bring them home tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species near Extinction a century ago an act that would restore the land rein liven traditional culture and bring much needed healing to their Community narrated by Academy Award nominated black feet and Nez Pierce actor Lily Gladstone and co-directed by black feet siblings Ivan and Ivy McDonald with Daniel glake Ivan and Daniel joined me over zoom in July to talk about the making of the documentary bring them home …

bring them home tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species near Extinction a century ago an act that would restore the land rein liven traditional culture and bring much needed healing to their Community narrated by Academy Award nominated black feet and Nez Pierce actor Lily Gladstone and co-directed by black feet siblings Ivan and Ivy McDonald with Daniel glake Ivan and Daniel joined me over zoom in July to talk about the making of the documentary bring them home will be screened at the walk H holds College Center on August 29th beginning at 600 p.m. tickets can be purchased through the walk holds College Center website in addition to the showing of the film there will be performance from native rapper Superman as well as a discussion about missing and murdered indigenous people with filmmakers and Nick McKinley founder of deliver fund a counter human trafficking intelligence and Technology nonprofit to learn more about bring them home visit www. Thunderheart films.com the introduction of Bison on the black heat reservation is a really special moment and I'm just wondering when the decision was made to put it on film like this and make a film about it so I started the project with three two or three other people my my our producer Sarah and one of our directors of Photography Zayn and and my wife was really helpful and the sound guy in Coulter in those first years but it was uh it came out of a buffalo drive that we shot the these short films that we made on a buffalo Drive in 2016 where it was just a an excuse for me to spend time with bison that was that was the initiative like I just wanted to be close to that animal and then I happened to have connections to Black Fe people at that time and they were like yeah come on let's do it and uh in the process of making that short film one of the characters in that the the head of the the manager of the bison herd told us about this plan this Vision dream to establish wild bison again on the reservation and I thought oh wow that that could be a really cool story and nobody else was working on it nobody else was telling it so I uh so the small group of us who are part of the team said okay let's let's do it we didn't have any money didn't have any funding we just like mostly volunteering for the first few years always looking for black feed collaborators and then finally through our our DP Zayn found Ivan and Ivy and it was like a perfect fit um because they're tribal members they're from the reservation and yeah I mean we thought that first year in 2016 they said yeah we're going to probably release them next year and uh and then the next year came and they're like oh we're probably going to release them next year it seems like next year and so it kept going and going and so it was like a seven or eight year process to kind of stick with the story but yeah Ivan and Ivy came in halfway and it was pretty critical to have them and I don't know if you have anything you want to add Ivan about you know why you wanted to be a part of it yeah you know it was a really interesting like meeting of all of these different kind of threads you know like Ivy and I had been working with Zane I actually when I was working at the University of Montana his mom was kind of my supervisor and she like oh my son does films too and stuff like that you know when you hear that up You' be like oh yeah no that's cute like I'm I'm sure I like looked him up I was like oh yeah I was like this guy's legit and so he was like our first cinematographer for our other um Sundance supported project which will be on PBS upon completion and um and of course like our cousin Alia who's appears in both of the shorts that Daniel was mentioning so there was all of these kind of coalescing things and then Lily um we had ran into Lily somewhere in Missoula when she was still living in there and um had that was right after I think we attached to the project so maybe late 2020 um and she was just super excited you know she was super excited about the projects and um and so yeah just it kind of all happen as of course born and raised and Browning um live there for probably the first half or at least third of my life and go back all the time um since I moved back to Montana about 10 years ago and um yeah you know it was just this amazing opportunity tell this super important story um I think when I jumped when I when we originally were agreed to be a part of the story as I get such this cool opportunity to tell this very micro level story of this community this small place in Montana that you know the work being done here has these larger macro macro um kind of implications and conservation and land stewardship and climate and all of those those kind of things so it was just kind super super excited to you know be attached and you know it was really Daniel had a really Clear Vision when um they first kind of pitched the project to us as like okay I could see this being done because I feel Daniel was so passionate about it and was you know kind of this the steward and was really super um you know iy and I and Sarah and all the other team always talk about you know as intense as Daniel can be at times none of these projects would have been completed if it wasn't for his incredible work ethic so yeah you know just being a part of it was you know really big honor yeah oh sorry go ahead Daniel I know you talked about me behind my back like that Ian but that's cool sometimes you need someone who's a little intense you know he keeps the ship going that's why iy and I iy and I say you know he keeps the ship going and always Keeps Us on course and it's that's what you need in these projects these high level projects like this I'm learning because you know it's really important yeah so growing up in Browning can you kind of tell me what you were taught about bison growing up growing up there yeah yeah you know I think growing up we had always learned that I mean Ivy and I had the I don't know if You' call it a luxury but privilege of growing up pretty culturally connected like our parents did ceremonies growing up and what always my parents would put up an oak on which is kind of the black feet version of a stance or what and so um yeah we grew up really understanding that you know the Creator created us and then created bison shortly after so we'd have something to sustain us and feed us and provide shelter and tools and clothes and all of that and so grew up really culturally understanding of Bison even if they weren't really like a parent on the reservation like I was telling Ivy I was like I remember like the first time I even had seen anything real about a bison was a bison skull after our parents did a ceremony because that's part of what you use that's kind of the last leftover thing from these ceremonies is like a bison skull and you know as high is used to put up the alter and the the lodge and the oon structure and so we kind of knew that bison were incredibly important for for us and our our people and our community and um have kind of but again you know they weren't something just read apparent that was on the reservation there was like these small kind of pockets of them here and there but it wasn't really like a sort of what the film shows it wasn't really like a a a huge thing for the tribe at the moment and people really I don't think people really understood or really because I remember when we used to get like bison for ceremonies it would always be a Yellowstone or something like that or some Rancher near the reservation would provide them knowing that their importance was there but not necessarily being maybe physically connected to him and so that came on a lot later and was even really heightened through working on this project so as you've gotten older and seen bison kind of return more to the landscape I know this reintroduction project is is very is new but how does it feel to to have them closer and know that kids that are learning about them in school now will be able to see them more in a natural way I do work with like the cwood which is the black feet language school which I attended when I lived in Browning and so you know they do a lot of like Bice and awareness and bison education and actually a short we did with them a year and a half ago it was all about kind of bison and the importance of Bison but on the flip side seeing them being reintroduced on this larger scale it's offered opportunities for for reconnection and other other ways like any days which black any is the black feet word for bison any days is this incredible yearly celebration that's all bison centered and it takes place on the reservation and it's kind of this huge event so seeing these kids who you know might have the spiritual cultural connection like Ivy did but Ivy and I did but not the physical connection um and that the fact that they have the physical connection now where you can see bison roaming the reservation there's opportunities to engage with them to see harvests to see you know to participate in reenactments I think it's incredibly important for kind of the future the future Generations but even just like the future of our people like when we interviewed even some of the elders you know they talked about how incredible it was to see you know the kids involved at any days or you know to see this large scale bison reintroduction because a lot of their elders and even their grandparents and great great grandparents talked about you know we may never see bison again on the reservation so you know 100 years later it's a incredible incredible thing to witness so as you guys got into film making what were some of the element about this situation in general that you knew that you wanted to capture in the film I mean pretty I think within the first two years we had figured out kind of the main elements that would be in it like we didn't we didn't know anything when we started filming like it was like okay there's this mission to put the Buffalo out there we didn't really know any of the players we didn't know anything except that there was this dream and uh I mean we knew like one one person and we started there but so it was an exploration but in the first like couple of years we kind of identified four pieces that felt important um and uh like and that was the the teachings of Dr LeRoy littlebear who's a who's a um Canadian he's part of the blackoot Confederacy in Canada and where part of our story is and the way that he's able to contextualize the importance of Bison is like very easy for someone who doesn't come from the black feet tradition to understand and it's just we did this one interview with him in like 2018 and it was just like like it was M it was just mindblowing it was an incredible experience just interviewing him and we're like okay this has to be a big piece of it and then there was then there were the we knew that the stories of pette fox who's also from Canada and irin Carlson who's the head of the black feed Buffalo program they needed to be in it because they they were two of the people who were there like from the beginning and who were like just stayed with it uh until the present and so we knew that there there was that and that we also wanted as much as we could to capture the experience of being with the Buffalo like what's called like verite filming where you're like on the ground capturing capturing action as it happens and you know there may there's not like like that's not the whole film it's this blend of interview and ver and narration and but we knew we wanted to try to capture the visceral sense of like what it's like to be close to those animals and cuz if you if you see them if you're around them it's hard not to love them it's hard not to like appreciate them like their power how how ancient they feel and then when they and then the nice thing about Buffalo filming Buffalo is that they really like looking at you and so they just we just have hours and hours of footage of Buffalo like raw footage of Buffalo staring into the camera lens and you that if you stare into their eyes long enough too it's like staring into the eyes of another human being it's hard not to feel something for them so those were the pieces that early on WE identified um but it was it was pretty hard to figure out how to weave them together that took a long time it was a really kind of a evolving process like I remember like maybe the second year we kind of at that point I think um you me from wrong Daniel like we had thought we had all the footage we're like oh the the final release might not happen you know it's this kind of thing that's been pushed back and pushed back and then I think it was maybe Iran or someone was like well we're going to release them release them soon and then it was kind of like um I wouldn't say out of nowhere but you know it was just kind of like I remember Daniel Ivy and I were all scheduled to be somewhere else so none of us even got to see that first release in person um just because of kind of like the tenuous the tenuous scheduling and and um how kind of sometimes things can work on the reservations and so yeah the story kind of really I think switched into the best version of it the fact that we able to get kind of that first release and you know again you know that's kind of the thing with I think the documentary in particular it's you know you could have one story kind of following your original idea and then have some whole different thing happen where you're like oh gotta go Plan B gotta go plan C sometimes you even get to plan e or F and and so I think that was um but I think I think you could correct me if I'm wrong again Daniel your original Vision was always to kind of get that first release or that release and so you know we after the the reality of It kind of came to us we're like oh we have to get this because this is the perfect kind of not even really ending but you know it's kind of this beginning for this whole story and and so um you know when we were able to capture that and it's interwoven beautifully within the film um yeah it was just kind of that it was really interesting to kind of see the different trajectory and you know even now the tribe is rooting and shooting for a even wider release of of the majority of the animals if I remember correctly and so um you know it's going to be this work in progress that you know fingers crossed that it's enough time where I can get up there and see actually one of the releases but yeah you know I think throughout the story it was just kind of following the um following the The Winds of Change I guess to get to the best story was that the biggest challenge just waiting for when the initial release was going to happen or what were some of the challenges you guys encountered in general I I think like the biggest challenge was patience um because there there was just so much uncertainty about when this would happen if it would happen like like when or really when anything would happen like there was always uncertainty of like I maybe we're going to do the Buffalo Drive these three weeks sometime in these three weeks and then like we wouldn't know until like two days before like for sure or even like a couple hours before if for sure something was going to happen happened and that was just uh because that's kind of the nature of things that at least on the black feed reservation and that was a process of like me coming from the white world I'm not black feet I feel grateful so grateful that the door was open for me and that I could team up with Ivan and Ivy and but I'm coming from the world of like okay let's schedule this out let's get but but being up there like one of the first experiences I had was filming this Buffalo Drive one of the Buffalo drives and I said there was 3 days and on day two I was like okay so when are we going to start tomorrow he was like the the guy leading the drive was like I don't know set 9 10 11 somewhere in there and then it happened and then it started at 2 and so it was like it was getting used to a different sense of time and learning to relax and trust and have faith and uh this the accept this reality of Indian time which is uh something that our narr that Lily our narrator says in the film of things are going to happen when they're meant to happen and so it would that was maybe the biggest challenge was uh learning to accept that we couldn't control anything and we and we just had to surrender to uncertainty could you guys run through how lily got involved yeah so yeah I I knew Lily through I think her cousins originally um cuz she grew up on the black Fe reservation and I when I before I even filmed those two short these Buffalo short films I had reached out to her about maybe playing a role in these short films and so this was long before killers of the flower Moon and we and we stayed in touch and like she was really helpful and we shared footage of the early stuff with with her and and as within like I think within six months of starting this film I asked her if she would narrate it and and she said yeah and and I think she's she had a big heart for this from the very beginning and and then when Ivan and Ivy joined up that like B even bolstered her interest more because you know black feet directors as well as me and and she knew them she had known at least I from school so there there was this long connection and Lily as her star like ascended into the heavens she stayed the same like she stayed as kind and generous as she always was so she wasn't like oh now I'm I'm hanging out with Leo and Marty so go away no she no nothing didn't change she was like yeah let's do it and like I'll do anything like we we did twice we did we recorded narration twice with her if we had to do it five more times God forbid she would still say yes I'm sure of that because she's got a heart for the Bison got a heart for her community and yes so it was we got lucky very lucky with the timing of her Oscar nomination I even remember like one of the earlier sessions where she's like well I have this big audition and I'll keep you guys posted if if I get it and then yeah had told us about had told our team about the killers of the flower Moon stuff like a few months before it was announced and yeah you know just like I think that's what's really great about Lily even with her ascendancy you know she's always shouting people out and you know shouting out I and I and she just really feels that um how did she phrase it when I interview something about like the door's open now and I want to hold it open for people to follow through as long as I can so yeah you know I think having that um and just like that like such like her her really invested invested interest and invested um time she put into the projects really really show uh so I just got one more question for you guys uh I really want to ask like 20 more so what are you hoping people take from the film when they when they see it the main takeaway is that I hope people understand that there's this like small little Community you know who's always considered like might be considered historically disadvantaged or marginalized or whatnot but you know the small Community who's trying to make this really Grand important change and change in you know the ways in which we humans exist with nature and you know interact with nature and you know the tribe having so much of this um understanding that kind of the greater good that this tribe is trying to do that doesn't only just benefit them but benefits everyone and so I kind of hope that people understand that takeaway is yeah you know kind of this um takeway of hope you know there is this hope for for you know humans you know humans in the world and how we see the world and how we navigate the world and how we interact with the the world and you know the N natural world around us and so I hope that's the biggest takeaway for for people who watch the film mine overlaps with Ian and I've said this a bunch of times in different interviews but like for me like my my hope my hope for the greatest like takeaway is is a recognition or a remembrance that human beings are not the top of the like are not the top of the pyramid like we we should not Place ourselves at the top of the Pyramid of life like we shouldn't even think of life in that way like we we should think of ourselves as a piece of everything a part of everything and to honor and respect everything else in in on our planet because not only does it help them but it helps us it it ensures our survival if we give respect to everything else that kind of lives and breathes and even the things that don't live and breathe uh like air and water and um so I think that that for me is the biggest thing is is I hope people take away like a sense of respect for life for and for the life systems that sustain us um yeah