The Osoyoos desert’s wild horses, and the man who cares for all of them

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings There are some things that some people feel they have to do, because if they don’t, no one else will. And in a part of this country that’s open and empty, there are horses, wild horses wandering a dry and dusty range known as the Osoyoos Desert. They’ve been there as long as people have been there to work with them. Maybe longer. Nobody really knows. They’re beautiful. There are about 300 of them left, and there is one man who cares for them mostly by himself. And when he goes, maybe the horses do, too. But he’s not gone yet, and this is his story. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Kate Helmore is a freelance journalist based in British Columbia. She wrote this feature for the Globe and Mail. Hi, Kate.

Kate Helmore Hi, Jordan.

Jordan Maybe we could start by locating the story you’re about to tell us, just because a lot of people might not be familiar with it, might not even know there’s a desert in BC. Where is the Osoyoos Desert?

Kate Helmore The Osoyoos Desert. It kisses the US border. It’s in the BC interior, and it’s right nestled between the Cascadia and Rocky Mountains. It’s this incredibly special place. I think it’s a very unique ecosystem. It’s made up of sagebrush and ponderers, a pine, and the ground is covered by a liking crust that holds trace amounts of water. And that’s where all of the life takes its energy from. It’s really cool.

Jordan Now, tell me about the focus of your story. The last, Syilx cowboy. Who is he? Who is Aaron?

Kate Helmore That’s a very good question.

Jordan Yes. Who is Aaron? Tell me about him.

Kate Helmore Aaron is well, I can tell you he’s a 63 year old cattle rancher. He’s a member of the Osoyoos Indian Band. And he is this incredible character. He’s a man of his land. It’s hard to separate two of them. He is this bushy moustache and he’s piercing blue eyes. Absolutely no time for small talk. He doesn’t like to if you ask, how are you doing? Nice weather today, Aaron doesn’t respond because his mind always seems to be elsewhere. His knowledge is vast. There’s this one story I heard that Aaron can look at a grasshopper in August and can tell you how much grass will be left underneath the snow in February, which is pretty incredible. Before we begin, I want to ask something a little bit sensitive here, and I noticed it from your story.

Jordan Aaron doesn’t like the word Indigenous. Did you speak with him about that? What is that about?

Kate Helmore Yes, Aaron and I spoke about that a lot. And it’s actually something that his mother, who’s the eldest member of the Osoyoos Indian Band, is also very careful about. They preferred the word Indian, and they prefer to be referred to that way because they believe that’s their history and they’re in the process of reclaiming that word. They worry that should the word for be forgotten, then the history will be forgotten, too. So Aaron’s, quite specifically, he doesn’t like Indigenous, he doesn’t like First Nations. He’s fine with Syilx because that’s specifically the type of First Nations person he is. But, yeah, that’s kind of a campaign that they’re really interested into.

Jordan I wanted to make sure we established that at the beginning so that people aren’t wondering about the language. These are Aaron’s choice of words to describe himself?

Kate Helmore Yes, absolutely. In fact, that was one of the precursors when I approached him for this story. He said, something that I insist on is that you use this word. And I personally feel uncomfortable using it, because I’m not someone who can reclaim that word. I’m, heads up, I’m a white settler. But, yeah, this is something that Aaron is very passionate about. Let’s talk now about his real passion and what is probably on his mind when you are asking him questions about the weather and he’s ignoring you. Tell me about the horses he cares for. In Australia’s Indian Reservation there’s, about where there was in the fall, about 300 wild horses. They roam around in bands of six to seven. There’s usually one male horse that leads them, and they are Aaron’s inheritance. They were cared for by his grandmother, then his mother, and now him. It is essential to him that they survive, and that when he looks at the land, he can see the horses on it.

Jordan Do we know where the horses originally came from? They’re not native to the land.

Kate Helmore That really depends on who you speak to. The academic Western consensus is they came the horses. Well, actually, the horses evolved in North America, but they were either hunted to extinction and then a combination of hunting and weather and stuff like that driven to extinction, but not before they crossed the bridge into Eurasia, where they were domesticated and then brought back to the continent with the Spanish, and they chased the north winds back up to Canada. But if you ask Aaron, if you ask his family, they would say the horses have always been here. They are key to his culture and to his people. As long as his people have been here, so too have the horses. So there’s a little bit of a disagreement there. But I think it’s also worth to note that absolutely, you can wade into that, but ultimately, the horses, regardless of the narrative, have been here for hundreds of years, and they’ve shaped and formed a culture, and they mean a lot to people out there.

Jordan Why does Aaron in particular feel compelled to care for these horses? Is it just the lineage of his family and his tribe, or is this something else?

Kate Helmore Yeah, I think that’s something that I spent months trying to understand, because as the story tells, it’s a heartbreaking job. It’s not easy. It comes with a lot of sacrifice and it’s more than a sense of responsibility. I think that Aaron has this quote that he told me, and this is his quote he said, there is no Indian without the horse. He believes that his people’s culture, their empowerment, their survival, is embodied in the body of the horse. And like a great historical example that I love is in 1877, the Okanagan people, when their land was being taken away from them and they were being pushed into smaller and smaller tracks of land. And their reserves, they declared war because they wanted greater grasslands, mostly for their horses. And they basically said that if you take away more of our land, we’re going to attack. And there’s a fantastic quote from Gilbert Sprout, who was the Indian Reserve Commission at the time, and he said, I do not know what force there is in this country to put them down. He’s speaking about the horse warriors. The satisfaction is chronic. They know their power and they do not fear war. And so the horse, it’s a cultural thing. Aaron would say that he’s never more complete when he’s in the mountains on the back of a horse, and his family will say the same thing. But it’s also this tool of empowerment. And I think that that tool where colonization tried to eradicate it. And Aaron worries if the horse is not theirs and they’ve lost a key to their culture and a key to who they are and a key to how they find themselves.

Jordan Tell me about what tending to the horses actually entails. You mentioned it’s a heartbreaking job. What does Errand do?

Kate Helmore Well, I mean, that’s a good question. It does depend on the year. So some years, when the land is lush and green and there’s lots of forage, it’s mostly just about driving around, checking on them, seeing how they’re doing. He’ll pull them in, he’ll train them. Watching Aaron train horses is really, really cool to see, actually. But he’ll train them. He’ll get into the point where you can ride them and maybe he’ll sell some of them because he thinks that they’re great horses that way. Maybe he’ll keep a few of them because he also runs a riding stable. So, you know, people will come and ride them and then the horse will just like when it wants to break or needs a break or go back out onto the land. But then there’s years like the one we just had, where 70% of the forage the land that the horses use for food was burned in the wildfires. And Aaron has hard decisions he has to make because if all the horses stay on there, they will overgraze it, there’ll be non left and they will die of starvation.

Jordan So your piece actually opens with a scene of Aaron holding the barrel of a 22 rifle up to the head of one of these horses. Tell me about maybe that particular instance.

Kate Helmore Yes, this is a really powerful moment, I think, in Aaron’s life. It was February, the snow was heavy on the ground. There was no feud left on the land, and we were facing a hay shortage that was impacting cattle ranches across the country. So Aaron couldn’t afford the hay. There was no actual food out on the land, and he had to start culling. So he had to start looking at the horses he had and making some really hard decisions about who got to live and who got to die. And to be clear, Aaron’s a controversial figure because he calls often. Aaron will go out and be like, okay, well, this horse is inbred. This horse is too old. This horse is wrecking havoc. This horse needs to go. But he always gets to make the decision for the benefit of the herd, whereas this time, yes, the decision was still for the benefit of the herd, but he was having toll based on arbitrary traits. And so this horse that he’s holding the barrel of a gun, too, is a horse that means a lot to him. He’s had it, not had it, but it’s a horse that’s been in his life. He’s ridden it, and his children have ridden it for 28 years. But it’s old and it’s skinny, and it’s taking food and fuel that needs to go towards the younger members of the herd, the ones that will keep the herd alive, and so he has to shoot it. And something I love about that scene is Aaron, when he usually shoots horses, keeps a distance from them, and he doesn’t shoot them at range, but he’ll shoot them from 10ft away or something like that. But with this horse, he goes up to it, and he presses the barrel of the gun to its head. And I think he did that. He won’t explain to me why he did that, but he did that, I think, because it was a symbolic moment right there, and he needed to be next to him when he did it, and it broke his heart. But that’s the sacrifices that he makes as someone who does the job he does.

Jordan You mentioned that he’s had to make tough decisions. You just described one of them. You also mentioned wildfires, which obviously the past few years have increased in frequency and area in general. How are the horses doing compared to previous years and errors? Is his job getting harder?

Kate Helmore Yeah, I mean, as climate change ravages the earth, more extreme weather patterns are happening. In forest, fires are going to be more common. If it’s not a fire, then it’ll be a drought, something like that. And he is nervous for the future that way. I mean, as we all are, we all have that anxiety inside of us right as we see our wilderness and our wild things suffer because of the decisions the human race has made. But this is also the tail end of a pattern, right? This is not just a story about an Aaron story in wild horses of the BC grasslands. Their story is not happening right now. It’s not just like this is climate change. This is a result of a long history of decolonization, when the land was stolen from people and when the horse, a tool of empowerment, was systematically eradicated and targeted in government campaigns because it was a resource strain and took away from the cattle ranching that this land had been designated for. Something that’s really worth noting is that when the BC grasslands were cut up and parceled off and handed over to cattle ranchers, first nations people were put onto reserves. In 1883, BC’s largest ranch was established and that ranch was 1562 sq mi, which was 520 times larger than the largest Indian reserve. So that’s the power of the ranching world and the ranching industry in the history of BC.

Jordan Has that attitude changed at all in more recent history as these horses have become more threatened and as climate change has become more of a concern, is there more help available for these animals or potentially more land? Or is this just Aaron all on his own for however long he can do it?

Kate Helmore That’s a really good question and I think a lot of it does come down to individuals, like to this one man, and he has a wonderful supportive family and he hopes that when he passes, someone else will pick up the mantle. But I’m left feeling, why is this falling into the hands of one individual? Why is it that these crisis that we face, the onus has been put on single people? It offers great opportunity for heroism, but also deep, deep tragedy. And it’s not sustainable in the long run because ultimately those people will fail either by their own human error or due to their own demise. And you just have to wonder, will we be able to take the steps to prioritize and enshrine the rights of things that we need for our cultural survival or people need for their cultural survival?

Jordan Is this even on the government’s radar? Have you asked the government about it?

Kate Helmore It’s tricky. The wild horses are a very controversial topic and I want to make that really clear. At the top, there are plenty of members of the Osoyoos Indian Band who do not like the wild horses. And for fair reason. These horses wander down from the mountains and they trapple across front lawns and they ruin flower beds and they in the winters when the roads are lined with salt, they come down to the roads and they lick the salt off the road and they become a motor hazard. And so there was lots of stories that I heard while I was there of Aaron getting a phone call saying, yeah, there’s two horses on the side of the road with broken legs, you have to come and shoot them. That’s something else. That he does and that’s a hazard to passing motorists. So I understand the frustration with this. And so it is like on the radar. It is on the radar of the various governments that are involved. And there was a 2016 report that looked into it and they’ve tried other methods, but ultimately what that report concluded was that this is just an issue of competing jurisdictions. You have the First Nations Councils, you have the municipal and you have Federal, and no one is really taking responsibility for this. Whereas in someone like the States, for example, you have the Free Roaming Wild Horse and Brewer Act, which was put into place in 1970s. And so you actually have an act there that provides and protects the wild horses and manages them. And there’s problems with the way the wild horses are managed in the States, no doubt, but at least there’s a recognition there. And I think what strikes me about this, myself included, is that when I heard about wild horses, I was like, oh, wow, those still exist. They weren’t even on my radar. I thought that was a thing of the past and it inspires me that they do. There’s something about wild things still being out there in this world that we live in. But I think that everyone would like to just see this process formalized a little bit.

Jordan Does Aaron want to see the process formalized?

Kate Helmore I think that he is at his heart, also distrustful of government systems, which is more than fair. And I think that he would worry that if it was formalized, it wouldn’t count. It wouldn’t really take into account the thoughts, opinions and wisdom of people like him. And, you know, obviously we have that’s not unreasonable expectation. I think that yes, I think that he would like to see it recognized in some way. Just don’t see how he I don’t think he knows how that would look. And to be clear, I have no idea either. And yeah, I wish that was a discussion. He would come on the podcast and just like, I would like to see this and this and this, because he’s just so much more knowledgeable than me. At some point will there come a time when something does have to be done, whether that’s because Aaron can no longer do the job and nobody picks it up for him, or because the rising rate of climate change and wildfires completely threatens the habitat.

Jordan Like, at some point, if things continue this way, will it be like somebody has to step in and save these horses or they’re gone?

Kate Helmore Yeah, I would say we’ve probably reached that point now, yes, but I think that’s the case across the board, right? At some point, something has to be done about how we treat wildlife and how we don’t prioritize it and how we understand wildlife in the first place. This binary understanding that we have of the wild things cannot be touched by humankind because humans are divided from nature. That’s not a worldview that someone like Aaron has the word say. It means to take a mini, stranded, vibrant twist it together to make a rope. He believes that humankind, humankind is intrinsically connected to nature. It is one part of nature, not that we are divided from it, which is much more than a geochristian view of things to be banished from the garden, for example. We are divided from it. And I think that at some point, yes, things have to change. But I think that has to come from an evolutionary understanding of how we see these spaces and how we see these animals and how we see our role in that. And until that, I worry about what that change would look like.

Jordan Is there any way, if somebody is listening to this and they want to help, whether that’s with money or whatever, that they can or is this just leave the man alone and let them care for his horses?

Kate Helmore The last comment sounds like something Aaron would say. No, I think that I’m very hesitant and since the article was published, I have had a couple of beautiful souls reach out and say, oh, can we start up a GoFundMe or something like that? I worry about that because obviously my role as a journalist is not to I don’t want to get involved in money. I was just worried that throwing money at the issue is not going to make things better. I think maybe just the community be becoming more alive to this and really asking ourselves the deeper questions underneath all of this, why do we see the world wildlife, land, animals and wildlife the way that we do? Is there a way that we can see it more holistically and then vote for policies that practice that? Because even if you and your community, if you don’t have wild horses, you might have wild sheep or you might have salmon and all these other animals that are also really key to culture, when the land is lonely, then so are we. And so I think it would be becoming more alive to the issues that are in your community and then do what you can to support the people who know that land and know those animals and doing what they can to make it better. I know that’s not a great response. I know it’s like, here’s a go, fund me page, go here, send money. I just don’t think it’s that simple. I think this story has been has left me with so many more questions than answers, which is, I guess not a great practical response, but it is a poetic one. I’ll take that as a compliment.

Jordan It is. Kate, thank you so much for walking us through this.

Kate Helmore Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

Jordan Kate Helmore told Aaron’s story in the Globe and Mail. That was The Big Story. If you’re wondering why we haven’t done an episode on the massive one day strike by education support workers, it’s because, as I’ve said before, we don’t do breaking news as it breaks. What I can tell you is next week we’ll examine every angle of this story. Yes, for you Ontario parents, who are probably as frustrated as I am right now, as frustrated as my neighbours are and everyone I know with kids, but also from a bigger picture for all Canadians of the ramifications of the notwithstanding clause, what was once thought to be a break glass in case of emergency button has been broken an awful lot lately. Think about that as you watch what happens this weekend. And also just think about the people who take care of your kids at school. I’m not here to pick sides, but I am here to thank them. So if you’re one of them, thanks. You can find the bigstory at the biggest storypodcast. CA you can find us on Twitter at thebigstory FPN. You can write to us. Hello at thebigstorypodcast CA. Some of you did write and asked to hear about the Notwithstanding clause, so we’re working on it. And of course, you can call us. Leave a voicemail 416-935-5935 you can get The Big Story wherever you get podcasts. If you get it on Apple podcasts, make sure you leave a rating and a review. And if you want it on a smart speaker, just ask it to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Have a great weekend. We’ll talk Monday.