Programs aim to connect young Paiutes to their roots

Dixie National Forest • Did you know wild turkey scat is different depending on the bird's gender?

Hens' are in the shape of a spiral. Toms' are in clumps.

"So if you see turkey poop on the trail, you'll know if it came from a boy or a girl," Ashley King, a Bureau of Land Management intern biologist, told a group of Paiute tweens gathered for a weekend outdoor camp this month outside Escalante.

Such observations were critical to the survival of these kids' ancestors, who inhabited southern Utah and northern Arizona for centuries before white settlers arrived.

Now, public lands management agencies are connecting American Indian kids to both their heritage and careers in natural resources through youth camps in the Dixie National Forest.

"The idea is they are coming back to traditional homelands," said Dixie forest supervisor Angelita Bulletts, herself a member of the Kaibab Paiute Tribe.

Bulletts joined 17 kids, ages 12 to 14, for the Kwiyamuntsi Youth Camp under the southern rim of the Aquarius Plateau.

"This place hasn't heard the voice of the Southern Paiute," she said. "These kids sing traditional songs at night around the fire. That's what the mountains want to hear."

The camp, she said, is a bridge between activities for younger kids and internship programs for high school students.

Bulletts' hope is that Paiute-led youth programs will encourage more young American Indians to pursue careers with state and federal agencies that manage land and natural resources.

"When you look at someone who looks like you, you think that is something you can do," said Bulletts, whose own career started as a cultural-resources officer with the Kaibab Paiute Tribe. She later was a district ranger on the Kaibab National Forest, then worked for the BLM before returning to the Forest Service in 2012 as the Dixie manager.

The camp included four days of exploring and learning at Blue Spruce Campground, situated along Pine Creek 18 miles up the Hells Backbone Road from Escalante, just above Death Hollow. Campers studied wildlife, the water cycle, geology, botany, forestry, fire management, archaeology, and other elements of nature and culture associated with a region known as the Grand Staircase.

Sessions were divided in halves, one conducted by land-agency scientists and the other conducted by Southern Paiute Nation elders who provided a traditional look at the same subject matter.

"They can blend those two worlds," Bulletts said. "They don't have to choose one or the other."

On this day, King and BLM colleague Brandon Crosby are leading a wildlife session, sharing various casts of tracks and mammal pelts with the kids, who drape them over their heads and arms.

Tyrone Lopez donned a black bear skin, while Matt Spute reanimated a bobcat pelt he pulled up his arm.

The kids practiced the Paiute names for the animals — "onchup" for chipmunk and "toho-uv" for rattlesnake — before learning how the animals were important to their ancestors.

"Nature is really important, not just trees and water, but what you feel when you're out there," said Daniel Bulletts, the Kaibab's environmental program manager and Angelita Bulletts' nephew.

He took over from the BLM interns to give a lesson in stalking and killing the small game that formed the core of the traditional Paiute diet.

Deer and pronghorn were great sources of meat, but people did not know when big game would be available, he said. Black-tailed rabbits, aka "kumoots," would often show themselves.

The Paiute always had to be prepared with a stick in hand.

"We made blankets from their fur, games out of their bones. It was our favorite food," Daniel Bulletts said. "Taking a life is hard, whether it's an animal or a bug. It's gone and it's not coming back. The lives are taken, so you can carry on and be healthy."

Another Paiute elder described how you need to strike a squirrel in the head because a blow to the body would just send it disappearing down a hole. If you cooked them in their skin under the ashes of a fire, the meat remained juicy.

Daniel Bulletts demonstrated how to poke a stick into a rabbit's underground den, pull out the animal, then tear the head off to quickly end its suffering.

"That was humane," he said. "As you pulled it out, it's screaming and it's scared, but that rabbit is going to take care of us. You either kill or you starve."

Bulletts then tested the boys against the girls in stick-throwing prowess. He propped up several pieces of firewood, each representing a prey animal.

"Our ancestors had to be really skilled with what they had," Daniel Bulletts said, wielding a stick. "You see the rabbit, you knock it over. Whoever misses has to run a mile."

With a sudden flick of his wrist, the stick was out of his hand, smashing against a small log 20 feet away.

bmaffly@sltrib.com