Restoring Traditional Harvest

Traditionally, the Núchíú (Ute people) were nomadic, moving across vast ancestral lands to steward the resources, including native plants, that supported their lifeways. Today, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe (UMUT) members are restricted to less than 600,000 acres of Reservation and Fee land from which to collect traditional plants, year after year. Due to habitat degradation, climate change, and harvest pressures, these traditional species have become increasingly difficult for Tribal members to access. 

In an effort to help restore both ecological health and access to culturally-important species, TWP has collaborated with UMUT, Montezuma Land Conservancy (MLC), and private landowners to open restoration efforts and traditional harvest on ancestral lands in Southwestern Colorado. 

“Being in the presence of the plants, especially those that thrive near the waterways, demonstrates that relationship between resources. But it also, for me, feels like I'm home…Where I grew up, on a reservation nation, there was a distinct line that didn't allow us to be in spaces like this. And to be able to participate in this project, where volunteer landowners allow for access and will work with us as partners and neighbors and humans, things seem to be back to almost the way they used to be, even if it's just for a moment. It's a revisiting of home, place and family – because we see the trees and the water and the land as members of our family too.”

— Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, UMUT Member, MLC Cultural Programs Director

TWP has partnered with UMUT members to co-create a Traditional Harvest Plan, focused on sustainable harvest of culturally important plants within broader Tribal-led efforts to conserve and restore riparian habitat. The Traditional Harvest Plan identifies restoration needs and strategy within thousands of acres of degraded riparian woodlands along the Mancos River, including on private lands.

“It’s a privilege to be able to be a part of this project and encourage the river to be as wild as it can be and to be associated with the local tribes.” – Earlene Swan, private landowner

Through building relationships with landowners, including conservation easement holders, the collaboration has also supported Tribal access to traditional plant harvest on private, off-reservation lands. 

What we're really thinking about in this project is so much bigger than just connecting people to a place for harvest. I think that this project is, at its core, reframing or even redefining how we think about conservation…. Lessons that have come to our organization through relationships with tribal community members have really helped us to think about the future of what conservation organizations can and should look like.”

 – Travis Custer, MLC Executive Director

As part of a reconnection to traditional plants, this unique collaboration supports a broader reconnection to place. These are the Tribe’s ancestral lands, intimately tied to tradition and culture, and re-engaging traditional harvest within them is part of reaffirming connections between a landscape and a people. 

“This is the way we would like for our young to understand our life – it's not just one little important piece of reconnecting, but it's the idea of a whole… It's deeper than just restoring the river. It's also restoring millennia of culture and traditions. Without the plants, we wouldn't have that tradition or that culture, without the mountains, that wouldn't be there. So what are some reconnections that could happen, whether it's with the land or different plants or the mountains or the animals here, the birds, or even just the air that's blowing through right now with us? What are some things that can help us be able to reconnect and, kind of, regroup?” 

 – Lisa Jacket, UMUT Member