“Native species such as swift foxes and black-footed ferrets disappeared from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation generations ago, wiped out by poisoning campaigns, disease and farm plows that turned open prairie where nomadic tribes once roamed into cropland and cattle pastures.
Now with guidance from elders and outside wildlife groups, students and interns from the tribal college are helping reintroduce the small predators to the northern Montana reservation sprawling across more than 1,000 square miles (2,600 square kilometers) near the U.S.-Canada border.
Sakura Main, a 24-year-old Aaniiih woman who is entering Fort Belknap’s Aaniiih Nakoda College in January, is helping to locate, trap and vaccinate the severely endangered ferrets against deadly plague in a program overseen by the tribal fish and game department.
The nocturnal animals live among the mounded burrows of prairie dog colonies, where ferrets stalk the rodents almost as big as they are, wrapping themselves around their prey to strangle and kill it.
On a recent clear night, the Nakoda sacred site Snake Butte looming on the horizon, Main shined a flashlight into a long, skinny, wire trap atop a prairie dog burrow. Inside was the second ferret that she’d caught that night with fellow wildlife worker C.J. Werk, daughter of the former tribal president.
“We got one in there!” Main quietly exclaimed.
“Wow, really another one?” replied Werk, who was engaged in a friendly competition with another worker, her cousin, to catch the most ferrets. “I’m going to rub it in.”
Hurried back to the “hospital trailer,” the animal was sedated and vaccinated against sylvatic plague carried by their favorite prey, work done in partnership with World Wildlife Fund. It had a microchip inserted beneath its skin for future tracking, before being released back into the prairie dog colony to a soft cheer from Main and Werk.
As extinctions of animals and plants accelerate around the globe, Native American tribes with limited funding are trying to re-establish imperiled species and restore their habitat — measures that parallel growing calls to “rewild” places by reviving degraded natural systems.”
Comment: I am not Indian or even part Indian. Repeated DNA testing has established that, but I wish the tribes well in this effort to re-establish their world. pl
Northern Plains tribes bring back their wild ‘relatives’ | AP News
I am with you Col Lang, I am a lifelong hunter but also an avid conservationist
Earth has been hit by an ‘unusual, intense blast of energy’ from nearby galaxy that could change our understanding of the universe:
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/nasa-blast-energy-burst-gamma-ray-grb-b2240729.html
We are a sinful and irreligious people who are not grateful for the benevolent mercies of life and the sacrifices of the Saints and Martyrs. When God made me his faithful servant he allowed me a residue of remaining brain cells by which I determine that headlines such as the one above are clickbait and nothing more. However this is not the whole truth. Earth is being aimed at by forces beyond the abilities of exponential notation to fully comprehend. Isaac Newton was very disturbed to hear that Pierre Simon de Laplace had demonstrated by means of astronomical observation and mathematical research that the three celestial inequalities did not in fact imply that the solar system was stable and in fact the monarchs of the civilizated world could sleep soundly knowing that though the peasants may one day rise up, the moon would not fall into the earth nor the earth into the sun. Newton said that by publishing his demonstrations he had undermined people’s faith and caused them to overlook that even if in fact the experimental evidence was otherwise than Laplace’s, God, being almighty and benevolent, could simply reverse the perilous dynamics.
Newton also, later in life, determined by means of theological exegesis and astronomical study, the exact date of the Apocalypse of St John. For which he was ridiculed by many people including Voltaire. The exact date as decoded from Newton’s ciphers by Sir Maynard Keynes from Newton’s private notebooks has not, to my limited knowledge been made public and of course no such thing ever would be. The notebooks exist in a museum located in the Middle East and another in the hands of a private collector. The only thing revealed, to my limited knowledge and subject to deceptive, is that the date is in the 21st century and the year includes the numeral 6 when the year is expressed in the conventional base 10 system counting forward from the birth of Christ. This caused great excitement and worry to me when in the year 2016 a certain thing happened. I leave you with thoughts of Joy and Peace and Good Tidings.
I know I am an irreligious person but I don’t think I am sinful. I don’t know whether Keynes was partial to LaPlace, Newton, or Voltaire, but I read he had a good looking wife and was a socialist. But more to the “here and now”, its been reported this morning that Kristin Sinema is considering caucusing with Republicans. Can Manchin (who wants to be President) be far behind.
Bill Roche,
Sinema emphatically declared she would not caucus with the Republicans. She did not yet say whether she would caucus with the Democrats or not. My guess is that she did this because she knows she would not survive a Democratic primary. Manchin’s position is solid. The Democrats cannot challenge him in WV. They know they cannot win there without Manchin.
Arlen Spector made commitments too and I continue to see Sinema as Spector. As to Manchin you’re right. The Dem/Socialist Party c/n challenge him in WV. But can he win his seat as such? 2024 is the year for him. Does he run for Pres as a dem candidate, or for the Senate (in a state that is going Republican). He wants to be Pres. His entire last three years has been a build up to that. I’d watch Sinema and Manchin very closely over the next year. Keep in mind what Pres. Nixon said “keep your eyes on what the administration does, not what it says. The latter is for the press.” What pols say and what they do are usually far apart.
Bill Roche,
It’s difficult to diagnose Newton’s sincerity when later in his life than the time of his scientific investigations he claimed that his motivations concerning his researches were theological in origin. People had been burned alive at the stake in Europe and England within easy historical memory, including John Wycliffe the first translator of the bible into English and his death occured on either the Oxford or Cambridge campus with which he was intimately familiar. His discoveries advanced philosophy far beyond the discoveries of Galileo Galilee who very nearly perished himself for his own work on Mechanics, Astronomy etc.
He may have lived in mortal terror expecting a relapse into primitive superstition. We see it in our own day. He claimed that the idea of developing his celestial mechanics, optics, mathematics and laws of motion came to him during his reading of scripture when he realized that the many citations of star or planetary or meteor sightings and corresponding dates of possibly historically verifiable events would enable him to determine the actual real date of the birth of Christ, which was a topic of lively and necessarily covert debate for many years. He had great success with his research due in no small part to ongoing advances in lens grinding (Amsterdam, Spinoza et al) and telescope design. And so much that he set himself the task of determination of the Apocalypse of St John which he describes at length in his short pamphlet on the prophecies of Daniel and St John, written later. The inventor of logarithms, John Napier, a Scottish mathematician and nobleman, also wrote a book in which he claimed to have determined the date of the Apocalypse, which was to happen in 1688 or 1700.
It’s a reasonable guess that for folks of those days it was wise to seem concerned with theological issues. Notice Kristen Sinema’s names. Krist. Cinema or Sine of ma (mass times acceleration). F = ma, is Newton’s fundamental law. Kristen Sine of F or sign of force? It suggests Cynthia too, a reference to the moon.
Kindly excuse my interruption. For clarity of labeling, consider: history, babble, no sarcasm or irony.
An interesting system where mysteriously gigantic votes on huge issues result often in dead heats. In Georgia, they had a choice between two choices for Senate who resembled each other in certain characteristics right down to their names which each began had two syllables and began with W a. The victor was the one whose name began with War.. and Warn.. rather than Wal.. and Walk.. and had as first name the name of an Archangel.
I myself, like you, in fact am a deeply irreligious person who believes it best to act as though we were governed by an all seeing omniscient being who sees and hears everything and can even read minds. Who believes God is a projection of universal human terrors born of long years of infantile and childhood helplessness and tyrannical subjection in face of giant monsters who control everything better known as parents. Where and when I was raised, a person could “lap up generous portions of the fear of God with a spoon” to quote a wiseman. I didn’t like it.
Joe Manchin. Consider the name Joseph. Who used a dream and terror of famine of Pharoah’s to institute a scheme whereby all the Egyptians were turned forever into serfs without property. Inch Man. Nim Chan. Very interesting.
“Who believes God is a projection of universal human terrors …”
More precisely the fear of ill willed agents, enemy tribesmen rattling the bushes nearby, sure it’s THEM!
Though this did have some evolutionary benefits. 🙂
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/religion_3217jsp/
Thanks. My outlook is that the infancy to childhood to adolescence period is more important regarding psychological outlook. A computer scientist might make the analogy First In Last Out.
But the tribesmen and particularly their priesthoods did understand the most vital scientific question of any era. Will the Sun rise tomorrow?
In regards to which they are known to have cruelly murdered thousands of innocent people in spectacles they exploited for purposes of overawing and terrifying their slave societies. “See. Sun came up, right? You want us to stop?”
Followed by easily manufactured smoke covered skies and packs of trained wolves howling from nearby ravines. Women who weren’t raped but say that 12 foot monsters were dancing on the outskirts and the moon turned red, and they lost consciousness after that.
In other words: Give me that old time religion.
It looks like a very interesting book.
I’m struck by philosophic/spiritual thought behind this practical approach to restoring a habitat. The tribes realize they are part of that habitat, very “Laudato Si” in my opinion. You put it well, they are attempting to “reestablish their world.”
I was just reading about somewhat similar efforts in Africa spearheaded by Jane Goodall. She started this effort purely to save her beloved chimpanzees, but realized she had to start by helping the locals improve their lot. Eventually, habitat was restored, the people did better and the chimps did better.
An explanation as to why rewilding projects in Australia were failing.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-08/land-revegetation-habitat-renewal-strathbogie-ranges-la-trobe/101742752
I Have a Very Deep Respect for Native American Culture…I Have Lived and Worked on Indian Reservations..As a Teenager One Year My Only friends Were Indians..
I Once wrote A Very Long Poem about an Indian Religious Ceremony…It Starts out
“I Am your Other Brother”
They have thier Own Prophecys and Medicine Men Prophets..Who Also
Have Visions…And Are Visited..By What We Call “Angels”
.Very Deep .Touching..I Am a Christian..But I Love Native Culture Verey Much
JT
For Those Interested In Native American Culture and How They View Life Spiritually…There Is a Good Web Site With Many Native American Spiritual Quotes…
Such as The Ones By Black Elk..Oglala Lakota..Such as..
“Let Every Step You TakeUpon The Earth..Be As a Prayer….”
100 Native American Quotes-Spiritual Quotes To Live By-A Resource For Positive Inspiration..