“Who will carry this on when we are gone?  Who will carry on the traditions of the Crow people?” asks Noel Two Leggins in Rylon Bird’s new film, “The Return,” which will be featured in the Wild and Working Lands Film Festival on April 12 at the Cody Theatre. 

In summer 2023, Noel Two Leggins brought a group of Apsa’alooke (Crow) youth to Heart Mountain in northwest Wyoming for the Return to Foretops Father gathering for storytelling, dancing, early morning pipe ceremony, and the hike to the top of the mountain. “You look at the nomadic Plains Indian days — they went up to a high place, a summit, to fast and to get away from water. I want these kids to understand what their ancestors went through,” he says. Noel mentors these youth, called Aak Baacheeitchilewioosh or Those Who Will Be Leaders, in the traditions and culture of their tribe through a program of Little Big Horn College.

The story caught the eye of filmmaker Bird, with Valley of the Chiefs Productions, and he explored the event through film over several days at the mountain and follow up interviews with Noel Two Leggins and mentees, O’Shay Birdinground and Michaiah Pease. The film was commissioned as a part of a larger project which is gathering stories of Heart Mountain from tribal members and from Heart Mountain Relocation Center internees and their descendants. The project is supported by LegacyWorks Group’s Laura Bell as part of the East Yellowstone Initiative, with generous donations from Wyoming Philanthropic Trust.

It was Grant Bulltail, tribal elder and pipe lighter, whose vision it was to bring the pipe ceremony back to Heart Mountain after many years away. The Nature Conservancy’s purchase of the Heart Mountain Ranch in 1999 opened the mountain up to that possibility once again. Grant shared the belief that the mountain is imbued with an animated life force and that a pipe lighter has the responsibility to gather people together to restore the mountain’s energy through prayer and beautiful ceremony. Although Grant passed away in 2020, the ceremony lives on and is being shared with the tribal youth in hopes that they, too, will carry on the tradition.

The Wild and Working Lands Film Festival, a project of UW’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, features short films that explore the intricate connections between humans and the landscapes where we live, work, and play– inspiring audiences to better understand our current world and work toward a future where people and natural environments prosper together.

The April 12 showing is hosted by The East Yellowstone Collaborative, a group of conservation nonprofits working with landowners and partners to catalyze landscape-scale conservation along the Absaroka Front while enhancing the economic viability of ranches and their important role in wildlife conservation. 

For more information, contact Laura Bell at laura@legacyworksgroup.com.