Celebrating the Tribal Stewards Working Across Ancestral Lands

Published September 5, 2025

This week, we co-hosted a graduation celebration for Tribal Stewards program participants in partnership with the Burns Paiute Tribe and Oregon Natural Desert Association. Over the 12-week summer program that began in June, seven inter-tribal young adults from the Burns Paiute Tribe and Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley Indian Reservation, as well as two local rural residents, have been employed by Lomakatsi to train in ecological restoration and support stewardship activities on tribal trust and public lands in eastern Oregon and across the region.

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Working under the guidance of our workforce trainers and partner specialists, the crew’s activities have included fence maintenance to improve habitat connectivity and reduce grazing impacts in sensitive native plant and wildlife habitat restoration areas; cultural heritage surveys; planting willows; collecting native forbs, and bunchgrasses such as Great Basin wildrye—which is a tribal First Food that is used in restoration projects; and completing priority bird species surveys. The crew also supported the Return of the Boise Valley People gathering in Idaho.

On Tuesday this week, the crew met up with Lomakatsi Senior Scientist Tom Rodhouse, Oregon State University – Cascades Associate Professor Matt Shinderman, and National Park Service Botanist Devin Stucki at the Oregon Badlands Wilderness outside Bend, OR to learn about and practice native seed collection and juniper surveys. They were visited by KTVZ21 and Central Oregon Daily News – check out the links to coverage at the bottom!

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On Wednesday, the Tribal Stewards crew gave a presentation about their experience in the program to Burns Paiute Tribal Council Chair Tracy Kennedy, Tribal Council Administrative Specialist Jody Richards, and General Manager Chris Hicks, where they were joined by Oregon Natural Desert Association Program Director of Stewardship Gena Goodman-Campbell, and Lomakatsi Executive Director Marko Bey and Tribal Partnerships Director Belinda Brown in celebration at the Tribal Community Center. We’re very proud of the nine crew members for all their hard work stewarding natural places across the region! Lomakatsi was honored to operate this program for the second year.

A special thank you to Lomakatsi Tribal Workforce Development Manager Gabe First Raised and Tribal Initiatives Project Manager George Swartzlender for all their work to make this a successful program. This year’s program was extended through August, through Lomakatsi’s Indian Youth Service Corps initiative with funding and in-kind support from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Roundhouse Foundation, Think Wild, Friends of the Malheur, and Oregon State University – Cascades, in addition to in-house contributions from ONDA and Lomakatsi.