Small Wings, Big Impact: Revitalizing Tribal Lands and Livelihoods

Native Americans struggle financially in rural Oklahoma, where land is often of poor quality for traditional farming and non-agricultural jobs are scarce.  These problems are compounded by cultural barriers hampering their access to the economic and technical resources that could help them to achieve greater success and a better quality of life. The Euchee Butterfly Farm, a Native woman-owned LLC small business located on the Muscogee Nation Reservation, is using butterfly farming as a platform to address these issues. The farm is located on 68-acres of original Native American allotment land that has been continuously held by descendants of the original allottee for 124 years. It is a working butterfly farm, but also a teaching facility with conference space, classrooms, butterfly flight houses, greenhouses, demonstration gardens, a teaching kitchen, a native prairie remnant, and a pecan orchard.

Although not well-known, butterfly farming is an exploding agricultural opportunity that is uniquely suited to the challenges faced by rural Native people. Over $100 million in butterflies are purchased each year for exhibits, weddings, and classrooms. Supply cannot keep up with market demand, and shortages are forecast to increase in the foreseeable future. Unlike traditional farming, butterfly farming utilizes native species of plants and trees as a food source for the livestock, does not require large quantities of water or acreage, has minimal start-up costs, can be done part-time to supplement existing income and does not demand the physical strength traditional farming requires. 

The flagship program of the Euchee Butterfly Farm is the Natives Raising Natives Project, which was launched in 2013 to train tribal members as butterfly farmers. Participants commercially raise butterflies on their own land, or even in their own backyard if they do not have access to arable land holdings. The program provides all necessary start-up materials at no cost to the farmers and provides ongoing technical support for them to ensure that they are successful.  

The program is designed to remove the barriers that prevent rural Native Americans from accessing employment by offering a trade that can be practiced in areas without industry or high-quality farmland—particularly important because much of the Native-owned land in Oklahoma dates from the original Creek allotments assigned through the Dawes Act in 1887, and these parcels of land are remote and unsuitable for traditional agriculture. Additionally, the program provides an opportunity for those who might otherwise be unable to participate in the labor market, such as the elderly, the disabled or stay-at-home parents, to engage in meaningful work.  

The Natives Raising Natives Project has three primary objectives:

• Use butterfly farming to create economic development for Native Americans living in rural areas by providing training and technical support to help them become successful farmers.
• Use butterfly farming as a hands-on learning opportunity to teach Native American youth about agriculture, conservation and science.
• Use butterfly farming as a vehicle to raise awareness about the need for habitat conservation efforts that support native butterflies and other threatened pollinators on lands owned by Native Americans and tribes, and to provide training on how to implement those conservation efforts.

The project uses butterfly farming as a platform to build success in multiple ways, including plant cultivation, climate-smart agriculture and sustainable agriculture. It also promotes careers in agriculture for Native youth by teaching technical and business skills in a way that is fun, accessible and culturally appropriate. Butterfly farming serves as a gateway to agriculture for underserved individuals who haven’t envisioned that career for themselves because it was an arena that has historically been dominated by white males. 

Butterfly farming is a sustainable form of agriculture that creates economic self-sufficiency for tribal members, but just as importantly, is also a hands-on tool for engaging Native youth in science. Butterflies attract the attention of youth like few other things can, and that natural fascination makes the concepts of science and agriculture—ecology, biology, geography, physiology, botany, nutrition and more—come alive for students of all ages, stimulating intellectual curiosity and motivating academic interests which could make the difference between future success or failure. 

The Learning Center at the Euchee Butterfly Farm is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 2013. The nonprofit works in partnership with the Euchee Butterfly Farm, with the nonprofit providing training, education and technical support at no cost, while the Euchee Butterfly Farm acts as a sales and distribution facility to provide a guaranteed sales outlet for the butterflies raised by program participants. Natives Raising Natives is based on the principle that butterfly farming is a long-term solution to some of the economic problems facing rural Native people because it is financially self-sustaining through product sales in addition to being harmonious with traditional Native values regarding good stewardship of tribal lands.  

Natives Raising Natives is supported in its effort by its sister programs based at the Euchee Butterfly Farm: Tribal Alliance for Pollinators, Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs, and Food Initiative for Tribes.   

Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP) was created in 2017 by the Natives Raising Natives project director, Jane Breckinridge, and Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor, the founder/director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. TAP has a mission to help tribal nations build their capacity for native plant restoration in order to create pollinator habitat on tribal lands and preserve the medicinal plants essential for preserving sacred cultural traditions. The training workshops and technical support are provided for free. The non-profit native plant seed bank created by TAP is the largest in Oklahoma, with 253 species of native plants. Each year, the TAP staff produces over 20,000 native plants and milkweed seedlings at the Euchee Butterfly Farm greenhouses. These plants are provided free to tribes and tribal members for use in restoring their land.  

TAP is an expansion of the Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM) project, which spent three years assisting seven tribes (Osage, Muscogee Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole, Citizen Potawatomi, Eastern Shawnee and Miami Nations) in eastern Oklahoma with the process of restoring native plants to tribal lands. The project provided hands-on training for tribal staff in all aspects of native plant production and land restoration. Over 50,000 native milkweeds and 40,000 native nectar wildflowers have been restored to tribal lands by the TEAM project.  

Food Initiative for Tribes (FIT) was launched by the Euchee Butterfly Farm in 2018 to address the issues of food deserts, food insecurity, lack of access to fresh produce and the resulting rise in preventable disease disproportionately affecting Native people in rural Oklahoma.  FIT provides training that emphasizes sustainability, pollinator support, conservation, and climate-smart agriculture.

The Euchee Butterfly Farm is a part of the communities it serves – every member of the staff is an enrolled tribal member. The farm has a demonstrated track record of not only working effectively within the tribes of the staff members, but also successfully bringing different tribal nations and Native American communities together to work on shared goals. To date, representatives from 82 different tribes have participated in its educational programming, including representatives from all 39 of Oklahoma’s federally recognized tribes, working together to create a more sustainable future for Native people and Native lands.

 

Article by Jane Breckinridge, an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, directs the Euchee Butterfly Farm in Oklahoma and co-leads Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM) and Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP). She founded the Natives Raising Natives Project to empower tribal communities through butterfly farming, science education, and pollinator habitat restoration. With a background in magazine publishing and a Political Science degree from Macalester College, she is a champion for pollinator conservation and community-driven solutions.