Hearing Highlights Importance of Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Tribal leaders today testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife in support of the Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act.  As noted by Lynnette Grey Bull, Senior Vice President of Global Indigenous Council and spokesperson for the Northern Arapaho Elders Society of the Wind River Indian Reservation, the Act is based on The Grizzly: A treaty of Cooperation, Cultural Revitalization and Restoration. It is the most signed treaty in history.

The full testimony for each leader can be found HERE.

“The grizzly bear is integral to the culture and spiritual practices of the Northern Arapaho people.Our elders teach how the grizzly bear brought us our medicines. ‘Grizzlies know not only about roots and herbs for physical healing but also about healing mental conditions,’ they say. In the socio-economic bondage we survive in, our reservation communities need that healing more than ever today. The grizzly bear isn’t a ‘trophy game animal,’ the grizzly is our relative, a grandparent. The frontier-mentality practice of “trophy hunting” our relative is abhorrent to us, and in no way reflects the “best available science” precept of the Endangered Species Act.” -- Lynnette Grey Bull, Senior Vice President of Global Indigenous Council and spokesperson for the Northern Arapaho Elders Society of the Wind River Indian Reservation, located in Grizzly Country, Wyoming.

“In the weeks before this hearing, we learned from a National Park Service official that 80% of our cultural and historic sites near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, have been compromised or devastated by recent energy development. A pipeline is presently being laid through one of our burial sites. We are literally being erased from the land. This is being replicated in Grizzly Country. As I stated earlier, our history and that of the grizzly are intertwined, as are our futures. The Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act can be central to the survival of both.” -- A. Gay  Kingman, Executive Director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association. The GPTCA is composed of the 16 Tribal Chairmen, Presidents, and Chairpersons of the federally recognized sovereign Indian Tribes within the Great Plains Region of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council (RMTLC) serves tribal nations located in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alberta who all called the Yellowstone and Glacier regions home before they were parks. From then until now, the grizzly has been ever-present, albeit tenuously. There is no soundbite that can communicate the importance of the grizzly in our cultures, but that our ancestors wouldn’t say the name of the grizzly out of respect, speaks to the Great Bear’s cultural significance. It is time that tribal nations had input and parity in decisions that will determine the future survival of our sacred ancestor, the grizzly bear. The Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act provides that opportunity, and the promise of cultural and economic revitalization for tribes who hold a fundamental connection to the grizzly and the habitat that the grizzly once imbued with power, before being taken to the brink of extinction by state and federal policies imposed upon our lands.” -- Tom Rodgers, Senior Adviser to the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe in the heart of the Grizzly Bear Nation, the Crown of the Continent.

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