Along the eastern banks of the Pen dOrielle River near Usk, Washington, The Kalispel tribe of Indians Reservation has many treasures.

Home to the Camas Center and powwow grounds, hundreds of members from many tribes from across the area annually make their way to the Kalispels powwow grounds to celebrate their heritage.

The smell of fry bread and the sounds of gambling, chanting and drums permeate the grounds.

Next to all this, the smell of barbecue wafts in the air.

>>The Buffalo barbecue.

Every powwow on Saturday, we provide around 70 roasts.

We cook underground.

We start the fire on Thursday, and that burns down for a day.

And then Friday we put the meat in, cook that for a day, and then we feed probably about 1500 people.

>>Jared Finley knows much about the barbecue.

He is the Kalispel tribe's agricultural field supervisor and is in charge of the operation.

He is also head of a core group of overseers of the tribe's prized bison herd.

With over 200 acres allotted to the bison and over 200 more in the offing, the tribe is doing its part in the conservation of the species.

>>We have 140 bison here on the reservation.

The way it happened I mean, tribal council, they got a letter from Teddy Roosevelt National Park that they were going to be bringing a surplus buffalo here in 1973.

And it started from there and it just grew.

So every so often we just get buffalo from another part of the country.

And that's that's pretty much how it started.

We're in the ITBC, The Intertribal Bison Co-op.

There's a lot of member tribes in there.

I'm not quite sure how many, but I think around 90 tribes.

They just kind of provide us with the resources and surplus buffalo to keep a herd like this and keep the bloodlines good >>For the health of the animals, keeping and growing a bison herd the size of the Kalispels takes manpower and good planning.

In the future.

Some of these animals will be shared with other tribes for their own future.

Bison herds.

>>During the summertime we hay about 800 acres of timothy grass.

We bail that up and that's what we feed over the winter mineral blocks, salt licks, things like that, just to keep the nutrients kind of balanced.

We vaccinate them every fall.

So that's the other challenge, is trying to keep trying to keep it balanced with ratio buffalo.

We have the land, we have the ratio is one buffalo per acre.

And this field right here is 250 acres.

The other side that we're going to be getting is it's roughly the same size.

So we plan on expanding.

We're working with the Colvilles and hopefully we work with the Spokanes.

And there's other tribes that we will probably be working with in the future, like the Warm Springs tribe.

They're going to be getting some soon, some buffalo from us, wherever the need is.

If we can help, we will Front and center.

The bison herd is an important resource, and as a whole, the sustainability of the herd is a feather in the headdress of the Kalispell tribe, as members do their part in honoring an animal that has played such an importan