More than 80 tribes from New York to Alaska have more than 20,000 bison in 65 herds as Native Americans reclaim stewardship of an animal their ancestors lived alongside and depended upon for millennia.
Bison, also known as buffalo, walk in a herd inside a corral at Badlands National Park, on Oct. 13, 2022, near Wall, S.D. The wild animals were corralled for transfer to Native American tribes, part of an effort by Indigenous groups working with federal officials to expand the number of bison on reservations.
By nightfall, the last of the American buffalo shipped from Badlands were being unloaded at the Rosebud reservation, where Heinert lives. The next day, he was on the road back to Badlands to load 200 bison for another tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux.“Buffalo, they walk in two worlds,” Heinert said. “Are they commercial or are they wildlife? From the tribal perspective, we’ve always deemed them as wildlife, or to take it a step further, as a relative.
Heinert, 50, a South Dakota state senator and director of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, views his job in practical terms: Get bison to tribes that want them, whether two animals or 200. He helps them rekindle long-neglected cultural connections, increase food security, reclaim sovereignty and improve land management. This fall, Heinert’s group has moved 2,041 bison to 22 tribes in 10 states.
European settlers and firearms brought a new level of industry to the enterprise as hunters, U.S. troops and tourists shot bison and a growing commercial market used their parts in machinery, fertilizer and clothing. By 1889, few bison remained: 10 animals in central Montana, 20 each in central Colorado and southern Wyoming, 200 in Yellowstone National Park, some 550 in northern Alberta and about 250 in zoos and private herds.
T.J. Heinert, assistant range manager of Wolakota Buffalo Range, takes aim to shoot a buffalo at the range near Spring Creek, S.D. on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. The day after the bison transfer from the Badlands, Heinert’s son T.J. sprawled flat on the ground, his rifle scope fixed on a large bull bison at the Wolakota Buffalo Range. The tribal enterprise in just two years has restored about 1,000 bison to 28,000 acres of rolling, scrub-covered hills near the Nebraska-South Dakota border.
Removing fences that crisscross ranches there and opening them to bison is unlikely, but Rosebud Sioux are intent on expanding the reservation’s herds as a reliable food source. “It’s wonderful tribes are working together on something as important as bison, that were almost lost,” Haaland said. Chains fastened around the front and hind legs, the half-ton animal was hoisted onto a flatbed truck for the bouncy ride to ranch headquarters. About 20 adults and children gathered as the bison was lowered onto a tarp, then listened solemnly to tribal elder Duane Hollow Horn Bear.Soon the tarp was covered with bloody footprints from people butchering the animal. They quartered it, sawing through bone, then sliced meat from the legs, rump, and the animal’s huge hump.
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