When the Spanish colonized the new world, they introduced sheep and horses to Indigenous societies. Native Americans quickly incorporated livestock into their cultural practices.
For the Diné, or Navajo people, horses and sheep were especially important. The churro sheep was bred to thrive in the harsh conditions of the desert and became integral to the Navajo lifestyle. Traditionally, its meat and milk were consumed for sustenance and medicine, while its wool was used for weaving.
In the 1930s, the U.S. government slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Navajo livestock, driving many herders to bankruptcy or starvation. The churro sheep all but went extinct and most Navajo people turned to other sources of income.
Today, sheepherding is much less common amongst indigenous peoples of the Southwest, partly due to the state-sponsored destruction of traditional grazing infrastructure a century ago, and partly because the current data informing grazing management on tribal lands is so outdated.
Reagan Wytsalucy, a Navajo scientist and extension agent in San Juan County, wants to bring back pastoralism on the reservations for economic production and cultural value.
"Animals as a whole were revered as an important part of the local ecosystem, as part of the sustainability, for families living within our communities," Wyatsalucy said.
Besides just their importance for the lifestyle and livelihood of farmers and ranchers, she said that livestock are important for responsible land stewardship.
"Those that are elders today," Wytsalucy said, "that learned from their grandparents and great-grandparents; they say that the animals were necessary in order to keep the entire landscape healthy, balanced, diverse, active, thriving, alive.
Wytsalucy recently won a grant for $160,000 to study traditional grazing practices.
"So we want to be able to understand the areas, the type of geography that was utilized primarily for grazing livestock, what type of livestock, how they manage the livestock, creating a whole picture of the life of the activity again, in these areas," she said.
Wytsalucy and her team will interview many elders of the Navajo and Ute tribes who remember the grazing traditions of their ancestors. This knowledge will inform modern grazing policies which are currently based on extremely outdated information collected as far back as the 1930s.
"That's extensively inaccurate to today's current conditions, so we want to start capturing today's current conditions and seeing if we could aid and support the Bureau of Indian Affairs in updating their policies and procedures for issuing grazing permits in the communities," Wytsalucy said.
With this knowledge, Wytsalucy hopes that an important practice can grow to support the cultural and physical health of Native peoples in the Southwest as it once did.
"We have to live with the land in order to thrive and allow everything around us to be able to have that ability as well," Wytsalucy said. "And if we live in a cohesive balance with our surroundings, then we'll be able to have what we call ‘hózhó,’ or harmony. We'll be able to live in the life of beauty. We'll be respecting everything around us; we'll be respecting ourselves; we'll be respecting other people that we associate with. And we'll be respecting what the Creator made for us."