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The Wind River runs deep for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. They pray alongside the river. They pray for the river. They pray with the river. But what happens when your river is highjacked by a ruthless system that would stop at nothing to control the resource? Tribal Waters, a documentary by Teton Gravity Research Film in association with Patagonia, traces the Wind River as it winds through a history of stolen ancestral lands, insatiable agricultural demands and the American justice system in the hopes of a future built on a sustainable, outdoor-based recreational economy.

Native Memory Project Board Member Wes Martel and Advisory Board Member Jason Baldes both participated in this documentary.

The Ohlone are a Native American people of the Northern California Coast.

In this film, Cafe Ohlone founders Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino lead a walk in the hills below their most sacred peak, Tuushtak, aka Mount Diablo. As they point out plants and animals along the way, they discuss Ohlone history, culture, and cuisine—and how we can all celebrate what is “native to right here.”

Sponsored by Mount Diablo Interpretive Association. Videography by Wally De Young. Music by Phil Heywood. Photos by Scott Hein, Arnold Joe, Kendall Oei, and Cindy Roessler. Production by Joan Hamilton. This film is shared with permission of Cafe Ohlone and Mount Diablo Interpretive Association.

It is with great sadness and an irrevocable sense of loss that we report that the Native Memory Project has lost one of its founding board members and key consultants; Grant Bulltail passed away on October 1, 2020 from the Covid virus, in the Billings Medical Clinic in Montana. We have attached the obituary written by Dr. Timothy McCleary, his friend and colleague from Little Big Horn College.

Grant worked closely with Gary Wortman, John Mionczynski and Sharon Kahin over this last decade, recording stories of battles at sites such as the well-known ones at the Rosebud and Little Big Horn, and more obscure ones few outside the Crow community would have even heard of. Many of Grant’s stories took place in the Greater Yellowstone Region. Others, like the Battle of Rainy Buttes in North Dakota, where the Crow killed Sitting Bull’s father, took Grant and his colleagues farther afield.

In addition to stories of battle sites, Grant readily shared knowledge of his people’s edible and medicinal plants. Also, of the Crow Creation Story – in both Crow and English. Then there was the explanation of how the young warrior Bishish fasted in the Tetons—called by the Crow “Bishish’s Father”.    Upon returning from his fast, Bishish and his comrade, Carries The Marrow Bone in His Mouth, traveled through Jackson Hole, starting out on a seven year journey to bring back the Crow’s first horses from far away Mexico.

Add to this coyote stories, stories about Old Red Woman, and stories about how the Crow learned to kill dinosaurs – even their dinosaur lullabies (!) – and you get a sense of the incredible breadth of Grant’s repertoire. As one of his colleagues said of his passing, “When Grant died, an entire library died with him.”

It was an honor to have known and worked with Grant: his generosity of spirit, gentle sense of humor and total commitment to saving and passing on these stories for the benefit of future generations were an inspiration to all who were privileged to know him.

Sharon Kahin
President Native Memory Project

10/5/2020

California — a biodiversity hotspot — provides an abundance of plants for both food and medicine. To Native peoples across the state, gathering locations were like supermarkets today. They provided all the resources necessary to survive. These native plants are relevant today as they reinforce cultural continuity for California’s Native peoples and provide healthy, drought-tolerant alternatives to the processed foods typically found in Western diets. In contemporary California, movements such as “eat local” and scientists’ “discovery” of the health benefits inherent in chia and sage, for instance, have led to an increasing awareness and desire to purchase indigenous foods. But while more and more people are recognizing the benefits of California’s indigenous plants, the scale of the commercial food industry often prohibits access to local indigenous communities. In this video, we visit members of the Chia Cafe Collective, a group working in Southern California to revive Native food practices and raise awareness about the precarity of these important cultural resources.

Ohlone elder reclaimed sacred land in the Bay Area.
‘In the Land of My Ancestors’ celebrates the legacy of beloved Ohlone elder Ann-Marie Sayers. Sayers has devoted her life to preserving the stories and culture of her Indigenous ancestors. This documentary challenges viewers to consider the perilous impact of colonization on the Ohlone people in the Bay Area. It also follows Sayers as she provides a refuge in the sacred Indian Canyon for Indigenous people to reclaim their culture, spirituality, and heritage.

A film by Rucha Chitnis.

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Return to Foretop’s Father follows 78-year-old Crow tribal elder, storyteller and pipe lighter, Grant Bulltail, as he travels from Crow Agency in Montana to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Through his journey and the stories he learned from his grandfather, He Comes Up Red, Grant reveals a dark past of genocide, ethnocide, and the destruction of nature.

Grant’s mission is to bring awareness to the disconnect between people and nature, cumulating in the universal impacts of climate change. By connecting stories that have been passed down to him from generations of Native Americans, Grant presents his perspective on the modern crisis through a historic pipe ceremony at the base of the sacred Heart Mountain (Foretop’s Father).

Through the eyes of a Native American elder and historian, Grant reveals a unique perspective on the importance of nature on modern society, and how the ongoing disconnect is creating a crisis from which we may never recover.

We are pleased to announce that Grant Bulltail, one of our founding board members, is a 2019 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship – recognized for “artistic excellence” in storytelling and for his continued contribution to “our nation’s traditional arts heritage.”