SACRED RELATIVES
Grizzlies and wolvesare sacred relatives, integral to the Yellowstone-area watersheds and homelands & ancestral territories central to Nez Perce treaty rights and seasonal lifeways. These predators regulate deer & elk herds that overgraze camas meadows and berry patches if unchecked, ensuring roots (like kouse, biscuitroot), huckleberries and other plants thrive for Nimíipuu seasonal harvests. They also scatter seeds via scat, enriching watersheds where spring Chinook and fall salmon return - foods treaty negotiators named as inseparable from hunting rights. Without them, the full food circle collapses, mirroring dam impacts on salmon.
TREATY FOUNDATION (1855 ARTICLE 3) Open and unclaimed land rights explicitly protect access to Yellowstone-area forests for hunting/gathering, where Nimíipuu secured verbal promises of mobility. Grizzlies & wolves inhabit these usual and accustomed places, their presence affirming balanced ecosystems essential to Qoq’aalx hunts, salmon weirs and root grounds - core lifeways the treaty enshrined against reservation confinement. Bounties and Sheridan-era policies slashed grizzlies from 50,000+ to ~800 by 1900, wolves likewise eradicated, severing ecological reciprocity just as bison slaughter tested treaty mobility. Today’s approximately 1,900 grizzlies & recovering wolves face delisting by WY, ID & MT, enabling trophy hunts and rancher culls that isolate populations of slow-reproducing species - undoing our duties in Nimiipuu homelands and ancestral territories where we still exercise treaty rights. Sustained ESA protections are non-negotiable: they restore the web of relations - predators, prey, plants, fish - that makes Nez Perce treaty claims and food sovereignty viable.
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Grizzly bears reproduce so slowly, that even a small amount of mortality can have profound effects for decades to come.
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They are the second slowest reproducing mammal in North America and among the slowest reproducing species worldwide. It takes a female grizzly bear ten years to replace herself in the population.
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Grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region are still completely isolated from other grizzly bear populations, both geographically and demographically, as they have been for 100 years. Existing state management plans are inadequate to protect Yellowstone grizzly bears or to allow them to connect to other grizzly populations.
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Today there are only two populations in the lower 48 -- of any size and they are isolated from each other. While we have made good progress in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems. Despite progress, there's much more room for recovery. In recovering grizzly bears, now is not the time to remove protections.
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These anchor populations are essential to real, long-term grizzly bear recovery in and between all of the recovery areas. Currently, there are only 50-60 bears in the Cabinet-Yaak recovery area, and no resident grizzly bears at all in the Bitterroot – a vast recovery area of millions of acres of designated wilderness spanning Idaho and Montana.
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We must continue the hard work to allow this sacred relative to fully recover, including re-establishing a population in the Bitterroot and achieving natural connectivity between grizzly bear populations in the Northern Rockies.
THE SACREDNESS OF ALL LIFE
PROTECT MOTHER EARTH
Treaties are a written testament of our relationship with the environment and our way of life and how that sustains itself – whether hunting, fishing or gathering. Our spirituality is directly connected to our environment, our Earth, our Mother.
Creator made this world for us to take care of, not for corporations to exploit. It’s a part of us.
We’re all connected - all lives, the air, the water, land…You can't diminish one and not affect the others.
Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment protects Treaty Rights because our treaties protect the rights of Mother Earth.
WE ARE SALMON PEOPLE
What happens to the salmon, happens to us.
We need to breach the dams to restore the Snake River. This is not just for our future. This is for our entire planet.
PROTECT SACRED RELATIVES
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED
A long time ago, there was a sacred promise made to the salmon people. And that is that we would take care of them as long as they took care of us. And they have never broke their promise.
Our duty as indigenous people is to speak for the salmon on their behalf.
Whether it’s over-trapping beaver, decimating buffalo, overfishing or the dams…when you take away one part, you can't have the whole.
We need clean, running, cold water to survive. Just like the salmon and steelhead.
Whatever happens to the salmon happens to us. We're intimately connected with salmon in the rivers.
OUR FUTURE IS INDIGENOUS
It’s About Respect for the Earth
We protect our lands and waters - we preserve our plants, roots, wolves, grizzly bears, everything…because they're all connected - connected to the fish that make that wheel go around in Our Life.
OUR TREATIES PROTECT MOTHER EARTH & OUR PEOPLE
If you look at animals or plants as spiritual beings, that will give you a different perspective on how you treat them.
Just like those treaty signers, we want to make sure that we protect those treaty rights for future generations.
We organize and host events to protect us from threats to our treaty rights and sacred lands and to educate and engage the public.
Everything is connected from the smallest animal to the largest animal. We're all important, and we all play a key part of getting these dams removed.
The rights of nature are at stake. And we're counting on all of you to stand with us when it comes to defending these rights.
We’re dealing with the end product of over-extraction. Whether it’s decimating beaver, buffalo, grizzlies, wolves or salmon, when you take away one part, you can't have the whole.
Dam removal is important for not only indigenous lives, but for all lives. All of us depend on rivers, free flowing rivers.
This is not just for our future. This is for our entire planet.
Our hope is a better future for our grandchildren and generations to come.
We’re counting on all of you to stand with us to make a difference.
NIMIIPUU MEANS THE PEOPLE
FREE THE SNAKE RIVER
We are Nimiipuu, the People of this land, and Protecting the Environment is our shared commitment.
Our life force is that fire from the generations before - is that treaty that lets us rise as young people.
We are part of the salmon. They have helped us. They've nurtured us.
We are a voice for the land, water and circle of life.
The more that we speak up for the salmon and for all creatures - the butterflies, whatever it is, we can't go wrong.
The earth is part of my body; I belong to the land out of which I came. The earth is my mother.
~ Too-hool-hool-zute