Trust doesn’t come easy for former Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II.
Whether it’s a public radio producer or a transplanted buffalo who is still skittish about its new home, the leader of regenerative nonprofit WOZU has good reason to be guarded.
Just over ten years ago, when people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline protests were staring down Mother Nature as much as law enforcement and pipeline security, Archambault asked people from Indigenous communities and their allies to go home, saying that they’d achieved a legal victory that put the pipeline on hold. That put him at odds with some protest organizers and demonstrators at the tent encampments near the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers. Some accused him of being a sellout.
Ten years on, rather than ruminate about what happened with the NoDAPL movement, and the eventual outcome favorable to the fossil fuel industry, Archambault now directs his energy toward a nonprofit, located just inside the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, only a stone’s throw from the protests.
Founded in 2021, the nonprofit WOZU (translated from Lakota, "to plant, to grow, to care for") promotes regenerative, self-sustaining agriculture, food sovereignty, cultural revitalization and land stewardship.
Classes on languages, song, food and foraging take place inside the headquarters, located just off Highway 1806 near Cannonball. They’ve reintroduced buffalo to the land, not only as a traditional, sacred source of food, but to literally help plant seeds to regrow grass unique to the land, and to help heal people from generational and historic trauma. The majestic animals serve as a source of therapy for Archambault himself.
Listen above as Archambault takes Prairie Public's Erik Deatherage on an on-site tour of WOZU’s campus — riding along on an ATV through wild and bumpy trail system full of unique plants and animals, and sustainable agricultural practices. They then come to the top of a hill where Archambault walks among a buffalo herd who seemed unbothered and unafraid of the two peoples' presence. The tranquil moment demonstrates how WOZU is connecting people to the land.
