A_Haggard

Hello, thank you for doing this AMA. I have one pertinent question to my daily life and generally like to hear from Native peoples whenever we come across each other;

I have (legal) access to the shed feathers of many different birds of prey, including eagles. I try to take good care to collect them up, clean them, and save them so that they can be sent to the facility that distributes them to Native people. I like to think that I am helping people acquire important religious articles and hold on to their identities within cultural practice, but I have no personal way of knowing what happens to them or if they're even used once they are sent off.

Since you have lived on multiple reservations I am hoping you might have a broader view on how useful this is or how widely practiced this is. Have people for the most part stopped using them and moved on to, say, Christianity as you mention in another comment? Am I wasting my time?

I am also at a raptor center, as far as I know we have only ever sent off our eagle feathers but since I found out there even was a non-eagle repository I have been saving every feather regardless of species. I have a big storage tupperware of them at the center, but when we looked into sending them in it was such a confusing mess of "is the trial run over? Is this where we send them? Do we have to let someone know?" that our director is too busy tending our living birds to make personal calls regarding the sending of hawk feathers.

Could you please tell me how I can help my center get all of those feathers to your facility, if indeed that is where we send them? We have some pretty unique species, so we're told; a Native man at a wildlife conference said that the feathers of our short-tailed hawks and swallow-tailed kites would be very important to certain tribespeople but were very hard to acquire.

I am also a falconer with a red tailed hawk at the moment who is molting; is there a way for me, not as a center, to personally send these feathers in- while being well within the law- if I don't keep them for imping?

Thank you!

Wow, the response to this has been great! Thank you for letting me know, I will definitely continue to save them.

I could talk for an hour about this, but yes, it is extremely illegal to pick up eagle feathers you find even if they are in your yard. Pretty much every bird in North America is federally protected (to the point where you cannot technically even have a blue jay feather), but bald and golden eagles specifically are protected by an even higher Act, so messing with their parts is much more likely to get you in trouble.

The only way to legally have an eagle feather is to get it from the National Eagle Repository or else to have permits such as museums for wildlife education or rehab centers (like where I am, which is how I can do this) where you are picking up feathers from your legally held live eagles.

It is also legal for us to take in an eagle carcass and send it along to the repository to be parceled out.

In the UK there are some "falconry schools" or places where you can actually pay for lessons or if you get lucky you know someone willing to take you under their wing. In the US you have to track down someone already licensed and pray they like you, as here it is illegal to charge money.

In the US, the learning starts off purely theoretical and with lots of reading, followed by hands-on experience with the person doing the teaching, followed by getting a bird. However, even once you have the bird, you're very much a student and the mentor can end the lessons at any time if you aren't up to task. You can only practice independently after at least two years like this, and only if your mentor formally recommends you for an independent license.

In the UK, unfortunately, some people can say 'to hell with learning' and just buy themselves a bird. In the US, this is illegal.