I got the first vague idea for this Wisdom Road journey when I heard Tamera Miyasato give a workshop to South Dakota educators about five years ago. She has developed s curriculum around core values of Lakota wisdom traditions. I felt that virtually every educator I had ever met would see the value of learning [...]
We will heal our country by first healing ourselves. Mona Miyasato is the archetype I came on this journey to find. She is a Dakota elder and life-long educator. Now 80, she describes herself as growing up "aculturated" to the dominant, or White, society. Mona's father was a child around the time of the last [...]
Small-time horse rancher, Brad Bush "Let’s just pray that 100 years from now, a couple guys can stand in this yard and have a decent conversation and share ideas like we just did. Then we’ll know we made it.” I spent the night in the side yard of Brad Busch's little farm near [...]
The Perino family have been ranching horses and cattle near Newcastle, Wyoming for several generations. I got to spend a couple of hours around the kitchen table with two of those generations, including an invitation to a wonderful lunch. I will report in more detail, but this was such a key takeaway: Patriarch Matt Perino [...]
I have walked many forest paths; until now perhaps the most viscerally mythical was the trail through moss-hung trees in central Nepal after which Tolkien modeled his Elfin Lothlorien. A walk in the Paha Sapa, what most of us now call the Black Hills of South Dakota, rivals that. The veil between what-was and what-is [...]
I learned quickly that you don't ask a rancher how many head of cattle or horses he runs; that's akin to just asking a stranger what he has in the bank. By that time I was already sitting with the entire Perino family at their big kitchen table in a modest ranch house at the [...]
Don was born in 1928. Growing up on a farm outside of Wheatland, Wyoming then was tough. He said that they really didn't experience the Depression because everyone was so poor already. He graduated high school right at the end of World War II. What a treat for me to spend some time with an [...]
Chugwater, Wyoming is farm and ranch country, mostly dry farming, so rain is a constant part of the discussion. Cattle need 10-15 acres for every cow-calf pair. Keith Miller and two sisters, Lucinda Houtchens and Teresa Baker, all grew up together, went to school together, and helped each other on their family ranches. During our [...]
Sharon Utter's shirt reads, "America Needs More Cowgirls" Sharon Utter grew up on a ranch between Jay Em and Lingle, Wyoming. She helped me organize a set of interviews, portions of which I will post over the next several days. Like the others I met in Wheatland, she is a bit older than [...]
Answers are usually just one person away you haven't met yet. There are something like 1.3 million head of cattle in Wyoming. That works out to an average of about one head for every six acres of land in the state. Of course there is land that is off limits for grazing, so the density [...]
