This Native-Run Raptor Center Is Safeguarding Sacred Birds, Feathers, and Practices

On a brisk December night time, three males gathered in Cyril, a speck of a city in southwest Oklahoma. They’d come for a particular function—one which related them to their Comanche ancestors and channeled powers past the bodily realm.

Tonight, they’d be “roadmen,” the non secular leaders of peyote conferences. This ceremonial follow entails all-night periods of prayer and tune at which attendees might devour the psychoactive cactus peyote. Many Indigenous People, particularly those that are members of the Native American Church, think about it to be integral to their tradition. “It’s who we’re,” says Charles Tahah, one of many Comanche roadmen current on the demonstration that night.

Kneeling in a small room painted a superb marigold yellow, Tahah and his non secular brothers, Travis Codynah and Randall Foye, lowered their heads, closed their eyes, and started to sing. They had been sharing only a few of the numerous “journey songs” that may be sung at an precise peyote assembly. Chanting in Comanche, their voices rose and fell to a fast beat they stored with a gourd rattle and water drum. Even nonspeakers might select one distinctive phrase in a number of songs: Kweeni, or Golden Eagle. That species’ particular vitality was additionally current in followers the lads held, every produced from a full set of tail feathers. The followers are essential for peyote conferences: Ceremonial prayers can not attain the heavens with out them. “To anybody else, they’re simply feathers, however to us, they’re one thing particular and highly effective,” Tahah says. “They’re wind made flesh.”

Just about all Native American tribes assign particular significance to feathers and different elements from a wide selection of birds. Feathers are believed to encapsulate the animal’s vitality, and so they serve totally different ceremonial functions, relying on the tradition. For Comanches, Golden Eagles are probably the most cherished. “Traditionally, the assumption of our folks is that solely the Golden Eagle can fly excessive sufficient and much sufficient to see the face of God,” says Waha Thuweeka, co-director of Sia: The Comanche Nation Ethno-Ornithological Initiative.

Sia, which suggests “feather,” has captive-bred and launched tons of of Golden and Bald Eagles, serving to to rebuild wild populations. The group can also be one of many few locations Native People can legally receive feathers for cultural and non secular functions, and it runs the one repository of feathers from each eagle and non-eagle species. The feathers within the followers Tahah, Foye, and Codynah used that December night had been molted by Golden Eagles that dwell at Sia, and the group provides members of about 150 tribes per 12 months with feathers from a variety of revered birds.

Sia makes a singular contribution to the ornithological world, says Patrick Redig, cofounder and director emeritus of The Raptor Center on the College of Minnesota. “It’s basically mixing the cultural historical past and significance of the eagle to the Comanche and different Native American tribes, however with a watch to addressing the conservation of the eagle in trendy instances,” he says. Such an operation “simply doesn’t exist elsewhere, and it’s actually vital to eagles as a result of they want it—they want advocates.”

Eagles face a mess of threats, together with collisions with wind generators and energy traces, lead poisoning, and habitat loss. Now the rising recognition of peyote conferences inside and past Native communities, in addition to an growing demand for regalia for powwows, is feeding a black marketplace for eagle feathers.

Waha Thuweeka and Troy, Sia’s different co-director (he doesn’t use a surname), have watched because the sale and use of illicit feathers has “exploded,” Troy says, particularly up to now couple of years. Deeply involved in regards to the influence of this escalating unlawful commerce, they’re combating to save lots of eagles whereas sustaining their tradition. “We dwell in a time when an eagle can now not forfeit her life to fulfill tradition, not any tradition,” Waha Thuweeka says.

Golden Eagles have all the time been a part of Waha ­Thuweeka’s life. He can hint his household again by way of seven generations of Numunuh, as Comanches name themselves, on his mom’s aspect. His household’s historic duty was to keep up “the chicken methods,” he says.

His German-Irish father had his personal obsession with birds and will determine a feather blindfolded, simply by its texture. “That’s how I first received to know the birds, by way of the plumage,” says Waha Thuweeka, whose Anglo title is William Voelker. His father amassed a set of raptor feathers, together with some 2,200 Golden Eagle tail units, and quite a few carcasses—many despatched from ranchers when eagle persecution was commonplace, earlier than the federal government strengthened protections.

Eagles had been first federally protected beneath the 1900 Lacey Act, which bans the commerce and transportation of chicken elements throughout state traces or worldwide borders. Then the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it unlawful to hurt, kill, or hold any native migratory chicken or half with out a allow. However by the Nineteen Thirties it was clear that stricter laws had been wanted to stem the decline of eagles from rampant taking pictures and habitat loss. In 1940 the federal government handed the Bald Eagle Safety Act, including heftier penalties for harming the birds or possessing or promoting their feathers and different elements. For the Golden Eagle Modification to that act, handed in 1962, Waha Thuweeka’s father labored with federal authorities to create language and protocols that supported Native cultural pursuits, making certain Native People and others might legally hold feathers and elements already of their possession.

In 1972 George Sutton, an acquaintance and main ornithologist, organized for Waha Thuweeka to take graduate-level programs at Cornell College. There he shared quarters with Delight, a beloved Golden Eagle he’d introduced with him, and studied ornithology, avian physiology, and genetics. He additionally established connections with outstanding raptor consultants, together with Tom Cade, who based The Peregrine Fund, a raptor conservation nonprofit.

When he returned residence, Waha Thuweeka continued working with birds, together with by way of a captive-breeding program and avian surveys. At some point, in 1979, he broke a private rule and picked up a hitchhiker. The younger white man was Troy. “There was a child eagle sitting on the seatback,” Troy remembers. “I’m like, ‘What the heck is occurring right here?’”

Waha Thuweeka defined that he was releasing the captive-bred chick into the care of untamed foster mother and father. Troy, who had just lately left the Military after being injured in a helicopter crash, was fascinated. That summer season he joined Waha Thuweeka on an annual eagle banding survey on Numunuh historic lands. On their remaining day, tragedy almost struck when two eaglets jumped from their nest and landed within the North Laramie River. Troy instantly leapt into the fast-flowing water and saved them.

Again at Waha Thuweeka’s mother and father’ home, his Grandmother Eviyah summoned Troy to a fireplace within the yard and started a ceremony to take him “captive.” Solely Comanches born previous to the  tribe’s remaining give up to U.S. troops within the late 1800s had been permitted to take these captives, a follow traditionally reserved for younger folks whose households Comanches had killed. Grandmother Eviyah was the final Comanche recognized to invoke this privilege, which made Troy a member of the household and tribe. Although neither man had informed her about Troy’s heroism, she named him Kweeni Mahqueetsoi Okwetuni, or “he who saves the eagle from the water.”

Along with monitoring wild eagles, the duo started working to rebuild the raptors’ populations. Using a man-made insemination method that Waha Thuweeka had pioneered, they produced and launched greater than 400 Golden and Bald Eagles into the wild from the Seventies by way of the early Nineties.

Waha Thuweeka and Troy formalized their efforts in 1999 with the creation of Sia. The middle, funded primarily by donations, combines components of a museum, archive, shrine, botanical backyard, and raptor sanctuary. One room is a devoted analysis house, packed ground to ceiling with books, historic paperwork, and images associated to each eagles and Comanches. One other is a state-of-the-art archival storage facility.

Eagles are on the heart of Sia’s operations. Lots of the greater than 100 resident raptors are captive-bred eagles, a few of them descendants of a number of generations of Comanche birds. Sia additionally offers a house for some previously wild birds that can’t be launched, particularly species vital to Comanches. That features two wing-injured Harlan’s Hawks, a Crested Caracara born with a feather deformity, and a Zone-tailed Hawk that was hit by a automobile. Waha Thuweeka and Troy, who don’t give themselves salaries, dwell on the property. “This isn’t a job,” Waha Thuweeka says. “It is a hereditary life’s calling.”

Sia’s affect extends far past Oklahoma. In 2012 Sia signed an settlement with the Spanish authorities to ascertain a joint raptor conservation heart in Spain, the place they produced Maria, the primary captive-bred Spanish Imperial Eagle. That partnership additionally offers symbolic restitution for the horses and metallic that Comanche raiders took from Spanish settlers on the southern Plains three centuries in the past, Waha Thuweeka says. In 2016, after a number of main zoos had failed within the try, Sia succeeded in hatching the primary captive-bred ‘Io, or Hawaiian Hawk. The middle can also be the one place within the Western Hemisphere to propagate nonnative species akin to Verreaux’s and Steppe Eagles, which it offers to dozens of zoological companions. Sia does “issues on this world that no person else does with raptors,” says Benjamin Tuggle, former Southwest regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Waha Thuweeka attributes their success to “listening to the birds,” trying to them for cues that determine their wants by way of meals and habitat.

At the same time as Sia helped bolster wild eagle populations and construct experience vital to raptor conservation, Waha Thuweeka and Troy had a bigger, harder objective—one which married their devotion to eagles with their fervent assist of conventional Native practices. For many years, tribes had lacked a option to legally receive culturally impor­tant feathers. Sia wished to supply an answer to that drawback.

Under the 1962 Golden Eagle Modification, the Division of the Inside was required to supply tribal members some means for accessing Bald and Golden Eagle feathers and carcasses. Years handed, nevertheless, and the division struggled to satisfy that obligation. So across the time Waha Thuweeka went to Cornell College, he despatched a proposal to the FWS to create an Indigenous-run feather repository that may construct on his father’s substantial assortment and assist meet the wants of tribes. “Indigenous, conventional practitioners have the expertise and perceive the nuance of assembly the wants of different conventional practitioners,” Waha Thuweeka says.

The feds weren’t , he says. “We heard issues like, ‘That is like placing the fox accountable for the henhouse.’ ”

The federal government met its mandate to tribes by creating the National Eagle Repository within the early Seventies. Now positioned close to Denver, the power is the nationwide assortment level for all deceased Bald and Golden Eagles from native, state, and federal officers, in addition to from rehab teams and zoos. Enrolled members of federally acknowledged tribes can apply to obtain a restricted variety of eagle stays, elements, and feathers for non secular functions. The repository now receives hundreds of carcasses a 12 months, however from the start it was clear that it couldn’t sustain with demand.

In the meantime, Waha Thuweeka hadn’t given up on his imaginative and prescient for a completely Native-run feather repository—a mission that Troy additionally took up when he turned a Comanche. Their first success got here within the late Nineties, when their years of lobbying the federal government resulted within the creation of a brand new federal allow that enables Indigenous entities like Sia to keep up eagle aviaries for Native non secular use and distribute molted feathers to tribal members. (To Waha Thuweeka and Troy’s dismay, nevertheless, the brand new allow prohibited the discharge of any captive-produced younger to the wild—one thing they’d been doing for many years.) The Zuni obtained the primary allow, adopted by the Comanche and 5 different tribes. Even so, with 574 federally acknowledged tribes in the USA, members should typically wait years to acquire the feathers they require.

What’s extra, whereas tribal aviaries helped meet the necessity for eagle feathers, there was nonetheless no authorized pipeline for acquiring feathers from different chicken species. The Yuchi folks, for instance, require feathers from the Whooping Crane—a species they imagine to have gifted them with ceremonial songs—for non secular dances. The Wiyot folks had likewise lengthy sought California Condor feathers to finish a ceremony that had been abruptly led to 1860 when a gaggle of white settlers stormed in and killed most people in attendance.

As Waha Thuweeka continued to argue that Native People wanted authorized entry to feathers from culturally vital birds, Sia discovered an ally in Tuggle on the FWS. However when Tuggle started making an attempt to push Sia’s feather repository proposal ahead in 2009, he, too, met resistance. “Our legislation enforcement and programmatic folks claimed that Sia and the Native American neighborhood aren’t able to doing this,” he says. So Tuggle pushed even tougher. “It principally turned a mission of will,” he says.

In 2010, because of his efforts, the FWS granted Sia a particular allow to distribute non-eagle feathers beneath the Migratory Chook Treaty Act. (Liberty Wildlife, a non-Indigenous rehab facility in Phoenix, is the one different non-eagle feather repository.) With its two separate permits, as we speak Sia is the one repository for all sorts of feathers.

Sia shops tons of of hundreds of feathers from greater than 200 species in a warehouse offsite. Rehab teams, zoos, and falconers assist keep the availability. Sia fulfills requests from round 150 tribes per 12 months, primarily for raptors but additionally for songbirds like Blue Jays and Yellow Warblers and galliformes just like the Higher Sage-Grouse and Ruffed Grouse, in addition to these long-sought condor and crane feathers.

Sia offers all feathers without spending a dime, and covers delivery prices out of an abundance of warning for the legislation. They solely provide for bona fide cultural functions. If there’s any doubt as to how feathers shall be used, they depend on a verification course of utilizing connections throughout the tribal world. Even so, demand outstrips provide. That is very true for eagles: Sia can ship out feathers solely from the 8 Bald Eagles and 20 Golden Eagles at the moment in its care or from these in its assortment that predate the Bald and Golden Eagle Safety Act. Sia can also be working to acquire the authority to distribute eagle feathers from different sources, simply as the federal government does by way of the nationwide repository.

Waha Thuweeka estimates they’ve a backlog of round 80 eagle purposes, which is able to take a couple of years to work by way of. These excellent requests are for particularly prized juvenile Golden Eagle tail feathers, that are principally whitish with black ideas, in contrast to the all-dark feathers of adults. (Golden Eagles molt at most six tail feathers a 12 months.) Sia additionally has 290 purposes for non-eagle species that they lack the feathers or carcasses to satisfy, particularly grownup male Anhinga tail feathers but additionally some Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, warblers, magpies, ravens, roadrunners, and sparkles.

If Sia can’t assist, members of tribes that don’t hold eagles have to affix the yearslong queue on the Nationwide Eagle Repository. In response to the repository’s web site, it’s solely now processing purposes filed greater than 11 years in the past for immature Golden Eagle carcasses. The avian flu outbreak has the potential to additional lengthen wait instances due to further security measures. For these unwilling to attend, nevertheless, there’s an alternative choice: the feather black market.

Historically, Comanches obtained feathers primarily by way of two means. The primary, pit trapping, required a person to cover in a gap lined with brush and topped with the carcass of a prey species; when an eagle landed, he grabbed it by the legs, plucked the feathers he wanted, then launched the chicken. Juvenile feathers, in the meantime, had been taken by deadly means from birds that had been rendered flightless by a crop filled with meals. Holy objects produced from Golden Eagle feathers had been handed down by way of generations.

Deadly means for procuring feathers are nonetheless practiced as we speak—albeit with very totally different strategies. Unlawful taking pictures is a number one reason behind dying for eagles within the western United States, a 2023 examine discovered. It’s additionally grown extra brazen. Final October, for example, a U.S. district choose in Montana sentenced a person to almost 4 years in jail and ordered him to pay greater than $775,000 in restitution for killing greater than 3,600 birds, together with 118 eagles, on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Officers estimated the poacher earned as much as $360,000 by promoting eagle feathers and elements. “We’re going to really feel the impacts of the Flathead Reservation’s raptor loss for years to come back,” stated Mike Dolson, chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, in a press release.

The prosecution was introduced as a serious success. However as Waha Thuweeka factors out, catching poachers doesn’t remedy the issue. “Sure, cease the folks which might be killing the birds,” he says. “However they wouldn’t be killing the birds if there wasn’t a market.”

In response to the Related Press, the poacher and his collaborators focused these birds as a result of they’re in such excessive demand for sacred ceremonies and powwows. Previously few years, as mainstream curiosity in psychedelics has surged, peyote ceremonies have proliferated amongst Native People and others. Demand for feather followers has risen in flip. Even better demand for feathers is pushed by powwows. At these gatherings, dancers adorned in costumes that always embody multitudes of eagle and different raptor feathers compete for money prizes that may climb into the tens of hundreds of {dollars}. The nation’s largest powwow, held in Albuquerque, attracts greater than 100,000 attendees and 4 million livestream viewers. Dancers know that “in the event that they’re dripping in feathers, they’re extra prone to get the eye of the judges,” Waha Thuweeka says.

A latest browse of Fb confirmed how straightforward it’s to purchase illicit feathers. In a 5,000-member Native American Church–themed group, submit after submit marketed feathers on the market, some free, others made into followers. Most had been from Golden or Bald Eagles, however there have been additionally feathers from corvids and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers. “Felonious exercise,” Waha Thuweeka stated as he scrolled previous a set of tail feathers from a first-year Golden Eagle. He might inform by the quills that they weren’t molted feathers, he stated, however ones “from a chicken that’s freshly killed.” Sellers often ask events to message them immediately for costs, however Waha Thuweeka has been informed {that a} set of juvenile Golden Eagle tail feathers can promote for as much as $1,200 to patrons within the powwow world.

In 2022 directors from Meta approached Waha Thuweeka after he was quoted in a Los Angeles Occasions article about peyote. They wished his assist discovering and eradicating Fb posts promoting peyote and different pure hallucinogens. He says he raised the difficulty of black market feathers on an preliminary telephone name, and “they stated they’d take a look at it.” Though the Meta workforce was at first diligent about taking down peyote posts he flagged, he says, they by no means took down any of the unlawful feather choices he pointed them to. He emailed them once more in December. “The unlawful choices have grown on Fb, and one thing must be carried out,” he wrote. He by no means obtained a response.

Audubon reached out to each of the members of Meta’s coverage growth workforce Waha Thuweeka had labored with. One responded and directed Audubon to the corporate’s press workplace for interview requests. The press workplace by no means responded.

Relating to federal legislation enforcement cracking down on illicit on-line gross sales, Laury Marshall, now former assistant chief of public affairs for the FWS, stated in an e-mail that the company conducts “many investigations into the purchasers of eagle feathers and elements.” Violators often obtain verbal warnings or tickets. She added, nevertheless, that the FWS doesn’t have the personnel to undertake time-consuming investigations of the eagle commerce on social media. The FWS didn’t reply to follow-up questions.

Waha Thuweeka and Troy have began pursuing their very own options. They now implant all the feathers and feather-containing objects they ship out with microchips linked to a registry that confirms their authorized provenance. The chips might make it simpler for FWS brokers to determine legally acquired feathers, if and once they start cracking down on the unlawful commerce, Waha Thuweeka says. FWS legislation enforcement employees got here to Sia for an illustration in 2010, however the company didn’t reply to a request for remark in regards to the know-how.

Sia additionally engages in outreach and academic applications with tribal, nationwide, and worldwide teams, and these efforts appear to be making some distinction. “The Pueblos are beginning to consider getting feathers and different issues from locations like Sia, somewhat than going out to poach,” says Mary Motah Weahkee, a retired archaeologist and member of the Comanche Nation and the Santa Clara Pueblo.

One other resolution Sia has lengthy advocated is making a community of regional feather repositories for each eagle and non-eagle species. Sia would offer coaching and recommendation, if desired. Tribes would receive feathers from the identical locations Sia at the moment does—rehabbers, falconers, zoos, and extra—however would work with companions of their space. Not solely would this assist meet demand, it will additionally empower tribes to take management of the sourcing of their sacred objects.  As well as, it might give worth to the numerous carcasses and feathers from birds aside from Golden and Bald Eagles which might be at the moment thrown out or incinerated across the nation. “Think about if each tribe did this with their very own feathers,” Troy says. “It will be regenerative. No birds must be killed.”

Making this imaginative and prescient a actuality would require people who find themselves as dedicated as Waha Thuweeka and Troy. Whereas Western society tends to see Native American tradition as one thing from the previous, a rising variety of youthful Native folks like Tahah, Foye, and Codynah are dedicated to revitalizing an older, extra culturally genuine approach of doing issues. “They provide us some hope of those methods persevering with,” Waha Thuweeka says.

One other hopeful portent got here in April. The FWS granted Sia authority to launch limitless numbers of captive-produced Bald and Golden Eagles on historic Numunuh lands in six states, from Texas to Montana, for 30 years.

The allow “alerts a return to Indigenous folks partaking within the truest type of conservation of species for which we rely culturally and spiritually,” Waha Thuweeka says. It is usually a victory for “the sanctity of eagle life.”

So long as eagles soar and Comanches name on their vitality, at Sia “the chicken methods,” too, will nonetheless be fiercely alive.

This story initially ran within the Spring 2025 difficulty as “Safeguarding the Sacred.” To obtain our print journal, develop into a member by making a donation today.