Guerrilla History - Overcoming the Legacy of White Settler Genocide By Bringing Back the Buffalo w/ Jeremy Kuzmarov

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back Jeremy Kuzmarov (whom you may remember from our episode  Trying to Unbalance Russia - Sanctions on Russia) to discuss a piece he recently wrote for CovertAction Magazine - Blackfeet Nation Tries to Overcome Legacy of White Settler Genocide By Bringing Back the Buffalo.  A really fascinating discussion, you'll definitely want to listen in, as well as watch the documentary we discuss - BRING THEM HOME . Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is author of four books on US foreign policy including The Myth of the Addicted Army (Massachusetts, 2009); Modernizing Repression (Massachusetts, 2012); The Russians are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018) and Obama's Unending Wars (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).  You can stay up to date with his work by checking out his website at https://jeremykuzmarov.com/ Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory   

You remember Dan Van Boop? They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki. Unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussain,

who of course is a historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, today as he is traveling. So I will be hosting this one solo. However, listeners, we have a terrific returning guest, although it's been about three years since this guest has been on the show. So those of you who are relatively new listeners may not know that he's been on the show before, but he has been and we'll be bringing him back on. Before I introduce the topic and our guests, though, I would like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can find the show on various social media

platforms, which if you just look for guerrilla history with two R's, you should find them. Although we're not super active these days because sanctions make it hard for me to log on various social media platforms. With that being said, I am going to introduce our guests now. We have, again, returning after about a three-year absence, Jeremy Kuzmara, who is managing editor of covert action magazine, author of The Russians Are Coming Again. Jeremy, last time we had you on it was to talk about sanctions as war. It's great to see you again.

How are you doing? It's great to be back, yeah. So, like I told you before we hit record, I have been following your work for these intervening years. And of course, I'm a fan of covert action and your work more specifically. it's, we're long overdue in having you back on. I had recently seen a piece that came out from covert action, which was set to be timed to come out at the same time as so-called Thanksgiving week and to commemorate Native Heritage Month. You had a piece come out in a covert action

titled Blackfoot Nation tries to overcome legacy of white settler genocide by bringing back the Buffalo. And this article really caught my imagination for a few ways, which is a few ways, which I think that we'll talk about over the course of this interview. But I want to open this by having you discuss a little bit, what brought this issue of bringing back the Buffalo to your attention? Well, this was a film. I just went to there's a repertoire theater near where I live. So they had this film being screened with the directors.

So it seemed like a very interesting event. And I teach American history. So I cover that, you know, period in the late 19th century, Indian wars in my course. So it's a familiar history to me. Yeah, I've read some books. I have Roxanne Dunbar-Artees wrote a very good book called an indigenous people's history of the United States. And she has some discussion of that, you know, the larger history that she chronicles. And this film, yeah, it was a very good film.

you know, it humanized the story and it showed the efforts of the Blackfeet Nation based in Montana to bring the Buffalo back and it really emphasized the significance of the Buffalo to their communities, you know, historically, that it was part of their, I mean, not just a way to hunt and, you know,

eat and survive, but it was part of their, the fabric of their community. And they kind of viewed the voice, Buffalo as part of their community and almost part of their family that kind of comes out in the film and of course you know the white settler that just so the the other callousness and genocidal intent to just destroy them and their their whole way of life and you know blatant act of echo side and I think the article on the film you know surveys some of the history and the article I did that had some photos that I found online of these, excuse me, some, you know, historical websites where

you see these buffalo hunters just like gleeful, and they've slaughtered, you know, thousands of Buffalo. And I don't know how anyone could get any, you know, I mean, that's real perversity. I mean, but it's real dirty work. And of course, there's a story. And I've had a lot of students have done term projects on the Buffalo Soldier. They often sent the, you know, uh, African-Americans to do a lot of that dirty work of just slaughtering Buffalo. And they slaughtered huge, huge numbers. And that was part of the, the echo side and way to destroy the native communities. So this is very significant that they're trying to bring back to Buffalo and revitalize their way of life.

And so Jeremy, you mentioned this film, which is called Bring Them Home. And listeners, you can find Bring Them Home on PBS's YouTube. channel. The whole film is available on there. It's under the title, even though the film is titled, Bring Them Home, you should search for Blackfoot Strife to reintroduce Buffalo after 100 year absence or something along those lines, because that's what they have the video titled as on YouTube. But in any case, I also watched that film and found it also quite humanizing. And of course, it talks about a lot of the statistics that I already knew with regard to the absolute genocidal intent of the buffalo.

And, you know, you use the word ecocidal, but like, really, it is also a genocide of a creature, which is native to that land. And I had remembered this number also when I was studying American history and school, and this number has stuck with me since then. So we're talking like 15 years after the fact, which is that at the time that the settlers started moving in, there was 30 million buffalo in the United States. By the time this program of extermination of the buffalo took place, there was less than 1,000 left. So from over 30 million to less than 1,000, within one generation as a result of a planned elimination of this species.

So the question for a lot of our listeners, and of course, many of our listeners to this show aren't based in the United States or Canada, so they may not be as familiar with this history. particularly those listeners may be thinking to themselves, what is the justification, what is the reason, what was the purpose of eliminating a species, a keystone species in this environment? Why did the white settlers try to wipe out the buffalo population? And of course, this is intricately tied with the efforts to exterminate the indigenous population. So Jeremy, can you talk a little bit about the intent here? What is the intent of eliminating the buffalo? and what was the impact of eliminating the buffalo on the indigenous communities, who, as you mentioned, were highly reliant on the buffalo not only for food, but basically for every aspect of their lives, whether that was shelter, whether that was food, whether that was even culture.

Well, yeah, and the film is worth watching because it underscores that. And, you know, as far as the question of intent, I mean, the intent was clearly to destroy these societies. Because, you know, it was all about land and resources. You know, they inhabited the chief, you know, choice land that was beneficial to the white settlers and, you know, expanding American nation as far as taking over the, you know, building the railways, as far as the mineral wealth that was thought to be based on that land. The oil, you know, when wells was discovered, there was oil, there was other, you know, mining that they could, you know, and projects that they could develop. or just for farming, fruitful agricultural land and the building of the railway to interconnect the American economy. So they had to be destroyed and, you know, weakened, devastated, and then move from that land onto reservations

and the fabric of their society destroyed because they were, I guess, a threat. You know, and they were framed as terrorists and, you know, because, you know, because, If they would fight back, they were branded as terrorists, you know, fight back to their annihilation, basically. And, yeah, it was an obliteration of their culture and their society. And, you know, that's why, you know, when they were moved to their reservation, they were cut off from their culture and their heritage, and they were forced into these residential schools that further, you know, viscerated their culture.

And they were taught to, you know, basically that their own. culture was was valueless and they were taught you know to integrate you know I mean there was an attempt to I guess integrate them into white society but often the you know students were badly treated in those schools almost treated as slaves like they had to do manual labor and they were just treated in a very racist way but they were taught you know the dominant you know American ideals and, you know, Christian civilization. So that was all part of this project to subjugate, you know, destroy, subjugate and, I guess, integrate some, you know, who were able to maybe integrate into society at

large. But in that way, the threat was eviscerated, their land was taken over. And then you have all kind of pathology that emerge in the native. community because they were totally cut off from their culture. They lost their purpose in life and they were, you know, second or third class citizens. And that's, the film does, you know, show some of the poverty. And this creates, you know, hope in those reservations. It creates opportunities for youth, you know, that they can work with the Buffalo again, give them meaningful employment, a meaningful way to spend their time to reconnect with, with nature. And,

I think it's a company with efforts to revitalize native languages and other facets of their cultural traditions. So that is something I think that's very promising. And this film, yes, spotlights the Blackfeet Nation, but there are other, I think this has inspired other nations to do the same. Because at the film screening, I was, you know, I live in Oklahoma and there are a lot of, that was, you know, there are a lot of native groups in Oklahoma. they were a lot of them have been displaced in the famous Indian removal and they were moved into Oklahoma but there were a number of tribes at the screening and then they had displays after and they were discussing their own efforts to bring back some buffalo like the yuki Indian and at the you know after they had the director speak and some other tribal elders so they were

representative of the Yuki Indian nation and they had a whole poster about they have purchased several Buffalo and so they have land outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they have several Buffalo now on their land with them that they purchased in the last four or five years. So you get the sense that this may inspire a lot of other native groups and they were discussing their efforts to revitalize their language and the programs they've set up. And I mean, they were discussing the budget cuts like the Trump administration, you know, was cutting with all the budget cuts. That's first on the chopping block. But, I mean, they have some of their own ways of financing it, but they were receiving some government support. And fortunately, that is being cut quite a lot of that. But hopefully,

when Trump leaves office, a new administration would support that in the future. And, you know, these efforts are still moving forward. Certainly. And of course, relying on the federal government to ensure that indigenous culture comes back is not necessarily something that should be banked on. But I will get back to the Buffalo in a little bit. And I know that the Buffalo is the main focus of our conversation here. but I do want to take us on a bit of a tangent for a little while on two fronts. The first is something that I have to say, and the second is going to be something that I thought

about a lot, and I'd like to post you as well. You mentioned about the residential schools. It's probably been a couple of years since I mentioned this on the show, but one of my university professors and mentors was her name's Betty Kay McGowan. She is Mississippi Choctaw, and her and her twin sister, who is also a professor at my university, they were nearly abducted by the government to be put into these residential schools. So there, as I mentioned, Mississippi Chakta, but they, like the Chakta's, had been relocated to Oklahoma, where you are, Jeremy. And they, she would recount to me the stories of whenever

there was federal officials that were coming into their reservation, they would, her family had had a little dugout area in their dwelling that they would push the twin sisters and they were very young at the time, basically into this hole that was dug out on the inside of this dwelling and then throw blankets and things like that over the top of it so that they wouldn't be taken to the residential schools. And many of their friends were essentially abducted to go to these residential schools. And the residential schools, as you mentioned, and listeners who are, again, not from North America, may be less familiar with these, but we have talked about them on the show in the past. They were designed explicitly to destroy native culture,

to destroy native language, to destroy native religion. They were operating, as you mentioned, essentially one for slave labor, because they would often make these young children do work in these residential schools. But additionally, the explicit goal was to help them, quote unquote, integrate into American society. Well, what is integration into American society look like for an indigenous person from America. What that means is shedding any of your indigenous identity, all of those cultural artifacts that have been maintained for generations, and putting onto you this essentially white Christian belief system, the settler belief system, so that when you get out of the residential school, you think like a settler, you feel like a

settler, but you're never going to be actually accepted by the settlers because you're you are still an indigenous person, even though you have been forcibly shed from your indigenous heritage. Now, getting to the second point of the tangent, this is related in that, again, when we're talking about the United States and its colonial efforts, when we think about this logic of extermination, extermination of the people, extermination of the languages, extermination of the religions, extermination of culture more generally, extermination of their food sources

and their cultural, the things that are important for their culture. This, of course, began with the settler colonial logic of having to eliminate the indigenous population in order to create a land for yourself, air quotes, listeners, obviously. To create this land for yourself,

you have to eliminate that, which is indigenous to that, land. However, this logic of elimination while being pioneered in the settler colonial logic has also been utilized within American imperial and colonial logic more widely. So in its imperialist ambitions overseas in Latin America, in the Middle East, I know you write a lot about the Middle East Jeremy. We'll have you back on to talk about the Middle East sometime soon as well. this logic of elimination, elimination of the people, an elimination of which makes them a people,

whether that's eliminating their food sources that allow them to survive it, eliminating that which is culturally relevant to them, that is part of the logic of imperialism and colonialism, particularly in the American imperialist and colonialist sense. So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts onto this question of how this logic of elimination has these connections between the settler colonial logic that the United States was founded on these genocidal

exterminationist logics and how those logics have then been perpetuated through to the current day and can still be seen even today in the logic in which American, both domestic and foreign policy operates. Well, absolutely. I think that continuity is very significant. And yeah, I think, unfortunately, like in higher education, yeah, there's a tendency to compartmentalize. And say, oh, this, we're studying Native American history. And this is terrible what happened. But not to relate it all to the present day. And, you know, there are a few books that do that. One is I've assigned the students, Richard Drinnan. Well, this book was written in 1980, but it's called Facing West.

I don't know if you've read it on the metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building. It's a great book, and it provides kind of, it's a biographical approach, and he showed the continuity and mentality of the, you know, Indian fighters and genocidal impulses through the Vietnam area. You know, he goes through the Philippines, and he's got chapters on some of the key architects, like of U.S. policy on the Philippines in the early 20th century. This guy, Dean Worcester, who was this anthropologist, and he, like, classified the Filipinos based on race and, like, certain category of Filipinos were deemed, you know, superior, and those were the one

that the U.S. would kind of groom to run Philippine society, you know, because the U.S. plan was not to directly rule over a Philippine indefinitely, but to kind of groom a native elite. And then he gets into Vietnam and the kind of mentality that prevailed among U.S. Army officers and CIA in the Vietnam. So it's a brilliant book in showing the continuity and ideology, mentality,

the underlying racism, colonial attitudes, the quest for resources that underlies it. So that's really a great book. Another is Walter Hickson, American settler colonialism history or something like that, who shows the continuity as well. But I found that a few works, a few historians do that. Because, I mean, there are a huge number of books on Native American history, but it's all kind of, you know, in the history category.

So, and yeah, I mean, I think a lot of U.S. foreign policies undergird by the drive for resources, control over, you know, land and resources especially. And that's what we see in the Middle East, the drive for oil, you know, throughout the world, really, that's what underlays it. So that's the same of the Indian wars. And, you know, people are inconvenient can be exterminated, like the Gazans or manipulated, you know, divide and conquer. I mean, I think the strategy is similar to the Indian War of divide and conquer, you know, pitting native groups against each other because, you know,

the U.S. would buy off native groups with various economic incentives and sometimes liquor. You know, that was the approach. And that's the same thing they do now. They buy off leaders with money. And then, you know, promises of fancy military gadgets, military, economic aid, and that's how they buy them off, and they get them to, you know, repress their own population.

Orion, Middle East, like they'll play, you know, Sunni versus Shiae rivalry, just like they did. So, yeah, there are plenty of continuity, which one could point to, and I think underlying it is they had the quest for more wealth, land, and control over mineral wealth. and a lack of regard, yeah, for other cultures, as you point out, there's this impulse to Americanize that American culture is superior and to try and impore the American ideals, and that's the pathway to progress is Americanization and the ad then kind of commercial civilization like the United States, and that results in contempt for local cultures as well as contempt for the environment.

We see in the episode of the Buffalo War, the destruction of the environment and complete disregard for the environment. And we see that undergirding a lot of U.S. foreign policies around the world, as well as domestic policy. I mean, they continue to want to rape the land. Now with the Trump administration, they have kind of these oil barons have been appointed to the energy, the top position. are from the oil industry and they just want to take more and more land, you know, drill, baby drill and cut down more forests and protected lines. So that mentality is the same, just get as much, you know, short-term wealth as you can without regard for destroying the environment, destroying species, or destroying other human beings. Certainly. And so when talking about the buffalo, you mentioned, again, going back to a word that you said earlier was ecocide.

One of the things that I think is quite interesting, and which, again, I have been reading about in various places throughout the last couple of years. But they also mentioned in this documentary, although not nearly as in depth as I would have liked them to, I will mention, is the environmental benefit of the buffalo being on that land. So again, we have to consider that for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, this buffalo population was self-sustaining on this land. That was the land that those buffalo belonged to. That was the land that they were adapted to. And of course, over time, that land also becomes adapted to them. And the ecosystem also evolves around them.

As a keystone species, the environment really is predicated on what the buffalo are able to do. Again, they mentioned this in the documentary how buffalo wallowing creates marshlands, which allows different types of bird species to come in, which also allows, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In the wintertime, they plow through the snow, allowing pronghorn to go through these snow drifts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, it doesn't go into the depth on broad environmental impacts of the buffalo being present as I have seen in some other places, but they do mention it.

Now, again, listeners, we have to think from 30 million buffalo, these are large, hundreds and hundreds of pound animals to less than a thousand. The population has, of course, expanded a little bit since then. It's obviously much larger than a thousand at this point. But that ecosystem has also fundamentally changed and fundamentally changed in a way that was beneficial to the settler, was not beneficial to other species in the area, was not beneficial to the indigenous people in the area, but was beneficial to the settler. How? Grassland, grazing land for cattle. So when the extermination of the buffalo took place, it took place for one reason

initially, which was to aid in the genocide of the indigenous people. But then the secondary impact was that you now had all of this grazing land that was wide open for cattle, which allowed cattle ranching in those areas. And of course, cattle ranching was something that was almost exclusively a white settler industry and a large industry at that. And we then throughout this documentary and through a bit in pieces in your article, talk about these relationships between ranchers. And today there's also indigenous ranchers and people who are trying to reintroduce the buffalo. So can you talk a little bit about ranching, the kind of industry of ranching,

who is benefiting from this ranching industry and why the attempts to reintroduce to Buffalo in relatively recent years continuously would hit this hurdle that the land was enclosed for grazing for cattle. And additionally, even in areas where it wasn't like mandated federally that it would be cattle grazing land, you would still have ranchers that would try to enclose the spaces and would be very, very unhappy, including shooting at the buffalo. if the buffalo would encroach upon their territory. Can you talk about that at all? Okay, well, I'm not an expert on that,

but, you know, based on what I saw in the film and elsewhere, yeah, I think your point is well taken. I mean, there is a lot of resistance to the film does show that the efforts to bring the buffalo back because they could ruin some of the agriculture, you know, eat, some of the grass or crop they're trying to grow. so there's a lot of resistance even in the present to bringing

the buffalo back. I mean, I think eventually they were able to convince a lot of the ranchers that it could be beneficial overall and that wouldn't destroy their own crops. And that's why they brought in a lot of the native youth to work with the buffalo

to kind of manage them. So, I mean, an accommodation can be developed. But yeah, historically, as you said, they wanted to take over the native land, for her own form of farming, cattle ranching. And that's one reason the buffalo had to be destroyed. And there was self-interest.

And it was part of the obliteration, yeah, the native culture and society. And one of the other things that's related to this that I think is also quite interesting is, as I mentioned, there's also indigenous ranchers today. And what this creates is that my old many listeners would think that, okay, there's this attempt to bring back the buffalo. And the reason that they're trying to bring back the buffalo is because it is part fundamentally of their culture.

It is an absolutely critical central point of Blackfoot culture and then also, of course, many other indigenous nations in the area. But this film in your article focuses on Blackfoot Nation. However, there is then debate that takes place within the nation, within the tribal council, and thinking about how this debate unfolds and these kind of dynamics, I don't want to say power dynamics, but interest in dynamics, is quite interesting because many listeners might think, okay, the indigenous group wants to bring back this animal which is central to their culture. of course everybody's going to be on board with that, but you end up with two things that are then

shown throughout this story. One is that as we were kind of touching on in the last answer, ranchers, and in this case, indigenous ranchers are afraid of the impact on their own herds as a result of the buffalo. So despite the fact that the buffalo are central to their own cultural identity, the economic interest prevails over kind of a solidaristic, group cultural dynamic here. And the second thing that then

is shown in the documentary is that the initial attempts to bring back the buffalo were basically unilaterally voted on by tribal councils. And as a result of that, there wasn't much

grassroots push to make it happen. This is initially, and it's why the first couple of attempts that they made to bring the buffalo back failed because as several of the leaders of Blackfoot Nation as well as some of the activists within Blackfoot Nation that were trying to lead the push for reintroducing

the Buffalo to their original land. They were pointing out that when there was this imposition from above without a consultation, without a dialogue, and we'll get to dialogues in a little bit, but without a dialogue with just ordinary people to allow them to understand truly what the reason for it is and to make them feel like they have agency within the decision to bring them back, you ended up with one resistance from interest groups that had other economic interests, but then two, you didn't have grassroots support to ensure that the project would succeed. So do you have any thoughts on how we should view this event where we have, again, something that.

that you would assume the entire group would be in favor of. But almost because the decision was made without consultation, without building support on the ground, that it was essentially doomed to fail because it was something that was just decided by a nine-person tribal council. And even though that tribal council was elected and represents the will of the people who elected them, the lack of consultation made it so that it was doomed to fail.

Do you have any thoughts on that? well and there's also the fact that maybe not because so much time has passed and the film shows they're kind of cut off from their ancestry so some of these farmers may not understand the importance of that project to bring back the buffalo that's not purely an economic project that there's a much broader social significance. But so I think that was also an underlying theme of the film, that they've been cut off from their culture and heritage,

so they don't understand that important. So they're only thinking of short-term, you know, gain, and oh, this might negatively impact my farming business or the crops. They're not, you know, they've been cut off. So I think that's one of the sad, thing that happened over time and that's why they're trying to rebuild the culture and even with the youth the film shows how they are developing these programs among youth to teach them to revitalize

certain games they used to play like chase the buffalo and have these events where they educate the youth about the importance of the buffalo or other cultural traditions because various generations have been totally cut off from that and have lost their identity and may not have recognized the significant. That's why they had to work with them and ultimately perhaps convinced them that the economic consequences wouldn't be too severe. And then again, use these youth to manage the buffalo in a way that they wouldn't destroy other farmers' crops and stuff. Yeah, and it reminds me at the point where the first reintroduce,

introduction efforts were taking place. It had been over a century since Buffalo were interacting on that everyday basis with Blackfoot people. And they had mentioned that historically, the Buffalo would work with and work for the people in the same way that the people would work with and work for the Buffalo. It was a symbiotic relationship between them. But of course, over a hundred years had passed and so that idea of how that could be was lost, not only from the human side, but also from the side of the buffalo, this idea of being able to work together. Neither side had that. And so when the first efforts to reintroduce the buffalo came on, who did they contact from the nation to try to figure out how to, I guess, train the buffalo to be more like

the buffalo of the past that would work with people. It was the cattle ranchers, cattle ranchers that had this interest in reintroducing the buffalo. They weren't the ones who were resistant as a result of their own cattle industry. But what they had showed is that the first couple of cattle ranchers that were kind of voted on to take lead on training these buffalo and raising these buffalo. They tried to train them and raise them in the same way that they did domesticated cattle. And those efforts didn't work. You know, they talk about how the buffalo would smash down the fences and run through the gates and get into other people's land. And there was really no way of controlling them because they're trying to raise them as if they were domesticated cattle and not as if

they were buffalo who also had more than a century of separation between having that everyday working relationship with people. And so, So these failures then happen because there is, again, there's many reasons for the first couple of failures, but one of the interesting ones for me is that there was this divide for so long that there is this loss of understanding that it's not like training a cow, it's working with a buffalo. It's a fundamentally different relationship and that understanding of that relationship had to be relearned over the course of years. I don't know if you have any thoughts on the regaining of what would have been common knowledge to communities in the past,

but has been lost as a result of this separation, forcible separation in time. Yeah, I think you hollered that very well. And that's a very interesting aspect in the film. And it's interesting to think about the relationship between human and animal species. and that as you say they can often function symbiotically and feed off each other but when that connection is lost yeah things go awry and yeah the film shows as you say they couldn't control them and they had to relearn that relationship that may have existed over 100 years ago and slowly bring that back and develop techniques for managing them better and yeah as you say the

Buffalo themselves started to acclimatize and their own relationship changed and they became more, you know, I guess, respectful of the humans. They developed a kind of mutual respect, you know, it started to come back that mutual respect slowly, but it takes a lot of time, yeah. Yeah, and one of the things that helped bring back that relationship is that after that, those first couple of failures, and it actually worked out for them. They were essentially forced to only take young calves. They weren't allowed to bring adult buffalo back from where this population was, Elk Island in Canada.

They weren't allowed to bring adult buffalo back into Montana as a result of Montana state law. They could only bring young buffalo back. But because they were bringing young buffalo back, they were essentially raising the buffalo in a day-to-day, interactive way with people from the time that they were young until they grew up over the course of years. And that situation of having that day-to-day working relationship really was one of the things that allowed the later efforts to then succeed. Another small tangent, this is

something that often bothers me about the way that people think. And we've talked about this on the show since one of the first episodes. There's often this view that there is the separation, and I don't mean necessarily only in the left. In fact, it's primarily not in the left, but even people in the left have this view, that there's this society, nature divide, rather than humans being part of nature and also constructing society. So this divide is something that is talked about, that, you know, humans are humans and nature is nature. And it's about humans adapting nature to themselves and nature, and nature, fighting, against humans and making things difficult for them, et cetera, et cetera.

But humans fundamentally are part of nature. And so this idea that there can be a symbiotic relationship between species, if we think of humans as part of nature, isn't that surprising. You know, just thinking of ravens and wolves, for example, this is something that's been documented for many decades at this point. Two completely different species. Ravens, a bird, and wolves, a mammal. Couldn't get more different.

However, they have a symbiotic relationship as well. They do it without language, but they communicate with one another. How does this work? Well, again, this has been documented for many decades, is that the ravens will fly high in the sky in order to locate elk herds, and especially elk herds that have weak or sick elk that are straggling along behind it. And they will fly extremely slowly in the direction of the elk herd while there's a of wolves watching the raven in the sky and following the raven to find the elk herd.

And what happens then? Well, the raven's not strong enough to kill the elk, but the wolves are. And the wolves will then kill the sick or young or old elk that's straggling behind the rest of the group and then allow the ravens to feed alongside of them. And in this way, they have formed a symbiotic relationship with one another where the bird, which can fly high in the sky and can see very far and track the moon. of the elk very efficiently, then is working with an animal which doesn't have that kind of bird's eye vision, but is strong enough in order to kill these animals. They work together. That's something which has been documented in nature, not only in that case, but in many instances,

there's a lot of examples of symbiotic relationships in nature, and humans are part of that as well. And that would have been part of the indigenous understanding of the world is that we are part of nature and our ability to interact with and interact in a symbiotic way with nature is what allows us to really experience that connection to the land that we otherwise wouldn't have. But when you have that forcible disconnect, it's impossible. And so that has to be relearned. Now, I also want to talk, Jeremy, for a little bit about the success. that they had in bringing the buffalo back. So as I mentioned, there was several failed efforts

to bring the buffalo back that stretched back to the late 1990s. And over the course of 20 years, they had failures and failures and failures. They had government red tape that said that they couldn't do this. They couldn't locate them here. They couldn't locate them there. They couldn't bring adult buffalo. But eventually, they were able to bring a couple of herds of buffalo down to Montana and raised them there. And eventually, again, over the course of about 20 years, they were able to find an area in which they could release the buffalo and kind of rewild them. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like and, you know, how that success

was made possible? Well, as you say, yeah, it took a lot of effort and, you know, a trial in the air. And I think they, well, just the logistics of transporting those buffalo was not very easy at all. And they had to raise a lot of money and, you know, have the right people who could manage transporting them from Alberta to their reservation. And then as we discussed, managing the buffalo, you know, I mean, initially they were, the buffalo ran wild and stuff. So it took, it took a long time. Yeah, and there were a lot of, yeah, I know the resistance of some, you know,

some of these ranchers they had to deal with. So as well, the bureaucratic red tape. So this was not an easy undertaking. But it took years, but, you know, I mean, the film showed at the end that, I think the Buffalo herd is a, expanding because they're and then they're allowing them more the roam free like they did within certain areas like they did you know 100 plus years ago and the buffalo seem in their

kind of element in their natural milieu and they're managing them better and they're expanding I guess some of the buffalo are reproducing so it seems to be working pretty well now but yeah, it took years to get to that stage. So it's an impressive accomplishment. Yeah, and one of the points that I forgot to re-raise is the point of these Buffalo dialogues that they held. And I think that this is one of the most fascinating points of this story is that, again, after this experience of failure is when tribal councils were essentially saying,

okay, it's time to try again, it's time to try again, let's do this, let's do this. these efforts fail. One of the things that multiple people within this documentary had pointed out as being a key point that allowed them to have this ultimate success was that they hosted this series of Buffalo Dialogues, which essentially was an open forum for people from Blackfoot Nation, as well as the surrounding community, to come in and have these discussions about how logistically this would work. The importance of it, the importance of it culturally, the importance of it ecologically, the importance of it for understanding who they are as a people. And they would host

these open fora with up to and over 100 people in instances to get the people to feel like it was something that was benefiting them as an indigenous person, as a Blackfoot, and as a person who cares about that land, who belongs to that land. And after these discussions, they point out a lot of people, particularly young people, were excited to play a part in bringing the buffalo back and taking care of the buffalo for a day or a couple of days, to find out how to feed them, to find out how to corral them in and out of these various areas that they had allocated for them. whatever that that may be the young people and it is the young people that I think are quite important to focus on here they were excited about trying to revitalize their part of

this culture this part of their culture rather and thinking about how we involve the youth in these cultural and we can say cultural political projects really is is key for not only for those projects being successful in the near term, but also for instilling this feeling of belonging in them. And I think that that's a more universal message than just in the case of the Buffalo is that we have to, in any of these cultural political projects, really think of ways to engage people and make them feel like they have not only agency, but they have an investment in this project. Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, if you think of a lot of the pathologies on the reservations, in the native community, which are impoverished.

I mean, the film did show that. And a lot of it, because the youth have no purpose, you know, the education system, as we discussed, failed them. It was, you know, coercive, the residential schools. There are great opportunities. So this is really something where they can do something meaningful. And at the same time, yeah, learn about their own ancestry. And then hopefully, you know, they'll be the elders in the future, you know,

in 20, 30 years, they'll be the elder and they can impart it onto the next generation. So, you know, it's very, very vital. And yeah, for any political movement or institution, exactly, you have to involve the youth. That's why these, well, sometimes, you know, bad move, you know, like the Nazis, had the Hitler youth.

I mean, then there's just the importance of the youth. And I think Trump was, you know, the MAGA movement with this turning point. USA and as Charlie Kirk, you know, they understand that. And that's why, you know, they invests a lot on the college Republicans. So any political movement has to involve the youth. But this is something positive for it's giving them purpose, a meaningful direction in their life and a way to reconnect with their own past.

And they can hopefully be ones to pass it on in future years. Yeah, absolutely. So I know that this is a rather show your episode listeners, but as I mentioned at the beginning, we're going to be bringing back Jeremy a couple times in the near future. We're going to be talking about the Middle East with Jeremy. This is probably, I would say, Jeremy, the topic that you talk about the most, that you write about the most is the Middle East, at least these days. And then also we'll be talking about Russia in the near future with you. But in closing, I want to ask one more kind of grand, big question regarding this. case study of bringing back the buffalo, and as you put in the title of this article, overcoming the legacy of white settler genocide by bringing back the buffalo. What can we take away from this? Not just in the context of indigenous resistance against continued attempts of extermination, not only in terms of indigenous attempts to bring back cultural artifacts which had been more or less lost for over a century, but thinking not only about these, but also in the

broader scheme, what we can take away from this in terms of political understanding of what resistance can look like to the imperialist, colonialist, a hegemonic view of places like the United States. What are the kind of takeaway messages that we can take from this? Well, one, I think firstly, that people in general, you know, living in North America should be more empathetic and appreciate other society and cultures and can learn from them. As you've been saying, you know, the native population, you know, present in many ways the model of trying to, you know, live with nature in a way that's mutually beneficial, not just destroy nature. And, you know, with all the environmental problem we have today,

that's one thing, you know, the society at large can learn from native societies. And what they're doing in trying to revitalize nature and revitalize the fractured relationship is something we need to be doing in a lot of different areas to repair planet Earth. And just about respecting other culture and other societies and learning from them instead of trying to steal their land and resources. And it's mutually destructive. I mean, it's destructive of our civilization as well because our society they're imploding now. We're marred by tremendous inequality and violence.

on a daily basis. So it's not healthy for anybody. And then the other thing is, yeah, about resistance is that you can maybe keep them down, but people ultimately will defy oppressive systems and will sustain themselves in the long term. And that's what we see with the indigenous community. They've not gone away.

And I think what we'll see in the coming generations is a revitalization of native cultures and societies. And my point at the end of the article, that can be very healthy for society at large. I don't think they are vengeful that they want to destroy. Even though the white settlers came to destroy them, I don't think their intent in revitaling their culture is to destroy the broader society or take any kind of vengeance.

I think they just simply want to live in a healthy way. And I think we can, you know, the larger society, you know, they can be of great value to society at large and possibly leading to a revitalization of our society and moving in more peaceful direction as far as our international relations, as far as relation with the environment. So this could be something great for society.

at large over the coming generations and I think more and more in the broader you know dominant I guess you know remnants of the white settler society are seeing a lot of the errors of their way I mean if you look at the world situation it's not a pretty war and I mean a lot of say American society is off put by all these foreign wars and I mean they're they're struggling you know the the wealth and equality is so stark and the middle to working class people that are struggling and they see a lot of abuses of power and the delegitimization of the elite and the governing ideology of the past.

So that may result in major changes over the coming generation. And again, I think the indigenous people can help lead the way as far as how they live in collaboration with nature. So, yeah, I think this, again, could be something very positive for society as a whole. And certainly for the native communities as they rediscover their culture and the youth develop greater their purpose. We'll see less pathologies in those societies. So in closing, Jeremy, and as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm a reader of covert action. I really enjoy reading covert action.

but it's been either two or three years since we've had you on the show. And so many of our newer listeners may be unfamiliar with you and with covert action more broadly. Can you just tell them briefly what covert action magazine is all about and some of the things that have been worked on recently there and then also where they can find you and the magazine in the closing? Sure. Well, covert action is an anti-imperialist magazine. It was founded by Philip Agee, who was a CIA operative and whistleblower in the 1970s, who worked for the CIA in South America and was off put by this kind of imperialistic behavior. Yeah, that would be not that similar from what we're describing toward the indigenous people in North America,

toward people of Latin America, you know, trying to gain the U.S. wanting to, you know, establish control over their governments. so that a favorable climate can develop for U.S. businesses and that resources could be owned by outside corporations, which was not in the interest of Latin American people. So that's what A.G. wrote about, you know, he was off put that the CIA was basically doing the dirty work of financial oligarchy and was involved in supporting a lot of repressive governments. and doing dirty deeds involved things like torture. And that put them off-putting. So he quit the CIA and he wrote a book kind of expose of the CIA

and the various practices called Inside the Company of CIA Diary. And then he found in Covert Action Magazine with some other journalist, Louis Wolfe, and there was some other people who were involved in political activism in the 60s and early 70s. And the goal of the magazine was to expose the CIA, and they had a naming names column where they would out individual CIA agents. And over time, the magazine continued to try and spotlight the abuses of the CIA and also provide a larger critique. It's probably the only magazine is devoted to critical analysis of U.S. foreign policy.

So, you know, going back to the founding of the United States with the genocide of the Native Americans. Certainly. And we, as I said, we'll be talking about some of the work about American meddling in the Middle East in the near future with you. And then also Russia is a topic that, you know, is apropos of the moment. So, Jeremy, can you tell the listeners where they can find your work? Sure. Well, I have my own website, Jeremy Kuzmerov.com, and also Substack, Too Hot for the Mainstream, as well as a covert action magazine.

And I have a radio show that's also a podcast and on Substack called Uncontrolled Opposition. And we'll link to all of that in the show notes. So, as for me, listeners, you can find me online at Huck 1995 on Twitter. I'm not active these days against sanctions make it hard for me. get on, but you can follow me anyway. You can also follow my co-host Adnan H-N-Husain. He's on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N, and he has his own YouTube show, the Adnan-Husain show, which you can subscribe to. As for Guerrilla History, once again, you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash

guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And as I said, you can find guerrilla history on various social media platforms, just look for guerrilla history, gorilla with two R's, and you'll probably find the show's profiles. So on that note then, listeners, and until next time, Solidarity.