. >> reporter: steve lozar is a council leader for the salish tribe.julie cajune heads the center for american indian policy at the salish kootenai college. >> the land around us, you know, is part of our creation story. the geography, the place names go back to our creation stories when coyote and fox went through this area and got this place ready for human beings. >> reporter: one of those human beings turned out to be tulku sang-ngag rinpoche, the highly respected tibetan lama who says he saw this exact place in a dream when he was 8 years old in tibet. >> and he says when he came here to this very site little bit that site also he says there was such an overwhelming sense of dÉjÀ vu, and it was as if he had seen it before, as if he had really known this place, and he talked to his acquaintance about it, and of course they convinced him that he had never been here before. then he realized that this was the exact visualization that he had of america when he was a child. >> reporter: so this is where rinpoche supporters bought a 60-acre sheep ranch.