Chief Mountain: A Great Coming Home, with Andrew Berger & Kim Paul

The RegenNarration Podcast

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12d ago 1:25:01

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Last week featured a very special on-location episode with Amskapi Piikani Blackfeet elder, and founder of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute, Long Time Charging Woman Kim Paul. That was our first day together, visiting some of the places Kim holds most dear on spectacular Blackfeet Country in current day northern Montana, all while sharing some breathtaking stories about her life and work.

We left off that episode hearing the story of how Piikani Lodge came to be, and the support that started to serendipitously kick in. Back at the house that night, Andrew Berger turned up. He’s the Director of Agriculture and Climate Adaptation Programs at Piikani Lodge.

Based in Baltimore, he’s a landscape architect who cut his teeth in New Mexico on water rights and planning, which fortuidously led him to Piikani Lodge in its relatively early days. And he’s found himself pivotal to the big vision Kim talked about last time, on their latest reacquired land, while he also works with that increasing number (almost half of them so far) of the landholders and farmers improving their land management and production.

So the next day, Kim and Andrew kindly offered to take us out to the sacred sentinel that is Chief Mountain. Which was also where the closing scenes to the new award-winning documentary I talked about last week, Bring Them Home, were filmed, as buffalo were returned to the wild for the first time in over a century.

So join me as I climb in with Andrew to hear how he’s seeing this country, the work of Piikani Lodge, and his role in it all. We’re to meet up with Kim at Chief Mountain. And the day goes on to culminate with an unforgettable wild encounter, while it starts with an heroic story, and more breaking news, straight out of the gate.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 11 July 2025.

Title image: Andrew, Kim & AJ by the Medicine Wheel (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes become a supporting listener below.

Btw, at the last location in this ep, it was Pearl Jam’s bassist.

Music:

Flight of the Inner Bird, by Yehezkel Raz feat. Sivan Talmor (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

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Chapters

1. Setting Off Across Blackfeet Country (00:00:00)

2. The first on-reservation Native American land trust (00:03:10)

3. The drought emergency with changes in climate and land (00:04:47)

4. National hero Elouise Cobell (Yellow Bird Woman) (00:07:05)

5. A vital conservation corridor (00:09:17)

6. Carbon credits & other possibly helpful things (00:10:37)

7. Launching a dashboard and mapping tool for producers (00:14:42)

8. Piikani’s small team & the funding sources achieving so much (00:17:42)

9. Re-granting money for farmers to implement practices cost-free (00:19:00)

10. Piikani’s innovation with snow fencing for water retention (00:20:18)

11. A demonstration site at the high school’s progressive ag program (00:21:57)

12. The spectacular (and problematic) St Mary’s water story (00:23:07)

13. Lords of the Plains … and Mountains (00:27:30)

14. Exciting shift in National Park access (00:28:37)

15. Re-introduction of the transboundary wild buffalo herd (00:29:57)

16. The Blackfoot Confederacy (00:31:47)

17. Ways communities are repairing the water cycle (00:33:47)

18. Chaco Canyon water threats and other mining paradoxes (00:36:12)

19. Heading for Chief Mountain (00:37:40)

20. The largest living beings (00:38:12)

21. Heading to the medicine wheel (Andrew’s first time since the filming) (00:38:57)

22. Working with bison producers (00:40:00)

23. At the Medicine Wheel with Kim (00:41:07)

24. Brokering the buffalo release into the wild here (00:47:00)

25. The extraordinary story of Blackfeet buffalo survival & return (00:49:12)

26. Epigenetic memory in humans & buffalo (00:51:07)

27. A mountain lion? (00:52:00)

28. Ancient tobacco (00:52:49)

29. Transboundary Grasslands Partnership (00:54:15)

30. Maybe more projects can tap into peer subscription models (like this podcast)? (00:55:09)

31. Working with an indigenous led media company (00:57:10)

32. Independent media units popping up (00:58:25)

33. Is so-called ‘social media’ worth it? (vs alternatives?) (00:59:55)

34. Heading into Glacier NP (01:05:55)

35. Podcasts we’re listening to, RFK, John Kempf & our takes on US politics (01:06:45)

36. Jon Tester (01:07:00)

37. Arriving at the Canadian border (01:09:10)

38. Complexities of the tribal vote determining Montana (01:09:20)

39. Communities just doing stuff for themselves (01:12:00)

40. A climactic wild encounter (01:15:47)

41. Heading home … with a tangential Pearl Jam reference (01:20:44)

42. Music and closing words (01:21:23)

402 episodes

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