(soft upbeat music) (fire crackling)
- [Sierra] Fire isn't always bad
if it's used in a productive way.
- In this episode of Outside Science,
we catch up with a group of middle school students
at Knife River Indian Villages.
They're working to make this prairie beautiful again
by reseeding after a controlled burn.
Check it out.
- So we had students come in today,
and we were teaching them about the park,
about the history, and most importantly,
about prairie restoration.
- It's kind of cool just to learn about that kind of stuff.
- Yeah.
- The fifth, sixth, and seventh graders
that came out to Knife River Indian Villages today,
some are Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara
that have ancestral ties to the historic villages
that are in Knife River Indian Villages.
- The vast majority are Native Americans,
which is really cool.
So a lot of the teaching that's going on here
is relevant to their historical culture.
- About a month ago, other individuals here
at the park did a prescribed burn, or a controlled burn,
in order to prepare the land
for the students who came in today.
(fire crackling) (soft music)
- We talked about fire ecology and prairie ecology,
and it goes hand in hand.
If we're talking about restoring a prairie,
it's even more important.
(fire crackling)
- It feels really good especially knowing
that this was kind of the past
and you're kind of helping it come back.
- So those that are with the yellow headbands--
- [Child] We gotta run away.
- Run away from them.
You don't want to get tagged by them.
- Before we wanted to get the kids
out here to spread the seed,
we wanted to teach them a little bit
about what they were doing.
And so we made an activity where they were playing tag.
So they were being super active,
but they were involved in learning
what was a native species, what is an invasive species,
why do we use prescribed fire, why is that all important
and interconnected to help restore our prairies?
- We're raking these squares three by two,
and we're gonna plant these seeds.
And then next year we're gonna come back,
and then we're gonna see the plants that we planted.
- What's cool about this is we're helping the environment
and our kids and their kids
and their kids and their kids and--
- [Child] And so on!
- Having that ability to go back to a place
where your ancestors walked and they lived
is such a powerful thing, especially for indigenous students
where a lot of the places are no longer there
or they've been destroyed.
- So in Knife River we have the Hidatsa,
the tribe that lived in the area.
We have the sites from where they lived.
And if you don't have a physical landmark like that,
people might just think it's a memory
or it's something that doesn't exist now.
It's important for people to be able
to connect to this place because we need
to preserve it for the future,
and you can learn so much from the past.
- It's gonna be a beautiful sight.
Probably some of us might come out here
to see all the hard work be paid off.
I'm probably gonna end up doing it, but yeah.
(soft music)
- [Jesse] Thanks for watching.
Check back each month for another episode
of Outside Science (inside parks).