Description: In 1863, more than 400 Shoshone were massacred by settlers and volunteers led by the U.S. Cavalry at their traditional winter camp in southeastern Idaho. After more than 160 years of dispossession, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN) acquired this land along the Bear River. The NWBSN’s goal was to “restore the site to pre-massacre conditions while anticipating climate change impacts.” This restoration goal allows NWBSN to restore their relationships with their traditional territories by creating a restored system that evokes the ethos of pre-colonization and pre-massacre conditions.

Together with Utah State University researchers, Wuda Owga brings together cultural revitalization and ecological best-practices to create and implement a climate-informed restoration project. In addition to bird surveys, invasive species management, and riparian restoration, we identified culturally significant plant species and determined their current and future suitability at Wuda Owga. These results support Tribal revegetation priorities and approaches, identified by tradeoffs between each species’ current and future suitability. This research contributes to a knowledge-braiding approach to the analysis of climate risks, vulnerabilities, and restoration possibilities for Indigenous-led restoration projects by using the Wuda Ogwa ecological restoration site as a case study.

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