PROMOTING AGRICULTURE CAPACITY AND EQUITY IN THE CROW RESERVATION

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: OTHER GRANTS
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1029378
• Grant No.: 2022-38460-38437
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $157,142.00
• Proposal No.: 2022-03621
• Project Start Date: Sep 1, 2022
• Project End Date: Aug 31, 2023
• Grant Year: 2022
• Program Code: [KX]- Tribal Colleges Education Equity Grants Program

Recipient Organization
LITTLE BIG HORN COLLEGE
1 FOREST LANE
CROW AGENCY,MT 59022

Performing Department
Agriculture Department

Non Technical Summary
Non-Technical SummaryThe Crow Indian Reservation encompasses 2.3 million acres in southeast Montana, and it is the largest Indian reservation in Montana, 6th largest in the United States. The abundance of natural resources on the Crow Reservation creates an atmosphere for opportunity. Like all towns in Montana, agriculture dominates the industry, and majority of Crow Tribal Lands are used for just that--Agriculture. The Crow Tribal Trust Lands are owned by the Crow Tribe (Absaalooke) and the Crow Tribal members, they have not received a high revenue or profit from their properties. The majority of tribal trust property are sitting idle or leased by non-Indian farmer/rancher. The Crow Reservation has high unemployment and high poverty rate. Little Big Horn College is located in Crow Agency, Montana. The primary goal of this initiative is titled, "Promoting Agriculture Capacity and Equity in the Crow Country," is to offer opportunity to LBHC students and community an Agriculture curriculum and degree!

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
001	0001	0001	100%

Knowledge Area
001 - Administration;

Subject Of Investigation
0001 - Administration;

Field Of Science
0001 - Administration;

Keywords

"promoting

agriculture

capacity

and

equity

in

crow

country"

Goals / Objectives
Program Title: Promoting Agriculture Capacity and Equity in Crow CountryIndicate the specific goals and objectives of your plan to build education capacity at your institution and how you will measure the success of this plan after four years. Indicate which areas of the FANH sciences you will focus on. Opportunity Statement"The Crow Country is exactly in the right place. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains; all kinds of climates and good things for every season.....The Crow Country is exactly in the right place. Everything good is to be found there. There is no country like the Crow Country."-- Eelápuash/Chief Sore Belly, 1830.1The Crow Indian Reservation encompasses 2.3 million acres in southeast Montana, and it is the largest Indian reservation in Montana, 6th largest in the United States. As Chief Sore Belly stated, 'everything good is to be found here,' there are rolling grasslands and prairies, in between three mountain ranges and two rivers. The abundance of natural resources on the Crow Reservation creates an atmosphere for opportunity. Like all towns in Montana, agriculture dominates the industry, and majority of Crow Tribal Lands are used for just that--Agriculture. Although Crow tribal lands are owned by the Crow Tribe and Crow Tribal members, they are not the ones reaping the benefits of their lands. Majority of Crow Tribal lands are leased out by non-Indians. It is ironic that the number one industry in Big Horn County is Agriculture, yet the Crow Reservation has an unemployment rate of 18.1 percent(2)and a poverty rate of 31.5 percent(3). Considering the Crow Tribe Reservation makes up 72% percent of the land base in Big Horn County, is it very concerning why poverty and employment rates are high on the reservation, when the Ag market on tribal lands is successful.Little Big Horn College (LBHC) sits at the hub of Crow Agency. A small rural town which serves as the capital for the Crow Tribe Indian Reservation in southeast Montana. Agriculture is the number one industry on the Reservation; however, tribal members continue to deal with the challenges of managing and utilizing their lands. Considering the low number of Crow Indian operators on the reservation, there is a demand for more tribal members to get into the business of Agriculture. LBHC will be doing a huge service to the Crow Community by providing students and community members with the experiences, resources, and tools, to becoming contributing citizens for their community and economy through the Agriculture industry. By making improvements to the LBHC Agriculture Program curriculum, developing more accessible resources, and continuing to provide sincere experiential learning opportunities, will definitely be factors for student success at LBHC.The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West. Washington Irving, 1783-1859.Drake, Phil. "Bill seeks study of high unemployment Montana counties." Great Falls Tribune. July 13, 2016.Crow Reservation Montana Poverty Report Card. Montana State University Extension. August 2017.The primary goal of the program titled, "Promoting Agriculture Capacity and Equity in Crow Country," will be to offer LBHC students and community members a curriculum--a custom made education program inclusive of Crow Culture, Traditions and Indian Land Policies--that will increase their local agricultural knowledge base, ultimately in effort to help alleviate the disproportionate number of Crow Indian agricultural operators in the community.

Project Methods
Defining Efforts and Evaluation:The LBHC Agriculture Degree Program was only an idea in 1996. The USDA National Office, Washington DC recommended to Land Grant Institutions/Indian Colleges to offer degrees in Agriculture. This was based on the Keeps Eagle Case/US Supreme Court. The effort was to educate, inform and provide financing for the native farmer and rancher in the United States. Little Big Horn College passed a resolution approving an Agriculture Degree Program in 1997, Mr. Ugene Old Elk/board member championed this motion. This initiative has taken 25 years to develop in two Agriculture degrees here at LBHC. LBHC staff and administration develop the curriculum for these Ag. Degrees. The diverse teaching staff is critically important in supporting, educating and increasing the educational degree ratio. The workshops, training, seminars and classes offered will empower one's capacity in the Agriculture and on the Crow Reservation. The success of this educational initiative will be measured in increased graduation rates, development on trust properties and career employment in the US Department of Agriculture.

Progress 09/01/22 to 08/30/23

Outputs
Target Audience:We aim to garner intrest from Crow and other Native American students who may not have the same opprotunities to succeed at bigger universities. Along with students we plan to collaborate with some of the Native and non-native rancher/farmers within the Crow Indian Reservationfor help with research, internship opprotunities, feedback, etc. We work with the USDA and are open to gaining any relationships with any other government agencies that seek the need to collaborate. Changes/Problems:Major changes for the program saw that the program director S. Real Bird was terminated in 2022 and Shaleen Old Coyote became theinterim program director. As of March 2023 Kirt LaForge has been hired as Program Director. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? As mentioned before we have had the LBHC Horse Shoeing labas a training clinic to assistcommunity members in keepingup withmaintenance for their horses' hooves, we hosted it 3 times at the Big Horn County Fairgrounds in 2022 we hosted it at the beginning of August and in 2023 we hosted 2 one during the last full week of May and the next the second week of May. During the 2022 course there was 15 students attempted and completed, the May (2023) course saw 12 students attempt and complete and the August (2023) course saw 11 students attempt and complete the course. Within the past few years LBHC has purchased farm equipment (tractor, baler, swather, and drill)with intent to serve the community land owners who don't have access or can't afford equipment and machinery, in producing their own hay to maintain their livestock (horses and cattle). In the coming month, we plan to train a few of our agriculture and extension program employees as well as students who may beinterested in running the machinery and learning how to cultivate a field for hay production, aprofessional with the company that LBHC purchased the equipment from will be instructing the chosen individuals. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? With social media, the Little Big Horn College Facebook page shared pics and a short paragraph overeach horse shoing clinic. LBHC Facebook page shared the information after each clinics date (August 2022, May 2023, August 2023). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We plan to continue our horse shoeing course so that community members can continue to benefit from the program as well as spreading Crow horsemanship which is historically a large part of the Crow cultural way of life, and continues to be a major part of the contemporary cultural Crow way of life. With Crow culture horses are expressed throughout the different aspects of life from Rodeo to Native American Regalia Parade horses, horse racing, hunting etc. Continuing with horseshoeing clinics and other ways to get the Crow Community to be involved with horses is a way to continue accomplishing our main goal. Another way we plan to accomplish our goals is getting our agriculture program better aligned with MSU Bozeman so that our Crow students have a better chance at graduating from MSU with agriculture degrees. With agriculture degrees we aim to get Crow students interested in coming back to the Crow Reservation and apply what they learn at the universities onto the Crow land. We plan to also have a 2 by 2 program with MSU so that our students can do a majority of their studying at home with the help of LBHC and MSU partnered. We plan to change 2 courses in the agriculture program: AG 235 "Rangeland Monitoring" to AG 236 "Small Pasture Management" and AG 230 "Range Livestock Production" to AG 222 "Livestock in Sustainable Systems". The AG 235 lab is being discontinued at MSU according to our August meeting with them and the AG 236 lab is offered at MSU so it aligns with keeping our plan of study in place while also giving students the opportunity to earn the credit that will transfer. The AG 230 course is not a required course in the MSU ag program, with offering the AG 222 course it keeps that 3 credit core course intact while directly transferring one of MSU'sag programs' lower level core courses. As I mentioned before the LBHC agriculture program has the ability to give access to machinery for hay production with the purchase of the hay equipment we plan to start a program for land owners to utilize (rent or hire) LBHC's agriculture equipment and machinery. With a history of ending up on the bad side of a deal like a 70-30 split in favor of the equipment owner, we aim to give Crow land owners fair deals so that they can feed, save for winter and/or profit from their hay crop.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Looking upon our main goal that is stated above, one way of accomplishing this goal is that we are incorporating Crow cultural ways of life into our agricultural courses, which in turn will translate to our students and graduates to have a better knowledge of agriculturenot only as a livestock industry but with a broader cultral view. One example of this accomplishment is that in our departments "Intro to Animal Science" course we plan to have a section covering Crow cultural horsemanship, this along with many of our other AG courses will incorporate cultural aspects and ways of life into their lesson plans. On the Crow Indian reservation there are Crow farmer/ranchers, but one of the biggest agricultural practices for Crow members is owning horses. Horses are a major part of Crow culture being used for many different aspects of Crow ways of life, Crow people have a deep connection with horses tracing back to our ancestors whose spirituality and interconnectedness with horses has over the last century to present time been passed on and continued through contemporary Crow Horsemanship.With owning horses comes responsibilities from feeding/watering to hoof care, our program for the past 2 years (2022-2023) has hosted a horse shoeing clinic for members of the Crow Community to signup (18+ with a signed waiver) and participate in learning how to maintenance their horse's hooves. We offered the clinic as a 5-day course if the student is enrolled at LBHC they can get credit for the course as a 1 credit lab as horse hoof management under our programs' AG 233 lab"Applied Tech in Livestock Management- Horses" with the main goal of the course to help and assist Crow community members that ownhorses anddo not have access to professional farriers who are usually very expensive. Professional farrier Curtis Real Bird was our instructor for the past 3 clinics with over 40 years of experience, he taughtthe basics of trimming and shoeing and upon completion under Curtis' approval the students get to keep their full sets of tools to keep up with maintenance of their own horses.

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