THE MAKER • THE ARTIST • THE ELDER • THE WARRIOR
Meet Susan.
Susan is Apsáalooke (Crow), living in Bozeman, Montana, where she's become an elder in her community. In many Native communities, elders are looked to as cultural stewards and knowledge keepers, people who pass down traditions, offer counsel, and hold a family or community together in quiet ways. Susan has grown into that role over time, and she doesn't take it lightly.
People come to her for guidance, for traditional knowledge, sometimes just to be heard. She tries to be there for them however she can.
Living on a fixed income made it hard to help the way she wanted to. She needed a way to do more. The answer came from her grandmother's kitchen.
"I remembered something my grandmother told me, that buffalo tallow was a wonderful way to moisturize your skin. And she was not wrong."
What started as a family recipe became something much larger, a business, a nonprofit, and a movement.
Inspired by her grandmother, Carries The Warstaff “Katie Yarlott,” Susan continues the legacy of bison tallow — nature’s ancestral gift, passed down through generations.
How one recipe became a movement.
Susan rendered five pounds of bison fat using her family's recipe and ended up with far more jars than she could ever use. Her son-in-law had a simple suggestion: bring them to the powwow. Set up a table. See what happens.
At that table, something clicked. If she could sell the tallow, she could channel the proceeds into an emergency fund for the young Native women who kept coming to her door. A product became a vehicle. A recipe became a purpose.
Then 2018 changed everything. Susan's grandniece was reported missing and later found murdered. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Montana was something Susan had always known was real, and now it had touched her own family.
She founded the Fierce Women Warrior Society in 2019 alongside a multigenerational group of Native women, holding their first self-defense workshop at Montana State University that December. Since then, proceeds from every jar have funded workshops, billboards offering rewards for information on missing women, and emergency support for families in crisis, reaching approximately 30 women per year.
She still makes every batch herself, inspects every jar, and designs every label with her own art. The business grew, but the reason behind it has never changed.