[Andrew] Our traditional foods, our first foods are vital to our culture from our first breath to our last.

The water, the roots and berries we consider our, like, sisters.

And the fish and the animals on the land are our brothers.

First foods are the primary reason for managing these off reservation and on reservation properties.

You know, the tribes look at the ecosystem holistically as much as possible - [Jeremy] Generations ago, as we were essentially born upon this Earth, we proved to be, pretty, pitiful Couldn't take care of ourselves.

So the animals themselves took care of us and they got a council together they saw us struggling.

And ultimately decided to help us.

So at our longhouse when we have feasts, we put the water down.

We then when we had the foods prepared, we put the fish, the deer, the roots and the berries down.

And they're in order not only by that sacrificial line, but how they come about throughout the seasons.

The Rainwater property is a great property that we have managed for a couple of decades now.

There's a difference between, you know, settler colonial management and tribal management And the primary thing that drives settler colonial management is the economic side of it.

So their driving force is selling tags.

For tribal management there is no real economic side of our deer and elk management.

We don't charge for anything our tribal members because it's our right.

Rainwater is the place that I started hunting 20 years ago.

That's the best part is the diversity in the land and pushing yourself and getting lost sometimes and just going and leaving at dark and not getting back to camp until dark.

When I'm up there, I do my part because my kids will be coming of age before too long that'll be their spot, too.

So we're entering the southern part of the wildlife area.

You have quite a bit of wildlife corridor out there between the Wenaha and the Umatilla National Forest.

The great things about rainwater and the purchase of it by the tribes is that it essentially locked up 11,000 acres as a wildlife corridor.

This whole region becomes really important in terms of connectivity to the entire area.

Everybody's facing climate change.

Tribal communities specifically have a harder time with most likely adapting to climate change, primarily because they were driven off of the prime lands of their ancestors.

With climate change, acquiring properties like Rainwater is going to give us an opportunity in the future to manage these stands appropriately for climate adaptation.

A lot of the work we've done is forest thinning with or without prescribed fire to follow up the forest thinning treatment.

Before the tribes owned this property.

It was high grade logged.

It was also grazed.

So there are a lot of effects of that past management that we're trying to reverse.

And we're also just trying to kind of reverse the effects of a long history of fire suppression here.

Everything that we do has to somehow either complement, enhance or restore first foods.

So, say, for example, if we're working on the South Touchet and we are doing fisheries habitat restoration, we're working on both water and salmon.

These cooler elevation areas will give us an opportunity to harvest our traditional foods and medicines.

We try to gather these because we sweat all year long.

These will last in the sweat house, you know, at the longest, maybe, a month.

Girls, when's the last time we just drove in the mountains Just to drive in the mountains?

You know, they'll say I'm always putting them to work, but that's usually what we're doing.

Every time we come up the hills It's like it's always an opportunity to gather and to get something.

So we're now here in our sweat lodge.

Or as we call him old man.

This is where we go....

This is like our church.

You'll be able to see the fir boughs that we gathered yesterday, how we put those in there.

It's comparable to, you know, a sauna, obviously.

We're trying to get physically clean, but we're also trying to get mentally clean, you know, you have to take care of your body.

You have to take care of this flesh that has been gifted to us You know, we need you there for us.

We need you there for, for everything, including the foods, you know, because at the very foundation of who we are, we're nothing without their sacrifice.

So we have to be there for them.

None of this exists without our foods.

And so we're all in some way protecting, utilizing, cherishing, teaching about our first foods.

You know, whether it's the Department of Natural Resources, education, planning, you know, whatever it is, there has to be some element of that sacrifice.

Like my mother, really, I've heard her say a lot that it's not really a religion.

It's more of a, just a way of life.

It's just a way of living and a way of like, believing and taking care of the land and you know, how that might affect you and your family and even your people.

Resources we have down here are dwindling, just because of climate change and poor management and access issues.

So it's nice to have a place like Rainwater.

And it's a great haven for all of our first foods.

Our program, the First Foods Policy Program, Were almost like the mediator between the scientists and the policy itself.

Being that conduit between the hunters and gatherers back to the boots on the ground, the staff, the scientists, the technicians who are out there getting that data.

And honestly, a lot of times what we're finding out is what they're doing is helping.

We take honor in providing these traditional first foods to the table.

As gatherers and hunters, we try to do everything we can to provide these for our ceremonies.

In a happy ceremony or a sad ceremony, the food is giving them strength to continue whatever path they're on for happiness or joy or for sorrow, that food will strengthen them and make them feel good.

The tribe helps, like, negotiate with landowners.

They work with the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they try to make sure to incorporate some management for first foods on all of these publicly owned lands.

So when we go out, we'll have food that's harvestable in all of these areas.

It's an issue everywhere.

Trying to get to our foods is a big deal.

A large part of our gaming revenue goes to buying land back When we've been given land or when we've purchased land, we have to come up with a whole management just so we can get the forest healthy again.

So it can be a place for those first foods to thrive, whether it's plants or animals, pollinators, everything has to come back.