Toting the bloody heart of a bison wrapped in a plastic bag, a Blackfoot tribal member came to the governor’s office Tuesday to speak out against the killing of pregnant female bison by the Nez Perce Tribe from Idaho.

Adorned with a full headdress and carrying a white eagle medicine staff, police stopped James St. Goddard in the hallway outside of Gov. Bullock’s office, who was not there at the time. St. Goddard was told he could not enter the office with the heart, and later performed a Blackfoot ceremony with burning sweet grass and the heart on the Capitol steps. He was allowed to bring the heart into the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, and met with director Jason Smith.

Saying he spoke with the authority of the Blackfoot Confederacy, he had confronted Nez Perce hunt-ers near Gardiner over their shooting of bison with fully developed fetuses. He claimed hunting bison this time of year violated his and other tribes’ reverence for the animals.

“We’re almost different religions in the tribes,” St. Goddard said. “But it’s a standard thing with the buffalo that you don’t do this at this time of year. So why are politics allowed to do this?”