Stories Sustain Us #34 – Restoring the Bear River Massacre Site

Summary
In this conversation, Brad Parry shares his personal journey growing up in northern Utah, his experiences as a Native American, and his career in environmental restoration and tribal leadership. He discusses the importance of cultural heritage, the challenges faced by the Shoshone Nation, and the significance of the Bear River Massacre site, emphasizing the need for community engagement and environmental stewardship. Brad discusses the historical significance of the Bear River Massacre, the recovery of land by the Shoshone Tribe, and their ongoing restoration efforts to revive the ecosystem. He emphasizes the importance of community engagement and the need for collective action to address environmental challenges. The conversation highlights the tribe's vision for a cultural center that honors their history while fostering community involvement and education.

About the Guest
Brad Parry serves as the Vice Chairman for the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and is employed by the Tribe as the Natural Resources Officer, where he is the Program Manager for the Wuda Ogwa Restoration Project. Prior to working for the Tribe full time, Brad worked for the United States Department of Interior - Reclamation from April 2003 to November 2019.

Show Notes
Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation: https://www.nwbshoshone.com/

Takeaways
•Brad's upbringing in a biracial family shaped his identity and connection to Native American culture.
•Brad's career in environmental restoration began with a student internship at the Bureau of Reclamation.
•He worked on the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program, focusing on water management and habitat mitigation.
•Brad emphasizes the need for collaboration among farmers to achieve better environmental outcomes.
•His transition to tribal leadership was motivated by a desire to serve his community.
•The Bear River Massacre site holds deep historical significance for the Shoshone Nation.
•Brad highlights the cultural practices and gatherings that took place at the Bear River site.
•The conversation underscores the ongoing challenges faced by Native American communities in preserving their history and rights. The Bear River Massacre was a significant historical event that needs recognition.
•The Shoshone Tribe is actively working to recover and restore their ancestral lands.
•Community involvement is crucial for the success of restoration projects.
•Restoration efforts include removing invasive species and replanting native plants.
•The tribe aims to create a cultural center to educate others about their history.
•Engaging the community fosters a sense of belonging and shared responsibility.
•Environmental restoration can serve as a model for other communities.
•The tribe's efforts are not just for themselves but for future generations.
•Learning about local history and ecology is essential for community members.
•Everyone can contribute to environmental restoration in their own way. 

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Transcript

Steven 
Have you ever heard of the Bear River Massacre? Or have you ever wondered how restoring the land can help heal not only ecosystems, but also cultural heritage? These are big questions and there are some big answers coming up in today's episode. Hey everybody, I'm Steven Schauer and welcome to Stories Sustain Us, where we are exploring the inspiring journeys of people dedicated to making the world a better place. Today we're joined by Brad Parry.

Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and a leader in environmental restoration. In our conversation, Brad shares about why the restoration of the Bear River Massacre site in Utah is both an environmental and cultural mission for the Shoshone tribe. Now you may not have heard of the Bear River Massacre as it hasn't quite gained the notoriety of say the Battle of Little Bighorn or the Wounded Knee Massacre.

So it might surprise you then to learn that historians consider the Bear River Massacre to be one of the worst, if not the absolute worst, massacre of Native Americans in the West. For the Shoshone, the tragedy of that day continues to reverberate throughout their history to this present moment. In this episode, you'll learn about the Bear River Massacre and the incredible work the Shoshone Nation is doing to restore the land at that site as a way of commemorating their history.

and the lives lost on that cold winter day in January 1863. From removing invasive species to planting native vegetation, the Shoshone's ecosystem restoration work is about more than just the land. It's about ensuring future generations understand and honor their history. Let me tell you a bit more about Brad before getting into this amazing conversation. Brad Parry grew up in Syracuse, Utah, near the Great Salt Lake.

His biracial upbringing and deep connection to Native American heritage shaped his perspectives from an early age. Brad's path to conservation began with a student internship that led to a nearly two-decade career at the Bureau of Reclamation, where he worked on water management and habitat mitigation in the Colorado River basin. Over the years, he's witnessed firsthand the power of collaboration, whether it's working with farmers to improve water quality,

or leading his tribe's efforts to reclaim ancestral lands. Today, as a natural resources officer for his tribe, Brad manages the Wuta Agua Restoration Project, leading efforts to restore and protect Shoshone lands. Now, join us as we dive into this powerful discussion on environmental restoration, cultural preservation, and the importance of community engagement. Right here in Story Sustain us, where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Well, good morning, Brad. Thank you for joining me on Stories Sustain Us. How are you doing today? I am doing very well. I'm so excited to speak with you. I came across an article that you were in about the project that you're working on on the Bear River. And I've been really eager to learn about what you're doing and learn about the history of the area and the history of the tribe. So thank you very much for taking time to join me on the show this morning.

Brad Parry 
How are you doing, Steven?

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.

Steven 
Fantastic. Well, before we get into the restoration work that you're leading up, let's get into your life. Let's dive into your story. So tell me a little bit about you, Brad. Where'd you grow up and what's your personal story?

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so I grew up in what's kind of northern Utah in a little town called Syracuse. It's not so little anymore. When I grew up there, it was farms and wetlands and things like that. you could, and it was right on the banks of the Great Salt Lake. Which will play into my things later in life, you know, the work that I do. And...

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
You know, just, we got our first stoplight when I was in high school and so, you know, just kind of had that small town experience with friends and family. You know, I'm from a biracial family and my father's Native American and my mother's, you know, Danish. And so, you know, I just figured everybody had that in their life, you know, when I was younger and realized that no, it wasn't. So, just, you know, I...

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah. No. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
From very early age my grandmother, Mae Timbibou Parry, always told me, you know, you're an Indian boy, you're a little Indian boy, like that's who you need to be. And always explained that to me. And I grew up next door to my Uncle Bruce who was the Indian Affairs Director for the state of Utah for a time in the 70s and early 80s. so, you know, in Native American culture, tribal culture, whatever, was always around me.

My dad and them were always working on something like that. So kind of really who I was early on and just kind of carried that with me. getting into high school, you just do things. And I played a lot of sports. And during a baseball game for the region title, the team we were playing, we both got a really big scuffle on the field.

I got called out like in the newspaper and then the next morning my dad says your grandmother wants to see you. went over there and she just very gently said we don't do that. We don't do...

this, we don't do that, we don't do this, this is who you are and what your name is. And I mean, you hear that from your grandmother, you're like, time machine, you're like, if I had a time machine, that'd be the greatest thing in the world. Yeah. so like I went to, we had a football conditioning class very first period and you know, football coach was obviously there at the game and pulled me aside and was like, Hey, and I just said, you know what, if you're to yell at me, you please wait till after school. And he says, give me a good

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, carry some weight.

Brad Parry 
reason why I said well I just met with my grandmother so I'm on the verge of tears and he goes your Native American grandma? I go yeah he goes no we're fine we're done so she had it and she still does she still catalyzes that sort of respect for her name for who she just is and she was trying to teach me to do the same thing and so that's how I always was and so

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

May I ask a question about that? Is there a component not only for respecting the family name and the family heritage, is there also a component of a bigger spotlight maybe on you because of your Native American history? Is that part of her reasoning that, not only do we need to have a respectable name, but...

Brad Parry 
Yeah.

Steven 
You know, if we do something minor, somebody might make it a big deal because of the racism issues and the other, is that part of what plays into it? Yeah, I'm sorry for that, but I just.

Brad Parry 
it is it is but she no

she had told me is like when she was in school at washington you know she what she had to endure with the teacher that was there it was a boarding school this was a day school you know cut their hairs spoke english you know he would hit the kids with rulers and paddles and you know make you know she

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeez.

Brad Parry 
she said she refused to tell a story the guy was collecting stories from the kids and she just said well I'm not gonna do it and he just kinda told her you're never gonna be nothing but an Indian in the dirt and she wanted to avoid that with me like hey this is what I went through to make sure people look at us good

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah.

Brad Parry 
you need to do the same thing. It was a cool lesson, know, because it wasn't like she came in and screamed. She's just like, we don't do this and here's why. And she just reminded me who I was. so since then, I've really tried to just be like, okay, I don't want to bring a bad light to the Native American name, the Northwestern Shoshone name or all encompassing. just want to...

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
You just want to be that so you don't get Native American Brad Parry did. You know what mean? That's the headline you dread.

Steven 
Right, yeah, that's, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sorry that that's the

world we're living in and that you and your family grew up in, but thank you for explaining that and I appreciate you letting me ask that question, because I understand it brings up some vulnerability I'm adding, so I appreciate that.

Brad Parry 
Thank you for explaining that and I appreciate you letting me answer that question. Yeah, anything.

Yeah, I it was cool. Like I ended up going to the University of Utah, getting a bachelor's degree and you know, you're in school, you don't know what you're going to do after. And the Bureau of Reclamation who...

Steven 
Right on.

Brad Parry 
federal office was fairly close to the school, had a recruiting day and my dad had worked there and I just went up and I didn't know the recruiters but I'm like hey what is this? They're like we pay you ten dollars an hour and we help you pay for school and I'm like don't care what I do you know.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
I don't understand everything you guys do. I know you do water. So I applied and me and two other students were hired for the student intern program. When I finished school, I was offered a full-time job. I worked there for almost 19 years. Half of that time I was...

Steven 
Yeah, wow.

Brad Parry 
kind of the lead or you know just the coordinator under my boss for the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program which is a huge program in nation and so I got to see farms from

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Farson Wyoming down to you know, Farmington, New Mexico over into Arizona and California Just all the cholera all eight cholera river basin states, you know and managing against salinity and removing invasive species and so I The engineers there and the biologists were you know, really?

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
great to me. They took the time to teach me, hey this is why we do this, this is why we this. Because I was the program guy, I wasn't an engineer, I wasn't a water guy or anything like that. for ten years they guided me along. We were fairly successful with those programs.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
I love doing the work. Part of our stuff is we had to do habitat mitigation. Anytime you do construction on a federal project, you do mitigation. You help people plan and you want them to do bigger projects because it will make more. If 30 people do their own tiny project, we say, no, just dedicate a piece and all of you.

Steven 
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
you know our goal was to reduce the salinity in the water but when you do that and putting things in pipe you also lose less water so you gain more water and those are just things that I learned and did that for a long time and then I joined the tribal council in 2017 and by 2019 he had already purchased the land

I had already helped, you know, I had already helped eggs like you guys need to understand what these water rights are because we had some folks that are like some of the neighbors want this water right and this water right we should be good neighbors I was like no no no you don't give away what they're never making more of and you know so I let me bring in let me bring in a guy you know that I used to work with

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
He came in and he valued it and like everybody's eyeballs like pop. I didn't. Yeah, you don't realize. And so from that on, yeah. So from then on, they're like, well, what else can we do up there with that water? And I was like, well, I'd have to leave my reclamation job to come here. And they're like, well, would you? And I'm like, for the family, yeah. And so that's how we got, that's how I got to that point.

Steven 
Yeah, those water rights are special.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
And all my experiences, you know, when I was younger, you know, my dad always, you know, we were always Indian together. My uncle, my mom supported it heavily. My grandmother. I had an older sister. I have an older sister. She wasn't as active in that sort of a community as she is now.

Steven 
Yeah. Did you have siblings and gr- Yeah?

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
you know and we just played a lot of sports growing up loved going fishing, loved going deer hunting not really just to shoot a deer but to be at the old Indian camp with my great uncles and my dad and cousins that I don't see a lot and just hear all the stories about World War II and about know Indian experiences growing up on Washakie

Steven 
Yeah, for the experience.

Brad Parry 
You hear those stories and you're like, okay, it really shapes kind of your life. So I always just thought, well, I'll stay that way. The other day I was wondering, was I like that? Did I really talk about that stuff when I was a kid?

Steven 
Sure.

Brad Parry 
And out of the blue, an old high school friend had messaged me and said, hey, I just got this job with Shoshone Bannock. He said, just to let you know, I dropped your name and said how you talked about it. He says, I'm grateful you talked about it a lot when we were in junior high and high school. And I was like, he's like, I hope you're OK with that. I'm like, yeah, I'm OK with that. I said, you just reinforced it. yeah, I still was that guy. So.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, right on, right on.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so that's my main focus for the last decade is just travel relations and how to do things like that.

Steven 
Yeah.

Can I dig a little bit deeper into your BLM work before we transition into kind of the 2017 forward? But I'm curious on the work that you're doing throughout the Colorado River Basin. assuming, I just wanna make sure I understand it. I'm assuming you are working with landowners and farmers and ranchers on how to manage their land better to stop runoff and better manage that runoff, how to.

Brad Parry 
You are.

Steven 
restore riparian corridors and is that kind of the work that you were you were doing or was it something different or that and something else?

Brad Parry 
was basically that. The Bureau of Reclamation had special authority for underwater quality to treat salinity in these areas because the Colorado River Basin is just a collapsed salt dome. As the salt moves down the river, picks it up, by time it gets to a certain point, those folks can't use it. A lot of studies, and they'd had this program for a long time, but yeah, we...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
you know a lot of people were just still irrigating with open earth and canal and flood irrigating and those sorts of things and we're like they would run out of water their crops would be very very good and so what we did was like you guys need to pipe from the river to your farmsteads and then each of you need to upgrade your farm system with like

Steven 
Mm. Mm.

Brad Parry
side rolls, center pivots, know, gated pipes, something that will, you know, temper and get better coverage and better water management. So we did have a lot of that. We worked a lot with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well because they do all the on-farm work and we do all the off-farm. And, you know, for every

Steven 
Yeah.

That makes sense. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
area, you know, we mostly worked with companies so you get a hundred farmers in one company.

you know, you'd calculate all the salt that was in their soil, know, however those guys did it. And you'd rank them, you know, they'd put in a project and you'd say, well, who gives us our best ton per salt, you know, cost? And then, yeah, we would go there. They'd get an education on learning how to use the side rolls, center pivots, how to, you know, how long do you irrigate and things like that. And then,

we would go out and, hey, you guys have to do X amount of numbers of mitigation. And at first we saw these little farms just doing it one piece at a time and they just weren't working. And so we just started to suggest, just set aside 6 % of the overall project funding, set aside a piece of land that you all can help take care of and do a bigger project and you'll get more bang for your buck. And they did, they started...

Steven 
Yeah, and the environment will get a bigger bang

for the buck. Right.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, and they really

started doing that and they're like, yeah, this was lot easier than me having to plant my hundred trees. You know, and so we really kind of took that on was like, okay, we're going to just say the announcement, you have to get together and find this because.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, it was just so much better. people were, when they were done, like they used to complain a lot about having to do it, but after it was done, they were, man, this is great. There's so many birds and deer and you know, it's beautiful. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's what you do. And so that, yeah, that was my job was to like oversee the contract, the agreement, work with the farmer, work with, you know, our engineers at Reclamation and,

Steven 
Right? Right.

Brad Parry 
liaison with the Department of Agriculture just to make sure these projects would be put in correctly and yeah, just create that habitat resource at the end.

Steven 
Yeah. So I'm assuming over a 19 year career at the, at the agency working throughout the Colorado base. And you saw firsthand, you know, the, the effects of climate change and the impacts of the Colorado river dwindling from, from what it once was to kind of what it is today and the, and the challenges it's faced. And those who need it, right? mean, it's a giant river basin, that impacts.

Brad Parry 
yeah.

Steven 
you farmers in urban areas and everything in between. I imagine you know exactly that, you know, this is happening. you know, snowpack's not happening and the water's not flowing as it used to. And so what's your thoughts on all that?

Brad Parry 
Yeah, no, and you know

Yeah, I we would talk, I mean before it became a real topic in the news, like we would talk about it in our meetings with farmers and advocates and stuff, guys that really knew their land and water stuff. It's like, hey, this stuff's running out. We're gonna have an issue with this if we don't remove these invasive, if we don't start planting native, we're gonna have a real air quality problem, easier to set on fire.

Steven
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
and they're like, we're losing water and our water's dirty. they were like talking, but no one was really listening. Like, hey, we need more funding to do these things. We're like, well, does it help create help? Yeah, it kind of does. said, but really, it helps create water. They're like, well, what do mean? I was like, well, we'll lose less water if we do this. we'll go.

Steven
Yeah.

Right, removing the non-natives

is, I think you're referencing, right?

Brad Parry 
Russian olives and yeah, yeah, removing the non, oh yeah. Cause they're a heavy, heavy stuff. Yeah, sorry.

Steven
Yeah. Yeah. Just so the audience who may not understand that technical,

yeah, just want to make sure people understand what you're referencing that if you're removing non-natives that are sucking water, they're heavy water users, you might actually save water.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, like Russian olive, like a Russian olive tree is like the worst thing in the world for me, you know, because we're constantly removing them. And it's all, I mean, it's just from here down, it's not just our Bay River system, it's Colorado, it's all those river systems, all those farmers, all those people fight it. Just a quick training on that. The tree takes 75 gallons of water a day out of the system. That's what it brings in and holds.

Steven 
You

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
and it doesn't release oxygen. so you say, OK, I'm losing a lot of water and I can't grow crop here because it just like ruins the dirt. So when you cut it, we stump cut it. Within 15 minutes, we paint on an herbicide. If we were to miss that 15 to 30 minute window, we have to recut the stump because that's how fast that tree regenerates.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

It'll just grow again,

yeah, yeah.

Brad Parry 
and so you know it's not like it's dead when you cut it and so that's why they're extremely invasive if you go and pull them out by the root they come back even stronger because they drop all their seeds and so that's

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, the soil is

disrupted and that just fertile ground to grow in. So, yeah.

Brad Parry 
you know and so that's

why when i say invasive like they're just a major water suck and you know it was hard to yeah it's hard to convince people it's like well your guys's job is to take salt you know like like yeah but this will help and you know our our thing was hey the solution to pollution is dilution the more water we get in there the less this and it just

Steven 
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for explaining that.

Brad Parry 
you know it didn't start hitting home and then when I left Reclamation and came to work for the tribe then people started looking at my goodness we need to plant trees like and it was I was like yeah those smart guys I used to work for they kind of saw the writing on the wall and just hopefully people can catch up

Steven 
Yeah. I appreciate the, yeah,

and appreciate you and folks like you and the folks you worked with helping to educate folks. Cause it is a, it is, I've had some experience with that in my career working on restoration projects and helping people understand, you know, the removal of non-natives and the, you know, what natives, how they are just.

different, they're made for this environment and their root systems are deeper and they don't need as much water because they can survive droughts better. and just making sure people understand, some of these, know, complicated concepts if you're not raised in it or educated in it. you know, folks like you helping people get that is, is important work. So thank you for all those years of service. Appreciate it. Yeah. So.

So we're into 2017 now and that's when you took on the position with the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation. So did you, you're currently in a vice president position, is that correct? did, yeah. Vice chair, yeah, thank you.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm currently in the vice chair spot in

the tribal council. So we have seven tribal council men, women, you know, voted on. We vote every two years, so we don't have seven going out and seven coming in. We stagger it. So and so I started that in 2017. 2020, 21, I became the vice chair.

Steven 
Sure. Makes sense.

Brad Parry 
So yeah, that's where we've been. That's where I've been headed. yeah, really, my dad served, my uncle served, my grandmother served, my cousins have served. And I just thought, you I'm at a point in my life where I have enough time to go do that. And so really, really enjoyed it. It's hard, you know.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

to give that, yeah, nice.

Brad Parry
Cuz you're making big decisions about, I mean, it's the tribal family. mean, everybody's impacted and so you have to have good people in the council and we really, really do. We get along. We don't agree on everything, which is fine.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure, yeah.

Brad Parry 
But at the end of the day when the votes cast, everybody accepts the decision. And I think that's what makes up a good council that we actually council together. And so yeah, I've been doing that sort of work for the tribe. And then I left my position at Reclamation in 2019, right before the pandemic and became a full time employee of the Northwestern Man of Shoshone Nation.

Steven 
Yeah. And part of that then, looking at your bio and obviously shared that with everybody before we started the episode here, but you're also now the program manager for the Wuda Ogua restoration project. did I, please correct me if I mistakenly said that wrong. apologize. Okay, good. Okay. I to make sure. So tell us a little bit about

Brad Parry 
No, Woodo Ogre, yeah, you got it. Yeah, you got it.

Steven 
the history of that site, one of the things that grabbed my attention when I was looking for, you know, I was always scanning the horizon for stories to, you know, reach out to people and see if they'll come on the show. And there's a pretty, I think, ugly history associated with this site. So can you talk through that and let people know, you know, what...

what happened there and now what you're doing there to build something more beautiful in this location.

Brad Parry 
Yeah.

Yeah, so right now it's called the Bear River Massacre Site. I mean that's just what people call it. They know it as. Our ancestors would call it Moson de Gani, meaning home of the lungs, because the hot springs were there and over those red types of lava rocks and the steam coming up it looked like someone breathing. so the home of the lungs, and that's where you knew where to go because there's several hot springs in the area but they all had a little bit different name.

Steven 
Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
And so that's what they call it. And they would winter there because of those hot springs. The ground they would camp on was geothermal and so their teepees were dry and heated from the ground up and there were willows and cattails and grasses that were exposed so you could have horses and they would camp in a boxed canyon. You go there today and you're like, why in the hell would you guys ever camp there? You know, because there's no trees, there's no cover, there's no water.

Steven 
Yeah, sure.

You

Brad Parry 
you it's like what? And it's like you've got to put on your hat and go back in time and be like well this is what it would look like. So you know for thousands of years they met there to do what is called the warm dance. It's a community dance, it's not just like a one day thing. You you show up for a couple weeks and it's...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
You know, it's your rendezvous, it's your powwow, it's your respite. Others, the Shoshone bands would come in and I call it gambling, gossip and games because that's what would basically happen, you know. They loved sports races, know, horse races and you know, doing those sorts of things and handing out prizes. And so, I mean, you can imagine, hey, this was a lot of fun. You get to see people you haven't saw for a long time. A lot of times that's where you met your spouse.

Steven 
Sure, that makes sense.

Brad Parry 
because you'd be traveling like that. so to me, I pictured it as like, yeah, that's something I'd want to go to. That's something I'd want to hang out at. And so for thousands of years, they did that. So it was such a wonderful, special place to winter. I mean, recently I went out with Dr. Brian Cotting, who's one of the heads of anthropology at the University of Utah. And he just was walking around and said, hey, here's a projectile.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
we picked it up and said, take that back and study it and see what And it's 4,000 years old. It's called Elko Church. And you know, the people that say, I don't think you were there that long. And it's like, well, we were really here least 4,000. At least on this very spot. And so that's kind of the history of that area. Then on January 29th, 1863, soldiers had marched from Fort Douglas a few days earlier.

Steven 
At least, yeah.

Brad Parry 
with what we thought they were coming to capture some horse thieves. And so we were like, who did it? know, people, I did. All right, well, we're going to give you over to the army and they'll deal with you. And so the morning of the 29th, super cold, the diaries I read from the soldiers is their whiskey was freezing in the barrel, just feet and feet of snow.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
So

the chiefs rode out to, you know, they had told everybody the night before. There was a large group that left, you know, because everybody knew what was coming. And then there was a group mostly of older men, women, and children that were like, it's going to be hard for them to travel. We'll just keep them here and then we'll go and negotiate with the Army. The Army came down the hill and just, when they saw us, they just immediately started shooting.

Steven 
Right.

Brad Parry 
And so we knew the fight was on, either turning around yelling, the soldiers are coming, the soldiers are coming, and getting people out of teepees and waking people up and get out this way, get out this way. And we had 120, 121 men that could actually fight.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
There's 300 army people there was six probably 600 people there So we have men from 40 15 to 45 is what we guess that you know, not all of them had a gun You know, we did one volley 14 soldiers were killed immediately sadly five horses also perished

But they withdrew because they realized what we were doing. We were fighting on one side to get people to escape on the other. And they saw that, and so they changed their tactic. so about at that point, we were out of bullets. And so there was only one more soldier that was killed during the battle. There were several more that died from weather and hypothermia and gangrene in their limbs afterwards.

Not very many from wounds just because we didn't have the weapons and trying to protect old men, women and children is it was hard and just chaotic and so you know we had people laying up my great-great-grandfather laid on the ground and played dead. Several women would jump into the know icy Bear River but then like float to where the hot springs were and

Steven 
Wow.

Brad Parry 
They'd be under the bank, you know, and they could hear the soldiers up top and one woman, her name was Zanzi, she was holding her baby and just looked at the rest of the women and the baby started to cry so she just let it go. And, you know, she didn't want, she didn't want that to, you know, she sacrificed that for the rest of the people that she was with. And so it was...

Steven 
Cheers.

That's so...

Yeah, yeah, that's awful. That is awful.

Brad Parry 
It lasted about three four hours and afterwards we're just all scattered. And that point on, from that very point on, we were really struggling and striving to be a people. But that's that area, that's what that area means. And because it's January and a lot of the places are frozen, and we got out of there really quickly and didn't come back, lot of those bodies just laid there.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
and they're still buried there.

You know, there's always those local legends that says, yeah, those old people dug a big pit and shoved them in. And I was like, when? March? you know, it was just, so it's a graveyard for us. It's a cemetery. was quick, you know, within a decade was taken over for ag use and...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
all the trees, know, there were plenty of cottonwoods, all the streams. The crea... it's... for a long time it was called the Battle of Bear River. And until the 1990s, my grandmother just really lead the charge. It was a massacre. We got her...

Steven 
Yeah.

It's a massacre,

yeah, wasn't much of a fight, right?

Brad Parry 
We gotta call that this. So finally in

the 90s, Congress was like, oh yeah, probably. And so through an act of Congress, we got the name changed. A lot of the locals up there that I still talk to that I'm really good friends with, I'll say, yeah, the massacre, oh no, no, it was the Battle of Bear River. I was like, yeah, you're gold. Like, what do mean? I'm like, I love that you deserve so staunch on that. you know.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was somewhere between

350 and 500 Shoshone were massacred in that battle. I mean, if that's right.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so we've been doing a lot

of research and just calculating names and there were 72 TP slash Wiki Ups that were there. You sleep seven to eight for one of those. And the numbers at the time, we guesstimated we had about 600, a little over 600. So our guess is

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry
have rise to about 450, between 450 and 500 were killed that day. There was a, I think it was a Danish doctor in the area, and we have his journal now, but he went through after and counted all the bodies. And he got to 498 were the,

Steven 
Yeah, wow. Yeah.

Wow.

Brad Parry 
Locals had said well we counted them they're 368 they counted them twice but the doctor said oh I got in the stream and went downstream and walked and Said this was my count. So we were like, oh my gosh, we're right at 500 So and just you know 600 625 650 members at that time, you know, we just had a death the other day So we're back down to 579. So we haven't even made up

Steven
Yeah.

Yeah. Re-recovered,

right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
We haven't recovered from that and still

trying to. And that's what a lot of my thing is, is just like, hey, we're still here. We need help recovering a little bit. But yeah, that's what happened to that spot.

Steven
Yeah.

Yeah,

thank you for sharing that. mean, it's hard to hear, but thank you for sharing that. yeah, growing up in Texas in the 80s, know, US history, Texas history in middle school and US history in high school, you don't hear about things like that. know, learning some of these, you know.

bits and pieces of US history that are pretty horrendous. You know, it's good to know. We need to know those stories. So thank you for sharing it. Thank you for being a repository of that tribal knowledge and appreciate your willingness to tell us about it. Because it's history that needs to be shared and told. So thank you. So at this, does the tribe now own

That land again, it sounds like it was lost after that and became ag land and privatized over years. So the tribe has been able to regain that land, is that correct?

Brad Parry 
Yeah!

Yeah, mean it got, you know, Homestead Act, people came in and just took it over and people would sell their lots and at the end of the day there was a large, large landowner that, you know, we had talked to previously throughout the years and Mr. Johnson just, I don't want to sell, I don't want to sell. And then in 2018 he had come to the tribe and

Steven 
Sure.

Brad Parry 
Okay, or 2017, okay, well I'm ready to sell. And we just jumped back and we had tribal businesses and things outside of the tribe that helped generate basically general fund money. And we had enough in there to buy half of what, but it was the half we wanted because it was on the north side of the river and that was the most culturally important.

our neighbor Bozenland and Livestock joined us and said, we'll buy the other half so you guys can get this half. And so we went in and made that deal. in 2018, we signed the deed. And so we own it outright. It's not trust land. It's not a reservation. It's just our land. And so we were able to purchase it and add a couple of other parcels to it. And so.

Steven 
Nice.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
You know, we have about 500 acres, which right now, that suits us just fine.

Steven 
Yeah, and you mentioned reservation. My assumption is, correct me if wrong, since the tribe was largely decimated in that 1863 massacre, I'm assuming you don't actually have a reservation land? Okay.

Brad Parry 
You're correct. Yeah, we don't we're

I actually still try and work with Congress and our senators here to make good on the promises for reservation In Our first treaty we signed was in 1863 the Treaty of Boxelder where

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
They talked about it, but we were like, no, we're from here. And then in the Treaty of Fort Bridger, they set up Wind River, they set up Fort Hall. And we said, we're from neither of those places. We're from Cache Valley, Utah.

By then the Mormon pioneers had moved into that area and they were like, hell no, you're not moving. You're not setting up a reservation here. It was hard enough to get you guys out. And so yeah, we just largely just wandered around and didn't have a place. We eventually ended up appealing to the Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
He said okay, let's let's go out here and he found a spot You know it was just kind of out of the way and they said you guys can have this but it's gonna be owned by us and you're gonna go to church and you're gonna be under ecclesiastical direction and You know at the time you're like, you know But you got to grow your own food. You still got to go hunting Set up a school. I mean

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Was it ideal? I don't know. It acted kind of like a reservation, but it absolutely wasn't. There was just very little government assistance. I think the government was more than happy to, let's just let the Mormons handle them. That's less cost, that's less headache for us, let's them deal with it. And at the time, we were probably more comfortable with that because we had been decimated by the Army, and so we didn't want to see them again.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry
really weird relationship, unique relationship with the church, even during the day.

Steven 
Yeah,

yeah, sounds oddly similar to some of the indigenous history I am familiar with growing up in the San Antonio area and the San Antonio missions that are there and the Spanish colonial activities of the 1700s of basically disbanding the indigenous tribes and populations and you

Brad Parry
yeah.

Let's go.

Steven 
kind of blending everybody into a mission Indian. You live within the confines of the mission and you sacrifice your culture and your history and your beliefs to become Catholic. yeah, you can kind of stay on the land, but you gotta now be kind of a subservient to the Catholic Church and the Spanish colonial.

Brad Parry 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steven 
Crown. it's very similar sounding history just with the Mormon Church instead of the Catholic Church. So, yeah, wow. Well, so best wishes and good luck on getting the reservation. I know it sounds like an ongoing fight. So I wish you well with that. yeah. So tell us, I guess, about

Brad Parry
Correct.

Appreciate that.

Steven 
the restoration and you you've said upwards of 500 acres was that what I heard? Yeah, so what's the plan now here? What are you in the process of doing and what's the vision that you're working towards?

Brad Parry 
Yeah, close to 500.

Yeah, that's a great question. when I took this on, there was an engineer that I had worked with at Reclamation and I just said, hey, if I ever go out on my own, I'm calling you and your firm.

gave the guy a phone call, he's like, I know two biologists. And so one day, basically three acquaintances meet and they're standing on the hill discussing, what do we do? Like, you know, we have no money. We don't know where we're going to get any money, but we need, the tribal council wants to do a restoration. you know, we sat up there for a couple hours just talking about things and said, well, let's start with a phase, a phase of removing Russian olive trees.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
and then we'll replant after that. From there it just really grew.

because people started to take notice of what we were doing and so the funding started to come in a lot faster than we expected and so we had to make plans a little bit quicker and so the overall goal is to A, remove all the invasive species, replant about 250, 250,000 native plants from that area. A lot of them are medicine plants, a lot of them are food plants, know, cottonwood trees, juniper, quake and aspen.

just really good habitat for birds and for deer. yeah, native grasses, willows, cattails, know, create, we need to recreate the wetlands that was there. And, you know, back in 1863, the tribe camped around what was called Beaver Creek. And this was a creek that flew, you know, came through the mountain.

Steven 
Yeah, assuming grasses and yeah, there's the whole variety of plant, Yep. Yeah, nice. Yeah, nice.

Okay.

Brad Parry 
that they were camped by and entered into the Bear River downstream about three-fourths of a mile. Fresh water, cold, lot of beaver. Peter Skeen Ogden, who's a famous fur trapper in these parts, Ogden, Utah is named after him, actually in his diary, kind of like, well, here's where we are and I'm camped with a Shoshone. We're like, my gosh, he's right on the spot.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
You know, and

they talked about how the beaver dams made for bigger fish, you know, the water pulls up and just kind of a great place. And we're like, can we really achieve that? Like, is that something we could actually do? Like move this over here? They take this channelized irrigation system, which, by the way, is the most turbid or dirty water in the entire Bear River watershed. three throughout three states and millions of acres.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

get back to, yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
we have the dirtiest water and so we're the last user on the line for one of reasons so okay how do we clean this up and so we just put together a plan of all right we don't need that irrigation ditch anymore let's let the water free flow over the land we'll do our plantings around where we're going to have that water free flow and we're going to replant every time we remove Russian olive we replant right over it

Steven 
Yeah, you're towards the end there, yeah.

Brad Parry 
and so the goal is to make it look as much as possible like it could have in 1863 so if you were from 1863 you might recognize some of the area and you know people started to ask us, well did you guys do this for the Great Salt Lake? I said well we did it because it's our cultural and spiritual belief of the land and the byproduct of that is yeah you people downstream in the Great Salt Lake are going to

have an advantage for that and we recognize that but we didn't do it for you, we did it for us but we will help you have this help benefit what your needs are because it's about community for the tribe.

Steven 
Yeah, they'll get the benefits. Yeah.

Yeah. And from a geography

perspective, so people understand where you're working on this Bear River area is a bit north. If I've got the map in my head right, that, you know, it draining into the Great Salt Lake.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so the river, yeah,

so it's about 65 miles from our point to where the, you know, basically the straight south into the Great Salt Lake and the Bear River is the largest contributor to the Great Salt Lake. I mean, that's where it gets most of its water. And so, you know, very concerned about that. And so, you know, we've started to make that part of a priority.

Steven 
Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Because that's our aboriginal territory as well. I that's our home and we don't want to see that lake go and so

Steven 
Sure, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's

dwindling if people don't know that. It's drying up, so yeah.

Brad Parry
Yeah,

and so we just, we were like, so we've really gotten involved in the community and by that the community's gotten really involved in us. So we have people come and help plant, we have people donate, we have people that volunteer work and you know all to just make a place beautiful and climate adaptive and

Steven 
Yeah, great.

Brad Parry 
better water, more water, you know, because we won't be losing as much throughout, know, flooding irrigation and doing those sorts of things. And animals and birds and fish and everything coming back to the area is a huge goal of ours. And so we just really want to make a place that's sacred. I mean, it's already sacred, but we want that reverence there where you show up and you're like, this is a, this is a place.

Steven 
Right.

Of course. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
And we'll grow our own medicine plants and things we use for ceremony, our own food plants. We're going to have our own little nursery there where we teach kids, where the elders teach kids, this is how you use this plant for cuts and abrasions, or this is how you use eye wash, and this is how you make this. And just really try to make it cultural enough to where

we can go there and have teaching moments and that our kids will grow up doing that. so Beaver Creek was renamed Battle Creek. I don't know, people keep asking me, are you guys gonna change it back? I'm like, don't think we get to decide the name of that river, hopefully, because Beaver is another thing we'd be bringing back.

Steven 
Yeah, it'd be nice if it

could go back, right? Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so we'll be

doing all those things and so it's just a full restoration of the land where if you saw it in 2018 and you came now, you'd be like, oh, don't, it's not recognizable and hopefully by 2035, you're like, this place is completely different.

Steven 
Yeah,

that's exciting that you're already that far along. know, because restoration projects, as from personal experience, I know take decades to get done, not only just the restoration part, but then take decades beyond that for the full grow out of everything you're planning. So this is a multi-decade.

Brad Parry 
Yeah.

Steven 
process that you're in the early stages on and to hear that you're already that far along is really positive and that's really exciting. So, and I understand in addition to the teaching at the nursery that I see somewhere that there's plans for a interpretive center or cultural center as well or, yeah. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, we would really like that.

It's hard to find government funding for a building like that or that size. But we're constantly trying to raise money and people can donate. It's fully like we've done.

Steven 
Sure.

That's the ambition, yeah.

Brad Parry 
mostly the hard work, getting it designed and getting all the permits and having all of those things. It's shovel ready, ready to be built. It's just when the pandemic hit and concrete and steel and wood all went up and prized, we just, well, we gotta wait. So we're planning that because we wanna plan a center where you can come and learn not only about the Bear River Massacre, but more about the tribe because...

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Brad Parry 
You know, the Bear River Massacre doesn't define us, it's a point in history. But learn about what we did before and learn about what we did after. And you know, we talked to locals and we're like, hey, we know you guys arrived here early and you took over like, you know, we want this to be an evolving or revolving museum. We don't want you to come once and have seen everything. Like, we want to invite you to come and present your pioneer history here at our center.

Steven 
Perfect.

That's... yeah.

Brad Parry 
and just kind of give the community a chance to feel like, yeah, this is ours too.

Steven 
true historical cultural center that honors the indigenous history but the more modern history as well is what I'm hearing. Yeah that's wonderful.

Brad Parry 
And so, yeah, just be a good way for people to come and just see, you know, like, since we don't have reservation, you know, our people are scattered and so you usually go to, like, at the reservation you have these buildings that, these office buildings that just have tons and tons of artifacts. Our artifacts are with our people and so it'd be a good chance to have people donate and then they can explain.

what it is, how their grandfather, just want to make it really personal so people can show up and see, oh okay that's what that is and learn a little bit more about us other than the massacre.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's, I appreciate that. And that's, I know you're to get there. One step at a time, one, one, you know, bit of funding at a time, but that sounds like it's a vision that needs to happen. you know, is there anything else? know we're, I want to be respectful of your time and day and everything as well, but is there something that we've missed about the project or about the tribe that, that

I haven't asked you about or that it's something that you want to make sure people understand or know about the work that you're doing or the tribe in general.

Brad Parry 
You know, just the tribe in general really, we're a smaller tribe. We're spread out. It's hard to bring people together. So the project site is meant to do that. To start getting our 500-something members to start coming together since we're so spread out in the Wasatch Front and different places.

you know, we're part of the community and just kind of be cognizant and respectful of that. That, these guys are our community members and, you know, really trying hard to, you know, sustain ourselves so we can build a building like that and teach. And so, you know, that's what we really want to do is help teach people about who we are, that we're still here.

this is our story, our true story, it may not be what you read in the book. So that's all I'd like to say.

Steven 
Wonderful. I'm in the Seattle area. I'd love to get down there someday and see the see the project firsthand. Yeah, it sounds like a wonderful project you're working on. And, you know, this whole whole idea, this show, you know, is people like you telling your stories to inspire people to action and and and to. there's a cat we talked offline that he he might make an appearance. Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Anytime you let me know, we'll schedule a special. Yeah.

Steven 
But this idea of, know, what I can envision in the future, the story I'm telling myself after learning more about what you're doing there is that this 500 acres, when it reaches its full restoration potential, is really gonna be an example for others along the Bear River, up and down the Bear River to see this is what can be done. You know, this is, look what they did and...

Brad Parry 
Yeah.

Steven 
You know, we can, we can do restoration work along our stretch of the river as well. So, because that's, that's how this stuff works. Somebody does it, you know, you know, against all odds, you get it done and you can inspire others to go, wow, that's look at that. Look at what we can have if we come together and, and, you know, live more sustainably and, and restore, the world around us. So.

I see it being a great example there in Utah and throughout the Bear River Basin.

Brad Parry 
appreciate that. Yeah and I just you know got to give credit to our neighbors you know all the different organizations the Bear River Commission the state of Utah the Great Salt Lake City Advisory Council all of these people have you know they're like hey you need to be on our board you know I'm like okay because they do ask those questions how did you do this what are you doing what's going on can we model this and

And to us it's so important for us to help other people. know, it's like, hey, you may have a little bit different land or different thing from us, but here's an idea of what we did. Here's how we went after funding. Here's how we did it. And so we really feel fortunate that we can then we make sure we take the opportunity to meet with those agencies, to meet with other irrigation companies and, you know, offer support and offer help and, and.

And in turn, they come back and volunteer for us and do certain things. so it's just like you said, symbiotic. Like every, every, if everybody did something on their 20 or 30 acres, that, that adds up.

Steven 
Yeah,

that collaboration and that, you know, one one inspires the other and helping each other along with lessons learned and best practices and all that. That's, how it's going to get done. So I appreciate you, your whole career from the BLM days to what you're doing now with the tribe and, and trying to make the world a better place. So thank you for, for all that you've done. Yeah. So tell us the audience, whether they're listening and watching.

Brad Parry 
I appreciate it. I love doing it.

Steven 
Tell us what you want us to do. What's your call to action? Hopefully everybody's amped up and inspired and they want to go do something to either support you and the tribe. They're in Utah or they want to get involved in their own local community and do something. What's your call to action for people to do now that they've heard your story?

Brad Parry 
Yeah, so my first, know, when people ask, hey, I'm not around there or whatever, what little can I do? it's...

Learn about where you're from, first of all. Learn about what's in the area. these things, take an inventory of what you have, are these things native, non-native? And if you find something that you can remove and replant with a native tree, there are programs that help you do that. And that's something everybody can try and do. And more trees, better climate.

Better use of water, like don't just waste your water. When you live through droughts, just like, you don't realize how close you actually are sometimes to losing that. So really respect the water and the land. For those that wanna like help with our project, we have volunteer days throughout the year to like clean up, plant trees.

Pull weeds and things like that And so we invite people to come out to do that we all we try to put together volunteer lists where we can send out emails to everybody and The other thing is is if you really wanted to donate a tree to us you're able to do that through our website you know just click donate a tree and and we GPS it for you take a picture of it and

So hopefully if you're like, if you're living in Seattle and you buy a tree that we plant and we GPS it one day, you can go there and be like, that's my tree. And we, all the volunteers, we encourage them to GPS the trees that they plant. Because we said, we want you to come back with your grandkids and say that this section was me or that was me. so just to kind of make it home to them. And I just, that's what I ask people do is like make

Steven 
Yeah, right on.

Yeah.

Brad Parry 
Make your home like that. Get invested in it and then you'll want to take better care of it. But that's things that we could do.

Steven 
Yeah.

Well, what's the, I'll put this on the show notes as well for afterwards, but what's the website? Am I still here? Am back?

Brad Parry 
Well, I lost your voice, Steven.

Steven 
I can hear you, Brad.

Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're back. what's the, the website where people can go and donate? I'll make sure to put it on the show notes, so that people can link to it, but tell us, tell us what it is so people can go and contribute. And I'm assuming you'll, can, you'll take other donations if somebody just wants to, you know, give some funds to help support the project.

Brad Parry 
video.

We're back.

Yes.

Yep,

Steven 
So where do people go to do that?

Brad Parry 
absolutely. So you go to nwbshoshone.com. It's under construction right now. We're moving some things around so keep trying if it doesn't work. The other thing that people can do to get on the list and to get more information about the donate site is to email mariamonker at mmonker o n c u r

at nwbshoshone.com.

Steven 
great. I'll make sure all that's in the show notes

and that's the Maria that helped. Hi Maria. Thank you Maria for getting this interview set up. Yeah, yeah. Let's hope we get some responses from this but wonderful. Well Brad, I end every episode talking about hope.

Brad Parry 
That's the Maria that helped you.

Yeah, watch your email box.

Steven 
Talk sometimes during these conversations about some hard things and certainly the discussion around the massacre is a very difficult conversation to hear. the land degradation and the trouble we're having with climate change and the Colorado River and everything we talk about, we talk about some hard things and some problems and some challenges we're facing. in addition to all the inspiring work you're doing with the restoration project.

I always want to leave people with some hope. So I asked my guests the same three questions about hope. And hope isn't a, you know, a pink cloud emotion. Hope is actually, you know, for those who study it, it has meaning in our lives. It what gives us the motivation to go take action. So hope is this idea that you have a vision for a better future.

You have some idea of the steps you can take towards that vision and you have a sense of agency that there's something you can do to affect that outcome. You might not get there. It might not be easy. You might not be able to do it alone. In fact, most times you can't do it alone. We need each other in this world. But that's kind of the hallmark of hope. And when you have hope, then you have that ability to go take action and face the hard challenges of the world. So.

I'm gonna ask you three questions about hope. Just kind of give me your first gut intuition, your first answer from your heart. Don't think too much about it if you don't mind. So the first question about hope, Brad, is what's your vision for a better future? It can be for you personally, professionally, or the world. What's your hope for a better future?

Brad Parry 
working working better in the community you know we're a little divided on issues and things right now you know even regarding climate but that the sense of community comes back you know i'm not doing this you know i'm not doing this for me i'm doing this for you know i don't have any kids but my nieces and nephews and their kids you know and i want them to be able to

to reach out to their community, teach this story and bring other people into it. Just be more community minded. Like, yeah, you may hate it, but it may be the best thing for your 90 year old neighbor. you know, just basically getting back to, hey, I've got a widow across the street. I should go take out her garbage. You know, just that sort of mentality is what I is what I have hope for. And these this younger generation, I see it. And so, you know, they're really a lot.

really motivated to be involved in community and so that's very hopeful.

Steven 
Tell me why that's important. Why should we be back involved in community where we're caring for each other like that?

Brad Parry 
If you love your neighbor, you won't ignore them, won't steal from them, you won't try to do anything bad, then you realize that you're part of a community and they will help you also, and your goals together, you know.

Five fingers don't make a fist until you close them and you work together. That's really what it is. You have more people in your circle to make better changes, more ideas. You're not alone. You don't need to be anxious and depressed. You have people. And just meeting people. Older people, younger people, everybody can teach you. It's good to be in that sort of environment and community.

Steven 
So last question, imagine now that future you just described where everybody is more engaged in community, more open, more empathetic, more willing to help their neighbor and be helped by their neighbor. That's the world we're living in right now, your future. How does that make you feel?

Brad Parry
me feel great. I truly think that the great creator watches those things and that some of the turmoil that we're experiencing is just bad energy that we're putting into the environment.

you know we've we beat up on mother earth and she's she's done with it so she's gonna show us hey alright you want to do this and this will have a drought we'll have this we'll have that we'll have this you know in no way like some punishment from God but I just think it's you know we believe in the great spirit and the great creator you know in all things and it's like if you act harmoniously that spirit within the earth and water and things recognizes that and it begins to help you back and

You know, I think about that and I think of all the advantages that could be in the future, you know. We don't see the level of wildfires that we saw in Los Angeles, you know. We don't have to fight over water here and worry about, you know, toxic dust and stuff flying around. We can just...

have our kids, you know, to me, I would be grateful if I could just sit back in my chair on my porch and watch kids just play in the street, go from house to house like we did when we were kids and not worried about, you know, something happening because you don't know anybody in your community anymore, but back then you did. And it was so much fun, you know, to interact with everybody. Everybody was your parent and

you i did that's that's how i feel i just feel really grateful because i just think you would see so many positive changes

Steven 
love it. Well Brad, thank you for sharing the work that you do with us. Thank you for sharing your vision for a better future. It's a that's a future I believe in and gonna do my little piece to try and help us get there. So thank you for that. So and appreciate your time. Again, Maria's help setting this up, but thank you for for all your leadership and all the work that you're doing there in Utah. It's making a difference. So thank you very much.

Brad Parry 
Appreciate it.

Steven 
for what you do and I will let you know if I can ever get down there because I'd love to see it.

Brad Parry 
Yeah, give me a call. We'll take you right out.

Steven 
Alright, well I'll let you get back to work and I appreciate your time. Thanks, Brad. Take care.

Brad Parry 
Have a good day. Have a

good weekend.

Steven 
What an incredible conversation with Brad Parry. From his early work in water management to his leadership in restoring the Bear River Massacre site, Brad's journey is a testament to the power of environmental restoration and cultural preservation. We learned about the importance of removing invasive species to conserve water, the collaborative efforts needed to protect natural resources,

in how the Shoshone tribe is reclaiming their ancestral lands to ensure their history is never forgotten. Brad's work reminds us that understanding our past, especially the painful parts, is essential if we want to create a better future. As Socrates famously said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Look, if we fail to acknowledge and learn from our history, be it our own personal history or that of our nation's history,

We can't correct past mistakes or find ways to right the wrongs of the past. Brad and the Shoshone people are doing just that. They're honoring their ancestors, restoring the land, and ensuring that future generations remember the truth of what happened at Bear River. And in addition to doing all of this, their ecosystem restoration efforts will also carry benefits all the way to the Great Salt Lake.

and hopefully inspire others to restore habitat and ecosystems throughout Utah and the American West. So, I want to thank Brad for sharing his story with us today and the story of the Shoshone Nation. I also want to thank Brad for his leadership and dedication to making the Bear River a better place for his tribe and for the residents of Utah. By doing so, he's helping to make the world a better place. For those of you listening or watching,

I hope you feel inspired to take action in your own community. You can support the Shoshone's restoration efforts, get involved in local conservation projects, learn about indigenous history in your own area, or even just take the time to educate others about the stories that too often go untold. Every effort counts. And if you enjoyed this episode and it resonated with you, please share it with your family and friends. Like and follow Stories Sustain Us. Leave me a comment.

and help spread the word about these important stories far and wide. Your support really makes a huge difference, so thank you. I also want to invite you back for next week's episode coming out on March 25th. I'll be talking with an incredible guest about the global transition to clean energy. I was truly inspired by her unwavering confidence that this transition can't be stopped. And I think you'll be inspired by her too. So don't miss it.

Catch the next episode of Stories Sustain Us on March 25th at StoriesSustainUs.com wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for listening and thank you for being a part of this journey to make the world a better place. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.