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recovery of endangered species due to their trophy hunting license fees. It is a lie that has been
debunked time and again. What they are is a small minority of wildlife enthusiasts who are
enthusiastic about killing wildlife and happen, by demographic, to be 95% white males. They
are favored at the disenfranchisement of every other demographic for one enduring reason:
ignorance. And ignorance has a color, and ironically it too is green. “United States citizens
make up a disproportionately large share of foreign hunters who book trophy hunts in Africa,”
Dan Ashe, former director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service shared in a rare moment of
candor. The killing gene fueled by the enduring mix of inadequacy, misogyny and patriarchy is
still motivational.
“This is not a hunting issue, it is a killing issue. We come from a subsistence culture, where
there is ceremony and great respect accorded those beings you ask to offer their lives so that
you might live. That is what you call a hunting tradition, not a killing tradition.” Time and again
during the struggle to save the grizzly bear from these gun sight management practices,
Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance Priest and Spiritual Leader, Don Shoulderblade, attempted to
offer this explanation to those “wildlife enthusiasts.” “It is impossible to articulate in a sound-
bite the spiritual significance of the grizzly in our culture,” he persisted. “The grizzly is sacred,
an ancient spirit, a great healer and teacher. The grizzly is integral to our traditional spiritual
lifeway. We will not stand by in the land of our ancestors and watch grizzlies be blown apart
by high-powered rifles and mutilated just to satiate the bloodlust of some rich, ‘great white
hunter.’” GIC applies that principle to all sacred beings, wherever they survive in symbiosis
with First People.
When it comes to the environment and all our relations that walk, crawl and fly – We, the First
People of the Earth – are the embodiment of the wildlife management mantra “the best
available science” – as we are the descendants of those who co-existed and lived in balance
with our Mother Earth, before destruction and devastation reigned. The Grizzly: A Treaty of
Cooperation, Cultural Revitalization and Restoration, now the most-signed treaty in history with over
200-tribal nation signatories and written in accord with UNDRIP, is the foundation for GIC’s
policy on threatened and endangered species. The treaty inspired HR 3894, The Tribal Heritage
and Grizzly Bear Protection Act (THGBPA), that was introduced to the 115th Congress in