English: On Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt, Office of Tribal Relations Director Heather Dawn Thompson, and Food Safety and Inspection Service Administrator Paul Kiecker travelled to South Dakota to announce a new, interagency pilot project to offer more localized ground bison meat for tribal communities through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). The pilot will look at changes to how USDA purchases bison to better support buying the meat from local, small, and mid-sized bison herd managers and delivering it directly to their local tribal communities. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which coordinates food purchases on behalf of USDA; the Food and Nutrition Service, which administers FDPIR; the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and the USDA Office of Tribal Relations are working together to bring this new opportunity to tribal communities. In Eagle Butte, S.D., USDA officials visited the Cheyenne River Sioux Youth Project to meet with tribes participating in the pilot, including the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, their herd managers, and local producer Dakota Pure Bison. They discussed the bison pilot program along with the importance of locally and tribally produced foods.