Posted on Jun 29, 2022
Dogs are sniffing out disease in animals vital to traditions of the Blackfeet tribe
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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/29/ [login to see] /dogs-chronic-wasting-disease
Kenneth Cook used a mallet and a chisel to crack into a pig's skull in the gravel driveway outside his home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana.
Cook planned to use the pig's brains in brain tanning, practiced by Indigenous people for thousands of years.
The brains are mushed up in water and worked into deer and elk hides to make leather. Cook said the brain's fatty acids both soften the hide and give it a beautiful white color before it's smoked for waterproofing.
Kenneth Cook used a mallet and a chisel to crack into a pig's skull in the gravel driveway outside his home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana.
Cook planned to use the pig's brains in brain tanning, practiced by Indigenous people for thousands of years.
The brains are mushed up in water and worked into deer and elk hides to make leather. Cook said the brain's fatty acids both soften the hide and give it a beautiful white color before it's smoked for waterproofing.
Dogs are sniffing out disease in animals vital to traditions of the Blackfeet tribe
Posted from npr.org
Native Americans
Dogs
Leather work
Posted 2 y ago
Responses: 2
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel hope this works, dogs have been used for decades to help law enforcement, health care and find lost hikers and missing persons.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
...""We harvested 54 deer out of here all throughout ... the area in a 10-mile perimeter," he said. "We all had negative tests throughout those ones."
Hagberg is happy with those results, but he said his resources to look for the disease in other areas of the 2,400-square-mile reservation are limited.
Calling Last hopes the soon-to-be working dogs will give officials like Hagberg an advantage in trying to contain the disease, which can spread undetected for years before it decimates a herd.
She plans to publish a study on her work and seek additional funding to replicate it for other tribal nations in Montana and Wyoming, many of which are in areas where chronic wasting disease is more prevalent.
Calling Last said the Blood Tribe, one of the Blackfeet's sister tribes in Canada, has already obtained grant funding for a similar project.
"I think that just being able to monitor it, record it, and know definitively that you're harvesting food that doesn't contain the prion would be a big win for any nation," Calling Last said."
...""We harvested 54 deer out of here all throughout ... the area in a 10-mile perimeter," he said. "We all had negative tests throughout those ones."
Hagberg is happy with those results, but he said his resources to look for the disease in other areas of the 2,400-square-mile reservation are limited.
Calling Last hopes the soon-to-be working dogs will give officials like Hagberg an advantage in trying to contain the disease, which can spread undetected for years before it decimates a herd.
She plans to publish a study on her work and seek additional funding to replicate it for other tribal nations in Montana and Wyoming, many of which are in areas where chronic wasting disease is more prevalent.
Calling Last said the Blood Tribe, one of the Blackfeet's sister tribes in Canada, has already obtained grant funding for a similar project.
"I think that just being able to monitor it, record it, and know definitively that you're harvesting food that doesn't contain the prion would be a big win for any nation," Calling Last said."
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