dialogues that they held. And I think that this is one of the most fascinating points of this story is that, again, after this experience of failure is when tribal councils were... essentially saying, okay, it's time to try again. It's time to try again. Let's do this. Let's do this. These efforts fail. One of the things that multiple people within this documentary had pointed out as being a key point that allowed them to have this ultimate success was that they hosted this series of Buffalo Dialogues, which essentially was an open forum for people from Blackfoot Nation, as well as the surrounding community to come in and have these discussions about how logistically this would work, the importance of it, the importance of it culturally, the importance of it ecologically, the importance of it for understanding who they are as a people. And they would host these open fora with up to and over a hundred people in instances. to get the people to feel like it was something that was benefiting them as an indigenous person, as a Blackfoot, and as a person who cares about that land, who belongs to that land. And after these discussions, they point out a lot of people, particularly young people, were excited to play a part in bringing the buffalo back and taking care of the buffalo for a day or a couple of days, to find out how to feed them, to find out how to corral them in and out of these various areas that they had allocated for them. Whatever that may be, the young people, and it is the young people that I think are quite important to focus on here, they were excited about trying to revitalize their part of this culture, this part of their culture rather. And thinking about how we involve the youth in these cultural, and we can say cultural political projects really, is key for not only for those projects being successful in the near term, but also for instilling this feeling of belonging in them. And I think that that's a more universal message than just in the case of the buffalo is that we have to in any of these cultural political projects, really think of ways to engage people and make them feel like they have not only agency, but they have an investment in this project.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, if you think of a lot of the pathologies on the reservations in the native community, which are impoverished, I mean, the film did show that. And a lot of it is because the youth have no purpose. You know, the education system, as we discussed, failed them. It was, you know, coercive with the residential schools. There aren't great opportunities. So this is really something where they can do something meaningful. And at the same time, yeah, learn about their own ancestry and, And then hopefully, you know, they'll be the elders in the future, you know, in 20, 30 years, they'll be the elders and they can impart it on to the next generation. So, you know, it's very, very vital. And yeah, for any political movement or institution. Exactly. You have to involve the youth. That's why these, well, sometimes, you know, bad movies like the Nazis had the Hitler Youth. I mean, they understood the importance of the youth. And I think Trump was, you know, the MAGA movement with this Turning Point USA and this Charlie Kirk, you know, they understand that. That's why they invest a lot in the college Republicans. Any political movement has to involve the youth, but this is something positive where it's giving them purpose, a meaningful direction in their life, and a way to reconnect with their own past, and they can hopefully be ones to pass it on in future years.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, absolutely. So I know that this is a rather short episode, listeners, but as I mentioned at the beginning, we're going to be bringing back Jeremy a couple times in the near future. We're going to be talking about the Middle East with Jeremy. This is probably, I would say, Jeremy, the topic that you talk about the most or that you write about the most is the Middle East, at least these days. And then also we'll be talking about Russia in the near future with you. But in closing, I want to ask one more question. Kind of grand big question regarding this case study of bringing back the buffalo. And as you put in the title of this article, overcoming the legacy of white settler genocide by bringing back the buffalo. What can we take away from this, not just in the context of indigenous resistance against continued attempts of extermination, not only in terms of indigenous attempts to bring back cultural artifacts which had been more or less lost for over a century, but Thinking not only about these, but also in the broader scheme, what we can take away from this in terms of political understanding of what resistance can look like to the imperialist, colonialist, hegemonic view of places like the United States. What are the kind of takeaway messages that we can take from this?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Well, one, I think firstly that people in general living in North America should be more empathetic and appreciate other society and cultures and can learn from them. As you've been saying, the native population present in many ways a model of trying to live with nature in a way that's mutually beneficial, not just destroy nature. And with all the environmental problem we have today, that's one thing the society at large can learn from native societies and what they're doing in trying to revitalize nature and revitalize the fractured relationship is something we need to be doing in a lot of different areas to repair planet Earth. And just about respecting other culture and other societies and learning from them instead of trying to steal their land and resources. And it's mutually destructive. I mean, it's destructive of our civilization as well because our society, they're imploding now. We're marred by... tremendous uh inequality and violence on a daily basis so it's not it's not healthy for anybody uh and then the other thing is yeah about resistance is that you can you know maybe keep them down but they're they're you know people uh ultimately will defy uh oppressive systems uh and will sustain themselves in the long term. And that's what we see with the indigenous community. They've not gone away. And I think what we'll see in the coming generations is a revitalization of native cultures and societies. And my point at the end of the article, that can be very healthy for society at large. I don't think they are vengeful that they want to destroy, even though the white settlers came to destroy them, I don't think their intent in revitalizing their culture is to destroy the broader society or take any kind of vengeance. I think they just simply want to live in a healthy way. And I think the larger society, they can be of great value to society at large and possibly leading to a revitalization of our society and moving in a more peaceful direction as far as our international relations, as far as relations with the environment. this could be something great for for society at large over the coming generations and i think more and more in the brother you know dominant uh i guess you know remnants of the white settler society are seeing a lot of the errors of their way i mean if you look at the world situation it's not a pretty one And I mean, a lot of say American society is off put by all these foreign wars. And I mean, they're, they're struggling, you know, the, the, the wealth and equality is so stark and the middle to, you know, working class people that are struggling and they see a lot of abuses of power and a delegitimization of the elite and the governing ideology of the past. Uh, so that, that, may result in major changes over the coming generation. And again, I think the indigenous people can help lead the way as far as how they live in collaboration with nature. So yeah, I think this again could be something very positive for society as a whole. And certainly for the Native communities, as they rediscover their culture and the youth develop greater purpose, we'll see less pathologies in those societies.

Henry Hakimaki: So in closing, Jeremy, and as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm a reader of Covert Action. I really enjoy reading Covert Action, but it's been either two or three years since we've had you on the show. And so many of our newer listeners may be unfamiliar with you and with Covert Action more broadly. Can you just tell them briefly what Covert Action magazine is all about and some of the things that have been worked on recently there and then also where they can find you and the magazine in closing?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Sure. Well, Covert Action is an anti-imperialist magazine. It was founded by Philip Agee, who was a CIA operative and whistleblower in the 1970s, who worked for the CIA in South America and was off-put by this kind of imperialistic behavior. Yeah, that would be not that similar from what we're describing toward the indigenous people in North America, toward... People of Latin America, you know, trying to gain the U.S. wanting to, you know, establish control over their governments so that a favorable climate can develop for U.S. businesses and that resources could be owned by outside, you know, corporations, which was not in the interest of Latin American people. So that's what AG wrote about. You know, he was off-put that the CIA was basically the... doing the dirty work of the financial oligarchy and was involved in supporting a lot of repressive governments and doing dirty deeds involved in things like torture and that put him off putting. So he quit the CIA and he wrote a book kind of expose of the CIA nefarious practices called Inside the Company of CIA Diary. And then he founded Covert Action Magazine with some other journalists, Louis Wolf, and some other people who were involved in political activism in the 60s and early 70s. And the goal of the magazine was to expose the CIA. And they had a naming names column. They would out individual CIA agents. And over time, the magazine continued to try and spotlight the abuse of the CIA and also provide a larger critique. It's probably the only magazine that is devoted to critical analysis of U.S. foreign policy. So, you know, going back to the founding of the United States with the genocide of the Native Americans.

Henry Hakimaki: Certainly. And as I said, we'll be talking about some of the work about American meddling in the Middle East in the near future with you. And then also Russia is a topic that is apropos of the moment. So Jeremy, can you tell the listeners where they can find your work?

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Sure. Well, I have my own website, JeremyKuzmarov.com, and also Substack, Too Hot for the Mainstream, as well as a covert action magazine. And I have a radio show that's also a podcast and on Substack called Uncontrolled Opposition.

Henry Hakimaki: And we'll link to all of that in the show notes. So as for me, listeners, you can find me online at Huck1995 on Twitter. I'm not active these days. Again, sanctions make it hard for me to get on, but you can follow me anyway. You can also follow my co-host Adnan Hussain. He's on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussain, H-U-S-A-I-N. And he has his own YouTube show, The Adnan Hussain Show, which you can subscribe to. As for Guerrilla History, once again, you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. And as I said, you can find Guerrilla History on various social media platforms. Just look for Guerrilla History, Guerrilla with two R's, and you'll probably find the show's profiles. So on that note then, listeners, and until next time, solidarity.