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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hey, you all? It's Melissa Harris-Perry here on The Takeaway. This is a little unusual, what I'm really looking forward to Monday, of course, because it's labor day, which means a little respite from work. For me, that means a day in the garden, pulling weeds, planting moms, and tidying up the chicken coop. Part of my love for the outdoors comes from my dad's family. Multi-Generational black Southern crew who enjoy growing our own food and tending our own gardens.

For many of my family, the outdoors also means producing your own food. Not only from that backyard gardening, but through hunting and fishing. For as long as I can remember, my dad and uncle welcomed all the kids and cousins of all genders to join them in hunting and angling. They've conserved family-owned land as an undeveloped site for their hobby. Having grown up in a family of African-American hunters, I was actually surprised to learn that according to the wildlife society, only about 3% of those who hold hunting licenses are people of color.

I was interested to learn about Hunters of Color, a national non-profit recruiting, and mentoring, a more diverse cohort of American hunters. Brandon Dale is a New York ambassador for Hunters of Color. We talked about our shared experience of growing up in Southern Black families for hunting was part of life

Brandon Dale: For centuries, former slaves, which definitely made up this large portion of my family hunted because that was their first sort of form of really having free access to a income that wasn't sharecropping or something post-emancipation. For me, I think a lot more about that now than what I did when I grew up. Now when I'm out in the woods, I'm like definitely more aware of the fact that I'm the only person of color sometimes, but it's really, I think, awesome to be working on the projects and mentorship programs to help bridge that gap because I think ultimately like people connect so deeply with nature and this experience is for everyone.

In that regard, I think being conservationist, being connected to the land, hunting, fishing, that's inherently a human process that everyone should have access to and be able to feel comfortable doing. I think the societal and structural barriers there are what make it, I think different for people of color.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Help folks who are not hunters who maybe even have real concerns about it, understand how it is that you can see hunting and fishing as connecting to the land, as opposed to extracting from it.

Brandon Dale: Hunters and anglers provide huge. I'd say a majority of the funding that we as the United States have set aside for conservation and protection of lands and protection of our environmental waterways. This is set up by a number of legislative pieces with some of the most notable which maybe been familiar to people it's called the Pitman Robertson Act. This is essentially a tax that essentially taxes the manufacturers who make hunting and hunting-related supplies like ammunition, firearms, et cetera, but hunting clothes like camouflage, et cetera.

All of this is taxed before the consumers, the hunters purchase it. That tax specifically and explicitly goes to conservation projects that fund things. In New York, our Department of Environmental Conservation or the Department of Environmental Protection or the wildlife biologist that are doing surveys on turkey [unintelligible 00:03:25] sizes and all of the different parts of the environment that we need to have people like doing work for, to monitor and evaluate what is our current status. Instead a very real way, the logistical piece of it. I think hunters and anglers are definitely the most financially invested in protecting these wild spaces.

I think deeper than that, there is the sense of connection that I'd say is completely distinct to fishing and hunting, unlike any other wildlife or natural outdoor activity. What we get at in terms of whenever you hunt at fish is that you no longer become an observer of the process, you actually become part of that process. You're fulfilling this natural, very instinctual primal. I don't mean primal meaning rudimentary.

Primal meaning core to what it means to be a primate, which eventually evolves Homo sapiens humans was the ability to hunt and to gather and to utilize and be part of the nature and in a very real sense, like you are tapping into a very deeply seated, I think rooted sense of self in a sense that you're now more holistically taking in all parts of the variables. I think the depths and intricacies that you have to know to really begin to understand how these animals survive and live in the wild.

I think it gives you a much deeper appreciation for the sense of connection that you feel. For me, the full circle part of it is that after a day in which I do kill an animal and then harvest the meat, I get to take that back and really complete that full circle that I think is really fundamental to our experience as humans and really get into the food connection piece of it.

There are huge benefits of sustainably sourcing your own food. I think the connection piece to the land is really just so much more powerful and I think profound. I wouldn't consider myself conservationist nearly as much without the dedication that I've had to hunting and fishing because it's allowed me to really get to know something deeply and love something deeply to a point where I'm like, "Oh, well now I need to protect this deeply."

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Here on the North American continent, the idea that hunting would be for anyone other than people of color seems odd. Obviously, hunting, angling this version of conservation and engagement with the outdoors is core to Indigenous peoples who were here first and who remain here. I wonder about as you all are doing this work to expand and reduce barriers and to make more inclusive, these experiences, the extent to which the politics of land reclamation, particularly for indigenous communities are also part of this.

Brandon Dale: People of color are not-- This is not the first time people of color have been hunting. This is a continuation of a very, very long history. You're right that began with the indigenous communities that are here in North America. I think that a way in which hunters of color specifically tries to bring that element in to really remind people of that is just to be meaningfully present wherever we are. If we're doing programming somewhere and we have access to private land, we will make sure that we recognize whichever indigenous groups that land originally belonged to and belongs to.

Then also I think even more than a land acknowledgement, just treating a place with the respect and reverence that it deserves. Teaching people, the skills to go out and successfully hunt are pretty different and related, but not the same as teaching someone how to navigate through the world and through their hunting journey with a conservation lens and like a conservation and a lens of reciprocity.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: When you talk about teaching someone, what are the skills you've named some of them, but walk through that a bit for me.

Brandon Dale: First and foremost, safety is a big one. Everyone who to hunt in North America, you need to take a hunter safety course, safety around firearms, bone arrows and broadheads and all things. Safety is a big part of the, the learning that we really try to enforce, but beyond the safety piece of it there's woodsmanship skills. Tracking, understanding the weather and how that might affect your quarry, understanding travel patterns and topography as well. How do you read like a pinch point on a mountain Ridge where you might wanna set up preferentially instead of just on an open piece of Baron Flat Oakland or something?

Understanding the biology of seasonality of plants. Deer are going to eat this preference of acorn over this preference of acorn. How do you tell the difference between that? The tracking, the scouting, the thinking about preparing stand sites, the practice for like ethical shots and ethical practice of hunting, the preparation after you kill and then harvest meat. I think the big part of it too, is the sharing. All of our events in mentorship events that we've run so far, had a really great element of like, "We will eat wild game and share the stories." I think that's a big part of it because I think it is relational, I'd say and that's one thing is the community aspect of it.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Brandon Dale, truly an ambassador for Hunters of Color. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Brandon Dale: Oh, thank you so much.

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