Speaker 1: 0:14

Hey Rex. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Speaker 2: 0:18

Yeah, I'm well, sir and George, it's a pleasure to be here, pleasure to see you and meet you. And George, it's a pleasure to be here, pleasure to stay here and meet you.

Speaker 1: 0:24

Yes, absolutely, it's an honor for me, man, we've been connected through your son, scott, who I had on the podcast, and he's like I think you're going to need to chat with my dad and so you know we've had some phone calls and bringing us here and we've got some great things. We're going to talk about the you know restoration of the chestnuts. We're going to be talking about working with native tribes and the things that we can do collectively together to make sure that we are saving our forests for future generations. And so I think at the beginning, like, uh, if you can tell me a little bit about how you, you know where you grew up and you know, maybe talk about that day around that campfire that you kind of saw something with your dad that kind of changed your uh trajectory and what you wanted to go in and work with the forestry service, if you wouldn't mind.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Sure, I'll do that. I uh, I grew, I'm a product of Appalachian and uh and uh, we'll talk about the Appalachian uh, uh residents and the little uh, the society they built there in the Appalachians. And but I am product of that and uh, I grew up, uh, seeing chestnut in the woods. My dad, uh, who was educated in the first forestry school but he had a sixth grade education the old Baptist preacher, preacher, he, uh, he, uh, he told chestnut stories all the time because chestnut american chestnut composed about the one out of every five trees that grew in the Appalachian Mountains all the way to Pennsylvania and New York. It was then. And my dad saw that forest of huge chestnut trees when he was a kid. He hunted in them and he knew the tree. Later in life he was a logger and he really got to see how the chestnut dominated the forest and its value to, beginning with the indigenous people, the native people, but also the settlers. The trees would easily grow 100 foot tall. It was often called the red wood of the east because the wood was so rock resistant. They used it for everything from cradles to coffins. But every year the most important thing was it produced a huge crop of very nutritious American chestnuts that fed everything in the woods, including deer bear, a few bison that were running through the mountains up there, and the people, both the early Caucasian settlers and the tribal people, and they depended on it. They realized the value of the tree and so I grew up hearing chestnut stories. My dad witnessed the black.

Speaker 2: 3:45

The American chestnut's been around for 50 million years. It originated in Asia and in 1904, back up a step, the landowners and the farmers and the poor mountain people and the farmers and the poor mountain people, every fall they would go into the woods, the whole family with tow sacks and they would gather chestnuts by the bushel, take them to the country store and swap up for things that they had no money to buy. These were poor people, but a pair of shoes for the kids or coffees, things that they couldn't produce. And so my dad saw that come in and the chestnut was brought in on. The chestnut blight, which is a fungus, was brought in on some Japanese chestnuts and the Japanese chestnuts had the block and they were brought into New York City near Brooklyn and immediately the large chestnut trees began to die. This fungus was on the trees. It quickly attacked the chestnuts. That was in 1904. Between 1904 and the end of the Second World War, 1945, between four and five billion American chestnut trees died. And if you I figured it up one time if you could lay these dead chestnuts end to end, it would circle the globe one and a half times. So it was a huge. It's been referred to as the greatest environmental disaster ever to strike North America, because the forest changed completely when I went to work with the Forest Service.

Speaker 2: 5:58

Let me back up a step. You asked that question when I was growing up and, by the way, if you want to do, I did a TED talk about I don't know, early 70s. That kind of told about my youth growing up with my dad and how I got into the chestnut thing. But my dad, he was just an old-timer. We had no television when I was growing up, we just poured us church mice and so our pastime in the wintertime was to gather around the old wood stove that heated the house and my dad and other old folks who probably come visiting would tell stories.

Speaker 2: 6:49

And just from the very beginning I noticed that all these stories somewhere or the other ended up mentioning Chestnut, american Chestnut, and the simple reason was it was such a huge part of the life of the mountain people of Appalachia, it defined their quality of life. They were subsistence farmers but and they my dad tells a story of when he was a young man he and a cousin who had an old T-model Ford would load that old Ford down with sacks of American chestnuts and several jugs of genuine moonshine whiskey and they would drive to Washington DC. And this was common practice at that time. Country people would bring chestnuts into the big cities, have a way to roast the things and then sell them on the street. But where my dad really made his money was selling a little jug of moonshine whiskey to wash it down. Got to have something to wash it down. Sure, yes, exactly right. But they did that for years and he would tell that story.

Speaker 2: 8:10

And just just the stories he told, uh led me to become a forester and uh, uh. And when I started work and I worked 42 years with the US Forest Service and almost all of that I did firefighting man I did a huge amount of forest firefighting for about 30 years, mostly in the West, but in the rest of the year I was just a forester and I managed wildlife and timber and everything else, but the woods at that time were full of standing dead chestnuts and we called them gray ghosts because the wood decayed you like to never decayed, you know and it would stand for decades and we call those old dead chestnuts gray ghosts and, uh, you still see a few of them out there. But uh, I had an opportunity early in my career to watch the forest change and it changed from one that was dominated with this huge tree, american chestnut, and when they all died out it was red maples or shrub trees that took over and the change was dramatic and the Appalachian people saw all that happening. My dad witnessed the changes in it and he'd talk about when that blight hits that the local people would say surely it would kill all of them, you know, but in fact it did. All of them, you know, but in fact it did.

Speaker 2: 10:08

There are very few surviving large trees anywhere in North America. Now that escaped the blind. The largest chestnut trees in North America are on the west coast Washington, oregon, northern California, idaho and this is because the early settlers, when they migrated to the west to find land, they carried chestnuts with them because they thought so much of that tree. They were mostly mountain people from Appalachia and they carried these chestnuts, planted them all over oregon, washington, idaho, and the things prospered because the blight had had come in through the new york harbor and it never reached that part of north america. So these trees were huge out there and they're the largest chestnuts in amer and in the world today.

Speaker 2: 11:04

But I grew up hearing those stories and after about 20 years I heard about this organization that was doing research to restore the chestnut and this was 20-some years ago. As it ended up, I started a chapter of the Chestnut Foundation in Kentucky where I was working as a forester at the time. I have been in that, devoted all of my retired years working to restore that tree and, crazy thing I did a TED Talk. I was able to get the agreement started with the Eastern Barrens, the Cherokee Indians, and then when I got into that, I really was carried away with the thought of involving the tribal people in the restoration of the chestnut.

Speaker 2: 12:15

What did in all these trees and the same thing in Texas is we, the citizens of this wonderful country? We ignorance prevailed when it came to what happens when you bring a strange disease or a strange insect or a strange plant and drop it in our woods or get it started, and the native growth has never met that thing. They've never been around it and they died like flies man and within just a period of about 30 or 40 years we wiped them out and they still sprout. They're a prolific sprouter and they still sprout. They're a prolific sprouter and the fungus, for whatever reason, is unable to kill the roots of the tree. There are other fungi in the ground that attack that thing when it gets in the ground, but they've never been able to come up. Use this as a treatment. But the trees are prolific sprouters and you can still find dozens of hundreds of these small chestnut sprouts in the forest. We use them in our breeding program because we've got a very active breeding program. It's showing a lot of promise and we cross pure American trees that we find like these little small chestnut sprouts, and we cross them with the Asian trees who, over the eons, develop a resistance to the blight, as we call it.

Speaker 2: 14:03

But in order to restore a tree when we bring in, we now know ignorance prevailed for centuries and we immediately started to kill off not only trees and shrubs. Today we're losing all of our ash trees, about 8 billion of them all over the United States from an insect we brought in. We've lost numerous other trees. Butternut or white walnut disappeared a long time ago. We're losing hemlock trees that are necessary if you want to have trout fishing because they furnish a deep shade, and the trout we have, if that water's not certain cold temperature they won't reproduce. But the hemlock is dying. Oh man, we're losing American elm. We've've already lost that, that's exactly right. But today we know the impact of this stuff.

Speaker 2: 15:16

But the other thing we did with our early settlers we brought all of our domesticated animals into the country and the North America and turned them loose in the woods. And all the farmers just looked on the forest as open range and they would take their cattle and their pigs and notch the ears so they could identify them, turn them loose during the growing season and through the fall into the forest and they would fatten up and get ready for the winter by eating chestnuts. Then in the fall they would go round up these pigs and drive them back to their farm and kill them, you know, for their winter food. But when we brought those animals in and turned them loose, beginning in 1492, when Columbus made his first trip, we finally developed wooden ships across the Atlantic Ocean and he went to the Caribbean and he had his on his three ships. He had them loaded down with pigs to feed his sailors.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Well, the pigs all had swine flu and every every disease that is fatal to humans, including COVID. They first find a host that's a wild animal birds or some kind and in the case of pigs, swine flu was found on wild pigs. And then over time, because the settlers lived so close to their livestock that those diseases were able to jump from wild animals to domesticated animals. So when Columbus came to the Caribbean, we turned loose not only swine flu but smallpox, chickenpox, mumps, measles, things that none of the tribes and at that time they estimate there were at least 50 to 55 million Native people in North America, south America and in the Caribbean. Within 200 years, 90 to 95% of those folks were dead because they had no resistance to the diseases and they died like flies.

Speaker 2: 18:07

So today, even with our work, we've learned that if you don't restore a tree, the first thing we have to do is to develop a native tree that's similar to that thing, that can withstand the diseases that are already here, because once those things come in. They don't leave, they're here to stay. And it's like the chestnut blight was able to jump to oak trees and it will not kill the oak trees but it allows the fungus to reproduce and throw out spores. And, as luck would have it, on the west coast in northern california and southern oregon, there is a disease that was brought into that part of the country called sudden oak death. And this stuff, I don't know where it came from Asia, I'm pretty sure but it has killed literally millions of oak trees in that part of the world, in California, not if that thing makes it to the east or the rest of the United States, but when it has the potential, the rest of the United States. But when it has the potential and it's been, they've tested this in labs it has the potential to kill all the oak trees remaining in North America. And what we lost with the chestnut tree would pale in comparison to what that stuff will do once it's turned loose. So the bit we're where we finally are reaching a point where we've had some scientific success. The only answer to bringing this stuff back is through science and technology.

Speaker 2: 20:00

You know and this is especially important to me because in the past 10 years I've had three episodes of cancer, starting with prostate cancer, starting with lymphoma 17, 18 years ago, and it was type 4 lymphoma. It was in my bone marrow but the oncologist was able to drive it into remission with some really harsh chemo so I went on with my career. But about two years ago I had a return visit of that lymphoma and it usually hits you when you're young and the experts believe that most people catch it from using Roundup you know the stuff we spray the weeds with. Oh yeah, and that's likely where I got mine. But they drove it into remission.

Speaker 2: 21:09

But when it came back it was a very active cancer that attacked the stomach and the intestinal area and I was feeling really bad.

Speaker 2: 21:27

But I had a PET scan that went to an emergency room and my stomach was just full of tumors, one of them the size of a softball. And so my son, who's retired from the military, helps me in all this restoration stuff that I do, lives in Florida and he has a buddy he served in Afghanistan with who was kind of chief of staff of this Moffitt Cancer Center, so he got me in there and they have some really cutting-edge technology. They call it CAR-T and what it is when that cancer, that lymphoma comes back, it immediately spreads all over your body. But they've worked out a process down there where they this not a very pleasant subject. They put a little uh tube in my jugger vein, removed almost all the blood in my body into this little machine that I sat on the floor beside and that thing had a device in there that made the whole machine spin and they were able to separate out all the white cells in my body, thousands and thousands of them.

Speaker 2: 22:57

And as near as I can tell. The only purpose and one of those white blood cells is called a T-cell, and the T-cells only purpose for being in our bodies is to attack and kill cells that should not be in there. So what they did? They collected all the T-cells in my body, sent them off to a lab this is controversial genetic modification in Baltimore, maryland. And they changed that thing. They genetically modified it by adding genes from some sort of chemo so that the only cells that T-cell would attack were the lymphoma cells that I had in my body. And the way they modified it. It has the ability to seek out these cancer cells, attach to the top of them and then kill that cancer cell, goes through it and kills the cell. Kill that cancer cell, it grows through it and kills the cell. And they also had these things multiply greatly. They're able to do that with today's technology. So instead of thousands that they took out of my body, they put in millions of them and they put those things back in my body. And I still have to have a PET scan every 30 days and they give you this radioactive stuff that makes all the cancer cells light up. You know, whenever they go through a PET scan and they could see immediately that these things started seeking out, hunting for the cancer cells and immediately killing them, one at a time. And the last PET scan I had I was cancer-free and this thing has become a cure for this return visit of lymphoma, which normally hits people who have had it before, but when they're old and I just got turned 80 years old about a year ago but it has developed into a cure. But it has developed into a cure whatever the thing is that kills them.

Speaker 2: 25:52

And in American chestnut we had a couple of scientists up at Syracuse that discovered that there's a number of plants, one of them being a wheat plant, a common wheat plant that we make bread from, and this wheat plant is attacked. When the chestnut blight attacks a chestnut tree, the blight puts out oxalic acid, a very powerful acid to kill the trunk of the tree, and then the fungus eats it. You know fungi eat dead wood, so death is very quick whenever these things get established. But they were able. They discovered that this wheat plant was attacked by the same type of disease, produced oxalic acid, but that particular plant had developed an element in the gene that neutralized oxalic acid. So it was like vaccinating a chestnut tree a chestnut tree, because with today's technology they can take that gene from a wheat plant and insert it in the genome of a chestnut tree. And so we developed these things and the federal government's got to approve them, just as they have to approve this stuff that cured my lymphoma, but it's very controversial but it also is very effective. You know it's it's uh, there's a lot of resistance that that that comes into that chestnut tree and it looks very, very promising. We could bring back the tree with this use of science. So we're still working very hard at that. We're doing just traditional plant breeding, just like we also do with corn and beans and any other vegetable, and we're having some good luck because we try to capture as many of the Asian tree genes and resistance to the disease and we're having a lot of luck.

Speaker 2: 28:12

But some of it is very controversial. The genetic modification in today's world is very controversial. The genetic modification in today's world is very controversial and they accuse us of playing God. You know, they accuse the scientists of playing God because you take a gene from one living species and insert that in a completely different living species, and so they accuse everybody involved with it with playing God. I'm not a particular religious guy, but my belief is that we are. What we're doing is using a gift. The guy upstairs gave us this piece of hamburger between our ears that allows us to think and study science and technology, and it's much more acceptable if it's used to produce COVID vaccines or something like that.

Speaker 2: 29:12

If it goes to treat humanity, it's much more acceptable, but if we use it on an ecosystem, there are a lot of people who said nature is all-powerful, just leave it alone and it'll take care of itself. Well, we learned when Columbus came over that's not quite so. Humans were part of the ecosystem and they had zero resistance to all this stuff, and we killed 95% of them and then we took their land. So the point I was going to make a while ago there is no other group of folks that have been more mistreated by the rest of us than our native people, by the rest of us than our native people. So part of my scheme was that all these people are really interested in restoring particularly the chestnut tree, but also any other trees that were part of their culture. For the Ojibwe, it's birch that they make canoes out of and baskets and they want to focus on that if they can. Well, my scheme is to use the US Forest Service that own millions of acres of land use, the American Chestnut Foundation that's working to restore chestnut and the biggest contribution that's working to restore chestnut and biggest contribution that's going to make is that we're laying a pathway of science and technology that can be used to restore all the other stuff that we're in danger of losing or having go extinct. So, but part of my grand scheme is involve all the tribes. You know, maybe it's guilt, caucasian guilt here. You know that we try to, but it's their interest in it that fascinates me and every one of them wants to play a part of it. So I developed this scheme.

Speaker 2: 31:26

I worked 42 years with the Forest Service and I've got a lot of contacts within the feds, the government, and what brought these things to a head was Hurricane Helene that almost wiped out Florida and it wiped out 190,000 acres of eastern Cherokee homeland and trees are down. It looks like 190,000 acres of strip mine If you drive through the woods and look at. Well, that's a huge part of the Cherokee culture. You know, we've established a partnership with them. We've trained them in how we do this chestnut stuff and they're willing partners, they want to be a part of this and it's also an opportunity for us to use to give them some good training in the woods as they're working on this stuff.

Speaker 2: 32:35

My plan is to convince the Forest Service to approach every indigenous tribe whose homeland is now part of this national forest system and there's millions of acres of it, even in the east and allow that tribe to utilize a chunk maybe 100 acres, it might be 5,000 acres and on that tract of land they could work to help us, help the Forest Service and other people, restore those trees and maybe animals that were in danger of losing, and using science and technology. But the other thing they could do because any tribal people you talk to there's two things they're concerned about Number one, losing their language, if they still have their language, and number two, losing their culture. And number two, losing their culture. Well, what I'm proposing is that that piece of land that we permit the tribes to utilize they'll work on restoring, helping Forest Service restore and correct the mess we've made of the land for several hundred years, but also give them an opportunity to replicate this would be an educational project their culture, how their ancestors lived, what did their houses look like? How did they garden? What did they grow in their gardens? What did they kill out of the forest to survive the winter? But capture as much of the culture as we could, and this will be purely an educational program. We plan to secure funds to video this, to film it, because the best way for the tribes to hang on to their culture is to have it captured on film. Then you have a film there or a video that could be used by any government agency, any school, anybody that wants to put on some training about how the native people live. So, and the Forest Service is buying into this you know they're very eager, this whole thing.

Speaker 2: 35:03

I'm just really surprised and shocked that there is so much support developing for it. So I'm moving ahead with this thing full speed. Son Scott is helping me every step of the way and I think we're going to be able to pull it off. But it's just amazing to me and potentially this could be a very big deal, particularly with the government agencies like Forest Service. They're required by law. We still treat the tribes as sovereign nations because it was their land that when we first came over here. But we took their land and gave them Oklahoma parts of it. You know where it's difficult to grow the crops that they live with. Anyhow, that's my plan and right now there appears to be a good deal of buy-in for it.

Speaker 2: 36:10

We had a big meeting in Asheville this past week and man, the powers that be in the Forest Service are telling me to move ahead with it. You know, just keep them informed, plugged into it. Plus, when the hurricane, hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, it destroyed 190,000 acres of prime mountain land in there. The excellent chestnut land is an area most of the reservation surrounds the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the Cherokee are really interested in fixing the damage and the Forest Service is also very interested in getting every chestnut seedling that we can find. And as we work to restore or correct the damage that we did to that 190,000 acres, we're going to do it with chestnut, a tree that we wiped out, you know, a hundred and some years ago.

Speaker 2: 37:25

And the big thing about it when you look at all these people who do this stuff, including the chestnut group, most of them are struggling financially. They need support. They need financial support. They're talking about millions of dollars. Maybe that would come here to help restore this 190,000 acres of mountain land Cherokee homeland, but they like the idea of involving the tribes. It's such a big area that it would be a huge opportunity for good publicity to attract. A lot of people would be drawn to that, you know.

Speaker 2: 38:19

But anyhow, pushing ahead with it. So that's my retirement job right there, if I can hang around my old oncology colleges. After my return of lymphoma he said you really need to start collecting something like baseball cards instead of cancers. If you can't, so if you're going to do this kind of work, so if I can get reasonably healthy again, that's what I'm going to do the rest of my life. But I've got a lot of a lot of people who are very interested in this. This is one reason I really wanted to meet you, because I know what you, you, you all I got to do is look behind your head and see what's on your these boards and listen to my son, scott, and I'm honored to be here today just to be a part of this.

Speaker 1: 39:23

So I need to shut up and let you talk no, I, I, I am glad you you've shared all that you've shared. It's uh, it's a very important project and I think it brings a lot of things full circle. You know, I, I used to travel around with a guy named harvey arden who was a national geographic staff writer for 23 years, wrote a bunch of best-selling books, but he, his whole goal was, uh, he started a company where he was bringing the, the indigenous elders to the world and the world to the indigenous elders, and our goal was to try to capture everything we could from their personal stories history messages to mention this on your, your web page.

Speaker 2: 40:02

I've seen I've got a fact you sent me a book or two or some, describing that you've already done. Yes, sir, yeah, I can buy just a little breathing time. I'm gonna.

Speaker 1: 40:13

I'm gonna read that because it's fascinating, oh it goes along with what you're talking about the idea of trying to preserve a culture and a message and a history and especially in that digital form, trying to keep that. You know. The goal is to have something for the future seventh generation. Right, and what do they say? Like the uh, you know, best time to plant a tree was years ago. The second best time is today right like that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 40:41

But but the other thing, that that it covers this whole thing one of the one of the things that humans have at least paid some attention to since we began farming thousands of years ago is being halfway good stewards of the land, so that our grandkids and I think we have an obligation for our grandkids and those that come after them to let them inherit at least as productive and diverse chunk of land as we inherit. You know, I think we're obliged to do that, using whatever science is out there. We test the science. If it shows chances of working, let's try, you know, and give it the scientific test. So I believe it can be done. But anyhow, that's an old man's dream right there.

Speaker 2: 41:44

So I'm trying to think if there's anything I left out. But I'm really excited that the Forest Service and other groups are really anxious to play a part in this. And the tribes it's really surprising to me because I've been doing a lot of thinking about what part in this and the tribes are truly surprising to me, because I've been doing a lot of thinking about what's in this for the tribes and the thing that the biggest thing that I can come up with is this thing of recognizing the contributions they have made to us as a nation and understand that we're all one people.

Speaker 2: 42:27

And if they lose their language or their culture, we lose part of ours and by filming their capture as much of their culture and by filming they're capturing as much of their culture. I think it's a huge, giant step for expanded knowledge. From an educational standpoint, we've got chestnut people that we did a documentary a couple of years ago on american chestnut that actually was pretty professionally done and uh, and the people in that group want to do shorter versions, but but do it on things like uh, native american uh culture, you know and education, you know, and education, you know, shorter films, but they're going to try to use this project I'm working on if we can record video the culture that they demonstrate on these chunks of land we're going to give permission to work on.

Speaker 2: 43:38

That could be a very, very valuable educational thing that will be around forever.

Speaker 1: 43:45

Sure, well, it reminds me too, like when you're talking, even in your Ted talk and some of our discussions we've had before. You know the indigenous people wherever it is, worldwide, right wherever they are most of the times. Those folks have lived for you know millennia in that area and know those plants. They know those as the medicines, as healing agents, as food, as nutrition and all the different ways that we're connected comes in and tries to take some plant and then say okay, we own this now, and they'll you know they try to monopolize that where these people know what is going to be best around them for those types of medicinal health because they, they, they're very observant.

Speaker 2: 44:33

I've never met a tribal person that was not observant. And they, they know, they were very much aware a long time before we were of what kept that ecosystem going out there that they depended on. Sure, and another short story that one of my hobbies is raising purple martins. I don't know if you've ever heard of those things, but they're a bird that only catches flying insects. They once made their nests here all over the country. Well, there were some that lived in saguaro cactuses out in the southwest, but they once lived mostly in woodpecker holes and oak trees. That's the only species that was domesticated by native people. And what they did? They kept noticing this strange purple bird. What the bird does? It catches flying insects. I've got a couple of hundred of them up here in my place in Kentucky. But the insects they caught were tiny flying insects, the same kind that ate the maize and the beans and the pumpkins and the squash that the tribes grew.

Speaker 2: 45:58

So they came up with the idea. They also grew gourds. So they came up with the idea of planting a few gourds, just old dipper gourds, cut an opening in it and lo and behold these birds, which always come back to where they raise their young and they winter in Brazil. They fly all the way to Brazil, all of the parents and the young of the year, thousands of miles. It's seven man. It's several days flying over the Gulf of Mexico and then they go all the way to Brazil and live in the jungles down there until spring comes to North America and then they come back to where they raised their young the year before. But when you talk about contributions that Native Americans have made, as I get into this business of getting them involved, I want to try to uh, install a purple martin colony at every tribal or every place they put this stuff. Put, put a few gourds up there and get some martins to come in there, just to tell that story.

Speaker 1: 47:14

Yeah, no, it's. It reminds me of like, the, the bats, like, and we have a lot of bat colonies here in Texas and they actually have, you know, I'm not sure exactly. I think it was some type of radar system where they're able to see where they fly out each night and they go over all these.

Speaker 2: 47:32

They're able to bounce off and they know what's out there. They can identify a flying insect. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:39

And they go and they get these insects that are over these agricultural fields and I think people don't understand how birds and bats and how many different things are contributing to our way of life on a day-to-day basis and keeping our food system safe, and these are things that have been in play for millennia. And if we start to mess with those things, it's going to be detrimental to our future and our children's and grandchildren's future. That's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 48:05

That's exactly right and that's part of the educational process that could be explained If we were able to do some of this filming. That would include the contributions. My own personal contribution of belief is that our early Caucasian ancestors who successfully fought the British during the Revolutionary War, we learned to fight that way from the Indians and had we not done that, we'd all have a heavy British accent today, I think, if we had not done that. But there's a bunch of stuff like that that could be recognized and could be identified as part of the culture. You know these people, their contribution to how we live today.

Speaker 1: 49:01

Sure, it's a shoulders of giants thing, man. The people who moved into an area had no idea about the horticulture and being able to grow. They looked to the people who did it successfully for millennia and thatorticulture and being able to grow you. They looked to the people who were did it successfully for millennia and that's how they were able to adapt. And then it's a. There's a the lakota saying, which is we are all related, we are all one, we all. There's nothing that separates us. We all in this way, all all the organisms, every single animal, every plant, flora, fauna. And I think the sooner we recognize that and we learn to find our strengths within these different communities in order to be able to preserve these ways of life that we love so dear, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1: 49:44

It's what we have to do.

Speaker 2: 49:46

And I see that as being a major goal. I see that as being a major goal. The other thing that strikes me, George, is tribal people have a better land ethic, if you will, than most of us do. They have more respect for the land out there, and I know Cherokee, my old buddy, the Cherokee elder, explained it this way to me. He said most of us spend our lives taken from the land and what we have to understand is there comes a time when we have to give back to the land, and the way I think we give back is to use this piece of hamburger here between our ears and try to correct the damage that we've already done, you know, to the land and recognize the contributions that these other Americans, the tribal people, have made to this whole effort. And I think there's some real potential there to bring that story out. You know and I'm babbling again, so forgive me- no, no forgiveness needed.

Speaker 1: 51:00

I think all these things are important. When you were talking about the idea of working with the Forestry Service and with the tribes, it also reminded me too and I've done it on my own family land here in Texas is working with your local USDA agent, your NRCS. There's different programs that are out there. We've taken out these invasive species well, animal too with hogs and stuff. We've done it with trees and shrubs and we've replanted native grasses and there's funds there for that.

Speaker 2: 51:31

Yes, and travel people could easily be a part of that absolutely really could it is it's important. Yes, it is, and uh, I don't know, I I feel very hopeful, uh, uh, about continuing with this, but I would really treasure any inputs or advice you've got, as as we move on with it. Scott is really into it, he's really helping me with this and uh, so uh, but if you've got any thoughts on it, uh, I would love to hear any advice for it all.

Speaker 1: 52:09

I definitely my, my wheels are spinning every time I'm thinking about it. So there's, uh, there's a lot of tribes that I've worked with and traveled with and have relationships with that I'd love to chat and introduce you with. So we'll, you know, we'll definitely, you know, continue to keep that. Uh, you know those seeds of planning and uh, um, you know, before we kind of separate for today, I wanted to ask you, with all the things that you're doing, and you know, I know, at the end of your Ted talk you kind of mentioned too that you know, you know your dad would be proud of the fact that you have gotten involved and are working on something that is so near and dear to his heart and the ancestors and all those people for hundreds of years, and I was.

Speaker 1: 52:51

It kind of got me thinking about. You know, a question I ask a lot of my guests is is one about legacy and how you view your legacy or how you want it to be. You know something like what is it that you hope that you're leaving behind and that you're remembered by, and the? You know whether it's a movement, a personal, professional thing, and you know, just, is that something that you know at this stage of your life you kind of think about, and is it something that you share, a belief that you'd like to you know expand upon a little bit with us today.

Speaker 2: 53:21

Well, I do a lot of thinking about that. One of the things that turns me off is running into people that appear to worship themselves. You know, they think that I'm the only one that's important, and because when you, if you get to that point where all that's important is that, dude, you're looking at the mirror, at, there's no room left for kindness to anybody else. And I think there is much to be done in this arena. I call it leaving tracks. You know, to leave some tracks and we left tracks back in the old days and the native people also. Learning to read tracks was an art form, you know. Their lives depended on it, and sometimes it was to bountiful chunk of land that was useful for the tribe or something that was good for the tribe. And leaving tracks sometimes involved maybe drawing a little arrow on the ground or breaking a branch so that those tracks could be followed, you know, or breaking a branch so that those tracks could be followed, you know, and if I weren't 80 years old, I'd give some thoughts to trying to put this in a book form or some way to, because I think as a species, as a country, I think as a species, as a country, the land ethic thing is one that I think if we really focused on that and have some talented Native Americans and I think that with just a little bit of work with some of the tribal people, we would probably discover that their land ethic, how they viewed the land, their respect for it, it's very similar, you know, because just their history, I mean they, there are eons that they spent depending on these ecosystems.

Speaker 2: 55:50

And I think about how our citizenry today could benefit from having a land, that level of respect for the woods, the ecosystems, the streams, because when you look at this thing that bothers me of bringing in every strange insect. They come in through world trade or international travel. We're not going to stop trading or traveling internationally, but we need to do something because there's no indication that this is going to slow down and the damage will continue. The only way to fix that, I think, is to try to instill, particularly in our young people, a different way of looking at the land, that it's not just something to look at but it's our lives right there. We kind of owe that to our people.

Speaker 2: 56:57

I think If we could start to upgrade that land ethic and I don't know whose role that is a lot of agencies and a lot of people would play a role in that, for example a forest service. If we're in the business of trying to restore some of the damage that's been done when ignorance prevailed, you know, think about the improvements to our quality of life if we could just stop this damage. It's almost epidemic now and with good science and good technology I'd like to see that effort continue. But I think that this tribal thing, I consider those folks the indigenous people and I think back when in my youth, and you may remember this, there was an advertisement.

Speaker 2: 58:07

I think they called it the crying Indian the guy that's actually shedding some tears when he saw people throwing garbage out the car window. But I think there's opportunities to really make some headway for all our people on a better land ethic, an ethic that suits better our needs and those of our grandkids, and I think we owe it to them, you know, to try to do that. I hope some way we can get that, and I think I'd love to see the Native people play a role in trying to get this word out. Uh, get this word out, you know, maybe in the video, when we video some of their culture, get some of their best speakers and let them, let them address this and and get it down on film babbling, yeah, no these are.

Speaker 1: 59:05

These are great things, man. I'm so glad you shared it and that you know you're continuing to kind of build your vision and share it and, like you, shared it too with me and all the listeners here today, and I know that I'll be putting down all the notes to some of the organizations we spoke about to your TED Talk link. I think everyone needs to go see that. It's about 10 minutes give or take and it's wonderful. It kind of gives a good synopsis of what you know you're working towards and, uh, you know you and I will just kind of keep in touch and see how we can kind of help each other along with this, and I'm once again, man I'm so honored that you came and joined me today, and I and uh, uh, the same here, the same here.

Speaker 2: 59:47

you, uh, you've made my day, so I just uh, I want to stay in touch at your convenience, but uh, uh, I think, I think this thing has a lot of potential and you can uh, you can give us some tremendous help with it as you ponder on it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:05

Yeah Well, I look forward to be a part of every step that you, everything you're doing, so rex, thank you again for joining me and uh, yeah, we'll uh maybe have to meet up and have you on again soon, sometime we'll do that, buddy.

Speaker 2: 1:00:16

All right, you have a great day and I want to read more about your deer down there also working on another article.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

I'll send it your way. All right, that'll be great you take care.

Speaker 2: 1:00:27

good day, thanks for what you do, thank you.