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A group of 16 young people from the Wind River Reservation spent a weekend in Grand Teton and https://891khol.org/county-plan-to-add-wilson-pathways-will-require-temporary-easements-landowner-payouts/Yellowstone National Parks at the start of September.
They were with Indigenous Youth Voices, a group focused on empowering young people through experimental education and building connections to ancestral and traditional culture. It serves Native youth from the Wind River Reservation, the Rosebud Reservation and Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the Denver area.
The group spent the weekend hiking around the Tetons, touring Yellowstone, kayaking on the Snake River, learning about traditional ecological knowledge and playing Indigenous hand games.
Lynnette Grey Bull organized the trip and is the leader of the group, which she started in 2022 as part of her nonprofit Not Our Native Daughters. She said the trip is about helping strengthen connections to the area as well as opening up opportunities for conservation and outdoor recreation jobs.
“I’m trying to build pathways to employment for our youth. Hopefully through these trips, they want to get into work in the great outdoors … I think these are good experiences so they can start having a vision to be in these areas and we can kinda diversify these spaces,” she said.
The program ran a similar trip to the area last year, but Grey Bull said it was almost all new participants this go around – and all from the Wind River Reservation.
“Some of the alumni students went off to college or they’re now obligated to an employer or a job position, so we had an amazing time learning from and connecting with new students that came on this trip,” she said.
Grey Bull, who’s Northern Arapaho and Hunkpapa Lakota, said a highlight of the trip was having the youth get to connect with professionals working in the worlds of conservation, science and land management, who also have a strong ethic of caring for the land.
“In some parts of Wyoming, [Indigenous people] are not always treated fairly, so it’s important to let our students see that there are people that care about us, that want to honor our ancestral Indigenous ties to various parts of the land and national parks and waters and areas with our medicinal plants,” she said.
The Indigenous Youth Voices group during their paddle on the Snake River. (Lynnette Grey Bull
/ Not Our Native Daughters)
For Grey Bull, another highlight of the trip was getting to paddle on the Snake River with the Jackson Hole Kayaking School of Rendezvous River Sports. Earlier in the year, the outfitter business’ owner, Aaron Pruzan, had reached out to her to do a start-of-season training with their guides.
“He wanted me to share not only the Native American ties to the Jackson Hole area, but also what his guides can do to be more inclusive and be more connected to the Native American heritage in that region,” she said. “You don’t hear that a lot from tour companies.”
Grey Bull said that sort of cross learning and relationship building between folks on and off the Wind River Reservation is vital to addressing some of the most pressing issues in the world of climate change and conservation.
“They also get to learn from our youth and elders, and through our storytelling, about why this land is important. They’re able to take some of that and incorporate it in the work they do and I think that adds value,” she said. “As long as we’re living on this earth together and we value each other, I think a lot of work can be done.”
Harvey Spoonhunter is a Northern Arapaho elder and has gone on the summer trip both years. He has a long history working with youth and said that young people are considered the most precious natural resource.
“I’m very honored to share part of our knowledge to the children, because they’re going to be our future. They’re our future leaders,” he said.
For Spoonhunter, it’s important for young people to learn cultural values like respect, pride and love for family and nature, and to carry those forward. He said the kids with Indigenous Youth Voices were open to what he and others had to share on the trip.
“They were very respectful. They listened, they were very helpful and they were very interested,” he said. “They took part in what we were conveying to them, as far as our community traditions. We shared our inner connection with the beauty that was there, with the Tetons and rivers and trees. We explained to them that we’re all interrelated with all living things.”
One of Spoonhunter’s favorite moments was on a drive in the late afternoon, when the group spotted a big bull bison crossing the river.
“He stopped right in the middle of the river and he just froze there in time. He was sharing his beauty, his strength, who he was. He just stood there in the river, waiting for everyone that was there to take pictures, and then he slowly walked on across the river.”
Grey Bull said Indigenous Youth Voices hopes to do another trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone next summer, and are planning trips for the upcoming months as well.
