(peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) - So 250 years ago, I often wonder what the prairie looked like that long ago right?

And I can only imagine how awesome that was.

I really wish that I could go back and see how that prairie was thriving and what different plants were in there.

And you know, we get a sneak peek of that in some of our remnant prairies that we still have left.

But it would just be so amazing to see on a larger scale, and especially in areas that are, there's like monocultures of crops.

You see that and you're like, oh man, what did this used to be like?

- It was rolling hills around here, the native prairie, the bison on it.

It was very beautiful at the time.

- 250 years ago, the, the Prairie of Minnesota covered 18 million acres in the state, or about a third of the state of Minnesota.

So it was a tremendous portion of our natural ecosystem.

It was just a continuous sea of grasses and wild flowers as far as the eye could see, broken up by prairie pothole wetlands, by rivers, by lakes.

And it's just a very unique ecosystem, it's not one that really turns heads, but once you walk into it, you recognize that there's a whole lot there.

There's tons of different colors.

Many grasses are actually very showy.

You get your big blue stem that's very purple and blue later in the season.

You have Indian grass that's a beautiful bronze color.

And many of the flowering forbs are anything from bright purples to yellows, and then there's some that are really muted that are light green, and they all attract different pollinators and therefore attract a lot of different birds that eat those pollinators and utilize the habitat as well.

- We would find, you know, a lot of different ungulate species, so those are grazers like elk.

We had pronghorn, we had the bison, we had all these different types of animals using the prairie.

And those are just like the large animals.

People, especially in the plains, they were reliant on that food source that was really nutritious.

You know, we have stories about the glaciers.

And so how long ago was that?

At least 10,000 years ago.

I feel like for at least 10,000 years we've been in these spaces utilizing the prairie and making it, you know, an area that's habitable for our people.

So indigenous people use the prairie in many different ways.

I like to tell people that, you know, plants have uses, right?

And so that's usually food, medicines, or fiber, and those are all gifts for us, right?

And so it was kind of like our grocery store, our pharmacy.

(relaxing music) - Prairies are very disturbance based ecosystem.

They really need grazing and fire to remain as diverse as possible.

Meaning, you know, many, many different species in the plant communities, later in the summer was common time for lightning strikes to cause fire in the prairie.

So there would be this big patchwork of different areas with tall grasses that were growing all season and areas that were recently burned with very little vegetation on the ground, and this creates a really good patchwork quilt for wildlife that need different resources.

- Indigenous people were managing these areas for thousands of years, right?

And the idea that there's these wild places that were left untouched is kind of a myth.

So you think about national park systems and how they were set aside because they were so, you know, pristine or they were considered wilderness areas, that actually wasn't the case.

Our people used to be in those areas and they used to use different, you know, disturbances like fire to keep them in certain conditions or to keep certain plants growing or to keep certain plants from growing.

And so we had a lot of different, you know, sophisticated techniques we would use to make food forests, a lot of people call 'em, so different nuts, different berries, make traveling easier there's so many different ways that we were adapting to the prairie because it is a harsh environment, right?

It's really hot in the summer and it can be really cold in the winter time.

And so we were just able to live in that system because we understood what we had to, to survive.

I think of my ancestors living on the prairie and the plains, like I can't imagine being, you know, going through that area in the wintertime.

It must have been really difficult, right?

I think that sometimes because of colonization, that information has been lost.

- [Liz] Well, when people started colonizing Minnesota Prairie, initially they were looking for farmland.

- Well, the early European settlers, it was tough.

They had to break the sod to farm it.

They had to put up a shelter that was gonna withstand winters like they hadn't experienced before, that weren't many trees around here, and the winds were howling.

It was a tough life, really tough.

I'm sure glad I didn't have to go through that.

- So many people came to the prairies, they built homes, they started subsistence farming, found that the prairies had very rich soil, which was fantastic for farming, and that allowed them to grow their farm operations.

In comparison, a lot of indigenous peoples would really work with the land.

And people who are new to the landscape were often trying to change the landscape to meet sort of their expectations for what it should look like.

(peaceful music) - The prairie changed with western expansion in land conversion, right?

And so the idea was that settlers usually got some land set aside for them with the premise of them farming.

And so there was a lot of conversion of prairie to farmland.

It was devastating when western expansion happened for our people, because these spaces, our culture is very place-based.

And so that means we have to have these spaces to perform certain ceremonies.

For example, you can usually find a church, or like say a Lutheran church throughout the United States.

That's not the same for our people.

Our people's religion or spirituality is usually connected to the place.

When there was western expansion, we were displaced from those areas.

And so that was very devastating because then it was a part of our identities, a part of our culture, a part of our spirituality that was taken away in the span of maybe 50 years.

And that, that was pretty devastating for, you know, not only the plants, the animals, but for our people too, because we didn't have these areas anymore to go to harvesting, to, you know, have areas to hunt in, to have areas to perform ceremonies.

And so it was very difficult.

- Well, over time, prairie became more fragmented.

Farms started to expand as people developed their farming operations and their row crop operations.

And over time we've seen that a lot of prairie has eventually been tilled up.

So it, it has been a big transformation over the past couple of centuries.

It's rare at this point in time.

I mean, compared to states like Indiana and Illinois that have just a fraction of a percent of prairie left in their state, in reference to that, Minnesota's actually pretty lucky that we have about 1% of our native prairie, and around that we have additional grasslands that just aren't originally native prairie that was untilled, but native prairie as a definition is prairie that was never farmed.

And it still retains the integrity of the original plant community.

So it's still going to have many different grass and wildflower species.

It's still going to provide important resources for pollinators, for birds as a whole, the prairie ecosystem is really unique and it's important for us to respect it and appreciate it and conserve as much of it as possible since it is pretty rare at this point.

In the past, I'd say 50 to 75 years, people really started to appreciate prairie as a rare ecosystem.

And it's been a big focus of the conservation community to try and conserve as much of it as we can in order to maintain the diversity on native prairies that still exists.

And the other half of that coin is that about half of our native prairie is owned by private landowners.

So private landowners are crucial to maintaining our state's native prairie long term.

And many of them utilize their prairies as pasture or as hayfield, and often do a good job of understanding the value of their prairies and managing them well.

- The native prairie that we have little pockets of it that weren't farmable in the early days and only suitable for grazing have been left out here.

But it's, you know, just, you know, a 20 acre piece here and an irregular 30 acre piece there, I thought this is, you know, native prairie and putting bison back on that is just kind of a neat thing to do, and the bison do facilitate the reclaiming of the land and putting it back to the way it was.

Bison with their hoof action reseed the prairie with the dung that they drop.

It provides nutrients for the soil.

There's just myriad ways where the bison work to restore the prairie.

It's just a whole ecosystem that is developed.

It's nice to go back to that.

Yeah.

Important to go back to that.

(peaceful music) - If we lost all of our native prairies, we would lose hundreds of species of insects and birds and other mammals and it would just be a really tragic loss and something that we're not willing to accept at this point.

So many people are working hard to conserve prairie and do a lot of work to manage it well so that it retains its integrity and will continue to persist in the future despite all of these changing weather conditions.

- Yeah, I think it's important to preserve and sustain prairies today because it's one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States.

The idea that there's wilderness in there, it's untouched, and we need to leave it alone hands off is kind of a outdated approach, really.

Prairies, they need stewardship.

And I think that, you know, it's our job too, as not just ecologists or as scientists, but as indigenous people and people that have lived here for thousands of years.

It's our responsibility to make sure that we, you know, sustain that relationship and keep building on it and make sure that these spaces are still around.

(peaceful music) - [Liz] So when you first drive by prairies along the roadside, you often just pass by it and think, wow, that looks like a good spot for cattle to graze or for people to go and hay.

But once you get out into a prairie, once you step out of the car, and decide to walk right through it, you'll see how many different species of grass there are, how many different wild flowers there are.

You'll actually wander through, you'll hear the swish of grasses as you walk.

You'll hear the chirp of birds as they jump around to different grasses as you walk through their home territories.

Prairie is something you really need to walk out and appreciate.

(relaxing music) (birds chirping) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.